Slashdot Mirror
SBC Planning 15-25Mbps DSL Networks
Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that SBC has begun planning a massive network upgrade which will push fiber connections deeper into subdivisions and neighborhoods than before, resulting in incredibly fast DSL speeds for home users. Their current estimate for down/up speeds are 15-25mb/s down and 1-3mb/s up (mega_bits_, not bytes). SBC's press release goes into depth about this."
From the SBC press release:
The recent decision by the Bush Administration to allow unlawful telephone wholesale rules to lapse and let stand the FCC's decision not to unbundle broadband is a positive step
As much as I disagree with the administration on many issues, last year's decision by the FCC to deregulate fiber networks was a positive step in the right direction. Loosening broadband rules will restore some competition in the industry; and we may see lowering prices for telephone and internet services.
However, although I look forward to fiber-to-the-curb, it'll be awhile, at least in my subdivision.
Sigs cause cancer.
Another network for SBC to get blacklisted at dsbl. They need to learn to administer their network before they expand it.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I sincerely hope that SBC includes managed firewall appliances with the service. Pricing should be high enough to include a minimally managed CPE for those who want one.
-PM
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
My cable ISP is offering me an upgrade from 3 to 5mbps for a 50% increase of my bill...
one more reason to stay on the fscking computer! bah!
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
What is it all about . . . is it good or is it whack?
and it will probably cost a million dollars more than cable for static IP's
See Sig! See Sig Zig! Zig Sig Zig!!!!!
Megabits vs. millibits? Or did you mean MB/Mb? 1:8? Wow.
The MPAA is going to love this, NOT. I can imagine the day already where they will convince ISP's (or lobby the right people) to slow down network speeds in order to curb piracy (just like most cars have speed governors, eventho it is mostly for safety reasons).
With all those zombies mailing out spam, I have to wince at the possibility of removing the 128k upload bottleneck. Stay in your seats, more spam is on the way. On the good side, with a static IP address you can now host an (amateur) radio/video site from home, thats important to me and my band.
Where will this service be rolled out first? An announcement such as this means nothing if it doesn't come to my neck of the woods.
I guess it's true that fiber is good for you.
Best Windows Freeware
I currently run on a 3MB/256k cable connection for home usage and it works well, so I can only imagine what a service like this would be like... and COST. It seems to me that it would be out of the price range of most home users for quite some time. I definitely don't see myself running out to buy one anytime soon, even though the added bandwidth would be nice. I run a VoIP connection for our phone service (which utilized 90k up/down total) so it would be nice to beef up the upstream. This is lacking on most providers from my experience. Everything works great for me unless I happen to be talking on the phone and uploading large files to the Internet at the same time... then it makes for hard conversation as the upload chokes the phone.
Linux with kernel panic...
MadPenguin.org
I've RTFA, but couldn't find any information to answer this:
As an SBC user currently considering switching to cable, I'm wondering if, when they upgrade the lines, I will be upgraded for free, or if they'll charge me for it. I can probably assume it's the latter, but I can only be hopeful until then.
Then again, if I can get 25 Mbps for a few extra Franklins a year, who really cares?
If anyone knows any information about the upgrades regarding pricing for users (SBC has always been really dodgy about discussing pricing) I'd be happy to know.
Help a college student
And anyone who says it costs too much...why are you still paying the ridiculous rates for cable TV or satellite TV? If you refuse to pay the high rates for Internet or TV, then you may actually have a point. Most people don't.
15-25mbps...
Here in Sweden we have had 24mbps dsl network for quite some time now... both vdsl and adsl2+
I don't know what conventions you've been going to, but a small "b" means bits, and a big "B" means bytes.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I know its wierd to say, but yes I think SBC can really do this. After their recent network upgrades I changed packages to a 6000/640 plan. Cost? $45/mo At a distance of ~8000 feet I could reliably do 5200/550 at about any time of day. The only drawback was a dynamic IP, but Afraid.org helped out wiht that one.
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good taste'" -Pablo Picasso
Anyone remember Pacbell's (aka SBC) 80's statement that "Fibre to the Curb" was just around the corner. Well, I'd say it's just about time.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
..I am on board. Currently have cable modem at home due to nothing but speed and need for that speed for telecommuting. If they come out with such a speedy DSL, my company would love me to ditch cable co. (I work for a satellite service provider, what an irony)
Also, if they can bundle up a wireless hi-speed access with this fast DSL, men-oh-men... I already envy the people in NYC and wherever else (somewhere else in Fla. ?) for their fast wireless access from verizon. Some company in Los Angeles : are you listening ????
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Just because there isn't a need now doesn't mean there won't be in the future. If they have the money to upgrade their networks, let them! Let them plan for the future. What harm can it do?
And here I wasted my time in college learning 'M' is the abbreviation of Mega (million) and 'm' is the abbreviation of Milli (thousandths).
Imagine the disappointment of subscribers finding that they get millibits per second.
"Look, Dad, somethings coming in on the Teletype!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
M = mega
m = milli
B = byte
b = bit
mkay?
Actually, from reading the press release, it would apear the the whole deal with Microsofts platform for delivering TV content over IP was just an *example* of what could be done with that bandwith. Yes, they are checking it out to see that it actually works with the bandwith they are setting up, but it did not sound in any way bundled with the dsl service (yet)
I don't think they would slow down their networks. No, I think they would implement a download limit per day.
For example, Cox states in its End User Agreement that users cannot download more than 2 gigabytes a day or more than 30 gigabytes a month. Problem is that I don't think this is really implemented.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Pushing fiber farther out and closer to customers is a good thing, and concentrating on putting FTTH in new neighborhoods rather than having to tear up old ones is a smart thing. Me and my 6M/512K SBC DSL will be happy to upgrade when this becomes available.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Being an SBC DSL customer, this would be welcome news, but the question I have is, Where will this happen, when? Living in a neighborhood that is not quite on top of the charts, I wonder if it may take years before I see any activity in this area.
Are there any SBC folks who would know of any pending time schedules?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
MB is mega byte, mb or Mb is mega bit. They capitol B signifies a byte ( 8 bits)
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Another convention is that M=10e6, and m=10e-3.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
We'll see this in about 5 years or so once sbc get's done with the litigation with the ILECS and CLECS regarding the so-called "free" useage of sbc's equipment. By that time, the last mile may be owned by either cable, ElectricDSL or wireless. Here in the rural areas, it maybe ten years before we even get to see the entire community sees full coverage by the CLEC, particulary how sbc is dealing with their repair crews and logistics.
