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Comcast Launching $9.95 Low Income Broadband Plan
MojoKid writes "Comcast is launching 'Internet Essentials,' a new initiative offering discounted Internet access and home computers to families that meet low income requirements. The program was mandated as a requirement of Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, earlier this year. In that way, it's very similar to AT&T's Naked DSL program, which AT&T was required to offer as a condition of its merger with BellSouth. Internet Essentials will be available wherever Comcast offers broadband, which means 39 states."
So I don't use it.
Is this Comcast's doing, or is this the FCC forcing Comcast to do this? It looks like this is a very good thing. So if Comcast was offering this deal to better their PR, it worked on me.
God spoke to me
What sort of bandwidth will Comcast offer for all 'Internet Essential' customers? Will they be farsighted enough to put them on IPv6, so that they don't have problems later?
Looks like it's a 1.5/384 connection.
http://www.internetessentials.com/faq/index.html
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
It's probably identical to a normal service but with every metric divided by two or some other factor. Why would they put this service on a different architecture when they could simply alter some database records for these customers?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Look, if they're going to offer subsidized internet access to low-income households, I think the real move should be to nationalize it altogether. If Comcast and/or the FCC can acknowledge that it is a public right to have affordable internet access for everyone, then it is high time the profit motive were removed from the equation. Oh, wait, you guys completely fucked that up with the national health care plan... carry on with your nihilistic ledger-padding then!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The long term goal would be to move most, if not all, customers to the new protocol (not architecture). Since these would be new customers, they can start them on this, so that they don't need to upgrade later. Other existing customers can be moved to IPv6 whenever they are ready.
If the US had real competition you would have providers offering $10 broadband as standard without any income requirements. The rest of the Western world (ex. Canada) seem to be able to manage it. How long is the US going to let themselves be held hostage by the big two providers?
I love the comment on the article from a guy who complains that other customers will have to pay for these accesses for the poors.
God forbid these people have access to internet and be able to raise better educated kids to contribute to society!
Well, as IPv4 addresses become scarce, having a load of customers on IPv6 with NAT64 to access v4 sites may be cheaper. Rolling this out for the people too poor to switch to an alternative service first makes sense from a business standpoint.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's one thing if people voluntarily choose to pay for other people's internet access, based on their income levels. But given a lot of reasons, not least being the state of the economy, I don't fault them for not choosing to do so. But government doing this is simply using its power for social engineering, rather then acting within its constitutionally defined limits. Which to too many Americans is fanaticism.
True. Also, given that Comcast has/is already used/using dual-stack lite (i.e. IPv4 over IPv6 connections) to provide both types of access, they can rapidly proliferate IPv6 this way, and spur more enterprises to make the switch to IPv6 more rapidly.
Read the details: it's ONLY offered to families with young children. If you're single and down on your luck, you're still down on your luck; if you're an older couple with teenaged kids fallen on hard times, tough luck for you, too.
Ageism strikes again. Think of the children!
Many Slashdot geeks like to act like Internet access hasn't changed in a decade but that is not at all true. You get a lot more for your money. I think about my own history on the net:
I first got a connection in 1996. It was dialup, 28.8k max. That was a little deceptive though as the ISP had only a 28.8 frame relay out, so if more than one person was using it, you got less throughput. It cost $15/month, but also needed a phoneline, which ran about $25/month so around $40/month total, about $55 in today's dollars. That would be $1900 of today's dollars per megabit. That later was upgraded to a bigger connection out, and then to 56k.
My first DSL line was a consumer 256k line in 2000. A bit flaky, but sweet broadband. It ran me about $70/month, which is about $87/month today. That is $339/mbit.
I then moved up to professional/business class lines since I want to have servers. I got a 640k DSL line with 5 static IPs in 2001. That was expensive, about $200/month since it was business grade ($240/month today). That is $375/mbit so actually not that much more for speed, despite being a higher class line.
When I moved to a house on 2003 I got a different business class DSL line from a different provider. It was 4mbit/768k with 8 static IPs and cost about $160/month ($200 now). That is only $50/mbit. It was later upgraded to 6mbit down, though my line couldn't really handle that.
