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Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!
wilstephens writes: "Found this article on CNet about the latest trend of people dumping broadband in favour of their modems. Cheaper, and more reliable service, apparently! 'Katy Ling, a software consultant who had her home wired for high-speed Internet access last year, did what many technology analysts said would never happen: She bailed out of broadband...'"
She did it cause she is broke so what. If I had no job and had to cut back that is one place I would look at too
was running this as a story as well, basically most of their users came to the conclusion that the general populous would "sell their grandmas" before returning to a modem. Non-techies don't want to wait for their information, this is the only thing that brought them to the 'net. at least I _hope_ it wasn't for the ads...
________________________________________________
I could tolerate the net at 56k. Plus, the phone lines in my area are so noisy that you'd hardly ever get 4800 baud on them.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
I'm seriously considering going back to telephone modem. I'm using cable modem here, and the service seems to go down every other day and be no faster than 100Kbps. Before that I had DSL and that worked like a charm, but there's none to be had around my new house.
When broadband first came to my area, it was cable modems to a small section of town... only a few people had the access. This year the local cable company was working on doing the whole town, but excite@home stopped taking new customers, so that'll kill new cable access. DSL has been spotty with all the companies going out of business and there's a long wait when you call for them to set up the service (Ameritech). I called and they said they would be there in 4 weeks. 8 weeks later they still hadn't installed it. I cancelled it.
Long Live Dial up!!!!!!!
She obviously didn't know how to download stuff from Usenet. An ISP with a good feed and retention on alt.binaries.multimedia.* is enough to make DSL worth dropping cable TV for. And having a fixed IP so you can SSH back home is nice, too.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
And frankly, I don't know anyone else that would, either. I supect the Author's sole anecdotel example is also their neighbor. There isn't a story here.
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
It still amazes me the # of users of my websites that still use modems. We are now planning to install mod_gzip for Apache to help modem users download our larger pages faster. It didn't seem worth it at first with folks moving to broadband, but we still found many of our users listing 'modem' as their primary access method when they register. Plus it'll reduce our bandwidth demand for users who have broadband - they'll get larger files faster too. Yeah, it adds overhead on teh server CPU, but for us its worth it since we have headroom to spare.
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If was using DSL mostly to commute and I left my job and had less cash laying around, I'd probably cancel the DSL too.
We must be lucky where I live. I have had DSL for over 2 years now, and I have had almost no problems (well, one modem did die). Almost 100% uptime, on the DSL line and with the ISP (Open World Inc.) Course, now that I've said this, I'll probably get home and find it dead. Some basic info on where my DSL is coming from: Lexington, KY. DSL line provider: Verizon DSL service: 768 down, 256 up ISP: Open World Inc www.stdio.com
I've got a cable modem, and every night when the traffic starts to get high, service totally stops. This isn't too bad, because I live close enough to campus to run to a computer lab when I really need to, but it's annoying nonetheless. The solution: we called the cable company to complain about their horrible service, and they credited our bill for the month's worth of broadband. I won't argue with free broadband, even if it doesn't work from 6-12pm most nights.
If you're having trouble with your broadband service, try complaining. The worst that could happen is you'll have to leave a message, but you might be surprised what happens.
I mean, they also said a few things along the lines of "experts who have just as little evidence as us predict a downturn, etc.,etc.". Whatever.
Come on, give it up, that's
I think this is pure BS. I'd give up the net before going back to 56k modem. I was a lan party maniac until I got broadband, now I lan from home.
I have the net at work to surf, with out the sub 75 ping my sdsl gives me I'd just do without.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
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I think the main question (at least for me) is not how *fast* my connection is, but how much i have to pay. Here in Europe we don't usually have flat rates and have to pay about 1 us cent for every minute of online time. For browsing the web it doesn't really matter whether all those pages build up really quickly or rather slowly because I'll always need more time to read the stuff than I need to download it. Considering big downloads a faster connection is better, because it saves time and thereby money. But if I could get a flat rate like it is usual in North America I probably wouldn't care if my download takes a couple of hours or so. That's what a second phone line (or ISDN) is for. Just my 2p..
With a dialup modem I used to get a lot more done around the house. I could go get coffee while waiting for pages to load, or do some cleaning. And I got a real sense of well-being when I left my machine on all night to download a 100MB game demo and it actually worked!
I've grown so accustomed to highspeed access that broadband is almost a "necessity" for me; I'd consider cutting the stream of crap on cable television before I'd dump my cable modem.
That said, I can imagine that for many users, high speed access is a frivolity. Let's face it: you need a high speed connection mainly for gaming, porn, and overwrought sites with lots of graphics.
You could probably get by with a regular modem (and, hell, a text browser), if you actually wanted the Internet just for information.
Look, if you want broadband to work, you need a company focussed on their customers, with a manageable customer base and no plans for massive expansion. Videotron, in Quebec, Canada, provides reliable, inexpensive cable internet to one province, and one province only, with a possible market of around 5 milions people. They have kept their operation small, their staff trained, and decided not to expand into other provinces. In this way, they are able to maintain a high level of service. Your mileage may vary, but I have only had 2 down days of service, living in 2 large metropolitan regions of Quebec, in 2 years.
This is in direct contrast to Bell Canada, who's attempt service all of Canada has led to an incrdibly bad DSL service and Rogers cable modem service collapsing under the immense wieght of their customers.
The moral: Don't bite off more than you can chew. Canada may not be as competitive, but there are lessons to be learned from staying in business long enough to make money off the customers you already have.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
Those who can face unreliable service, high prices, and shamefully bad customer service and support.
And its getting worse. Most of the start-ups that may have created competition in this market have gone under, leaving the cable and telephone monopolies in charge.
I don't know if the solution is more or less regulation and/or public involvement, but in the current atmosphere, things are going to suck for a very long time.
K.D. Lang bailed out on her "broad" band? oh crap, now what will the girls listen to?
har har....
The truth is, most people don't need that much bandwidth(which is irrelevant in many cases because of limits put on broadband in many areas), people don't care if their computer is connected 24/7, and a lot of people just use their computers for sending E-mail and chatting. Broadband is nice, but why would people stick with something expensive and elabourate when a cheap and easy solution exists? Broadband is great for people who use computers for games, or downloads, or even for developers, but when all you are doing is checking your E-mail and chatting, 56k is more than enough -- especially for half the cost.
It's been a long time.
Five years ago, those of us who knew the Mysteries of the Web Host were preparing for a mass conversion of people to the Ways of the Net. We were telling people (and ourselves) that Faster Is The Future(tm), More Is Better(tm), and Wait'll You See What We Have In Store For You(tm).
:)
Then, most of those morons signed up for the Great Satans of AOL and MSN.
Seriously, though, this is hardly a shock. Firstly, modems have relatively minimal drain on bandwidth resources, and since there are infinitely more providers of modemic service than fatpipe, it's easier to conect (provided you have either a mom-n-pop shop or a few numbers to call).
Fatpipe is also expensive. Cable modems are somewhere near $40 a month for unreliable party-line bandwidth; DSL is more cash for less hash; and satellite two-way has bad lag (so would you after a 100k mile trip per packet).
In this economic dounturn, more people are looking to save money, and this is one easy way to do it. (Most people surf the web to find a few relatively important sites to them and then maybe putz around for other items of interest.)
I mean, $15/mo $40.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Once I actually found a reliable provider who could install it I have never had a problem with broadband.
I first got a cable modem about two years ago via RCN. Recently I moved to a new place which is not wired for RCN, so I switched to SBC (Ameritech) DSL. Surprisingly I really have had no major problems with the speed or reliability of their services (though I do take issue with the price).