They baited my company with their sales pitch, saying that DSL was available at the new office we were moving into, then a week later, the day before opening day, the tech comes in and shoots us down, saying that we were 19,753 feet from the CO.. I turned to cheater (Charter) cable and they bent some corporate rules getting us a business account forged and a line put in the next day. The reserved IP was assigned that same day, just needed to feed them the MAC address of our router to make it formal. We opened our doors a day late.
The day I trust a telco to do their job properly will be the day I die.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
On a side note, I still don't have a gmail account and would really like to get one. If anyone would like to help me out with that, email me at psyonick@yahoo.removeme.com (and don't forget to remove the removeme). Thanks.
A man walks into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
/agree for the most part. When I am downloading a file from random website, the bottleneck is usually them, not me, on my 3mbit cable. But a lot of stuff I do crushes my 256kbit upload. For example, the World of Warcraft beta was distributed via Bittorrent, and most of us can't get decent speed downloads because 90% of the peers are stuck at 16 or 32kb/sec. If people had more upload bandwidth across the line then we would have a much easier time. I like to host files for my friends to download off my home server, but it's unpleasant to move anything of significant size at 32 kb/sec.
Does that mean I can expect a commensurate increase in the frequency of network outtages? I consult for an SBC (PacBell) customer. Most of the employees there also use PacBell DSL at home. Every one of them, including the business account, frequently drop off the 'Net for periods ranging from 5 to 45 minutes at least once per week. SBC-Yahoo-PacBell doesn't seem to see this as a problem.
It was also an exercise in frustration to get the business account (one of PacBell's first business DSL customers) switched from an all-copper-to-the-CO connection to a short copper run to the fiber BBox in the parking lot. The original line had been moved so far down the chain that the signal had degraded to the point that the SiNR was well below minimum service level. It had been this way for quite a while (before I started servicing this small office). It took me a year to diagnose (by working with the local technicians responding to my trouble tickets) and get PacBell to do anything about it. At the suggestion of one of the field techs I worked with, I actually had to drop the original account and sign up for "new" service (which would automatically be assigned a circuit routed through the fiber drop less than 100 meters from the customer).
PS: I've advised the customer to switch carriers, or at least get a dedicated line (so as to combine voice/data, solving a whole host of other issues) but the owner is a cheap-ass (who I know doesn't read Slashdot...) and doesn't want to "change email addresses".
<Sigh>...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
My Motorola DOCSIS 2.0 has a maximum bandwidth of 38Mbps. Why not 38Mbps? :)
If you want to be pedantic: MiB/s vs. Mib/s. Or MiBS^-1...
BTW, little 'm' means milli. Anything else was written by a marketter with no knowledge of this simple technicalities. I won't stoop to their level by regurgitating their crap!
Anyone who doesn't know the difference between MB/s and Mb/s shouldn't be reading Slashdot. I kid. I kid!!
Un-news
25mbps converts to around 3.1Mb (megabytes) per second. So the press release, for tards like me, would be "1.8 to 3.1 megabytes of pirated movies per second!"
/scared/
Not that I actually download pirated movies.
Someone want to give me a good reason for this? Because I can't find one. Seems like a deliberate effort to shaft the consumer.
I wonder if this will cause an increase in the demand for new housing in SBC areas, as early adopters and home-based-businesses "trade up" to a new house to get FTTP connectivity? Or will the speed basically be the same regardless, making the effect on real estate prices negligible.
I applaud SBC for doing this; as fast speeds reach homes, everyone stands to gain. However, after my experiences with them at the office, I would never sign up for their service and expect it to be up more then 90% of the time. It simply crashes to often to be trusted. Has anyone else experienced? The office in question in near Hartford, CT.
Big Dig-ing until the money is gone...
'til the dawn's early light.
Assuming the MPAA aren't utterly brainless, they should have predicted this day would come and probably are already talking with SBC about ways to bust chops of movie swappers. It won't just be movies anyway. This kind of bandwidth would mean I could record (using my ATI AIW card and software) TV shows, edit out commercials (with Pinnacle) and make them available to friends and strangers alike. Slow bandwidth would have effectively limited my ability to move 700 MB or larger videos. Not anymore.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Agreed. I don't really need any more download bandwidth. I do need upload though. The disparity between the downward and upward bandwidths just kills the quality of the connection. I've had to set up rate limiting just to keep one program from killing everything else's utility.
NTT DoCoMo announces they'll be upgrading Tokyo and the surrounding areas' lines to 15-25 tbps.
Help a college student
You go to special pains to point out the meaning of the abbreviations but don't bother to use the correct abbreviations in the first place!
I mean, it's great that we are making progress in bandwidth and reducing cost to get from the phone office to the house, but with connectivity to the backbone still costing as much as it does, do we honestly believe that the effective bandwidth to what we now call "the Internet" backbone will be so cheap that we can ignore it?
I see this as just a way for the phone companies to become another media company and sell the usualy junk on commercial and cable TV, with the phone company now getting some of the profits (where some == "as much as they can gouge the user for").
Just me being cynical.
1-3mb/s up (mega_bits_, not bytes)
mb/s would be millibits/second. I'm pretty sure I could manage that speed by using a flashlight for signaling 1s and 0s, 86 times / day.
I have to agree. Sure, downloading ISOs or movies via P2P can demand that kind of bandwidth, but I have yet to see anything else that comes close to that kind of demand. I can see people taking advantage of this, though. One person subscribes, three or four houses share the connection, split the cost, and the ISP gets shafted.
The other negative side effect I can see is that software companies will be less vigilant in their network code. This kind of high-throughput, low-latency connection encourages sloppy, inefficient code.
Kind of like the increase in processor speed has allowed MS to come out with increasingly bloated software that barely does more than the old version, but takes twice as many system resources.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
I had a cable modem from comcast. One day I recieved a letter in the mail telling me to reboot the modem to update the firmware and I would see a speed bump. It went to 3 megs/sec and I didn't pay a dime extra for it. This is why competition works and regulations suck monkey balls
Verizon can barely roll out standard 768KB to a small minority of the washington DC area; probably one of the richest and best connected areas anywhere.
Comcast, by contrast doesn't seem to have any problems.
Why is Verizon run by such losers?