Some time ago I switched to business class cable and I've gone through a few upgrades with them, currently I have 50/5mbit service with 5 static IPs which runs me $155/month. That's $3/mbit. I've had that for about a year now.
So the progression is:
1996: $1900/mbit
2000: $339/mbit
2001: $375/mbit (change to business class)
2003: $50/mbit
2011: $3/mbit
That's not a bad increase in speed for money. In 15 years the price has dropped to 0.15% of what it used to be. Also consider that I went from a connection that had to dial in, and had fairly frequent problems to one that is always on and goes down very rarely (probably 99.9% uptime or better).
I'm not saying everything is perfect or that we don't want to see more for less, but let's keep it in perspective here.
Also with increases, we pass more barriers and further increases matter less. 28.8k was slow for everything, even surfing text pages. However 15-20mbps is enough that you can stream HD video no problem and everything loads more or less instantly (you wait more on DNS lookup and the like). Past that it only really helps for faster software downloads. We'll have new uses for more bandwidth, no question, but it is mattering less and less.
I noticed big changes in what I could do when I moved up from things like 640k to 4mbps. I noticed minor improvements going from 10-20mbps (which I did a couple years ago). I noticed nothing really other than faster Steam downloads going from 20mbps to 50mbps.
So while I look forward to the day when I have gigabit to my house (real gigabit, not "a connection that technically runs at gig but you never see but maybe 5% of it" as is common in Japan) I am not chomping at the bit waiting. I also keep a realistic perspective of just how much faster things have gotten and how fast it is happened.
That was precisely my point. More simply, a right is something I have b'cos I didn't need to deprive someone else of something in order to get. I don't deprive others of air while breathing, I don't deprive others of speech rights while opining, et al. But if I did, it would no longer be a right. All the things I listed above - despite the fact that everybody needs them - are not rights, precisely b'cos of the zero-sum-game nature of these things. If they were, farmers would have to give food to anyone who wanted it w/o paying for it, businesses would have to give jobs, automakers would have to give cars, et al. Even if people need certain things to survive, that by itself doesn't automatically make them rights. Rights means something that's yours and morally cannot be taken away.
Will Comcast follow this with 'Heroes of the fallen internets' and 'Heroes of the forgotten internets' later on?
Is Intenet Essentials their attempt to win over older Internets 3.x users?
This is just plain wrong. Comcast offers a product, and wants to charge one group of people one fee for this product and another group of people a different fee for this product. It's wrong and should be illegal.
Once they've got most of America's poor hooked, they'll throttle the service or make it unusable in some way, and most of those people will end up switching to more expensive, conventional plans. If people can pay $10 a day for cigarettes, they'll find a way to pay $60 a month or more to Comcast for access to pornography.
Way to hate. Do you presume that poor people are also stupid people and/or that non-poor people are smarter? Both presumptions would be ridiculous. People in general are pretty stupid and it doesn't matter which income bracket they fall into. A frikken CEO of X-Company could just as easily be hosting a botnet... worse, he might have half a dozen computers where "The Poor family" might only have one. (Admittedly, there will be thousands if not millions of "Poor familes" to each CEO but that's just how the division of wealth goes these days. Do you think you are "middle class"? Think again...
It would be interesting to see what the "poor" use the Internet for in a years time. Who here thinks the majority of the time will be spent filling out job applications or Khan Academy? I'm pretty sure YouTube, porn sites, and community flash mob organizing will be the major activities.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Perhaps some other countries should be looked at. I'm not sure what he counts as "western" but the UK ought to qualify. I see a deal there for up to 50mbps for $60/month for cable Internet. Requires a 12 month contract. My local cable company offers 50mbps for $90/month with no contract ($60/month gets you 25mbps). In Spain I see 10mbit ADSL and phone service for about $60/month with a 12 month contract. That's in line with what you'd pay either the cable of phone company for similar service here. Italy seems to be almost entirely ADSL, not much fibre and no real cable. Rates are around $50/month for 12mbit.
I don't think the situation is nearly as rosy in the rest of the world as some geek types seem to want to think. There are places it is good, there are places it is not as good.