I did have problems getting DSL service from a few providers, the standard DSL Hell - but they are both now in bakruptcy proceedings or already bankrupt - so go figure.
To go back to a regular modem is just unthinkable for me. Maybe my experience is atypical because I live in a large and competitive urban broadband market.
-josh
After that time I got those 2MBp/s download speeds over my cable modem, there was no way that I was going back.
I reguarly get 300KBp/s per file transfer from fileplanet.com, and even faster tranfers from other sites.
Being able to download a 5meg Shockwave Flash file in the time that it takes a companies logo to fade onto the screen also helps.
Alot.
Ping times under 100ms are also great. So is that nice west coast backbone that @Home has for its users.
I originaly started out with TCI@Home then AT&T bought them up. Now I have AT&T Internet Access, Cable Television, and Cell Phone service.
And you know what? I am being treated great. The few times that I have had to call text support were great, hell, the tech guy and me were swapping anti-MS jokes back and forth. The uptime is incredible, especialy after AT&T took over from TCI, and I have not had a service interuption for, God, almost a year now! The few service interuptions that I did have in 1q01 all lasted less then 10 minutes except for one that had was 30 minutes. After that there has not been a single problem for ages now.
Hell, when my power went out my UPS kicked in and I was still able to surf the internet. Cable Modem service was still up. Now _THAT_ is what I call robust service.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Broadband was almost like a "trend". Average people that browse the web maybe 1 hour a week and get their email everyday do not need their broadband; and, due to economic times, they'd rather go for a cheap alternative.
People that napster all day, play games all the time, are online a lot for something other than browsing and chatting will keep their broadband.
Its a sign of a trend, or of the economic times...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I ordered digital cable tv, phone, and internet from the same (nameless) provider. It took two weeks, even though all the cables and hookups were already installed in the house. When they showed up, they said, "whoops - your phone didn't get put in the DB, so I'll hook it up now and all you have to do is call to activate. They shouldn't have to come out here again." After 2 hours on the phone trying to convince them to just activate it, they said, "Sorry, we have to send out another technician, and that will take another week."
"Can't you just try activating it from there and see if that works?" I begged.
"No."
So another week without phone service went by. The technician came and, guess what, it was already all hooked up. All he had to do was call some special number to have it activated.
Then, when I got home that evening, I went to check my email and guess what? My broadband Internet connection was gone. I called tech support again (and waited in the easy-listening queue) only to be told (after reboots and wire reconnecting) that they'd have to send out another technician, and that they didn't have any spots open until TWO WEEKS LATER.
I wanted to tell them to shove their connection and cancel all my services. I wanted nothing more. But I don't dare do it -- I live in a "low" aread where cell phone service is bad, TV reception is bad, and DSL isn't offered, plus I bought my own cable modem.
They know I'm stuck with them, no matter how crappy their service / prices are. Short of disconnecting myself from the world and going back to 56k, I'm there.
With Northpoint and Rhythms going under and Covad on the brink there isn't much left to choose from for xDSL.
That's what happens when you compete against the phone companies. The phone company should lay the line and not provide the service, then you wouldn't be directly competing against your provider.
We dropped our Broadband and switched to T1.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I guess I'm one of the few that has actually had really, really good luck with broadband. I've got Verizon's DSL and it's reliability has been great, and they haven't raised prices like I thought they would. Unless they jack the price up or it starts dying all the time I'm sticking with it.
I wouldn't sell my Grandma.........but I might lease her.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
And the value in 'broadband' is not the speed really. We've heard many times now, it's the instant availability stupid. People hate to have to wait (through busy signals potentially) to get online witha modem to check their mail. They like to have ICQ/AIM running all the time to see when their friends are online and to chat. It's all about convinience.
Besides, the article is full of contradictions, for example take this bit:
[ISPs] are looking for high-speed subscriptions' profit margins to bolster their bottom line...
and later:
So which one is it? I work for an ISP that does DSL, and let me tell you, there are no margins on DSL. It can easily take a 2-3 years to start making money on a DSL client. Hosting (and dialup to a certain extent) and bandwidth reselling is where the margins are.
And as a later paragraph puts it, high-speed subscribers would "rather sell their grandmothers" than go back to a pokey dial-up connection. It'll be hard for anyone to convert back to a dialup connection.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
How strange. Up here in Canada, where Ma Bell still has a sanctioned and legally-enforced local-service monopoly, ADSL is more popular than the Beatles. Simply put, there *is* no reliability problem -- my service has worked perfectly since the day I installed it (although there *was* a one-month waiting list, IIRC.) Cable-internet is popular too, but generally more expensive (on the order of 17%) and slower to boot. Many of my friends have it, even the nontechnicals. It's the new 'cable' -- a somewhat-premium service that everyone desires.
;)
Price is $40CD/mo. , which is $30US.
Perhaps (and as a linux zealot I say this reluctantly) there's a place for limited (and legally enforced) monopolies in *some* markets (just not the OS market no thank you bob
- undoware.ca
For people with a short attention span, the article takes a long time just to say:
Economy bad. People out of work. Luxury spending allegedly curtailed.
I really can't see that happening in the real world, unless of course your ISP has a 50% average uptime. i've had many HS ISPs, and even with even the worse of them, i would bitch and moan when it was down, but never would consider dialup. now i am forced to be on dialup because of my new location, and i can't understand anyone who would *choose* this..
Ok maybe if you're a tight-wad, and you use the internet maybe 2 or 3 times a week to check your mail, it wouldn't be a big deal, but i personally can't stand clicking on my inbox, and then having enough time to go make a coffee before i get to the next page. And with so many people on HS internet these days, i find the majority of sites are loaded with graphics and the like which make them almost impossible to view on dialup.
And forget about downloading the new Mandrake release iso or something, not on dialup, unless you have a few days of spare time to kill...
I can understand some people being "fine" with dialup, not seeing the need for speed, so to say. but that is akin to my father being "fine" with his pentium 166.. its all a matter of perspective; if you don't know better, then dialup is good enough for you.
i dont know, but in my oppinion, anyone who would choose dialup after tasting the speed of 1 megabit or more of bandwith, is the same type of person who probly has a few whips and chains in the bedroom, cause they like pain.
Sure my DSL isn't the best, but it beats the hell out of a modem. I can get a constant minimum of 400kbps which ain't too shabby considering it's split with my roommate. Sure it's a hassle to reboot when the connection drops (discontinued 3Com DSL modem with driver issues) but it is not worth going back to dialup, especially when there are two web-heads in the house.
This isn't surprising if you are not mission critical
Where I live, I waited for broadband for two years. During that two years, I've seen download caps, bandwidth restrictions, disallowing of multiple IP addresses as well as privacy intruding features of ISPs RIAA and the federal govt. People who actively seed back doors if you actually UTILIZE the bandwidth that you pay for. Plus the qos stinks. nothing out there is worth it. Sure you may be able to vid-conference, but with whom? Watch movies over the web? Not until the entertainment industry pulls out of their litigation. I only surf a total of about 10 websites. And I need broadband for this?
I always said that anyone is a fool to pay for dialup. not I extend that. Anyone is a fool to pay for internet service. Broadband is useless in any applicable sense these days, and dialup is not a premium. Maybe this whole lousy ISP dynamic will collapse and be replaced by community networks. That would be golden, and something that I would pay for. Instead of paying corporations to tell me how much and what I should download and what I should use my property for.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Maybe your users select "modem" with the thought that if they select higher bandwidth, you'll force-feed them a more graphics/flash-heavy site, and they don't want that?
Or maybe they think cable modem == modem?
If I had a dollar for every website form I filled out truthfully, I'd be a very poor man.