To quote from this article:
"The speed of fiber make advanced broadband offerings -- especially high definition TV -- possible, SBC says, because the technology allows download speeds as high as 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of as much as 3 Mbps. Television services will be based on Microsoft's Internet protocol TV platform, which has been tested by telecoms in India, Canada and Europe.
"IPTV uses the newest Windows Media Series 9 video-compression technology, but some experts question whether it will work efficiently over wires where customers connect to nodes from existing infrastructure. Microsoft says the compression technology will work."
Hmm. Dunno. I have to admit that I'm surprised that SBC is working with MS on this, but then again they are both pretty evil, so I guess not.
Man, I *hate* those news about this SBC 'cause I always think what the Sociedade Brasileira de Computacao (Brasilizian Computing Society) is doing acting as a provider...
Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that just 3meg down and .2meg up?
Thats good i suppose, but i have cable and thats pretty standard.
Given what the RBOCs charge now for DSL, you can expect this new, faster service to be priced at at least $450-$500/month...
...will push fiber connections deeper into subdivisions and neighborhoods than before...
don't you mean then? This is Slashdot afterall, we don't want to use the correct one, you know?
Networking always always ALWAYS works in multiples of 1000, NEVER 1024. Anyone who uses 1024 wrt networking has no idea what he's talking about.
The San Antonio Express-News is also reporting SBC's partnership with Microsoft to provide the video capability through the new high speed pipes.
Things that make you go hmmmm.
Lets say this service, worst case scenario costs you over $100/mo USD.
You can recover that with a mere 5 movie downloads.
You can recover that with a mere 10 CD downloads.
If you have a real use for the technology then no price is too high. If you're happy with your current pipsqueak connection then by all means, keep it, more bandwidth for the rest of us.
After years of no cable and me being 22,000 feet from the CO, will they finally upgrade the network so I can get DSL? I can only pray. Hell, at this point I'm praying for something other than flakey 26.4k. Even 48k would be nice.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
You can get 50megabit for like 29.99 a month. I wonder how the increase speed effects the distribution of warez.
Out here in the more rural areas of our nation, we're still struggling to get halfway decent modem connections. Deregulation may be helping people in the city get boatloads of bandwidth, but those of us unfortunate enough to live in the boonies have to fend for ourselves.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
captcha
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
I completely agree. I use SBC DSL for a office in San Diego, CA. The speed is great, and the connection itself is fairly reliable, however, everything past that needs a lot of work. Their mail servers refuse about 15% of all attempted connections, and they go down completely for days at a time about once every 6 months. Their DNS servers went down for 24 hours once for no apparent reason. The worst part is a call to their support/customer service is always a complete waste of time. I have COX cable at home, the speed is about the same, but the service has none of the other issues, and they have very a helpful support staff.
I'm not familiar with Microsoft TV IPTV. Any competing products, presumably FOSS ones?
John Kerry is a Joke!
"BTW, little 'm' means milli. Anything else was written by a marketter with no knowledge of this simple technicalities. I won't stoop to their level by regurgitating their crap!"
... says Malc regurgitatingly.
As a business customer of a competing telco outfit we had issues a few years ago with their provided DSL uptime too. But unfortunately there wasn't an official Service Level Agreement in place. All I could so was complain and issue status updates to our endusers.
Back at a prior job we had an SLA in place with another carrier. But it paid pennies on the dollar in terms of compenstation for downtime. Just some meaningless service credits.
Here's an example. You state that your client is down up to 45 minutes per week. Basing a week on 10,080 minutes that means that the DSL circuit has > 99.5% uptime. If your client were to be compensated for the downtime as a credit on a typical monthly bill that would mean for a $200 monthly bill they would see a whopping $1 credit! And this is only if the carrier guaranteed that Unavailable Seconds (UAS) as measured by teclo couldn't exceed 0.5% in a typical reporting period (typically a range between 1 hour to 24 hours).
huh? You want fast speed for fast downloads, not for saturating it for 24/7.
so that you when you update your machines they don't take half a day to download at some crappy 200kB/s but zoom in at comfortable 3mbyte/s.
particularly useful for large game demo downloads, iso's and such. you want to play that 400mb demo today or tomorrow? today of course.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I have SBC DSL, and most every night, from 7pm to 10pm, the speed drops to something like 300bps.
My firewall still gets probed by jerks, and ping sometimes works, but most anything else doesn't work. Browsers behave like there's no connection at all.
Sometimes, when GUI browsers are timing out, curl will be able to download a bit of a page, but it stops in the first few hundred bytes, and then hangs.
Feh. Now I can have more unusable bandwidth? Oh joy.
These ISP should consider blocking incoming ports for homes, minus ports need to say run an IP over phone service. Of course smart people will use the port, but if the port is actually rated differently then they might not.
This would stop the spread of viruses, because no one could be connected to. I'm behind a firewall, and except for my Overnet forwarded ports I have no need ( and you know that I really don't need Overnet ).
This would be the biggest difference between home and business accounts. On the home side opening up a port for their IP phone based service would be key. They could allow unlimited calls in their network, and charge lower fees for others.
If made standard enough then a whole slew of other companies could compete against each other. You pay SBC for the open port, then pay the other provider for the phone services. 5 bucks a month for the port, and then the rest based on usage with the actually phone company. Phones calls made to other Voice-IPs on a different network are rated lower, then those with a normal POT line.
At the same time they should allow ports to be opened, and then charge bandwith. So you could run a web server they open up port 80, at the same time you actually get a free firewall of sorts.
Piracy would not happen so much if the entertainment industries would get there heads out of their buts and offer good digital forms of albums and movies at affordable prices. The fact that no one has come up with a good "record" file that contains all the tracks of a record is proof of this.
Being able to download movies that are playing in the theatures for 15 bucks is essentially the same thing as going to theature. Yes you loose some money when two or more people see it, but you don't have to pay to distribute it, or take cuts from the venues themselves.
Chances are you might loose some DVD sales, but people buy DVDs to have a permanent high quality copy of video. I'd still buy the DVDs so I could then encode them to Tivo like device ( at the least my current favorites ) and then be able to do it again when I upgrade, or the hardware fails.
Backing up 100s of movies can be kind of a daunty task for a technical person, and impossible for your average consumer.
Even if the viewer program deleted the file after 2 weeks that would keep most people from keeping them forever, most people feel better about doing something the right way.