I'd love to see faster Internet in the US because, well, I'm a geek but I also am not going to claim people are getting screwed by 25mbps for $60. 25mbps is plenty fast for everything, including HD streaming, and $60 is not out of line.
Comcast is in the process of rolling out IPv6 to all areas of the company so I can't see why this would be any different. Bandwidth will be minimal at 1.5 mb per second download and 384 kb per second upload. This program is designed to bring internet to homes that otherwise would not be able to afford the regular rate of 44.95. There are some conditions that apply for this service. Your child must be getting a subsidized school lunch and you are not elligible if you have paid for comcast internet at any other price in the last 3 months. It's not a bad idea but I can't even think of what it must be like to surf at that speed. It reminds me of dial up.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Access to internet is as essential now as access to drinking water and electricity. Selfish bastards such as yourself can go back in your hole.
If you actually compare dial-up to current dial-up where you can still get it. bandwidth hasn't gone down that much with that class of service. AS a matter of fact, it's still at 1999 prices.
But let's go back to broadband, shall we?
We were and are paying more than any other industrialized country on Earth for inferior service. AND that's not including these ridiculous pricing plans that broadband providers impose on us to obfuscate just how much they're screwing us.
We're being ripped-off.
As far as I know there are only some parts of the Comcast footprint that are currently using IPv6 right now so I think that most will be on IPv4 for the time being.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
But the point is over all how you are getting lots more for less. I'm not saying the US Internet is the best in the world, I am saying it is not bad and has improved a ton in 15 years.
Also a few other things to consider:
1) Do you really get your promised rate, to all over the place? Something I've seen quite a few times, most particularly with Japanese ISPs but elsewhere too, is that they build a big WAN type of environment where there's a fast connection to the premises and to their stuff, but not to much backhaul. So great connection to them, good connection to some peers, not so great to other countries.
2) Do your taxes fund that at all? While taxpayer funded Internet is certainly beneficial for those with less money, the cost can't be ignored.
3) How are your housing costs? I pay $650/month (that includes taxes) for a 30 year mortgage on a 165 square meter place. I'm going to hazard a guess that your living arrangement is a bit more expensive.
Just things to keep in mind when comparing things. US and Denmark Internet appears to be in the same general range of low single digits per mbit. Denmark is cheaper, but it isn't as though the US is an order of magnitude more expensive or anything.
I'd love to see faster and cheaper Internet in the US, but I'm not that worried about it. Internet here is fast enough, it is easy to get a reasonably priced connection that can do HD video streaming, fast web surfing and all that ($60/25mbits here, some places are a bit less or more speed). More is nice but not a big deal. Also I've seen the progression going strong, and I have no reason to believe it won't continue.
I'm not concerned about not having the fastest, cheapest Internet in the world. So long as I can get Internet that does what it needs to do for a reasonable price I'm ok with that.
This is hilarious. Having been watching J-Bloggers on YouTube for a while now, it's clear that broadband access in Japan runs about $12 a month (maybe a bit higher now because of the exchange rate) for EVERYBODY.
You sir are a fatuous prick.
"I can't even think of what it must be like to surf at that speed. It reminds me of dial up."
Are you seriously fucking kidding me? It sounds like you need to be forcibly returned to using dialup for a year or so, as you clearly don't remember what it was like. You may in fact be too young to have ever used it, judging by your displayed immaturity.
Oh boo-hoo, like most alleged conservatives your worship of the sacred Constitution is probably one of convenience anyway, not actual diligence. Believe it or not, the Constitution is not a sacred unchanging mandate from heaven. It is the work of men and meant to serve the needs of those who live within its authority.
In some aspects it has served well, in others it has not.
If you merely wish to say you feel that the duties and authority of government should be clearly articulated, that would be one thing, but I sincerely doubt that's the case. If it were, then you would be open to the idea of holding a convention to discuss the parameters for a modern day, where we can discuss things on their own merits, and not with some people relying on what was written centuries ago as if it were the last and absolute word. Pardon my doubts, but if you do support the true principles of the US Constitution, which was written by people who chose to take the reigns of power in their own hands, you will let us do the same thing today, and not force us to be beholden to our long-dead ancestors.