Even out in a rural area in Minnesota, I've seen this happening for about the last month. Nothing major, but a customer here, a customer there, maybe 2 for a month, dropping High Speed to return to dialup.
Reasons I've heard so far 'too expensive', or 'expense did not justify the speed' and what not. Let's face it, this isn't cable. We've got DSL out here, and people are paying for it. NOt cheap, it's under the control of the local telco's, and if I were not an employee getting major discounts, I probably would not get DSL.
For the average home user, what advantages does DSL or other high speed alternatives give them? Faster downloads? Everyone likes that, but it's where most of the 'benefits' end. Most of the folks who have DSL out here don't know enough to understand how to save files into particular places, let alone how to watch streaming videos.
So what do the people who's kids talked them into getting DSL get, after their kid leaves? Not a lot, if they don't really know how to use their computer, or if all they do is browse CNN/stock sites, and do email. What's the point in paing that much more per month, just to do email? Not a lot, I'd say...
It does make sense. Until ISP's don't gauge prices, it won't matter. Sad thing is, we aren't even gauging prices. We're making a little money now, but we had to pay to have a lot more range then any city DSL company, with fewer subscribers.
...if people would learn how to make a damn web site speedy. /. at home because there damn ad system stalls the whole load.
I no longer view
Not to mention the site that have 1/2 a meg or more index page, sheesh.
Anybody who designs a site for a wide range of consumer customers(as opposed to business cutomers) that doesn't design the index page as a basic, small page that allows the consumer to choose between a high band width page and a smaller low bandwidth page, should be fired and ceramoniously stripped of there editors. I had DSL for a year, then cable for a year, and I gaurantee you if I could get them for a reasonable price, I'd do it again.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is that the people there to serve are incompetent. Just yesterday I called asking where to FTP to for my web space, since that info was never given to me. The guy on the other end of the phone said "Uhhhh.... FTP? You lost me."
When it was installed, the dude who set up my computer was a complete moron. I have AT&T Cable, BTW. Of course, they wouldn't allow me to do it myself, so this dude takes my case apart, and boots up my computer. Before I can say anything he puts the PCI NIC in while the machine is on. HE said "They saw you shouldn't do this, but its okay." Then he was surprised when Windows did not auto-detect it.
[FromTheMorning]
I expect that the same people are also cutting back on their cable TV subscriptions.
if this really does turn out to be a major trend, a positive side effect would be a lot more consideration for low bandwidth users. Sites may return to being trimmer, more text-oriented. You know, like the original vision Tim Berners-Lee had for the web!
It's hardly an original point, but it's worth mentioning in the context of this story. Most of the useful information I get from the web is text.
E.g., slashdot, virtua fighter websites, drudgereport, etc.
The main exception to this is probably mapquest. The rest of my browsing is work research and/or entertainment. My point is that very often 90% of the data I download is extraneous images and other content (e.g., ads, decorations, other blah...) that I pay zero attention to. (BTW, I have T3 at work and DSL at home).
On a dial-up connection (and I used to use one, from *Australia*) this is really annoying. With broadband it's not so bad -- but what could be better than surfing a more text-based web with broadband? There wouldn't _be_ download time as such -- the amount of time it takes to d/l a pageful of text is trivial compared to the time it takes to find ther server, and (often) for the server to retrieve/generate the page.
So in some ways a mass defection back to modems would be a healthy thing for the web.
grib.
maybe
I can't seem to put my finger on it, oh wait. It's the complete lack of evidance that broadband defectors are on the rise.
The article says "Broadband defectors on the rise" yet only cites on person who was using DSL to telecommute and after losing her job, without the cash for the connection there wasn't much point in keeping it. Hey, if I got canned and bills were stacking up, the first thing to go would be my cable modem too. That's just silly.
They claim that a lot of people are dropping broadband, but then relate it to the loss of jobs in the high-tech sector. Hello! The high-tech sector is probably the primary user of this and yes, again, if you lost your job could you justify spending $40-$50/mo on an internet connection vs. paying the rent and putting food on the table. Talk about stating the obvious.
Even then, most of the ISPs they talked to said that growth was slow or subscriptions were rock steady. So where's this image of digital rats deserting the ship? The final blow came when they shifted the article towards @Home and Napster, trying to blame them for the downshift in broadband dwindling. @Home screwed up because they grew too fast and too large for their own good. Any company will suffer that. Napster, well, that's another story but again, it has nothing to do with broadband. They say there's no "killer app" for broadband. What the hell is that? You have a browser, an email and maybe and ftp client. What more do you need? What do you expect out of bandwidth?
Short of it is that I don't see any defectors in broadband subscriptions and like Kurt Rahn, an EarthLink spokesman said, high-speed subscribers would "rather sell their grandmothers" than go back to any modem solution.
liB
You'll get my broadband when you pry it from my cold dead nics !
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
There's no debating that at the current time, broadband is a luxury like cable TV or long distance telephone calls. These are the luxuries that you'll probably hang onto until you've already cut back on eating out and movies and other easy to eliminate budget items.
I would imagine just as many people are dumping $50/month cel phone plans as are dumping $50/month DSL plans. If you have less income, or none, its not like you can't survive without the 3000-minute cel plan or unlimited broadband. These are people with serious budget problems (an unfortunately large population).
I doubt folks are going to be dumping broadband (or cel phone, or Cable) unless they have something specific they need that $50 for (like food or rent).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
One consultant changes jobs and decides DSL isn't worth it-- fine, she can go back to the stone age if she wants. I sorta wonder what she does with her pc anyways....
Let me just say that they'll get my broadband over my cold dead body.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
It's amusing that people get really upset if cable TV goes out, but tolerate data outages.
I used to work in the Cable Modem industry, back when it was "New Technology(tm)". The biggest selling point that I noticed for the tech savvy was the speed. (Obviously.) However, the tech savvy market is smaller than you think. So the real highest selling point was the cost vs benefit. For example:
_Dialup Model_
56k ISP: $20+/mo
2nd Phone line: $20+/mo
waiting 10 minutes/MB: pain in the ass
_Cable Modem Model_
Modem Rental: $10/mo or less
Connection Fees: $30-$40/mo
waiting 30 seconds/MB: less pain in the ass
The point is, for the same price, or even $10 more, people could have the same non-voice-line-interrupting service, and even get some extra speed out of the deal. People that had the more expensive ISPs (AOL comes to mind) were even more prone to make the switch, since they would actually be saving money by switching. (We provided @Home at the time, which provided content so people used to AOL wouldn't feel too out of place.)
as with everything it comes down to value vs cost. I spend most of my waking time at work where I have net access, so by the time I get home I read mail and that sabout it. when I first heard about high speed connections I had grand dreams of running my own web service, and doign all this stuff. but the reality of it is it's not worth $50 a month, for something I used essentially, less than 1 hour a day. that equates to $2 an hour to check my e-mail and down load the latest movie reviews. I figure I will switch when the pricing is around $30 an hour.
1. Unreliable connections experienced on Cable. (frequent disconnects)
2. Connection speeds lower then modem speed when connecting to server hosted on modem bandwidth.
3. Cable does not play my favorite song on connecting.
4. Cable security is low. (People can actually hack in my computer without having to wait)
- Cable is haunted by big nasty ghosts
Dump your broadband! Use MODEM!
If I was out of work I'd cut the cable, cable modem, Netflix membership, sell my motorcycles, and anything else to keep food on the table (and keep the table). The article states the painfully obvious. Broadband comes out of discresionary spending and when you need to save money, dropping down to regular dial-up is a viable option to many people.
So long as I have disposable income, however, the extra $20/month to have a cable modem as opposed to a traditional dial-up is worth more, than say, my weekly trip to the arcade.
