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Broadband Bermuda Triangle
An anonymous coward sent in: "Mike from Techdirt has written an article in Salon.com about how he is the bermuda triangle of broadband, and how the government should kick him out of the country if they really want to save the broadband industry. Apparently, he's been kicked off 4 or 5 different broadband networks in the past year alone as each company went bankrupt or gave up the business."
Read your subject line.
Note that it was submitted to the 'It's funny. Laugh.' section.
Fits pretty well then.
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
It's a shame broadband internet services cant seem to turn a profit. I'd like to see a cable provider provide me with an IP address, and thats it. I'll take care of my email and other services. Something like 'Broadband for Nerds. Simplicity Matters.' or.. something like that...
Don't Tread on Me
hey, if this guy is the broadband bermuda triangle, i must be the dot com bermuda triangle.
all the sites i use and visit have gone bust. webvan...etoys...pets.com....my favorite site now is slashdot. hey wait a minute....
(The rules & the first three cards are in the thread on Quantum Holography)
I'll add a couple more cards here, in case anyone else wants to join in. (It's relevent, cos there's a whole bunch in the intro!)
Card 4: Salon, Bermuda Triangle, Aliens, Black Holes, Conspiracy, Broadband, Kuro5hin, Sourceforge, Server51
Card 5: Bankrupt, Depression, Afghanistan, Luddites, Identity Card, Homeland Security, Virus, Outlook, Keystroke Monitor
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is /. being paid to pass on their drivel?
/. just plans on driving people to their site?
Its bad enough using Salon as some kind of fact filled reference behind a story, but now
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Dear Mr. Masnick:
Please do not attempt to sign up for an ISP that uses Covad. I'd die without my DSL!
Respectfully yours,
nixon
It was hard to get the article once I began to read it. Written in first person, you begin to think it is a testimonial. Then just 4 or 5 lines after the beginning you realize it is another article, that could be written in thousand different ways.
I like first-person point of views. But what they did is just too simple... 'Tell a story'. And what is the moral of the story? I think the writer tried to meant it is the consumers. Look at how absurd that is! 'I make broadband companies go bankrupt'.
Well, and it asks for the governament to take care. This article is pretty much of a joke. A bad joke. It's a historical analisys of who went down on the broadband business, told in a bad way.
Usuless article that could be resumed to:
"Companies X,Y,Z doesn't exists anymore".
Ha, the lost minutes.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Other powerful interests opposed to the future are large publishers, governments, advertisers and all others want to tell you what to think. Free speech is not what these folks want. They want broadcast and money. If you don't consider propaganda and money equivalents, consider what a green piece of paper is really worth.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
That's a pretty amusing article, but he has it easy. My own curse is with race car drivers... as soon as I start rooting for them, a freak accident is sure to follow.
If anyone could be the cleaver of ISP's, it would be myself. Of course since I'm signed up with the local telecom monopoly, and the gov't is backing them up, I don't fear them going bottoms-up anytime soon. But I do suck down about 40 times the monthly bandwidth 'limit', which isn't really limited because these people don't know how to setup their uBR monitoring software. tsk tsk!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I submitted an order with an ISP for DSL service 8 months ago and nothing came of it until one day a couple of techs from a business network provider came by my house and said, "Here's your IDSL router." After a quick hookup and entering the DNS variables provided by the ISP's homepage, I was on the Internet @ 144k both ways. I called the ISP and asked what I should do about payment and their response was, "Ummm... we cancelled your order so you're not in our computer." I called the busines network provider and they said, "Talk to your ISP." So I called the ISP a few more times and then they went bankrupt. Their DNS died, and so did my Internet access, for the 2 minutes it took for me to enter a DNS for a nearby college that now resolves all my queries. So the ISP no longer exists and I can't pay them, and the business internet provider that is my first hop says they don't do residential accounts so they won't take my money. Meanwhile, I have a Lucent router I've never paid for, an install I've never paid for, and continuing IDSL service that I've yet to pay for going on 2 months now. I'm wondering that if this could last indefinitely, perhaps I can turn it over as a feature when I sell the property...