What is it worth for "the poor" to be connected on the same system?
Who wants to bet the "low-cost" computers Comcast gives out have cameras that can be turned on remotely?
I'm sorry, I'm paranoid. I stopped trusting anything a telecom does some years ago.
You are welcome on my lawn.
and wait till you find out what speed they get for their $12. While other nations are busy upgrading their infrastructure to meet consumer bandwidth demands, US' solution to bandwidth problem consists of raising service fees.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
He's partially right, though. Your hypothetical CEO will have a dozen boxes, yeah... but they'll likely be top-o-the-line or relatively new stuff, or something his kid may be tinkering with.
As a former poor person (in my case a struggling student), I remember what it was like to scrape up a box out of spare/cast-off parts, running an OS 'borrowed' from someone else. (props to the owners of nwark.com for selling me the bits, and to the idiots at my former employer at the time for clinging tightly to their Windows 3.0 licenses, but giving me a valid SCO UNIX kit).
Back then, and even now, most poor folk get their computers much the same way - big-hearted geeks bang together boxes and make sure the underprivileged kids have something to do their homework on - and these things aren't going to run the latest/greatest OSes. If you're lucky (like in Free Geek's instance) the boxes have Linux on them, but most of the time there's a copy of Windows ${old} installed because the hardware won't run the latest. Then there's the flea markets, where enterprising folks bang together similarly old boxes, selling them with a copy of Windows-something (maybe XP, maybe 2000, probably 98).
Unless the recipient is a geek (or a budding one), odds are perfect that the OS will never get patched, and that the users have just enough knowledge in using them that they can do some basic bits online, but not really do it safely.
Now sure, your typical CxO with a ton of machinery may be similarly ignorant of patching and such, there are a *lot* more poor folks who are prone to becoming bot-fodder than rich folk who are... especially once you consider that the further you go up the money ladder, the more likely you're going to see something with a stylized fruit stamped on the lid/box/monitor and running OSX.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My mother only has 1Mb/s, and it's far better than dial-up. Downloading stuff is a bit painful - you actually have to wait or 10MB downloads to arrive - but for normal web browsing and email it's perfectly adequate. The main time I notice the difference is on iPlayer - her connection isn't quite fast enough to stream video. 1.5Mb/s would be. Anyone who thinks that a connection that's fast enough to stream SD video is unbearably slow has been living a very pampered existence.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
1.5-2.0 meg is slow anyways no need to throttle.
Now will they try to bill for basic tv on top of that? crack down hard on people who split that feed to a tv to get the clear QAM channels?
seeing how this is rent free will they give out old cable modems that may or may not be able to run IPv6? Comcast still likes to swap / give out old SD only cables boxes and the old MPEG 2 HD only boxes as well. also the router needs to be able to IPv6 as well.
now it would be more accurate to say, most employers of people who frequent this site assume those employees have access the the internet.
There still are a good number of people who won't use the net even if you hand it them for free. It took our family years before our grandmother consented to even having a computer! We only convinced her that with a computer and internet she could get pictures of her grandkids daily, let alone e-mail from them. She didn't care to talk to her children all the time, she did want to write to her grandkids though.
Two industries I worked in we could care less if people had internet, both were service industries. I did contract work for one and the only requirement I saw at both was, you must have a phone. Now in certain states, PA is one, phones are considered a right and beyond that people have of certain income levels have a right to a free wireless phone and 250 minutes a month usage. (which explains the extra cost you pay to use your own cell phones)
I am all for giving people a cheaper means to get to the internet but don't assume that just because you and your friends use it that everyone does or will. I know many who are quite happy without it today and are just as productive as they ever were. I have friends with families where the kids are the primary users, the parents might use it for pictures and such. It all comes down to, do you use it at work daily? If not, then you might not have a reason to use it at home. I can list dozens of industries where the employees never need access to the net and many might not even care. Its getting more universal, especially with cell phones having web access but there are still people without cell phones and how long have those been around?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
well they have more high rises so it's easier to build a CO / RT / NODE just for that one highrise. Comcast will need more nodes and or kill off the rest of the basic analog channels to free up more room. Also SDV can help but to do SDV comcast will need to build out more nodes.