A better (real) story would be about people who aren't worried about their jobs or the economy dropping broadband because they see no value in it.
I've had some sort of full-time connection to the Net for about 8 years now, starting with a nailed-up 33.6 modem (with a router on my end), moving through ISDN, DSL, and finally cable today. Over all those years, I was only down for about 3 days between the Northpoint shutdown and when the AT&T tech showed up at my house with the cable modem (I spent the weekend in between rewiring the house). I couldn't conceive of life without a full-time fast connection.
With it, I provide e-mail to myself and some friends, web service, and a fast connection that lets anybody anywhere in the house plug in and run fast. There's an Airport base station too, with a hacked-in antenna, to allow use around the immediate neighborhood. Through it all, prices have steadily fallen (from $79/month plus phone line charges of about $45 for the V.34 to $50/month for the cable modem), performance has improved, and I couldn't imagine going back to the dark old days of dial-up. When I travel, I try to stay at hotels with broadband (a lot of Marriotts have it), and only occasionally are forced to use a modem. It's painful.
As a result, there are a lot of things I'd part with before I'd give up my connection. I'd chop out regular cable TV, ditch the OmniSky service (which is pretty darned cool, though), toss the cell phone, and stop collecting comic books before I dumped broadband. Easy.
When you get used to the convenience of having an always-on connection, very few people are going to give that up - though they may not be as dependent on it as I am. The only real people I see as being likely to churn out are people with serious cash flow problems (where the $50/month may be the difference between food and no food), and maybe folks who have had service problems to the point where they say "screw it, this isn't worth the money".
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
This is really a transition time for computer communication/web/distributed computing. People haven't really figured out what the web is good for, and companies haven't really figured out how to use it.
As the kids that are around ten years old today grow into adulthood -- kids that can't imagine life without computers, the net, and web -- these are the kids who'll first really see how it will all integrate into their lives.
Broadband will be part of it. I have no idea how it'll look, but it'll be there. My suspicion is that we'll have a single cable that handles all communications -- TV, Phone, Computers, new stuff -- and that things will become more and more networked within a home. Maybe not -- but I'm not worried about broadband in the long run.
Might worry about losing my current DSL connection though...
Sean.
When I first made an inquiry with PacBell about getting DSL service, they told me I was too far out. So I contacted Covad, and lo and behold, they hooked me up. I had service through Fastpoint Communications. It was awesome. I had true, always-on static IP, blazing-fast DSL.
But Fastpoint had a difficult time getting DSL subscribers, due largely to the fact that PacBell was able to jam marketing messages down the throats of phone customers, not to mention TV ads, magazine articles, and the like. Of course, the fact that most PacBell customers were having installation nightmares was beside the point.
I actually had one friend who spent six months trying to get connected through PacBell. FIVE home visits later, they finally got it working. Another friend actually had to contact the California VP of Sales for PacBell in order to get some action on his stalled installation. Talk about a bait and switch tactic.
In any case, Fastpoint went belly-up. So Covad passed me on to Earthlink. Whatever problems Earthlink is having seem to be self-created. Their phone support people are truly awesome - great attitude, very helpful. But it took a while for my service to get started, and I was actually DSL-less for two months. Once it started working, I was moderately satisfied with my new PPPoE (yech!) connection, but not as happy as I'd been before with Fastpoint.
Then I wanted to add a second phone number to my apartment. I had to switch to PacBell for my DSL because since they own the voice line, the only way to get a true DSL Internet and voice on the same line setup is if you use PacBell!
So now I am using PacBell, with an annoying PPPoE, dynamic IP setup. I've just put in an order to convert over to static IP, which means I'll now pay $70/mo., and I'll have five IP addresses, when all I really need is one, perhaps two.
I work from home, so fast, reliable Internet access is key for me. I use PacBell because I basically have no other choice. They submarined the competition, played every stall tactic in the book, and now they're a local monopoly.
Will there be any action on this at the state or federal level? With the current economic and political climate, that's highly unlikely. To me, the subversion of competition in broadband was the real tragedy of the dot-bomb crash. I don't give a crap about pets.com, but we all lost out on a great opportunity when the Baby Bells subverted true competition.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Broadband will take off when it is cheaper to have broadband for a month than pay for a dialup bill... We need mass take-up for broadband to really take off, and that means making it a cost effective option for occasional users who currently enjoy their hour online each month for at most a few pence. Maybe the answer to this is to start charging by the MB for transfers? I suppose that would mean people would need to run a secure OS too to avoid extortionate bills:-)
I am dumping my cable modem only because I have found that someone else in my apartment building has an open wireless access point with a DHCP server and a fat pipe to the Internet. I plan to piggy-back on their connection and save me $40/month I pay to AT&T@Home. Under normal circumstances I would not consider it seriously, but my job situtation is very unreliable. They could let us go any day now. My wife and I have totally gone in savings mode. Heck we even turned off our land line phone, to save money. We do have cell phones, so it made that decision a little easier.
If I had to give up one or the other: cable modem or netflix? Tough choice.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I've used modems in about 6 different locations around the country; out of these, only 1 place yielded a connection speed greater than 50k. On average, I've experienced connection speeds of 24k. Then factor in the extra packet latencies from having such a narrower pipeline to the ISP, and download speeds will never actually reach 24k, not even close. Then count all the extra bloat that Web pages have nowadays, which are designed for broadband connections for the most part, which is enough to make a normal person go insane and jump out the window.
No sir-reee... I ain't dumping my broadband for nuttin'.
The kinds of people who end up dumping broadband fall into two categories.
1) "I cant find anything useful to do with it!"
2) "Oh, help me, my broadband service has been a nightmare!"
Both of which are fairly stupid conclusions. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean its not there--There are plenty of things on the net for which broadband is perfectly suited for. Here, i'll give you a real world example: I stopped watching TV news about a month and a half ago. Now, I just pull in feed via DSL from CNN and ABC News. I don't find much sense in 24 hour nonstop anthrax coverage, so I omit that crap from my feed. Tipped over vending machines have killed more people in the past 10 years than Anthrax has killed in the past 50 years. I'm surprised the nightly news isn't giving you stooges hourly vending machine updates.
Anyway, onto the second category. Broadband service providers by in large don't have their acts together, but thats not the technology's fault. Its the fault of the people handling it. We as Americans are far too impatient with such things. We just want to plug it in and see it go, and no form of broadband works that way. People who complain about broadband service are the same people who complain that their tires get dirty from off-roading. Wait until the damn road is paved, then travel on it.
For the record, i've had DSL for the past two years or so. I never had a problem with the technology end of it -- But I have had a problem with the human end of it. Namely, inept technical support, and billing, which is to be expected whenever theres a big rush to do anything.
Getting rid of broadband is like saying we should get rid of cars because they cost more to maintain than bicycles. No thanks.
Cheers, and yes, PROPAGANDA is still running,
Bowie J. Poag
I don't have a phone line at my house!
I decided that instead of paying $25-28 a month for a landline, I'd ditch it in favor of a cell phone, which costs me about $40 a month including long distance.
Cable modem is $40 and cable service $30... so I'm saving cash on the stupid phone line in favor of the added features & convience of a cell.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The first factor was simple economics.
My family has been on cable for a little over a year now, since it first became available in our neighborhood. My selling point to my wife was that we were paying the $19.95 monthly usage cap every month on the phone bill, largely because of computer use, and we were paying $17.95 every month for ISP subscription. Add that up and we're a few bucks shy of $39.95, which was the cable fee. By acting early, we got installation and the first month free. Counting just that free first month against the extra expense of cable, we're still better than cost parity with phone+ISP.