In short I think we need to find a balance. The wild west days of the internet need to stop for better security, and better QOS. Yes I think we need the ability for people to distribute information more freely, but that is what bloggs are doing. How many of use really need to run a web server on the internet anymore, especially with all the blogs, and free web space provided by ISPs. The answer is your really don't, except that it feels like freedom is being taken away by not having them. Freedom comes with cost, and the cost of this freedom has shown to be great, the cost has been spam and worms.
.. we have states bigger than your entire country. So the distance problem comes up a lot.
99% of home users cannot use that much bandwidth regularly. But I think some of this will be licensed by Covad and other national DSL providers to provide business class service over.
If you look at Covad's web site, they have restructured the business offerings to offer DSL and Fractional T1 as EQUAL alternatives. And the large reason, I feel, is that DSL has issues with troubleshooting and reliability. It's hard to offer an SLA on DSL, when it was designed to adapt for noise. I've seen people get 8k of throughput on a 512k DSL line, just because the line has so much interference or has been bridged tapped too many times, that it is almost not useable. Almost. it costs money to train help deks to go into CPE and look at the db levels. With T1, it's a bit more cut and dried. You may need to adjust the CSU for power, but once it is going - well, that's what it is. ESF is going to give you the number of channels x 64k (56k if you need bit robbing).
But T1s get expensive as you start to bundle them. Multiple CSUs start adding up. Covad has them equal for now, because the fastest business class DSL they have is also 1.5Mb/s. Probably because they backhaul it over DS1.
With offerings of 25Mb/s, I know alot of companies that would like to get that for ROBOs. Very attractive. An office of 50 people can use that much bandwidth, I've seen it happen.
No, you're thinking of hard drives.
If this does mitigate the distance factor for DSL service it might allow me to get my DSL back from SBC.
When I first moved into my new house I ordered SBC DSL, fully expecting their 1.4 mbit service. When I checked the status on the website I saw that I was actually signed up with the 384 package due to distance problems. When I got it hooked up I never got more than 192. After have the service for 8 months, my service became very unreliable in the middle of July. I called a tech out and they disconnected my service citing that I was too far from the CO.
Now I have a 512KB cable package, but as much as I dislike SBC, I hate my cable company even more.
It's the same bogus promises the telcos have been making for years. If only they were given unregulated monopoly power, they'd provide more bandwidth.
Here's SBC's announcement of fibre to the home in 2002. Where is that now?
Aren't you just the cat's ass??
I don't need 25Mbps down, but something more than 128k up on the basic package would be nice. It's one of the reasons I switched back to cable. I had better reliability at a great price, but 128k up is rediculous. I don't do much P2P, but I do have to upload large files and manage content often enough. And forget about sending attachments :(
Not being required to have a phone line is nice too. I'd rather have basic cable than a stupid land line, and best of all, our cable provider doesn't even require basic cable!
I always see the news about high speed bandwidth predictions for the consumer but what about bandwidth on the grand scale? Will current internet backbones be able to handle the increased capacity? And what about all the servers hosted on leased lines how will they be affected? Used to be that a T1 line could let you run a decent web server back when dial up was the only way to go. Now a T1 can be fully saturated with just one DSL/cable user. And if you look at the cost per mbit a month of boradband versus leased lines how will companies hosting sites be affected now that 100 25mbit DSL users could saturate an OC-48 line (~2.5 Gbits/sec)? Cable modems can do 38mbps but if they opend up the modems to 38mbps they would have to install more concentrators and upgrade there network to handle the increased bandwidth. Otherwise the increase would bog down the network and make the speed upgrade pointless. I know they are working on 100gbit lines that could handle over a thousand users but what happens when you have millions of 15-25mbit subscribers? I just wonder what is being done by both ISP's/telecom's and corporate leased line consumers to meet future broadband demands.
And networking.
With BBC America available on a number of cable systems (it's on the digital tier here in the Twin Cities on T-W Cable), I kind of doubt we'd ever get a BBC UK feed, just the recycled BBC stuff, spliced with thousands of annoying commercials.
Comcast already harrasses the 5% of their users that rack up the highest transfer totals. This is generally acknowledged to be about 90 gigs/mo. If SBC suddenly starts giving out 25 mb/s down, you could easily go over this limit in less than a day. What will SBC do when users start topping 1 terrabtyte of transfer each month? It's all well and good for them to say they are going to give me a gb/s 'net connection, but are they going to cancel my service for violating their purposefully vague terms of service when my transfer rates break their ROI calculations?
This news most definately has online gamers cheering. Now it won't be just the dedicated servers that have low-latency. My only concern is...cost. Speed like that doesn't come cheap, making this new network pretty expensive on the grounds of a monthly fee. I would be willing to pay it if the speeds are guaranteed and the bandwith is acceptable.
I can't wait for FTTP, if only so it lowers the buy-in cost of upgrading the phone system as a whole.
I mean, come on. It's 2004. Why is it that we have private individuals developing spacecraft, yet it still takes me an entire sentence to describe to someone on the other end of the phone whether I said "S" or "F"?!? It makes no sense.
Increasing the quality of the telephone should be a major priority, for a great deal of reasons. Reduction of errors in transmission or understanding, safety reasons (911 calls or voice matching a criminal), far superior modem capabilities... the benefits would be endless.
And before you say "no one would spend the money on a better quality phone line", think about all of the people who make money off of phone calls. Broadcasters who have reporters do lives from a phone line to save costs on microwave trucks, radio call-in shows, news services who rely on phone-in reporting... a lot of people would help invest in a better telephone network - mainly because they would all benefit greatly from it.
If we finally get FTTP, and the majority of the phone network becomes packetized (VoIP or not) so that you're only transporting data and not voltage, the buy-in and initial investment in getting "Hi-Def Phones" to work will be minimal, and maybe it'll push things along much quicker.
That would explain the questions I was asked before I could get help for my sbc telephone account this week. I called the help desk regarding long distance usage and they started asking me all kinds of question about whether I use cable or satellite for my television. No. No. How much would you be willing to pay? Etc, etc. It bugged me at the time, but if they're willing to give me that kind of bandwidth it'd be worth the price.
The Microsoft TV IPTV platform would make it possible to deliver standard-and high-definition TV programming to multiple TV sets in the home over an FTTN network while leaving ample bandwidth available for super high-speed broadband and Voice over IP (VoIP) services.