A right is whatever society defines it as. As technology improves, what we define as a right can be expanded. The question you're getting at is: should it be? By defining a right as the opportunity exercise it without government interference you're saying that it shouldn't. You're advocating a society without progress. This makes sense. You're doing well yourself, and another man's progress risks yours. That's what conservatism is all about. A handful of super rich manipulating frightened people desperately trying to hold onto what little they have.
Oh, and if the infrastructure is spread thin, BUILD MORE OF IT. Jeez, it's not complicated. We could use some public works projects anyway. Internet may very well be necessary to survive. For many it's becoming their only access to education and networking opportunities needed to maintain their communities and livelihoods. There are other forces for evil besides the gov't you know.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Most poor people already have internet, on their smartphones that they pay $100 a month for.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
1.5 Mbps is 30 times as fast as dialup. There's a *world* of difference between the two. In fact, you can do almost anything at 1.5 Mbps - browse the web, use email, watch video streams (maybe not 1080, but adequate), Skype, games, you name it. By contrast, with dialup everything except perhaps email is an exercise in extreme patience.
I used a 1.5 Mbps connection for a while - big downloads could be a bit frustrating, but on the whole it was quite usable. A lot better than when I had a nominal 10 Mbps on a congested cable network.
After the merger AT&T offered DSL (768/128 kbps) at a great rate of $9.99 / mo. but this did not last. My great rate was raised twice "quietly" in the last year to $14.99 and then now to $19.99 (so as to slowly not let the customers notice). And now when I look at their website the same package without a term contract is now $24.99, so I am expecting price hike soon enough. On top of all of that AT&T now has a data cap of 150 GB / mo. So the price has been doubled and the amount of data I am now allowed to transfer has been limited. But, at least I can say their service is reliable...
Meanwhile the only competition in the area is ironically COMCAST, and since their service is severely lacking in reliability I would never again switch to it for any rate; when I had COMCAST service before Bellsouth, COMCAST was out literally every other day, and then out completely for 3 months when one of the fiber optic lines to one of the main boxes was cut.
Comcast has a robust security suite available at no cost to subscribers.
That's not the point here. The point in this particular case is that you can get broadband for $10 a month in the UK, and you don't have to be low income to qualify, whereas you do in the US.
It seems funny that a company that could afford to acquire another from overcharging to have a hoard of cash, now is required to provide some cheaper lines to finish said acquisition. Was I the only one that noticed this?
I think it's a great first step. In fact I'll be sending a letter to them shortly to see if there is anyway they can help or partner with my local non-profit organization that provides computers to those in need. www.ctctricities.org
I disagree with the family only requirement, but it's still a step in the right direction.
Of course, in most Western societies, people have come to regard some of those things as entitlements. Problem is that the moment someone else pays for something you use/consume, either that someone else will have control over it, or you will be reckless about how you use it. As Gary Becker once noted, there are 4 scenarios in terms of paying:
In scenario 1, X will take good care of himself, while not caring about how well Z's money is managed or spent.
In scenario 2, X will neither take good care of Y, nor care how well Z's money is managed or spent.
In scenario 3, X will not take good care of Y, but will be careful about how X's own money is managed and spent.
In scenario 4, X will take good care of himself, while also being careful about how X's own money is managed and spent.
Scenario 4 is obviously the best case scenario, where the most optimal solution will be sought after, due to selfish interests of X. Scenario 2 is the worst case, where X has no vested interests in either the well being of Y, nor the financial condition of Z. Scenario 3 is the best case for X himself, but the worst for Y. Scenario 4 has no repercussions on Y, but forces X to make the best decisions for both himself and his budget.
In the above scenario, X is Comcast, Y is the 'low income consumer', and Z is the government. In the plan above, scenario 4 doesn't come into the picture. What we do have is scenario 3, and once the government notices it not working, some will try and shift it to scenario 2 or 1. Scenario 4 is not even going to come into the picture, since Y is not being asked to make any of the decisions about spending the money. If Y was asked to spend its own money, you can be sure that the best decision would be made - Y would either make other budget adjustments to allow for the most affordable internet access locally available, or Y would choose to forego it altogether for the time being, use the library for absolutely essential stuff, like submitting resumes, until he got to a point where he could pick a provider.