The second factor was phone availability. We had constant contention between phone and computer on the line. I didn't mention this in my original sales pitch to my wife, but it quickly came out.
I never mentioned performance at all. I waited for her to tell me about how fast things suddenly became.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This has come up before, but it's really bizarre how you have to pay so much for broadband, and yet get so little.
I complain about service sometimes, but I haven't had an outage for months, and the one that I did have was pretty brief. I pay $40.00CDN a month, and I don't know a single person - not one! - that still uses dialup. Even people that don't really need it have it. A friend of mine in Didsbury, Alberta (try looking it up on a map. I dare you.) is getting cable access soon. You can even get cable in Hicksville, Alberta. Geesh.
Meanwhile, you folks have shitty service, at bad prices, and it's actually worth it for you to go back to dialup? What's the world coming to when the (ostensibly) most technologically advanced nation can't even get decent internet access to its citizens?
Yeah, I dropped my dsl line back in October. My carrier got bought out by RealConnect and at the end of my one year contract I was notified that my 49.95 128K IDSL line would be *slightly* going up to $169.95!
What really annoyed me was the letter itself. Okay, I can understand if costs go up. But (a) there was no apology in the letter and (b)I was given 7 days to make up my mind on continuing the contract.
So I call up RealConnect and mildly explain my position, which is that you are trying to gouge me with an insanely high price. They in turn blamed Network Access Solutions for ratcheting up the residential rates to match business class. NAS is the only provider to the local switch, so after some research, I figured I was pretty much hosed.
Needless to say I do my big downloads from work and at home I say, "Welcome to NetZero!"
Postscript: After one month plus at 28.8K (my phone lines are &@#'d up buts thats another story) I don't knotice it that much. When I'm online my phone calls are forwarded to my cell, and I can't download ISO's, MP3's, or mulimedia, but who cares? I can easily do without that junk. Email, ebay, online shopping, messaging, you can do 90% of your stuff with a dog slow connection.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Good point made here...although Canada has it's share of bad ISPs (Bell), there are many broadband providers that are global pioneers in the business and provide very reliable service.
In my observations in Alberta (Edmonton and Calgary) broadband has generally been reliable and brodband adoption continues to increase despite the economic downturn. Videotron was introducing cable broadband service in Alberta (Edmonton) and Quebec as early as late 1996, and their cuustomers seems quite satisfied apart from the wait times when service is required.
In Calgary, Shaw cable has weathered the growing pains without TOO much difficulty, and service continues to improve. Shaw was wise enough to cut ties with @home when their difficulties affected Shaw's quality of service. This month, Shaw is pulling the plug on at-home completely and moving all their customers to Shaw's own infrastructure, which has been in tested for a few months now in parallel with @home. Perfect timing considering the complete mess @home is in right now.
I myself use DSL to brovde my internet needs. I work from home and run servers so I opted for TELUS-Cadvision "Basic Business" service. It provides me with 7168 (down)/1024 (up) kbps (although typical d/l is more like 2048), I get an 8-ip static subnet on which I can run servers or whatever else, free dial-up access, 1 year free DNS hosting and a lot of other goodies, all for approx. US$65 per month. "Home" or "starter" DSL or residential cable typically costs little more than US$25 per month.
No only is it cheap, it is reliable...in 2 full years of service, I've had less than 1 hour without internet access. It took a few weeks before I got it installed, but they got it dome the day they said it would be done when I first applied for the service. Tech support is quite good too---they don't even hang up on me when I tell them I run Linux!
That's my US$0.0125...have a nice day!
There are some DSL providers that have horrible track records, just as there are cable outfits that have fantastic records. In 3 years of having a cable modem I'd say my total downtime is
People are dumping electricity for candles. Running water for wells. Plumbing for outhouses.
If anyone who has broadband and has a use for their computer being online then why be so retro. But man -- if this is such a big trend then maybe those "Free ISP's" with the big business plans can give it another go no?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
damn I got to move to your town. ATW charges $44 IF you have cable service with them, otherwise it is $70.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
My employer is still covering TWC cable modem in the same area as you're in...
.iso files is nice, but begin able to hold a conversation while I wait for VoIP to work well, that's something!
Granted, there were a few months where my employer put a hold on reimbursement, but now things are back to the norm.
The biggest advantage that I notice is the ability to use the phone-- not being knocked off by casually picking up the phone. Getting those large
But the snafu you're witnessing is due largely to our devotion to competition and the corporate tendency towards greed. It'll probably take the government to straighten things out so it can flourish enough to become a common service.
On that note...
Isn't broadband in Canada government subsidized? I forget where I heard that, but if it is, then Canada really is in the same boat with the difference of having our mistakes to learn from before doing their own broadband.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Ummm...oh yeah, for our US readres those are CANADIAN dollers...multiply by 0.63 to get what it would cost with YOUR dollars....
Your numbers are a bit exaggerated. For my dialup:
56k ISP: $13/mo
2nd Phone line: 0
Download time/Mb: ~6 minutes
Time to connect: ~10 seconds (wvdial is great)
Busy signals: Never.
ISP downtime/problems: 0
Plus, my ISP (hevanet.com), whom we've been with for over 7 years, runs BSD, so they provide a shell-login, and have always been Unix-friendly. From what I read here on Slashdot, lots of the broadband companies seem to go out of their way to make life difficult for non-MS users.
A couple years ago, I got cable modem service when it became available in my area. It was nice and fast, but like an old British sports car, it was out of commission about half the time, usually when I wanted to use it the most: the weekends. The customer service was horrible and it got to the point that my wife's AOL service was more reliable. Speed is great, but I want the ability to check my email whenever I want and if it's down when I want to use it, it's worthless. So, I went back to dialup. Sure, not being able to download the current iso in an hour or so kinda sucked, but I got over it. I have DSL now and I've only had a couple minor glitches and they were usually during the weekdays during business hours, so it wasn't that bad. It's much better than the cable modem service that I had.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The article states and several people around here argue that dial-up access costs > $20 a month. While that might be true if you go with one of the big-boys like Earthlink, there are lots of smaller cheaper alternatives.
I get perfectly good service (almost no busy signals) from a small local ISP that charges me $99 a year. That comes to just over $8 a month which is less than 1/5 of what broadband access would cost me.
If you are a heavy music-trader/online-game-player/whatever then sure, pay for the broadband. But for those of us who just use email, check websites, and watch our bank statements, its a no-brainer decision.
I work for an isp. In the end, we make more money off a dial-up customer than we do off a dsl customer. To compete with the lecs we have to keep the profit margin on dsl down to a bare minimum. Combine that with the pipe that is necessary to get all the dsl customer's to our router and we end up with a very small profit margin.
If all of our dsl customers went back to dial, we would actually be making more money.
:q!
My cable was so unreliable that I now have a cable modem AND DSL, joined together with a neato router from nexland (ISBPro 800 Turbo). I program out of my basement and I cannot afford to be without a reliable connection.
I am an AT&T Broadband customer and am very satisified. Very little down time (much less than PacBell/GTE/Verizon DSL I've experienced). Fast connections. Good tech support (once you get past the 1000th level of voice prompts from the I-wanted-to-be-a-Top-40s-announcer male voice).
Even for a wireless I prefer broadband. Love that Richochet - want it back.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
My crappy PacBell DSL dies every time I start up a large download. It does not come back up until after a full restart, and since the connection is dead, Windows freezes when trying to disconnect. The Linux support sucks... an alpha utility from Alcatel, and I have to install several kernel patches that only work against 2.4.2. I've been trying to get a gateway together, but the fscking dsl modem is "usb ethernet". Who ever heard of that? My gateway hardware is so old that it doesn't even have a PCI bus, much less usb ports. Maybe cable broadband is the way to go? Anyone have experience with AT&T broadband?