A motion JPEG stream of a NTSC signal takes about 8Mb/s. With Divx and Xvid and other newer MPEG compressions that may have come down.
Cable's value is that it can package analog or digital offerings on the same coax that brings you data digitally. DSL was just about data. But with Video Over IP and de-regulation, we reset the table. Now Telcos have an advantage again. Converged services over IP, esp. voice and video. This puts Vonage and their ilk and Comcast in a position to ward these off. Why use Vonage over the Internet with no service levels, when you can use IP telephony over the DSL provider network with service guarantees? The only reason would be cost.
Comcast may fight back with partnerships to offer voice in a bundle. Vonage's offering already goes a long way to destroying the E.164 convention. I live in one state and have 4 phone numbers on my line, the last 3 being in different states so people can call me without toll to them. International prefixes and U.S. area codes will simply vanish.
Too bad the guys who could most use fiber optic DSL, programmers, are the least likely to earn enough to afford a house.
The RIAA a window of about, what, 5 seconds to notice an illegal song download happening? lol...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
Which was exactly the wrong thing to do, for customers! It basically eliminates any possible competition between ISPs, allowing cable/telco to force customer to choose their preferred ISP. There is absolutely no positive aspect of that decision for non-monopolies.
There are some telcos that have actually played nice, with or without regulation: to my surprise the local teclo (Qwest) is one of those. I both like their DSL service, AND the fact they do allow me to choose any of ISPs in the area, not just their own one (which they sold to MSN, a year ago, but even before that). But such telcos (and cable cos, if such exist) are exceptions to the rule, and will remain so with the current Laissez Faire philosophy of corporate bootlickers at white house.
Guys!
How is downloading speed measured normally?Is there a "standard " for this?
is it bytes or bits per second?
and what are the symbols used?
can some one clarify?
Why does yahoo do this
Sometimes it can help to actually scan through the comments that have been posted on this there, Chester. Perhaps you should turn off your home PC and just use the public library's.
Moron.
Lets say they block a range of ports for residential DSL.
Lets say it becomes widespread.
Lets say that today's exploits aren't possible because the ISP's are blocking ports.
But not every port. Just the "evil" port.
Now lets say you're a virus/worm writer. Which ports will you use to infect or communicate? The blocked ports or the open ports?
With overhead, it converts to about 2.5 megabytes/sec.
I hope they have ISP hosted firewalls setup with sane security settings which can be modified via the users web based account.
Otherwise it will be Zombie relay heaven.
Groan...
My house sits what like 20 yards from the FTTH junction box.
I can't get FTTH because SBC/SureWest (and any other FTTH competitors) are understaffed to do rollouts. Their current focus is right now on new housing developments and tracts.
20 yards! Oh the torture of staring at this FTTH junction box as I drive/walk by every day.
Oh, the horror...
SBC is basically providing an "OOOoh shiny!" to its customers to cover for its absolutely pathetic service. I have friends in kansas city and texas who have SBC DSL, and I'd be willing to wager it goes out at least once a day if not more so, for often enough to disrupt downloads and instant messaging, if not for hours at a time
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
1) Increase bandwidth
2) Raise prices
3) ?????
4) Profit!!!!
This is bad, very very BAD . SBC is a mega mega MEGA corporation, in cahoots with Microsoft and SCO for sure, this can ONLY be bad for the Joe Beergut, I mean THINK about it: pushing fiber to my house, without my permission, and linking that fiber to the chip in my head? It's outrageous! Where is Fidel when we need him? It is my opinion that the fact that tinfoil is not actually tin anymore is an SBC / Microsoft / SCO PLOT also. MARK MY WORDS.
What they're doing looks similar to what Bell Canada is doing in some of their downtown markets. Bell Canada has been rolling out VDSL services by installing hardware into condos in Toronto. They aren't using this to give people superfast broadband though (I mean beyond the 4mbps they already have available), but instead to offer their version of Digital TV to compete with the likes of Rogers Cable. Bell is eventually migrating away from their sattelite based ExpressVu service to an ExpressVu service based on VDSL. Check out Bell's ExpressVu site, and also another site with info.
provides some competition and breaks the natural monopoly. In Loveland, CO, the cable company was slow in getting broadband through out the city. In the meantime at least two wireless companies were providing the missing service. Well the cable company woke up and got broadband in the city, and the phone company saw what the cable company was doing and expanded their DSL coverage. Too late for me, I got tired of waiting and went wireless. They lost a customer.
I live in one of the most densely populated communities in the United States (NYC, NY). I'm 3900 feet from my CO. I cannot get DSL. Yes, that's right - I cannot get DSL, because the area I live in is fed by DLC equipment that cannot support DSL. My good friends at Verizon can give me zero information as to when I might be able to get DSL. Of course to even get this far (figure out that I can't get DSL), I had to order a Verizon phone line, which cost about $100 to install and is $22 a month if I don't even make a call. I applaud the bells in rolling out higher speeds. But getting the network to all their subscribers still has to be addressed. I don't think anyone's complaining about the speed at this point, but it'd be really nice if they can solve technical (DLC) and logistical (make me order a phone line to learn all this) issues before worrying about higher speeds.
between cable and DSL. One is shared coaxial bandwidth while the other consists of dedicated copper pairs. The availability of one or the other doesn't have to be interdependent. After all there are places that have telephones but no cable out in the boonies, right??
Although on principle I agree regarding trusting telco. They can be like the Enron traders, shuffling around things and playing the shell game to the company's own benefit, largely discounting any hardships endured by the customers.
When does SBC Ameritech plan on upgrading their business practices?
I had Ameritech's 1.5/128 plan for 18 months. Moved to a new address 2 miles from my old one. Had DSL service moved.
Downloads dropped from 155k per second at old apartment to 38.x k per second at the house. Download speed only fluctuated to the RIGHT of the decimal point. Obviously throttled.
Five hours worth of telephone calls over 2 different days. Bottom line? Ameritech has a HIDDEN PLAN that is ALSO $26.95/month, but - Drumroll - It's 192-384 DOWN, 128 up. This plan is not on their literature, and NOT on ameritech.com. Without any prior notification they switched me to this plan for a full MONTH before finally admitting to it while billing me at my normal service rate the entire time. The reason? They THOUGHT I was 146 FEET too far from the CO. Two network techs told me during two separate phone calls that their line scan showed I was good to go for 1.5 megabit down.