Since that's not being done here, sooner or later, either X will do a bait & switch on Y, or get Z to subsidize some of that cost. Again, scenario 2.
Broadband is a utility that is necessary every day tasks. $9.95 should be the average plan price. You can get $100 computers, why should you have to pay more than that per year to keep it connected?
Twinstiq, game news
Jeez, now I have to help pay for low income people to surf for porn on top of all the other things I subsidize for them?
Yes broadband is a right. So are widescreen TV, cellphones, food stamps, birth control, and fancy sneakers from all appearances. Next, a monthly crack stipend.
an ill wind that blows no good
Given that those boxes would be useless w/o adequate #IP addresses, and will introduce new incompatibilities w/ the IPv6 network that Comcast has been rolling out, Comcast s bound to determine that the costs of deploying IPv4 here will outweigh the costs of new IPv6 compatible equipment. And Comcast does have options other than giving out brand new cable modems. They could install routers @ a CO, then forward connections to switches in apartments, and directly provide ethernet connections to the end consumer. That would probably go directly to that consumer's laptop - I doubt that such consumers will have Wireless routers that will service multiple laptops @ home. Such an arrangement would enable them to save on installation costs w/ such new customers.
Yes. The situation could be worse. Therefore, those speeds are good! "Good" is subjective. Perhaps he just doesn't find those speeds acceptable at all. And I don't know why you're assuming that he is young just because of a small preference.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
...essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Actually, they want to make a particular service available only to a certain section of the population, based on their income levels and number of dependent children. It's not illegal - as a private enterprise, they have a right to do that. But it is about as twisted as someone going into a grocery store, being asked for his/her income levels, and then the items s/he's buying being priced according to that. Most normal people that I can think of would refuse to shop at such a store. Of course, if the same thing was priced on race or gender grounds - like say, one provider provides Internet2 access only to White men, but charges women 20% more and Blacks 30% more, such a move would be struck down by the courts within a week. But here, a move is made to make a service available to only a certain section of the population, and it's getting all these high-5s.
This is great news. The internet can be such a powerful learning tool for children today and it can also keep parents connected with their kids. It is an excellent attempt to lessen the gap between the abilities and knowledge acquired between children from different socio-economic backgrounds in the school environment. Like many others stated, I do wish that this discount applied to seniors as well since it is a perfect tool for seniors to keep their minds in tune and connect with their family members who may live far away from them. Email Marketing Software
"Anybody care to prove me wrong?"
If you were wrong, considerable immigration would flow in the opposite direction.
It does not.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
When I bought my first house (650sq ft.) in a bad neighborhood (Police were always like, "why don't you move?"), but the folks in the 3-unit apartments on my court would have an RTO truck show up and bring in a big screen TV and couches and stuff, then 3-4 months later it'd show up again to take the stuff back. Over and over. Comcast truck was there all the time hooking people up as well (and probably putting blocks on the disconnect as well) as the box for the court was on my properly line.
Most of the teens all managed to have the latest shoes and jerseys too, and the adults all had smokes and alcohol.
It was a below poverty level living, but they didn't have it that bad. Let any of them win the lottery and they'd be back in the same place or worse in a year.
This was back when DSL first hit: I made a deal with some teens right next door - we'd trench over and lay a pipe for CAT5 and I'd share my Internet with them. I even worked out a deal with them to include a PC (low-end build from spare parts, but still, it worked just fine for the OS of the day). I don't remember the exact figures, but basically for the first 6 months they were mowing the lawn to pay me back for the pipe and PC parts, and after that I was paying them half the going rate for lawn maintenance (and they got Internet). All they had to do was mow the lawn once a week. I provided the lawn mower and gas. They just had to show up and spend 45 minutes mowing.
Guess how long that lasted? Yeah, needless to say they never paid off the PC parts, and sure never got paid for mowing (well, if you include the PC and couple months of lawn mowing, they made out).
Hindsight, I'd should have made them earn the piping and PC parts up front, once they had, then give it to them. Then go month to month on the Internet/mowing. Oh well, I bought a riding mower anyway (yeah, it was a big lawn, but I could mow it in 45 minutes with a push mower, or 10 with a riding mower).
Well, as IPv4 addresses become scarce, having a load of customers on IPv6 with NAT64 to access v4 sites may be cheaper.
IIRC comcast are planning to use ds-lite instead of nat64.
With DS-lite the "customer premises equipment" encapsulates v4 the packets and sends them over v6 to a box at the ISP. The box at the ISP performs network address translation on the v4 packets and includes the clients v6 address in the translation tables so multiple customers can use the same private IPs without conflicting with each other.
This is IMO the best solution as it avoids the need for ISPs to allocate private v4 IPs to customers, avoids the mess of protocol translation and allows legacy v4 only equipment to be used behind the customer premisis equipment.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's not a bad idea but I can't even think of what it must be like to surf at that speed. It reminds me of dial up.
Beyond a certain point page load times become dominated by latency and server side slowness not by the bandwidth of your own pipe.
Going from dialup to 512K ADSL was a huge leap but my experiance has been that beyond that there is little difference in normal web browsing (file downloads and video are another matter).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Is this profitable or beneficial to Comcast? If so why are they permitted artificially to discriminate against others?
If it is not profitable is the cost paid by the shareholders or their other customers?
... is a growth industry.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
I am in Americorps. It's a year long volunteer program that sends workers out into the poorest communities in the USA. Each volunteer is given a pverty level stipend which puts us at the same level as many of the poorest people in the country.
Coming from a middle class lifestyle, it's eye-opening.
I can't afford a cell phone + rent, I have to spend my money on food and gasoline to get to my 'site' (the non profit I was placed at)
I use my neighbor;s wifi with permission because I can't afford my own.
Rent and utilities are far over half of my budget.
For families living in this condition, esp those with people actively searching for work need this.
It's tough out there
You're a very thoughtful and caring person. Don't waste your energy trying to understand the hatefulness of Satan's world. We're ready for God's World. There will be across-the-board Fairness for all worshippers. You will never get it here. The Meek will be given the planet soon. Abundant food, health. Say, remember a few years ago they discovered the "muscle gene" in the young boy? 3, 4 years ago? They'll never give that to Americans. They'll give it to aborigines in Australia first. American men are currently having their kneecaps busted. Find a Kingdom Hall and breathe the fresh air, find out what we know is in the Bible that the "mainstream religions" missed.
Yeah, both India & China are b/w them some 40% of the world's population, and according to those numbers (how credible is that source, anyway? Did they do their own survey, or what are their sources), there are just 12 computers for every 100 persons. Add to that the countries in Africa, Latin America and Oceania, and the percentage will dip even further. Not sure whether it'll be as high as 95%, though. However, I disagree w/ the metric here. Lots of people, not only in the Third World, but also in the Second and First Worlds, choose not to have computers, b'cos they are either computer illiterate or decide that they have better things to spend their money on. Whereas people on middle to low incomes may put computers pretty high on their priority list. So possession of a computer by no means implies that A is richer than B. All it means is that A decided that s/he needs to have a computer among his/her possessions, whereas B didn't.
The Republicans had long ceased to be conservative since Bush 43. The conservatives want to tax less and spend less. Bipartisan Republicans, otoh, are perfectly happy to tax & spend more, but they know that doing the former is political suicide, so they want to keep taxes level, while spending more, and that too competing w/ Dems. Pretty moronic, since why would anyone prefer somebody who just wants to follow watered down Liberal policies over the real deal?
The reason the GOP lost in 2008, aside from Obama, was that after witnessing that Liberal fraud called McCain masquerading as a Conservative, conservatives were pretty tepid about the party. Also, the Congressional leadership, w/ all their bipartisan compromises, didn't help either. So a lot of Conservatives are disillusioned w/ the GOP, and even the Tea Party crowd has too many frauds in its ranks. And I don't blame them for deserting the GOP in droves - if after 6 years of both a GOP president and GOP Congress, conservative policies weren't what was pushed through - immigration reform, social security reform, Gitmo, federalization of airline security, Dubai Ports deal, and a whole laundry list of things where McCain and his gang of whatever managed to manipulate things there way - then plain and simple fact is that there ain't a Conservative Party in the US that they can support (unless they are willing to vote Libertarian Party, Constitutional Party or Loyalist Party candidates)
So those on the Left needn't worry too much about the country shifting Right. Just get your Dem senator to get McCain, Gramm and a few pimped out Republicans in their room, and lay out their wishlist, and you'll get what you want. In fact, you'll even get it if a Republican happens to replace Obama next year, which ain't likely. If I were a Leftist, I'd worry about the GOP the day McCain, Gramm, Hagel and a whole bunch of other bi-partisan senators retired and were replaced by Conservatives, b'cos that would be when you'd have a pretty strong Conservative presence in Congress. But honestly, I don't see a snowballs chance in hell of that ever happening.
A more novel idea might be breaking up the monopoly/duopoly structures Comcast and the other big ISPs maintain over access in the US...
When I was abroad in a certain fast-developing East Asian nation where income and household expenses are generally equivalent to those at home, I had a choice of five service providers all offering high-speed connections and cable TV with premium channels for under $20USD per month... but that would be Socialism or a Liberal Utopia or something, right?
Don't forget company cast offs. Once word got out I rebuild for poor folks plenty of local businesses give me a ring when they are getting ready to cast off their old models. i pick them up, since nearly all have an XP Pro sticker I used a stripped down XP Pro image I have, load them up with free software like LO and Comodo dragon, and sell them dirt cheap. this lets me pay for the gas hauling the things and lets poor folks have cheap computers.
I just had 4 PCs, average 1.6GHz with 512Mb of RAM walk out the door the other day. I keep a cheap USB keyboard/optical mouse combo for $10 and if they need a monitor I point them to a shop down the road that has 15 inch CRTs for $25. So for $60 they have a full PC, with full AV, loaded with software, and is ready for the net. Now that the latest refresh is starting I'm seeing more late model P4s so it is even better for the poor folks.
There are plenty of us guys helping out folks where we can. I got into it by accident myself. A former teacher gave me a call and asked as a personal favor if I'd look at a box for a poor student. This poor girl was trying to do her classwork on a 30Mhz (you read that right, not a typo, and this was in 05) with Win3.1. She was hoping to get another year out of this hand me down before giving it to her kid. she looks at me practically ready to cry and says "Can you fix it?" I knew I couldn't let the gal down.
I pick up the box and say "Sure, follow me" and when we're walking out I hear Shaun tell her "See? I told you he could fix it" I wanted to laugh and say "If you only knew what I was gonna do". I walked out to my truck and said "Where are you parked? well back your car over here by my truck". and when she did I popped the trunk and sat her old box in the back and pulled out two 1.4Ghz boxes I had gotten from an office job. I wiped and reinstalled them on the spot so the head of the company could see no data was leaving the building, I have automated install discs anyway so no biggie, and I was able to let them run while building out his new systems.
She started going "No no no...I don't have any money to buy PCs!" but I told her "Relax they are 100% free and fully loaded. I just don't have the room for them at the shop so you'll be doing me a favor" Well sure enough she starts bawling like a baby then. I loaded her up a couple of 15 inch CRTs, keyboards, and a couple of good ball mice that came with the systems. i heard back from Shaun like a year later than not only had she graduated and had a good job now but she made sure to pass those PCs on to someone else needy at the school.
So yeah there are a lot of poor folks with "hand me downs" and I'm sure that while SOME of them end up in botnets the ones me and the other shop guys throw together ain't in that category. I always give them a fully patched system, with full AV, and a nicer free browser like Firefox or Kmeleon or Dragon. done right a 1.5Ghz P4 can easily do basic office and Internet tasks quite well to this very day and when you see the folks light up at all the free software and the fact they can afford a decent running machine? Makes all the hassle worth it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.