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
There are LOTS of people who have made similar choices
Same problem here as with the article... evidence please?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Anybody who screws with my cable connection DIES.
I have considered dumping my cable modem too, and here's why (and they're not your given reasons):
1. It's spendy. I could use the $46/month on something else. And it's going up. They're going to keep jacking prices until a considerable number of people drop off, then they might back down a bit. But if no one drops off, they'll just keep raising it.
2. You don't *really* need it. I use my cable modem extensively, and about 50% of what I do could be accomplished with dialup. Well what about the other 50% you ask? Most of that is stuff I don't need to do. Downloading various types of multimedia, game demos, etc. are not things that I require professionally or otherwise; I could live without them. I can also live without internet newscasts, etc. I don't need those either. I can read the AP or Reuters off of Yahoo! instead.
That about sums it up. I haven't had any hassles at all compared to a lot of the horror stories I've heard, but most of those seem related to DSL issues (which is apparently the real quality culprit most of the time).
BTW - Getting rid of cars would severely cripple our economy. By comparison, very few people would notice if broadband went away.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
The always-on argument also invalidates the cost argument for dialup. To even have half the uptime people associate with broadband, you can spend $30-$35/month easily (large number of hours, extra phone line), which is only about a $10 difference from broadband.
Wrong. I currently use Juno (cost $0) on my normal phone line (cost $0). Up until August I had a DSL connection (cost $45). That is a $45 difference. How many people do you really know that have a phoneline that they exclusively use for the internet? That is a marketing literature fabrication designed to make a broadband appear cheaper.
You are missing the entire point of the article. People are cancelling their broadband connections because the whiz-bang! effect has worn off. The average consumer has no need for large bandwidth because he gets bored with it.
When I had DSL, I downloaded about 50-60 CD's off of napster. Then I ran out of music that I wanted to download. I don't play video games, but even if I did, I would probably use a playstation. I had no more use for my internet connection other than checking my e-mail.
The fact is, broadband access at home is currently little more than a toy. And toys get tiresome. If I need to do research or use the internet for some other reason, I can use my T1 at work. Besides, I sit in front of a computer for 8 hours day. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer.
I don't live in a major metropolitan area. Broadband just came to my town earlier this year, but there was too much demand, a long waiting list, and only certain geographical areas had service. Then with @home in trouble, they stopped signing up new customers. So there was only a brief respite from modem use for some people.
> You're paying about 2-3 times as much for a cable/dsl line as for dialup
I've got a problem with that statement. That may be somewhat accurate for comparing dial-up with DSL service, but not for cable modem service.
Cable doesn't cost as much as most DSL installations, and what 'DSL' are you talking about, anyway? There are versions that range from $40 to over $200 per month. Most cable connections are between $35 and $50 a month (mine is $40).
So, many people with modems have a second line just for the computer. Take the cost of a dial-up ISP and the cost of the phoneline, and you're very near or the same as the cost of most cable modem hookups, cuz the line & ISP are included in one (unlike many DSL configurations).
I was an early adopter of cable modem service here in Seattle over 3 years ago, and I've had VASTLY superior service over any dial-up ISP I ever had, and the huge speed increase I've gotten is a major bonus (and quite addicting).
The problem with saying that 'broadband' service is 'less reliable' than dial-up is that there are lots of broadband providers out there, just like dial-up. And just like dial-up, some are reliable, and some are not. For me, in my area of Seattle, broadband via cable has been many many times more reliable, and ridiculously-faster than dial-up ever was.
I'm just sayin'...
Here's further coverage of the situation, from the same site. I really hate the fact that we @Home users are being used as pawns in negotiations in bankruptcy court. It ain't fair. I finally get my broadband back after over a year's drought, when I basically had to get rid of the DSL connection due to lack of funds, and this happens.
Maybe this might be a solution...Aerie Networks, the folks who bought Metricom for a pittance, is looking to involve local governments in basically providing their service as an utility. Last time I checked, cable TV is a utility and regulated as such. Maybe local governments with constituents directly affected by the @Home financial debacle should step up to the plate here.
I get greater-than-T1 speed from this connection. It's fun. It's a pleasure to not be sucking the Internet through a 45.5Kbps straw. I pray that this pleasure will not be short-lived.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Unfortunately I have to lose my DSL and go back to a normal modem again. I'm moving to a rural area in Indiana and there is no cable, no DSL, and Sprint wireless broadband appears to be cacking - they are no longer looking for new users.
I LOVE my DSL. Fast, reliable, painless...I really do not look forward to conflicting phonelines - busy signals to those calling in, errant pickups of the phone to make a phonecall only to hear the squeal of a modem, the curse from downstairs because the connection was trashed.
I hate the idea of going back to this that I am seriously considering giving a shot to the "roll your own DSL" projects previously mentioned on slashdot. Sorry, but once you go to a good DSL, you NEVER want to go back.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I have a cable modem with AT&T, and they do have a dial-up option for travelling, with local dialups nation wide. It's not terribly useful if you travel frequently, since they only give you 2hrs free access per month. Thereafter you need to pay $2/hr or something. Still, it's not too bad to check on news and maybe download stuff for offline viewing. If I end up taking my laptop on my next trip, I'll probably use it to check on e-mail and send out the files I would be working on.
Earthlink handles this pretty nicely...I used them for dialup service (well, I used Mindspring technically) for years before DSL became available in my area...when it did, I got it through them, and they leave your dialup account active for no additional charge. They have dialups in most places...I don't travel all that much, but it's nice to have that whenever I do go on the road.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
DSL, however, is bits from the CO to the client. No intervening modulation/demodulation steps. It requires REALLY clean phone lines to work right, from the CO to the internal wiring in the home. My experience with DSL (Flashcom with Verizon as the Last Mile provider) showed just how bad of an effect dirty wiring can have on your DSL experience. I got only HALF of the theoretical 768Kbps downstream bandwidth I was supposed to get. My prime suspect is the '50s-vintage copper in my home. Bleah!
Even with this weird-ass system that my cable company uses, I can get better than T1 speeds in the morning. Even at 10 at night, in the middle of peak usage, I get better than the 384Kbps I used to get from DSL.
Mama don't take my broadband away...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It's hard enough managing the basics of living being an unemployed geek. Who has money for toys? As soon as I find a new job and catch up on some bills I'll be back to broadband. A normal modem is hell after being used to broadband at home and the huge pipes at work.
:P
If they want to save their business maybe they could talk the govt into giving the actual unemployed some of those billions their bailing companies out with. Would help those of us who have already used up our unemployment and still haven't found new jobs.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
When you convert the money, the price is exorbitant compared to, say, Canada. Right now, if I lived in a area where the service was available, I could get DSL for CAD$20/month for 6 months and CAD$40/month after that. The modem would be another $CAD10/month.
And the prices I'm quoting are the worst case scenario which is of course Bell Canada. Going with other local ISPs, I could get DSL for about CAD$35/mo including modem rental.
So what am I saying? The service in the US is just too dang expensive and if people are leaving it [the service], I'm not suprised.
How was that overrated?
It's the blatant truth. The fact that Northpoint and Rhythms died proves how bad their business plan sucked.
I experienced this firsthand. We were a Northpoint client (through Savvis) and had a 208k SDSL line for half the price of a 128k ISDN line. It was rock solid as far as stability and the speed was great with no alternatives available.
Other SDSL providers wouldn't even bother to work with us because our distance was so far.
Again, I say the technology rocked and the business plans suck. What sucks more than that is the fact that all SDSL providers are competing against the phone company that they depend on to provide the lines.
