news.com.com— A broadband speed war is emerging as cable operators raise data rates in regions where Verizon Communications is selling its Fios fiber-to-the-home service.
Jul 1, 2005View in Crawl 4
I haven't had too many problems with Comcast. They recently upgraded our cable speed (northern panhandle, WV) to 4Mbps/384Kbps - right before Verizon upgraded their DSL speed to 3Mbps/768Kbps. All this competition is nice :)
The weird thing is they give people this crazy bandwidth but they really only expect people to do stupid things with it - like browse the web and send email. but the cool thing is that people do it. The big pipelines to the web (T3+) don't seem to have really come down in cost - they are still extremely expensive. but regular people can now get crazy speeds relatively cheap because grandma thinks it's a good idea to spend $30-$60 a month for DSL she won't actually use. You get enough people paying $50 and ultimately only grabbing as much off the net as any old dialup user, and it becomes kinda like a health insurance program - if everyone really used their insurance it would never work, but since many people would never go to the hospital unless they were on their death beds, it works just fine... if you have 100 people paying for a T3 line and collectively only using half the bandwidth, that leaves the whole other half ... to the one guy bright enough to do with broadband what it really ought to be doing... I won't specify what ;-)
I live in Northern Virginia and Verizon is installing fios around here, and sure enough cox upped their speed and gave upgraded our speeds from 4mb to 5mb down and 2mb up. The premier package now gets 15mb down. I still plan to go to fios once it is installed here though. Fiber/digital or copper/analog? hmmmmm.
f**k FIOS. They state right in their FAQ: "The consumer offers do not permit customers to host any type of server, personal or commercial."What good is my 2mb upload if I cannot host anything? Will there ever be a broadband connection you can actually use??
p00pJul 2, 2005
I haven't had too many problems with Comcast. They recently upgraded our cable speed (northern panhandle, WV) to 4Mbps/384Kbps - right before Verizon upgraded their DSL speed to 3Mbps/768Kbps. All this competition is nice :)
thenikJul 2, 2005
I only get 3MB from Charter and it's 42bucks a month. >:(Kill charter, gain Verizon. ;-;
Closed AccountJul 2, 2005
The weird thing is they give people this crazy bandwidth but they really only expect people to do stupid things with it - like browse the web and send email. but the cool thing is that people do it. The big pipelines to the web (T3+) don't seem to have really come down in cost - they are still extremely expensive. but regular people can now get crazy speeds relatively cheap because grandma thinks it's a good idea to spend $30-$60 a month for DSL she won't actually use. You get enough people paying $50 and ultimately only grabbing as much off the net as any old dialup user, and it becomes kinda like a health insurance program - if everyone really used their insurance it would never work, but since many people would never go to the hospital unless they were on their death beds, it works just fine... if you have 100 people paying for a T3 line and collectively only using half the bandwidth, that leaves the whole other half ... to the one guy bright enough to do with broadband what it really ought to be doing... I won't specify what ;-)
paiwayJul 2, 2005
Poor Americans. In Sweden, we can get 100Mb/s up/down fiber for around $40-45 a month. I'm on 10/10 fiber for $25/month, personally.
adidasJul 2, 2005
In Connecticut I have optonline with 10mb down and 1 up. ANd they have a trial market in NY getting 100 up and down.
appleaday3kJul 2, 2005
fios = awsome. im getting 15.5 down and 1.78 up. Cox = Trash
motionblurJul 2, 2005
I'd just like to add that Bell Canada can kiss my ass.
mofoJul 3, 2005
I live in Northern Virginia and Verizon is installing fios around here, and sure enough cox upped their speed and gave upgraded our speeds from 4mb to 5mb down and 2mb up. The premier package now gets 15mb down. I still plan to go to fios once it is installed here though. Fiber/digital or copper/analog? hmmmmm.
enzomediciFeb 17, 2006
f**k FIOS. They state right in their FAQ: "The consumer offers do not permit customers to host any type of server, personal or commercial."What good is my 2mb upload if I cannot host anything? Will there ever be a broadband connection you can actually use??
urischNov 17, 2009
Well, Who did not expect it?<a class="user" href="http://www.invictawatch.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.invictawatch.org/</a>