"3 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2 car garage, free Internet access for life..."
No, you can't. Salon intercepts it.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
Didja look at the top right corner that say "Go to article"?
I wonder if you were that short bus driver that stopped in front of me...right next to the sign that says "KEEP MOVING"?
{sigh}
Cheers,
Moose.
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Note to the audience: Broadwing is a nasty spam haven, and the world will be a much better place once they'll be out of business.
Say no to software patents.
Stay
Away
From
Connecticut
Thank you.
For the LECs (local exchange carriers like Verizon) that is. What you don't realize is that $30-$35 of your monthly $50-60 DSL fee you paid Northpoint, Rythms, or currently Covad went to the LECs. That's right, 50%+ goes to the Baby Bells because of their monopolies on the local loop. Get some competition on the local loop and the Baby Bells won't be able to squeeze out the profit margins from DSL providers.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
There is a good resource here that explains why all of these broadband providers are going out of business.
They don't know how to charge.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
IME, the failure of broadband companies has more to do with their gross mismanagement than with the realities of the market. Usually if you try and walk out of a store without paying for something, the proprietor will stop you; the broadband companies are not just failing to notice, but are actually shoving equipment and service into your hands and then insisting it doesn't exist. (BTW, when I finally managed to get my order officially reinstated and another Covad guy visited (while I pretended it hadn't been already working for three months), he actually had the nerve to say "Yes, we're known for our speedy service." I stifled my laughter...)
Give it up already. People have to pay the bills. Bandwidth isn't free you know. Sheesh people. Just because you don't pay for it, doesn't mean nobody else has to.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
Every song I don't download gets dropped out of the charts... ;)
So I do my best to help the industry
This is offtopic, but maybe someone can help. I was on the @home network, and my connection was down the last few days while I was switched to another network (@attbroadband??). Now my windows boxes can connect to the network fine, but my linux boxes won't connect. No matter what web page i visit, i get an ATT Broadband page saying my settings are not configured properly. I tried Konquerer, Netscape, and Mozilla. I am behind a Linksys router, and I know everything is configured properly. The linksys has access, the win boxes have access, and the linux boxes can traceroute and ping no problem, but no network app's can connect (browser, ftp). Anybody have this same problem?
Corporate Crap.
Here is yet another example of technology creating corporate crap.
There are a host of idiots driving technology based products and services that do not have a clue about what the market is really willing to pay for.
I've seen things like consulting companies embracing eBusiness and eCommerce (gagging just typing these words) by hiring a bunch of consultants and then firing them and leaving the rotten heads to continue running the business into the ground.
Broadband is still hype. Some butthead at Gartner or Meta or some other "stink tank" decided this is the market segment that comm companies should persue.
Home broadband is still too expensive and flaky. I admire the folks who who are sigining up. They are brave. Anytime a company that resembles a phone company that gets into the broadband market its going to be a fiasco.
Neighborhood organizations should just treat themselves like a comapny that wants internet access to the desktop. Recommend standard PC configurations, negotiate access and wire it with ethernet or go wireless.
If he is choosing the best deal each time he finds a new provider, then naturally he is choosing the provider who, at that time, is cutting their margins the most.
Thus, each time he is choosing the one provider most likely to fail. Amusing, is it not?
Fuck local loops. The Bells will never open it up. IP laws will ease up around the same time this happens.
Let's treat internet infrastructure as infrastructure (aka roads) and have the govt lay the lines. We can fully fund this with the 70+ billion ca$h from the War on Terrorism. Remember, the Interstate highway system was built from Defense dollars during the Cold War, and that's why their symbol is a little shield. If bush can justify handing IBM a check for 1.3 billion in the name of homeland defense, then this should be a congressional walkover.
After that, let private ISP's bid to operate the lines (i.e. maintenance, routers, cacheing, etc.) and make money on service not bandwidth. Competing on the quality of service is more productive than getting into infrastructure wars -- suing who owes what to whom. You can then run your mail/web server and pay only the costs of administering your account, which should be billing you, electricity, and checking that no one cut the line to your house accidently. Shouldn't be too much. Those who want webmail and funky desktop icons which guide you through the internet search process can and should pay extra. Also, I think more people will sign up if there's a fiber optic line heading to just about every home in the major urban areas. As an extra plus, it'll give silicon valley a shot in the arm.
For those whom just can't stand the thought of govt. spending on public infrastructure, you can always just privatize the thing once the lines are laid and enough cutomers have signed up to make it profitable.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Don't kick him out of the country, stay where you are! Or at least don't come to the UK..
:)
We've only got one backbone ADSl provider and we've not had that very long! Stay away!
Comical.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
i got a free idsl line dropped, and 2 idsl modems, never paid for them too. no connection tho. ;(
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I've seen more than enough people leave a otherwise technically competent ISP due to impossible service through their customer service department.
Surprising, this doesn't seem to be as big an issue with the dialup ISPs.
If you are *are* going to set up an ISP, get the bookkeeping down first before you buy any of the connectivity equipment. Getting technical help to your customers first is a priority, but knowning whom your customers are is more important than that!
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I agree, it was insane expansion that bred mismanagement which is killing broadband. I tried to get dsl out here in the sticks of Ohio, and it turned out (after two weeks of calling everyone I could possibly call at Verizon) that I finally got ahold of the CO which told me I was on partial fiber and no way would DSL work. The ISP was completely unresponsive the whole time, and when I called to send the DSL Modem (free with sign-up!) back, the 9 year old tech support kid said he would have to have someone call me back. This went on for a week, and eventually I just shipped it via USPS (insured) and gave a follow-up call 3 or 4 days later to make sure they got it. The 9 year old said they would have to call back, and they didn't. I'm sure most people would've kept the modem and sold it on ebay...
I don't know that broadband as we know it is going to stick around, I think it's going to be an all-in-one connection like cable but running voice, music, video (tv), and internet all in one new technology (if it was wireless that would be great...)
Latest quote (after they had admitted before to port throttling) to customer enquiring if pcAnywhere ports were disabled / throttled: "Erm, we believe that they are not throttled".
They daren't admit it or they'd get hit with litigation, but do it all the same and lose you in the system and charge you £40 a month for the privilege.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
actually, I was wondering whether anybody could recommend a provider in Brooklyn area, NY - we're planning to purchase 5 T1s and a toll-free phone number in that area; we've been trying to find a sane person at Verizon for two months, and they just keep tossing us from manager to braindead manager like a bloody hot potato. Is there anyone out there offering decent prices and services, or is it all a dream? No, wait - everything is a dream. Whatever. We want our T1s!
It's the thought that /. get paid (more) to post articles with unavoidable adverts, and I'm somehow contributing to paying for a new car some sales guy@salon.
What do people who work for salon not deserve to drive or something? If you don't want to contribute to the salon.com employee automotive fund, then don't visit salon. If you don't like the ads you can pay salon to turn them off.
Finaly, slashdot has no control over this, its something salon is doing on there own.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ah yes ... this story makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside ;-) It's some lovely Christams cheer...especially for me because I live in a rural area and there are NO broadband options except the ultra-pathetic Bell Symcraptico Satellite-based internet (where you still need a modem to go upstream and there are monthly data transfer caps.)
Uhm, with BT, there is no ADSL in the UK. They're just started to unbundle the localloop now, if they ceased to exist that would get put into turmoil and it would be a _long_ time before anyone else managed to get it under control
Luckily I don't get mine from BT. I couldn't handle that
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
Worth bearing in mind is keeping evidence that you tried in good faith to pay all the right people, in case someone suddenly realises that you've been getting a free ride - and demand x months of back payments...
Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't.
No, he was driving the SUV that sat 4 cars in front of me at the newly reopened intersection, staring at the green left turn signal until it changed. If he had been in front of me, I would have pushed his damn ass into the intersection.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I just want to play with that cool absolute composer ad. I can just see my productivity going down the drain today...
Junkbuster refused to show me the page at all. So for those with similar problems, this link gets you past the ad:
d band_bermuda/index.html?x
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/06/broa
I've had a lot of trouble with slow Windows Update connections this past couple weeks (mmmm, W2K testbeds), but everything else on my cmodem connection runs just fine...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Cry me a river!
At least you have the options of different Broadband companies. I had one, once. They offered iDSL, but they went bankrupt. I had the chance of getting WISP, but they liquidating the building for money reasons.
I currently have only two options - PPP and CableModems. The CableModems are expensive, unreliable, inconsistent, and have the worst support imaginable.
When you run out of DSL options and have a choice of ONE, then call me and I'll buy you a beer. But until then, you should be grateful that you have that option of any DSL.
Personally, I would be willing to let the government run DSL networks if they could get it as ubiquitous as the Highways or Post Office.
See, it's people like you that are a drain on the internet, causing companies to go out of business because of the bandwidth that can't be accounted for, yet has to be paid for upstream.
Turn off the modem, I say, and start paying for a slower connection with horrible customer service before you run another clueless company into the ground.
It's all your fault! ;)
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
then I must be in broadband limbo. I'm too far for normal DSL (not to mention that I'm on a slick), don't have all the way fiber have all the way to the house for VDSL, can't afford IDSL ($169 a month!?!) and the darn cable company serves the houses on the other side of the street but is not going to upgrade my cell (and subsequently the houses on my side of the street).Damn that last mile...
Do think this guy would help me pick some lottery numbers?
The main problems I see are the marketing, and the definition of 'Internet'.
Now.. I know, to us geeks.. when we think 'Internet Provider' we think, someone to provide us with a connection, and to route us some IP. Period. We also expect them to have (or delegate to us) proper reverse-DNS. ANd that's ALL we require. Now.. we sort of expect them to have DNS servers for us to use with our resolvers, because that's just traditional (not to mention easy to do), but that's only a convenience. As is the outgoing mail server, and incoming mail services.
Now we have ISP's selling you on their 'content' or their 'portal'. WE have ISP's refusing to allow SMTP connections through anything but their own mail server... and the list goes on.
So how do we get out of this mess? How do we make a clean separation between routing IP and all the other services they can provide? I know we geeks would love to see an ISP with modularized service. You get 1 IP with your connection, and that's it. No other services are provided by the ISP. Then the ISP could sell web space, email accounts, webmail, portals, high-speed local content, etc.
Oh.. and regarding those 'useless' services many of us don't use (like your 10MB web space, or 5 email accounts). A friend of mine moved, and was looking for a new connection. He asked the Telus people (Alberta, Canada) "Hey, can I trade my 10MB web space for a static IP?" They said "Sure". THat's the kind of thing I'd like to see.
Disclaimer: This may read like an ad for Internet America. While it is somewhat of a testemonial, I am just a satisfied customer, and receive no financial compensation for saying nice things about them.
In days gone by, I'd dream of an ISDN connection, or even dedicated 56k. But the price/performance just wasn't there: around $100/month for the physical line and connectivity. DSL, of course started to look attractive. I'd never been a fan of cable modems, what with the shared media, dynamic IPs, and generally draconian TOS.
When I moved to a Dallas suburb, I priced various offerings, and ended up with Internet America. I stayed in a month-to-month apartment for about 6 weeks until I bought and closed on a house, and the following factors were important:
I needed dial up access for a short time, month-to-month while I was at the apartment.
I wanted to make sure that the TOS were reasonable. Some are downright insane: pinging remote hosts, even with consent, was considered "hacking" and could get your account suspended. Running any server, even an smtp sink (non-relaying, of course) was verbotten, and forget about a static IP. Often there were stingy traffic quotas.
Naturally, I wanted to make sure that service was likely available in the area where I'd be buying a home.
Internet America fit this bill nicely: dial-up and DSL, reasonable TOS ("Oh, things like SMTP are fine, even a Web server as long as you don't saturate the uplink -- we're geeks, we understand" from tech. support), and various access plans (fast, faster, and fastest, er, duh, I guess).
I was a bit out of range from the CO (15.6 kft) so they couldn't piggyback on the existing POTS service. But, for an extra $15 a month, they'd lease a dry pair and add the cost to my bill. Bottom line is that I've got 768 kbps down by 384 kbps up on a dedicated pair for $74.99 a month, plus tax ($81.18). Not exactly cheap, but they don't appear to be going out of business.
The big plus, though, is service. Static IP? No problem, I get one free. Their tech people admitted to having looked at PPPoE over ATM, and having held their noses, decided it wasn't the way to go. I had a few glitches with billing (like not dropping the dial up charges when I get DSL), and the odd 15 minute outage but these were resolved (actually we're still looking at the outage but as it happens so rarely it isn't a real problem and is hard to track down -- they suspect their DSL modem). They even back-credited me for 2 months of dialup charges while I had DSL -- many providers won't do that under any circumstances, being so eager to nickel and dime their customers.
Now, like most slashdotters, I'm not your typical "one computer plugged into the DSL modem" guy: I've got a headend with the DSL modem, a 10/100 Mb/s 8 port Linksys firewall/router doing NAT, with wired drops to rooms all over the house. I run [GNU/]Linux, sink my own email, plan to provide SSH access, and might run a non-advertised web server (on other than port 80). In short, I use the DSL line as a shared connection for the whole house's traffic, eventually with 3 or 4 computers behind the firewall. As long as I don't excessively saturate the uplink, Internet America is "O.K." with this.
Basically I get DNS delegation (for my domain) from register.com, DNS and secondary MX from iicinternet.com, and am very pleased.
Compare this with my neighbor across the street is in Southwestern Bell Hell: he pays $49.95 a month for draconian TOS with PPPoE. He gets dropped at the strangest times (not just when idle), and his DSL modem requires frequent power cycles because it loses sync. His service is down so much that he retains a dial-up modem and needs it weekly. I'm over there about once every 2-3 weeks resetting his DSL modem, or reconfiguring his networking options. He isn't using a firewall (oops), and I hope his box does not get r()()73d, as they say ('course it's just running Windoze).
Is the extra $25 a month that I pay worth it? Obviously I think so.
Again, this is just a review of my experience with a particular provider. I've heard grumblings about them from others, but am satisfied myself. Naturally, YMMV.
You could've hired me.
Reminds me of Al Gore's talk about getting Internet access to everyone, which is not a bad idea (of course, Al Gore is still an idiot).
The only issue I see is the same one the post office has. For 34 cents or whatever-the-heck first class mail costs these days, you can send a letter across the street or to some lonely shack 5 miles outside Scuffboot, Nebraska.
If the government is going to lay the infrastructure (I think comparing it to the Interstate system is a valid analogy), then how much would it really cost to lay fiber to every little hamlet across millions of square miles of these great United States? After all, if public money pays for it, it should benefit everyone, if possible. (Forget that, that's too naive).
I think it's a great idea, but it would just be too expensive, so I think we're stuck with the piecemeal development, which is of course hampered by monopolies and stupid regulations and general incompetance all around.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Surprising, this doesn't seem to be as big an issue with the dialup ISPs.
It happened to me with Qwest 56k dialup all the way back in 1998. I signed up online from a neighbor's house. My new account was activated immediately. The charge for the ISP service was supposed to appear on my monthly Qwest phone bill...
It never did, though the dialup ISP service continued to work.
Three months later (I originally thought maybe it was due to "bill lag"), I called them to see what was up. They asked for my login, and I gave it to them, and they said that no such login existed. Then they asked for my address and residential phone number, which I gave them, and they said that I had definitely not signed up for the service. I told them that I was using it every day, and the lady kindly explained to me that it "must be settings still left over from your old ISP" that were providing me net access...
I got nervous and didn't use service... I didn't want to suddenly recieve a balloon bill years later or get sued or something. I signed up with a local alternative instead, and later, with @home (grrrr).
However, I still used it as a kind of "test" account every now and then because it was so reliable and the phone number was easy to remember. Eventually, I moved from my apartment, my old phone bill and number became nonexistent. Qwest sold out their dialup ISP to a major national ISP. The account continued to work.
The account was *finally* closed about three months ago, with nary a word from Qwest or the ISP which took over their dialup in my area.
*shrug* just a dialup free 'Net story.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
As much as everyone around here complains about spam and other sleazy advertising habits, how can anyone here not get annoyed by Salon's adverts?
CNN, FOXnews, Wired, ect doesn't resort to such tasteless and pushy schemes.
Why does Slashdot encourage this?
I'm sorry,
The Tribe has spoken.
You must leave immediately.
You are like Arthur Dent his power is cut off only when he pays his bill.
say "access to everyone". I used the roads analogy. Is there an I-xx near everyone? No. But in most places, yes. In the urban centers where 70% of us live it will be great. Think roads. Think the armies of construction and cable workers which are already employed laying stuff to your house or repatching the road that goes to your driveway. What if they laid some optic cable, the next time they reasphalted that road?
But..yeah, it is wishful thinking. Problem is, almost all people I talk to think it's a good idea. Even a majority of fiscal conservatives think that this is a legitimate infrastructure expense. Also, I can't think of too many corporate entities who are opposed to it. Boggles my mind why it's not being done.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
You're talking about the manifestation of a principle I think gets overlooked a lot: if you want a competetive market, you don't let any one player own or control the delivery network. Whether it's electricity over a grid, communications over wires or airwaves, or operating systems on an manufactured computers.
So what you're saying is absolutely true. If we're going to get to the point where markets are going to operate for the public as a whole, we're going to have to get this through to people who set policy.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Last night I had to plug my windoze box directly into the cable modem (no router), turn on DHCP, and reboot. When the box came up I looked at ipconfig to write down my new DNS server IPs.
/etc/resolv.conf (on linux or whatever)with the new DNS entries and changed the router DNS. Might want to turn on DHCP on the WAN side of the router too. ATTBI has been issuing random IP addresses lately.
Then revert the windows machine back, edited the
You can avoid all this excitement by turning on DHCP on the LAN side of the router, and having all your home PCs ask the router for the info. It'll screw up your home gaming setup nicely tho.
You should probably ask this guy what IT companies he invests in - and then pull your cash out of them immediately. Might save you some heartache later.
Hmmm...
Call your ISP's tech support.
I didn't see any ads. Oh, that's right, I have WebWasher.
Linux is on their list of unsupported OS's.
This may be just the thing we're looking for! Spare no expense in loading this guy up with your AOL CDs - maybe, just maybe...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
We wrote a science book of BASIC programs for the Coleco Adam.
i splay" fetish, which led to some of the first decent video convolution filters at Apple, and contributed to WebTV's set-top abilities, etc. etc...)
*Poof*
We re-wrote it for the PC-Jr.
*Double Poof*
The standing joke around the office was we were going to write a million-dollar ransom note to Apple...
Somehow Apple survived our publication. Guess we really weren't cursed after all.
(Before you snicker about the Adam, it was the start of Steve Perlman's "lets-get-large-amounts-of-readble-text-on-a-tv-d
(OK - it also had a howitzer for a printer.)
(OK they did just as well at selling computers as IBM would do selling Cabbage Patch Kids.)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As I'm reading this article, what ad pops over my screen? Of course, a solicitation for Verizon DSL service. They're watching.
Sure, plenty of Slashdot readers will sign up, but Joe Sixpack is perfectly content with his 28.8K connection to AOL.
Step into the way-back machine and swap 'broadband' for broadcast TV:
The customers will be there when the service is. Having the government install the infrastructure makes it affordable.
When I left college for a trip into the real world I signed up for an internet account at a local ISP who shall remain nameless. Every month I got a bill from them that said I owed them $0.00 dollars, this went on for 2 years till I moved and gave the account away to some chick at a coffee bar.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
well then learn networking in Linux or get an OS they support.
As a former Charter employee (I also worked for @Home, but that's another story) I'm shocked that you ever got more than 2.2KBps. With the myriad of headend, line, and server problems Charter has, it's amazing you were able to get on at all.
Of course, Excite going down the shitter doesn't help matters much, either.
economies of scale & all that.
Only one state in Oz has electricity supply problems & that one's privatised
hmm, and how much do they charge you for traffic, if you don't mind me asking?