If I had a product that everyone wanted and you could only get it from me and I allowed other companies to resell it but I charged less and slowed down shipments to my resellers. People are going to go directly through me to get it and put my resellers right out of business.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
and it's portable, too. You can't take your cable modem out of town and use it in an El Cheapo motel room!
My MediaOne cable modem was horrible. For the 3 months I had it, it was literally down more often than it was up. I spent more time on dialup than on cable during those months, and I'm glad I didn't cancel my dialup ISP in anticipation!
When it was working, the speed was as advertised. No complaints there.
Then MediaOne took it upon themselves to portscan my machine. They found FTP open, which I'd set up the previous day so I could get to some files from a friend's house. Anonymous access was disabled, I made sure of that. They then proceeded to try standard guest and visitor logins, which of course didn't work. Then MediaOne (this is all in my logs, coming from their machines!) started guessing common words, one of which worked. Well duh, I hadn't exactly locked the box down like Fort Knox. I just wanted to set myself up a little remote file dump! So MediaOne gets in, notices I have some MP3s on my drive, and proceeds to yank the plug.
I get a nice letter in the mail a week later, saying I've been terminated for violating the service agreement. Because they hacked _my_ machine. The RIAA has like-minded friends already if they plan to move in this direction.
Needless to say, I've been on a POTS line with a v.90 modem ever since. The account goes with me when I travel, it's never down for more than 5 minutes at a time, and in the extremely rare event that my favorite POP is busy, there are two more within my local calling area. Cable just can't offer that reliability or portability.
Not that phone lines are perfect! The Ameritech bozo who installed my line "buried" it so poorly that it got hit by a lawn mower. The resulting splices in the line keep me down to about 33.6 most days, slower if it rains, but it always gets me to my mail, at least.
I'll never go back to dialup. Ever.
Why?
Simple, both my wife and I use it to connect to each of our corporate intra-nets using VPN. And if you want to do any real work, NFS mounts, Windows junk, remote compiling - anything - you really have to have enough speed to make it worthwhile.
It's not different for non-technical people either. If you use accounting programs, inventory tracking, anything else using a client-server model, broadband speeds are the only way to go for any real work at home.
Hell, I do that all the time on surveys. I do it for bandwidth, processor, memory and any other spec that costs me money personally.
;)
I think it actually works.. there's very few new games out that my Pentium II 350 machine can't run, and there's absolutely nothing my AMD 1.2Ghz can't run. I won't be telling them about that machine on surveys though.
You know, I would rather they spend the time on performance instead of adding yet another great cut-scene that costs $1 million to produce and you only ever see once. I just help them keep their priorities straight.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I talk to my friends in Europe and they have some exceleent broadaband in areas over there.
In Sweden they have 10Mb for around $20.
Belgium is loaded with excellent broadband service for cable and dsl. Germany has dsl. They are also getting the Powerline super high speed internet connection going in Germany and Scandinavia. There prices are cheaper for high speed internet than the U.S. I pay $40 for 8Mb,640k ADSL in Korea. While I still pay $40 1Mb,128k in the U.S. We need to get competition in our broadband in the U.S. They are too monopolistic in their prices. One hikes their price and the rest follow suit. My ISP sent me an email saying they were do to the others were. We may I hate to say need government regulation back in some things. I rather they work it out before the government needs to intervene. I only had one problem with my DSL where it was out for 16hours the rest it has been up the whole time.
Wait a second. You're pointing to the fact that this guy was not allowed to run a fileserver on his ISP. That doesn't bother me, but it is a reasonable thing to complain about. So no argument from me there.
But how does this make always-on broadband any worse than dialup? You say yourself that you're not allowed to run keep-alive scripts. Sounds to me like you wouldn't be allowed to run the fileserver that he was running, either.
I was using Qwest as my DSL provider and my ISP. Well...they were just doing that little deal where their ISP customers were being switched over to MSN. So I wasn't that crazy about that. I considered finding a different ISP and keeping the DSL, but I didn't for two reasons.
1. Thought it would be good to spend a bit more time offline.
2. Qwest's service sucked.
To give you an example of 2, here's how it went when I called Qwest to cancel my service.
First person: Wants to go over all my personal info to make sure it's up to date. We do so. He says he'll transfer me to the folks who can cancel my DSL.
Second person: I get a paragraph of Spanish before I can make it clear that speaking in English works much better for me... Turns out the first guy transferred me to the wrong person. This is the Spanish Repair line. I get transferred.
Third person: Says she cancelled my ISP service, but not my DSL service. Says she'll transfer me to appropriate dept, but she disconnects me instead.
Fourth person: I call back. I can barely understand this person through her Ebonics. She transfers me without telling me that's what she's doing.
Fifth person: He tells me that it doesn't make sense that the third person cancelled my ISP service. He's supposed to do that. He finally (I think) takes care of everything.
The thing is, this wasn't too bad considering how some of my other calls have gone. Anyway, now I'm on a dirt cheap intro sale for dial-up with a company that's actually local. As opposed to doing anything with my Qwest account, I actually did all the sign-up stuff online.
-- dR.fuZZo
...Consider V.92, the new-ish 56Kbps modem standard that introduces internet call waiting in hardware, quicker dials, and faster upstream. Next time I switch ISPs (and there's always a next time...), I'm going for one that supports V.92.
Kind of changes the economics if you assume you MUST have a second line for dialup...
Back when BellSouth were the first to bring ADSL into our area, we had an average of 8 Mbps with spikes up to 12 at certain times of the day, served by DHCP for about $40/month. Now it's PPPoE at 1.5 Mbps at best for a little more money. And you can't see why I'm considering saying "to hell with it" and forsake them for a modem? Especially when it's a heck of a lot easier to change providers with a modem?
My household has four people, each with their own computer, sharing the cable modem through the local Ethernet and household server (Linux box doing NAT, as well as sharing the printer, scanner, etc). The server's connection out used to be dial-on-demand with a 56K modem, and with more than one user it became intolerably slow. We would probably drop the second phone line, cable TV, and trips to BlockBuster before we dropped the cable modem.
But we're probably not real typical...
bzztt..
Sorry. Wrong. Try again later.
What in God's name makes you think that a modem connection doesn't need a firewall?
It's still tcp/ip...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
ahem... some of us are still stuck at 56k. articles like this just tick me off. its not easy living in a poor city. no one wants to sell to you.
-
The person who gave up broadband probably got that "You have reached the end of the Internet" web page and took it seriously.
As long as your ISP has dialup as a backup, even if it isn't entirely reliable, it beats dialup by a huge margin.
It isn't just the speed. Its "always on" nature is a qualitative difference from dialup.
It's fast enough to do streaming audio. At last, I can listen to Dr. Demento again.
It's fast enough that I can feed it into a router that does NAT and the whole family can web browse, do email, video chat, and stream audio.
Only when it's working, of course, but that's most of the time. When it isn't, and if I really need to do something on line, I can still dial up.
I had 384/128 ADSL for five months at the beginning of the year. Then it "went away" due to some Pac Bell actions that I'm still fuming about. Just last week, Earthlink was finally able to hook me back up (I guess Pac Bell put a repeater in my neighborhood?) and the measured speed, according to dslreports.com, is 1.2M/312.
I will not willingly go without broadband again.
Go back to your cruddy dial-up! More bandwidth for me! :D
You can have my cable modem when you bring me a faster one, or when you pry it from my cold dead hands! NO WAY would I trade this back for a modem. I need a net connection too much. Here's the reasons why:
ALWAYS ON! (Big one with me)
NEVER as slow as a modem (I do agree that Road Runner is sometimes overloaded because of overselling, but it doesn't happen much anymore).