You wouldn't BELIEVE how many people I had to yell at to finally get an admission that they had quietly switched me over to their HIDDEN slower-speed "plan". I cancelled on the spot. Billing someone full price for a service you are KNOWINGLY not providing is FRAUD.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
By time SBC actually gets round to rolling this out they will have subverted this project in favor of some wireless scheme. NOTE - SBC already ditched on this once - the project was called "Pony" or something like that - this was maybe three years ago.
While that may be the trend, it's because of lack of competition more than anything else. Historically, there's been very few ways of getting information into people's homes. At first there was only phone lines, then cable came along and more recently wireless has started to show up.
Ultimately if you control those pipes and you are the only game in town, you have no incentive to innovate. Why upgrade your network to charge another $5/month for services when you can just charge another $5/month.
I don't believe regulation in the sense that you are suggesting would be a benefit. What you'd have it a bunch of people trying to hit that 512/128 sweet spot. So you'd end up with having that bandwidth being about as cheap as possible, but anything more than that would be terribly expensive.
Frankly, I think the best form of regulation would be to say that any company providing a pipe into a home cannot offer service itself but can charge a percentage of the retail price of the services that go over their network. So, for example, you get DSL service, you pay $40/month and SBC get's 10%. Now, why would SBC have an incentive to improve their network? Well, if they do that, your DSL provider can charge you $60/month, and everybody is happier.
Putting them in the position of just running the pipes gives them incentive to be open with their network and to provide the best service possible to the carriers who run over their pipes.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Perhaps, but 'K' is generally the abbreviation for "Kilo" (1024), whereas 'k' is the abbreviation for "Kilo" (1000).
Deregulation is the antithesis of the bureaucratic "quick fix". As such it avoids the problem that von Mises talked about, that each regulation causes problems that require more regulations to fix, which in turn require yet more regulations, causing far more problems and costing anyone who tries to do business a fortune in compliance costs.
Deregulation simplifies new entrants into a market. This means that if a "problem" can be solved, be it technical or price, someone will step up and make a profit solving it.
The difference is one of time. While the benefits of deregulation are long term, the bureaucratic "quick fix" ensures that special interest groups and politicians can claim to have "done something". By the time their "something" has blossomed into a Frankenstein's Monster, they have either retired or can point fingers at anyone and everyone else.
After all, they have the moral high ground having "done something".
That's also the reason bureaucrats hate entrepreneurs. Bureaucrats are only "seen" to do something, entrepreneurs actually do it whether you see them or not.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I've currently got ADSL2+, 24Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up. 4 persons are sharing the connection, and even though we've only had it for about 3 weeks, we've already saturated it a number of times. The fastest single download I've clocked so far was 22Mb/s(Downloading a Gentoo ISO from the Sunet servers).
Other things we've noticed is that we are having less troubles now with things such as voice-chatting via Skype, downloading while playing games, streaming video(BBC and National Geographics via PC-TV), streaming audio(some radio stations also run their broadcasts via the net. Works great, since radio reception sucks in this apartment) and similar things.
Precept Software (acquired by Cisco) filed a trademark application for "IP/TV" in October 1995. It was granted and, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office, its status is "LIVE".
So, according to the USPTO, IP/TV is a trademark of Cisco Systems, not Microsoft.
Some of you need to learn this.
The internet was HATED by the private telecom industries.
The internet reduced reduced reliance on them.
We need a public communications network that's not reliant on these greedy industries.
You all saw what happened in California with the energy crisis . The contractors rigged the bidding for electricity.
Every other country has affordable broadband because our current stupid system is to hope that there is enough competition so that prices will come down. This is verrrry slooow process.
We need government to install the next gen of broadband which will replace the greedy phone/cable companies.
dslreports.com has the WAR between municapal and the privates. The privates are fighting them with the most ridiculous propoganda you have seen.
The are frightened to hell of the governments getting into broadband !
Kind of absurd for them to take this step when they can't even handle some basic mail operations. This announcement needs to be read in the context of a company that has demonstrated its technical incompetence with simple, straight-forward technology (SMTP).
... either having long periods when the servers are inoperative, or alternately wide open to spammers who hack into them... some of the problem probably lies with SBC DSL users who have no firewalls or virus protection ... however, if SBC is going to flog their service then they have some duty to advise TCUs (Totally Clueless Users) on these things.
... so I've had to put up with these folks for years.
In that light, this SBC announcement needs to be received with a grain of salt. It looks like a way to pump up their stock price. If they can't handle SMTP, why should we think they can competently handle a big data pipe?
What SMTP problems? You may ask: At the end of this post are the headers from AOL today indicating that SBC's SMTP servers have been placed on the AOHell Black Hole list.
This happens relatively frequently.
SBC has a particular problem with SMTP servers
To introduce the latest, slickest, fastest version of their service does nothing to fix the intolerable problems that have plagued SBC DSL users from the very beginning.
I'm in an area with no DSL competitors and no line-of-sight for wireless broadband and no cable broadband yet either
I got so fed up a few years ago, I created a Pathetic Bell website (http://www.patheticbell.com, this was before SBC bought them).
There were so many complaints on the message board (including frequent, documented SMTP issues) that the board became a trolling ground for lawyers and as a result, the board posters managed play a key role in two successful class-action lawsuits. Unfortunately, the amounts they had to pay were so low nothing changed.
AOL banishment of SBC e-mail
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:14:05 -0400
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem
To:
Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure)
The original message was received at Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:14:03 -0400
from adsl-63-200-154-57.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.200.154.57]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
(reason: 554-(RLY:B1) The information presently available to AOL indicates this)
----- Transcript of session follows -----
451 4.4.1 reply: read error from mailin-02.mx.aol.com.
while talking to mailin-01.mx.aol.com.:
554-(RLY:B1) The information presently available to AOL indicates this
554-server is generating high volumes of member complaints from AOL's
554-member base. Based on AOL's Unsolicited Bulk E-mail policy at
554-http://www.aol.com/info/bulkemail.html AOL may not accept further
554-e-mail transactions from this server or domain. For more information,
554 please visit http://postmaster.info.aol.com.
while talking to mailin-03.mx.aol.com.:
QUIT
Contractors working for Verizon were in my neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia 2 months ago stringing fiber as part of a test community for running fiber to the home. Havent heard anything else on the matter but Verizon may be following SBCs lead very soon.
Let them pump broadband wherever they want. It just means they connect to my mail server a little faster before I refuse to accept their mail and hang up on 'em. SBC has been one of the largest sources of spam in the last year.
They'd be wise to spend some of their resources to stop the huge flow of spam across their network first and foremost. Or their broadband customers will be further alienated from the Internet proper and all that bandwidth won't make a difference.
I fought with SBC for 3 months last year in an effort to get my phone line fixed. I had a constant buzz on BOTH of my lines that I could hear from the point-of-presence. The buzz made using the phone annoying because I could barely hear people on the other end sometimes and dial-up internet was 100% useless, 30 mins connected would be a good run. I called almost daily in an attempt to resolve this, nothing was ever fixed. They hard wired my PoP so I could no longer jack a phone in and listen (this removes your house wiring from the equation). I have requested on 2 occasions to have this repiared but nothing has happened yet.
Let's not even get into the DSL issue here in Fresno, CA. Cable is kicking DSL's ass here mostly because SBC is too SLOW to expand. A HUGE housing development 1 mile from my house that has been there for 10+ years and has 1000's of people living there (I have no idea how many are in the area, but there are 3 brand new schools) and has ZERO DSL service. And me living just 1 mile away I have poor phone service and zero dial up internet. Luckly I found a wireless bussiness provider who has a T-1 service that I had installed and then I linked the office and the house again with wireless.
SBC is a joke, if I ever see 15-25mbps in the Fresno area using SBC I'll be shocked.
According to the International Electrotechnical Commission, Ki is for Kibi (1024), K (k?) is for Kilo (1000).
SBC (Ameritech) is where I am too. They provide the last mile for some other carriers and their network is stretched pretty thin here as well. I know when they were bringing in a private DS1 connecting two of our sites they tried to cross connect it using an available HDSL2 circuit. Just a single pair of copper wires just like the POTS lines going into residential homes. Due to bridge taps and other issues they had to give up on that and use more sophisticated transport. Wireless phone carrier spend billions improving their cellular networks. I know that the company I used to work for (PrimeCo, now part of Verizon Wireless) spent boatloads on replacing Motorola MSC's with Lucent MSC's. Plus look at all of the 2.5G, 3G, etc. cellular data infrastructure upgrades competing out there. The old copper pairs are a beat street.
Big fucking deal. How old are you?
This is the second story from Timothy in just a bit more than a week where SI units are used incorrectly. See the previous story.
In this story 15-25 Mb/s is expressed two ways:
1) 15-25Mbps
2) 15-24mbps
Both of these are incorrect. Here's an reference on how to use SI correctly to back me up.
In short:
a) There's always a space between the number and the units.
b) "M" is mega and "m" is milli. There's nine orders of magnitude difference between to two.
c) "per" is expressed with a "/".
Subject really says it all. I'm 100% for faster DL/UL speeds as long I don't have to pay $300/month for them. I don't expect to get these speeds for $30-$40 a month, but I won't pay much more than that.
Bah. I have the privilege of paying SBC $59/month for 384/128 that has mysteriously deteriorated to 192/107 over the past few months.
SBC are incompetent morons. The only clever people they have are the bookkeepers who will sell and buy back SBC assets to make $6B of capital disappear into their rate base without any improvement in the service they deliver.
P'tui.
Whoever they are, they apparently have no pull in such matters.
boy another product that will be Microsoft only.
I wish they would stop shoving microsoft down our throats - their isp software sucks big time along with their customized "home page".
if it only works with microsft products then they can stick this up Bill's a$#. I won't be buying.
This is going to be EASY to utilize. Imagine HDTV feeds delivered via broadband rather than over the air or through your cable system. This amount bandwidth enables a whole variety of high definition video applications.
of ANY kind to my house--I don't care what speed. I'm stuck with ^%&*#$ CableOne internet for $45 a month, and DSL isn't supported on my line. Qwest just started offering unbundled DSL service for about $15 a month (plus a few bucks for a cheap ISP), and I can't get it!
This is Boise Idaho, so we're not exactly on the leading edge of technology.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Die fucking SI Nazi
Yeah, WHATEVER, SBC...
I'm still waiting for SBC's Project Pronto.
Where'd that go? Well, it went nowhere fast
Sometimes I wonder if SBC says these things just to scare away their competition.
SBC should be able to do better than that. Surewest Broadband here in Sacramento is fibre to the house. They hit 100Mbps.
Further proof that the dinosaur Bell telecos need to be taken out to the dustbin of American history once and for all.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
And a lowercase "m" means milli and a uppercase "M" means mega. Who wanted millibits again?
Scott, Keeper of the Crystal Flame
Do any DSL companies offer DSL in a "reversed" asymmetry? For instance, 256Kb down, 1.5Mb up?
It would be nice for those of us who want to serve (legitimate) files, as opposed to download tons of stuff.
mb = millibar. But thanks for pointing out that you meant megabits.
since Mb= megabit,
and MB = megabyte
Here's another little excerpt for those too lazy to click "The symbol for megabyte is MB (note B for Byte, lowercase b would mean bit)."
Hey! I have a quick question, if you (or someone in the know in SBC) could answer this for me. What's going on with SBC's "enhanced DSL" service in the St. Louis, Missouri area?
Not that long ago, I upgraded my regular DSL package to "enhanced" which gives me 6 megabit downloads and apparently, about 512K-540K upload speeds. Now, I've been told to make sure "I hang onto that package and don't cancel!" because SBC no longer offers it.
I'm told that the fastest DSL speeds you can buy from them today in St. Louis are 3 megabit? Why'd they do this? Was it a matter of technical difficulties (too many people paid for the 6 megabits and then couldn't really get it due to line errors and the like), or just wasn't popular enough or what?
I'm very pleased with my 6mbit service.... It's been very reliable for me. Granted, it's not exactly cheap - but my roommate was an SBC employee, so we put everything phone-related in his name and got the employee discounted rates, making it a little more affordable.
I was just surprised to see that in a market where max. speeds for broadband seem to be climbing, SBC would drop their fastest speed package.
All of this FTTN and FTTP talk and they still won't roll out the fucking completation of putting the DSL line cards in the RT's. I've got Fiber to the 5 different remote terminals in my area, all within a 10 miles radius in a suburb of about 5k people. DSL is not available AT ALL because sbc in it's infinite wisdom won't put the line cards in the remote teminals, which btw, are all new enough to accept them without upgrade.
I don't understand it and of course, I can't talk to anyone at sbc who gives a damn or has any control/power to change it.
I don't want to move just so I can have broadband, I don't live that far outside of town ( 12.43 miles from the dead center of a city of 250k people ). It's outragous that they refuse to put dsl in my area. I think it's because I'm south of town and all of the ghettos are between me and the downtown area, so they won't put out dsl basically because of racism/classicism.
Fuckers.
Verizon is further ahead in their fiber rollout (they've already begun in Keller, TX) whereas SBC still hasn't even chosen who the various providers of the equipment and such are going to be.
Also, Verizon's speed tiers are going to be 5mbit down/2mbit up, 15mbit down/2mbit up and 30mbit down/5mbit up.
Still, it's nice to see the RBOCs finally moving forward with fiber rollouts... let's hope it's not just all smoke and mirrors... this time... again... (Though the main difference between now and then is the competition from cable companies).
If you were the one in charge of the net connection then you dropped the ball here, not the phone company. There are plenty of tools to let you know how far from the CO you are and in any case you should have asked. Not knowing the distance limitations of DSL is not an excuse, if you are ordering one for your business then you damn well better at least read a FAQ on it.
--- I do not moderate.
I live in Phoenix, Arizona - when Cox rolled out its high speed internet, and USWest rolled out its DSL - you could get from USWest television service over the phone line. There was a set-top box that plugged into the phone line, and your TV plugged into it. Their TV guide directory system was sub-par (I prefer Cox's directory over everything else I have seen) - but it was cable TV over the phone lines. I have no idea how they were doing it - whether it was like cable where they allocate different frequencies, or if it was DSL data...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Wow, seems like the world already forget about project PRONTO that SBC announced in 2000.
What ever happens to that project. Did SBC actually spend $6 billions or to deployed those remote DSLAM?. Now they're reduce the price downto $4 billions or so.
Funny, I'm not seeing all the "I don't know who SBC is so why should I care? Why does this rate /.?" posts I've seen about past coverage.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Their current estimate for down/up speeds are 15-25mb/s down and 1-3mb/s up (mega_bits_, not bytes)
:)
Oh. I thought they were measuring this new dsl in millibits for a minute. If it were telstra (the infamous Australian ISP), I wouldn't have been suprised if they were
Fiber to the curb still isn't enough to beat cable. I'm on cablevision's DOCSIS 1.1 system with 10Mbps down/1Mbps up and right now, it can compete with the SBC upgraded system.
What happens when cable companies upgrade to DOCSIS 2.0? That spec allows for 30Mbps SYMETRIC speeds. The only upgrade required is a Cable Modem Termination System upgrade and , maybe, a modem replacement at the customer premises. That type of upgrade is a hell of a lot cheaper than stringing fiber all over creation.
Cable system operators are already providing voice, data, digital cable, and on-demand movies. I know people that have completely left verizon, and have no interest in going back.
The local telcos need to work on Fiber to the Home. It is the only technology that will save them in the long run.
-ted
i hate sbc
i want my unbundled loop
A "plan" to roll out incredibly high speed DSL at 25Mbps? Sorry, but Tokyo already has 45Mbps ADSL, and Fiber isn't that much more expensive either. I have a 100Mbps fiber optic line in my apartment right now. At peak speeds I can get up to 75Mbps, UP AND DOWN.
Bragging aside, I still don't see a future for DSL in the U.S. Other than a few metropolitan areas, people just live too far from the telco. In Tokyo ADSL works great because almost NO ONE lives further than 2 to 3 miles from a telco. Fiber works great for areas where people live far apart, so maybe it's time to give up on the "interim" broadband solution, and get something real. Afterall, phone lines (copper) were for phones. Not digital communications. There have been quality enhancements, telco equipment has immensely gotten better, but the basic concept behind these lines hasen't changed a whole lot since Graham Bell first invented them. Time to get lines that are meant for digital data traffic, not modulated analog waves.
How about range?! I'd be happy with DSL period where I live, about 300 yards from the nearest house in DSL. Cable? Goes out every ten minutes because the ISP has no bandwidth whatsoever. Anyway, thats my rant.
Cheese is fun!
From what I understand the 6mbit at 3mbit advertised was because they didn't have the 3mbit profiles in their system yet and marketing went ahead and offered the packages. The people who got 6mbit will be able to keep it. I'm sure they will be offering 6mbit again (not sure when, or for what price). Best place to get details on this stuff is dslreports.com forums. Official SBC techs post there.
AS LONG AS they have unbundled options. They can bundle together cable tv, dsl, satelite, telephone, electricity, water, air, uranium, toxic nerve gas, Hitler's spleen - and i don't really care, IF i have the OPTION of NOT CHOOSING ANY BUNDLE.
Yep, sbc may be upgrading where they already have dsl services. But the rest of us are screwed.
Where I'm at I get 28.8 dialup on a GOOD day. Cable doesn't exist, there were charter trucks all over the place near here a few months ago, but the never seem to be able to tell me if I'm in thier area or not and promis a non-existant call back when I call them. And satalite is questionable at best as I live in a river valley surrounded by hills, especially to the south.
I've been buggin them both (sbc and charter) every month or so for over a year, best answer I get from eigther is "we're not showing your area as having availability" after several minutes of them clearly having no clue where I am. Usually I get an I dunno type answer and promis of callback that never occures.
There really should be some sort of push to extend broadband. There are a lot of people in my situation and I'm shure they could make money if they just extended service a few more mile (I know people less than 10 miles away with good speed broadband).
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
kool(?) aid is a mystery to me. Being not-an-american I see it quite often (penny-arcade ie.) but never understand whats funny about it. If anyone had time to enlighten me, I'd be more than grateful.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
I'm not a rep for SBC nor a competitor to SureWest.
How much do you have to pay for 100Mbps to the shop? I just checked and their residential pages do not list what their package prices are and you have to basically enter all ZIP codes for Sacramento to see if it's available--I've entered something like 10 so far but they are all not available. Their business DSL (1.5Mbps/384kbps) package is $219, compared to something like $75 from SBC. I'm genuinely curious about their prices.
For $49.95/Month - 30Gb + $1.50 for every GB over 30
For $69.96/Month - 55Gb + $1.50 for every GB over 55
For $99.95/Month - 95Gb + $0.80 for every GB over 95