RELIABLE (Um, modem more reliable then a Cable/DSL connection? GET REAL!)
Time saving (I save time not waiting for the modem to dial up....you use the net differently then when you had a dialup....anytime you have a question that you don't have an answer, just hop on the browser and do a search)
Doesn't tie up a phone line
I don't understand these people who have constant problems with Road Runner. The only way I could see they have a beef is if they LIVED on the thing and I understand some geeks do. When our downtime occurs, it's usually at night and usually restored by morning. So if my connection were to die now, I would go to bed! By 5 am, it's back up. Reliability is MARKEDLY better on a cable modem of that I have no doubt. I bet the ones that DO have problems probably are one of the following:
Live in the boonies, Live in a old part of a city
or they live in a town where the net was just discovered (some towns probably never heard of it much until recently). If you live where most of us do, you probably won't have a problem. Case in point, I have a co-worker who lives in the sticks. His modem goes down every sunday. I live in the Columbus, OH metro area.....probably every other house in my neighborhood has RR. We get great service. Pity for those who live in the sticks, but that's the nature of this beast. Best to go with a dish when they start going two way.
Gorkman
My service is cheap. ($45 Cdn. including monthly DSL modem rental; no up/download limits)
My service is FAST! (I've never had even slight slowdowns which weren't remote server issues)
My service is reliable. (In five months, there hasn't been a single interruption that I'm aware of)
My service has great tech support (while they don't officially support linux, the installer told me, "Just call our support line--we all run it at home." Then he gave me a sheet with proper linux setup instructions)
My service has great server support (their news servers are legendary, locally)
My service is friendly. (See above)
I love my DSL which is through a local reseller of telco service. I spend 8hr/day on big computers with fast connections at work, and I can't imagine anything more I'd want in an ISP.
Live in Alberta? Get Nucleus. Tell 'em cbigam sent ya.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I only want one telephone line. If I ordered a second phone number the telco would just multiplex it on the same wire as my first phone number. The consequences of that manouever (DAML) for the line noise usually cuts the download speed of a 56k modem in HALF. That's just not bearable.
DSL frees my phoneline for normal calls while I am online, which was nearly round the clock already when I suffered with 56k "service".
Large software downloads that would take all night to complete now take 10 minutes to half an hour. I never wait now to be connected. Most web pages load like they're part of my local filesystem or already stored in browser cache. Big pages load with tolerable quickness, usually, instead of provoking me to slap my monitor. 1.5mbs down/ 256 kbps up for $49/mo compared to a second line plus 56k unlimited access plans that limit you to 300 hours is no comparison at all
Really people should not whine about this kind of service and shake their fingers at the RBOCs and say "You have to make this less expensive before people will buy into it" I hear this from time to time and I wonder how cheap do they think it can be made and how far out do they think telcos can defer breaking evern on DSL service expansion. It's already a bargain at the price compared to the dialup alternative.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Lucky me that doesnt live in US. :)
I always love to tell people what I pay for my internet lines
Why do I got two lines? I use alot of bandwidth, have many computers.
Bonet ADSL: 2.5 Mbit down, 760 Kbit up, real static IP.
250 SEK/$20 per month
Telia ADSL: 512 Kbit down, 700 Kbit, DHCP (almost static, never changes)
325 SEK/$33 per month
Yes, they have MORE upstream than downstream. The worlds only ISP that
have that? U got a 50% chance to get 700 Kbit in upstream instead of
512 kbit if u get Telia ADSL.
All ports are open, servers allowed (but not commercial servers).
Other ISPs in Sweden:
Chello: 512 Kbit/128 Kbit: $25 per month
Bredbandsbolaget (translation: Broadband company):
10 Mbit (old installs): $20 per month
100 Mbit (new installs): $20 per month
(no, im not kidding! Ethernet rules!)
Telenordia: 512 Kbit/128 Kbit: $33 per month
Misc other ISPs: $20-$35 per month
I say, while we're bringing out our modems, let's :)
get back on those BBSs!
I'd love to have a cheap and slow (e.g., 64K) connection where I could stay on line 24h a day. What bothers me the most is the need to connect each time I want to verify an email or visit an URL when I'm in a dial up.
You sure have a market for this out of USA. Remember that out of the USA, you have to pay your telecom company for the time you use your phone in local calls. Here in Brazil we have to connect, download the emails, disconect, reply all, select the URLs you want to visit, connect, visit each URL and have your email sent, disconnect, read everything, connect, follow some links, disconnect,...
Ok, I hear you all going nuts about how your :). My
.8 seconds more for DNS res :P. Ahhh... if
broadband connection sucks for DNS res. or what
ever else. I have to tell you that you are nuts.
This is coming from someone that hasn't had the
experience of broadband, except for the 2.5 RL
friends I actually have that have it
friends that have it also complain about down time
and whatever else. But are you people not doing
the math here??? Lets see.... most of the people
I know with cable get average of 30kb sec. I get
at most 5... and they are down maybe for average
of 4 hours or so a week.... even though they are
down that much, they still get more online than I
just because of the speed difference. I just
can't understand why we just can't be happy...
instead of going wow look at the tech involved or
whatever else, you get angry because it takes a
whole
I could only afford to pay for crappy broadband.
L8r
Mod_gzip isn't always better. If you have to compress your page, your user will have to download it all before visualizing. If you code well your page, instead of coding it as one big table (You don't do it, do you?), you allow people to start reading as it downloads, then the perceived download time is SLOWER with mod_gzip.
Actually, you can gunzip on the fly, just as you can gzip on the fly. The page does not have to download completely to start displaying. Gzip (and most compression algorithms) uses blocks and compresses them. Try this: generate a really big file. Then do "cat file | gzip | gunzip". Include command-line switches to compress/decompress to stdout/stdin as needed. Notice that the output starts showing up *before* the entire input file is read.
All you need is enough information to regenerate the first block of the file, and you can then stream from there. Your network conenction and computer aren't fast enough for you to tell the difference in waiting for the first block of information.
Also, gzip is really fast. Mod_negotiation with the pre-compressed files is certainly faster on the server side, and should be used for non-dynamic content. I think mod_gzip has the option to pre-generate those files, actually. If it doesn't, there's a mod_perl module that does. On the client side, if your computer is fast enough to quickly render an HTML page, it's fast enough to ungzip without you noticing. If your client is too slow to transparently ungzip, then you're used to pages that render slowly and will appreciate the bandwidth savings anyway. Test it and see, it really does help.
Personally, I don't see how it would ever happen with me, at least not at this point in my life, but for those less technically inclined, or less technlogy-oriented, I can see it. I'm talking about people that check their mail, surf the web, maybe even play some 'online games' - of the Solitaire or Chess variety at Yahoo! Games and other such locations. If it wasn't for the fools that put excessive graphics + ads + flash animation on many pages nowadays, I'd be mostly fine with dialup, if it weren't for my Counter-Strike needs. I can handle being connected for 10 hours a day (during the late hours of night/early hours of morning) while stuff downloads. I used to do it. And, as I did before, I could open all the articles on slashdot (and similar sites) and read the one I'm reading, while those pages load.
I can certainly say I'd save a lot of time if I were to not be 'online' all the time. All my personal projects would get done more quickly, I'd spend more time doing things that I enjoy (not that I don't enjoy chatting w/ friends or talking on IRC... but enough is enough.)
For all rational arguements and logicality, I can fully understand people wanting to ditch 'broadband' due to lack of reliability and price alone, with social implications aside. Were I to go back to dialup, I certainly would find myself getting out more. I think that's a good thing. If I'm working with computers all day long, I really need to get out in the evenings. My psychological stability and offspring depend on it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers