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The Fastest ISPs In the US
adeelarshad82 writes "For a second year in a row PCMag partnered with Speedtest to find out the fastest ISPs in the U.S. The results were a product of 110,000 tests ran between January 1, 2012 and September 19, 2012. Collecting data for both download and upload speeds for each test, Speednet was able to calculate an index score for a better one-to-one comparison, where downloads counted for 80 percent and uploads 20 percent. Moreover, rather than testing the upload and download speed of a single file, the tests used multiple broadband threads to measure the total capacity of the 'pipe.' While the results at the nationwide level were fairly obvious with Verizon FiOS crushing its opposition, the results at regional level were a lot more interesting and competitive."
I at least think my ISP sends their bills the fastest. Not sure about the "pipe" speed though.
FiOS coming in at 29.4Mbps down/16.7Mbps up is quite fast relative to the competition, but still pretty disappointing. I regularly hit 35/15 with my cell phone's LTE connection.
In addition Midcontinent has prices that aren't bad. Good bandwidth at a good price in a city with a population under 500. I would have never believed it before moving here.
As I have said repeatedly on here, in my area I have 2 choices: Comcast or Verizon. To get the lowest level of naked broadband service, 15/5, I would have to pay $75/month. From there, it's only how much they can squeeze out of you for minor increments in speed.
Despite this, the U.S. consistently ranks in the middle to the bottom in terms of speed, but always at the top in price.
So for all the talk about broadband penetration, who has what speed, etc, until real competition is injected into the fray or the law about one provider allowing another to use their lines at reasonable rates is enforced, surveys like this are relatively meaningless. If the cost of getting this supposed speed is too high, why bother?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
i'm on the time warner a la carte $50 10mbps plan. next year FIOS is coming to my building but i will most likely stay with time warner.
reason is that i get almost 100 channels free through the same cable so i can watch sports and my wife can watch american idol without the need for an antenna
my inlaws have FIOS in their neighborhood but they still have cable because FIOS doesn't carry their international channels. same for a lot of people. that's what the geeks can't figure out when these studies are done
I'd really like it if they could make this distinction. I understand that for the typical user, it doesn't matter much, but it feels really deceptive. I pay for a 3Mb/sec connection, I typically get a hair over 2 in burst speed and then about 1 for any download that takes more than 3-5 seconds.
some cable ISPs here are known for unthrottling connections as soon as the URL includes something like /speedtest/ - e.g. NetCologne
FIRST POST, CHECK It BItCHES
A claim like "Fastest internet connection" is amazingly dubious based on the data they are presenting. What they mean more specifically is "fastest average customer". While some providers may offer fast services at higher prices, the only thing we know for sure from this is how many people are in the upper/lower tiers on a given provider. Sure, coming up with an actual "Fastest provider" number is going to be pretty darn hard to do (you basically need a way to reliably throw away data from anyone not in the fastest service tier) they could at least be a little more honest about what their "Study" is actually saying.
You mean to say the Slowskys actually had a fast internet connection... This might lead to Mr Slowsky in a roadside ditch.
It's not what your Sig can do for you, but what you can do for your for your Sig.
I have charter at the 30/3 increment. it costs just under $50/month. If I wasn't bundled for another 14 months I think I could get by with a slower speed, as long as I can stream some Netflix, and play a bit of CoD, or Battlefield 3 I would be happy. 10MB would probably be enough for me.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Speed is not as relevant as it once was. Caps are the big problem now for residential service. The providers are offering speeds in the 10's of megabits per second, but the caps are set so low that the service has no value for the money. There needs to be more competition in residential broadband or more regulation if there is not sufficient competition. The only way out of the caps is to order business service in my area (which I have done, but at $119/mo is quite expensive).
Both AT&T and Cox have caps in place for residential customers in my area. Cox has no cap (yet) for business customers.
If it can only be solved by regulation in certain areas of the country, then a moratorium on dividends or a 100% corporate tax on dividends of companies in areas with little competition might provide the necessary incentives to change things. Communications companies pay ridiculously high dividends to shareholders, and I'm convinced this is one of the roots of the problem. This money could be redirected over the long term to build a better Internet in this country, and the communications companies would stand to benefit from it.
There has been talk recently of the FCC investigating the cap thresholds, but that is just going to lead to a court battle in my opinion (at least in the past it has)
Where I live, I have two main options:
1) Verizon DSL at 768kbps
3) Time Warner at 3Mbps, 10Mbps, 20Mbps or 50Mbps
You can see why I'm happy that Verizon has the fastest internet in my region.
The problem is that Verizon, the only national company providing it to homes in the United States, stopped expanding to new markets a couple of years ago, or at least past the planned footprint. The existing 13.7 million customers get new upgrades (like the new 300Mbps "Quantum" option for $205 a month) and while Verizon expects to grow to 18 million FiOS customers eventually, after that, if you don't have FiOS, you probably never will.
Just sad. Europe and Asia are quickly leaving the U.S. behind. And no one has any plan to do anything about it. From internet pioneer to the back of the pack.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Wednesday night the full idiocy of right wing politics will be exposed for all to see. As Romney tries to protect his rich donors' wealth, Obama will tear him to pieces.
You are absolutely right. But if you think the Democrats are any better, you are delusional.
Paying 20€ per month for my 100/20Mbit uncapped, unthrottled fibre connection.
The competitor is offering 150/30 for roughly the same price.
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy reading TFA.
If this damn page would load fast enough...
I suppose I should be pleased. My very local ISP gives me a consistent 15/15 for $40 - $60 when bundled with local phones.
Just because the Democrats are bad doesn't mean they are not any better.
Home of Cisco, Juniper, Google, Yahoo, all the bleeding edge tech and network companies - and our internet speed is at a measly 10Mbits/sec on Comcast.
How pathetic !!!
Maybe all the tech gurus of Silicon CRUD has this pathetic slow speed so they can tell their boss - "But boss, the network is so slow,
I couldn't download/upload my work"
So how do their numbers compare to the Samknows numbers?
I'd like to see $/per Mbit. That would be a way more interesting regional graph.
No it means they are worse.
Why do you hate our Constitution?
You're saying... that because Democrats are "bad", they are therefore "worse"??
If only I could escape from this 10mbit for 45 a month hell.
Come on google!
Want to see your Kansas test bed take off and expand like wildfire and force the incumbents to get in gear or get left behind. You have the clout to do it and to take them on in court in every jurisdiction you expand into so they can't force you out like they did so many other newcomers or lower their prices to break even just long enough for you to go out of business.
I know they are a corporation, like the rest, but they are the best one I have seen in a long time as far as how they treat their product (the people) before they deliver us to their customers (advertisers). While to others we are the customer and yet they still treat us like crap.
Google Fiber uses a PON network.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Where is the broadband speed? 30mbps at max is not fast. Only becourse FIOS is the fastest does not mean its good. At least 100mbits I say. Like you could walk 99,999% over the street and not die. You are the best of the dead.. still does not matter.
Why do you hate the constitution?
The right are far more interested in infringing on your liberties than the left.
Cite evidence please. While I think both parties are a joke, this statement is just plain silly
The police state is a right wing construct.
And the Democrats are less right wing than the Republicans.
Why do you hate America? Not only are the Republicans hell bent on stripping away the freedom of religion, expression, privacy, fair trial, etc. But they are pushing for a road to abject economic annihilation. The only balanced budget proposal is from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It has been objectively proven that deregulation has destroyed the economy and directly lead to this last great recession, as it led to the great depression almost a hundred years ago. Republican economics are an abject disaster.
I think you may be confused. Is gun control typically a platform for the left or right? Are property rights more often abused by the left or right (think about the effects of profound regulation via EPA etc.).
De-regulation destroyed the economy? Really? You might want to brush up on your history and economics.
KK4SFV
Stalin and Hitler were both left wing by U.S. standards. Please name me someone who set up a comparable police state who was right wing by U.S. definitions of the term?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
'The right are far more interested in infringing on your liberties than the left.'
I call bulls#it..
NoBama and friends brought 'NDAA of 2012' to you, with minimal republican support.. Now I bet you'll say that it isn't 'infringing on our liberties'..
Where is Centurylink?
Riiiiiiiiiight.
(See what I did there?)
Speaking of fiber, what about AT&T? The company did not make the top 15. In fact, the fiber-based AT&T U-verse service got an index of 7.9, putting it at number 22.
I'm really not surprised by this. One of the worst features of U-verse is that the tv and internet share the same bandwidth. After a little at home testing I found that my '18mbs' connection dropped by almost 6mbs per HD channel we were watching or recording. So while you pay for both, you can really only use one at a time. I promptly dropped their cable. The most frustrating fact is that we can't get Fios in my neighborhood. When we called to set it up while moving in the gentleman kindly informed me that if AT&T services my area Fios will not. Still trying to figure out how that is legal...
The second amendment is not the only civil liberty.
Gun control is authoritarian, therefore it is right wing.
It is the one thing that people who call themselves right leaning do that is left leaning, and the one thing that people who call themselves left leaning do that is right leaning.
I am extremely left wing and very pro 2nd amendment.
On economics, no I have spent years on history and economics. I am not mistaken or confused.
Unregulated markets are unstable and prone to catastrophic failure. Deregulation in critical sectors preceded both the great depression and the recent near depression that we are still not recovered from.
Not only that but right leaning lowering of taxes on the wealthy has been proven to fail in stimulating economic growth as happened prior to and during our recent recession. More money in the hands of the wealthy rarely leads to economic growth because they spend little and are likely to invest in safe investments. More money in the hands of the poor does stimulate the economy, because nearly 100% of that money is spent on goods and services, and in the hands of the middle class, that money is spent on goods services and for starting productive small businesses.
And then there is the FACT that right wing economic policy not only slashes consumer spending and productive investment, but it also historically increases government spending and amplifies the continuation of the debt cycle.
The only result of right wing economics in the long run will be the ruin of America and our takeover by another power.
How fucking stupid are you?
Both Hitler and Stalin were right wing authoritarians.
Just because democrats are less right wing than republicans, but still right wing, doesn't mean that that the left supports infringing on liberties.
Both right and left wing economics are Keynsian at their roots. The Austrian model is the only one that works - economies are more organic than formulaic because they are comprised of organic components.
Maybe I misunderstood your use of left/right - it may be a symptom of context. In the US, the "right" typically fights for the right to bear arms while the left typically pushes for gun control. This is not universally true, but I suspect that more than 90% of the candidates that identify themselves as "left" are pro gun control.
The assertion regarding taxes on the wealthy is disingenuous. I have been directly affected by high tax rates and I am not in the 1%. The question is not who's hands you put money in, the question is how do you generate more money. Giving money to the poor has been proven to seize the recipients in an iron grip of dependency.
There is no FACT that taking money from business owners increases investment. When I pay the taxes I pay now I simply can't afford to pay someone else to do jobs that I can do on my own. THAT is a fact. The government is the single least efficient means for putting oney into anyones hands.
Our (US) founders knew these - they wrote that when more than 50% of the population becomes dependent on the remaining portion of the population due to government influence then their experiment would have failed.
KK4SFV
Not by the U.S. standard of left and right. In the U.S., the central planners are left wing, opponents of central planning are right wing. Stalin and Hitler were both big proponents of centrally planned economies.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Both right and left wing economics are Keynsian at their roots. The Austrian model is the only one that works - economies are more organic than formulaic because they are comprised of organic components.
Stop stealing my material, you talking monkey!
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Or did they just have a crappy route to their test server? If I could make a living in Chattanooga TN and the wife be ok with it, I'd move in a heartbeat. The local city owned electrical company has HTTP on the cheap. Their base service is faster (50mbps symetrical) and cheaper than my base service with Comcrap: https://epbfi.com/enroll/packages/#/
Seriously wish that could happen where I live, but it will never happen. Sad thing is, the available ISPs and speeds are a factor in my choice of domicile. My wife rolls her eyes at that statement, yet she bitches when the internets are slow or don't work; go figure. I've got her on the same page now that we're on Comcrap and shit breaks on occasion. Who said it was impossible to get the wife on your side? I just use logic, point stuff out, and she'll come over to my side on things we disagree on in most cases. I just haven't gotten her on my side when it comes to guns yet, but I haven't made the effort to shoot down her lame arguments with facts yet; no pun intended.
The department of homeland security, the central point of the modern police state was a right wing republican creation.
Stalin was not a communist.
Hitler was not a socialist.
It is what people do that matter, not the words that people use as shields.
I'd rather get a cost comparison of who provides the best value for low-end hi-speed broadband. /mo for 2 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. (The cheapest/lowest-speed broadband of all the carriers.) I also have an antenna for television. Why? Because I live by myself in a modest 1200 sq ft house and do just fine with what I've got. Cable TV gets really expensive, really fast and I can't justify that cost over, say, two or more vacations/trips a year.
Specifically: I live in a highly populated area, and have multiple options for internet. BUT, I pay $40.00
I'd love to see who provides the cheapest low-end high-speed broadband. Preferably 2-4 Mbps down.
Consider its only in a limited few area's so how can be put under nationwide when its only in a few area's where as charter, comcast, etc are in every state?
Hitler ran the Nazi party. Nazi - translated to English it means National Socialist. That's left of center, son. Stalin was a Communist, that's even farther to the left. Sorry if the truth hurts, but the phrase "right wing authoritarians" - just doesn't scan. It's Socialism where the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few (sorry, Spock.)
Perhaps you fear liberty?
DHS has only EXPANDED even more under Obama. There is no opposition by the leftwing media exposing the increasing surveillance society like there was under Bush. This is part of the problem for today's (R) bad (D) good mentality.
Dozens of our Embassy's around the world are under siege and yet, the News is completely silent. If this was Bush, they'd have hourly updates on them. Hell, even Faux News isn't reporting it.
As for your assertions of Hitler and Stalin, I'll one up you and go Goebbels "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth" And you're right, it is what people DO that matters, but why then are there no left wing protesters against Obama's Authoritarian Tendencies? It is because His is their kind of dictator, while GWB wasn't.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Did anyone else notice that upload speeds were labeled as "Averge Upload" for every chart?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
The real truth is not in the names, but in the character. Sorry if the truth hurts, but just because you claim to be something, doesn't mean you are.
One thing I notice is that the index rating weights in favor of download speed more than upload. That's IMO misleading. It's OK in a world where people only consume content, but in an environment that includes Skype or Google Voice for telephone and video calls, Google Hangouts, cloud-based storage like Dropbox or Google Drive, workers remoting in to the office using VPNs and remote-desktop software, and mobile devices using WiFi and an Internet connection as an alternative to the regular cellular network, upload bandwidth is becoming as important as download bandwidth. Rating ISP A significantly higher than B when A's upload speed is half of B's and A's downloads are only 20% faster seems to me to be misleading.
Wish the chart somehow showed reliability as well. I used one of the hosts in the top 5 and I gladly got rid of them because the wouldn't provide the speed nor the reliability I was looking for. When I explained I was getting 10mbps and I was paying for 20mbps they reminded me it was "Up to 20mbps".
I wonder what it would take to get data like this into Gapminder.org. I want to compare connection speed to population density. I also want a version of the report where they exclude ISPs that effectively require a "bundle" with other services I don't want.
In the southwestern-most part of the contiguous KC metro area, I have a symmetric 18Mbps FTTH line with no caps, no throttling, and local phone service from SureWest for $58 after taxes. They offer up to 50/50 service here. I've had no problems with the service, and it has always provided me with the bandwidth I pay for, and sometimes more.
North of me in KC, KS, they will have Google Fiber rolling out their network.
West of me in Lawrence, Wicked Broadband has 10/10 wireless service, and is rolling out fiber service.
No way in hell the incumbents could outprice Google. $70 for Gigabit internet (Verizon FiOS is $210 for 300 Megabit)... not to mention basic connectivity at 5 Megabit for just a one off fee of $300 bucks to cover equipment and the construction is a pretty hard thing to match.
One thing I've noticed in my 59 years on this Earth. socialists and communists will always deny that anyone other than themselves are socialists or communists. And they will always say that nobody but themselves know what the terms mean.
According to some here on slashdot the Communist Party is not communist and the Socialist Party is not socialist. Say what?!?!
And the sky isn't blue.
Reading this thread I forgot this was a story about ISP speed tests. Thank you.
Just asking because I know the 20Mbps is standard in most areas with the bundles, but it's not the only option. Comcast also offers 105Mbps in my area for residential internet and 50Mbps as well as 105Mbps in my parents area.
Granted since it doesn't come in a bundle, most people don't take or even know of the option... but I'm curious what speeds you really get with those tiers.
I just came back from 5 months in eastern europe. the broadband there is 4-8x faster than most residential US broadband. and for a fraction of the price. sadface.
Fail/Flail
Not kidding, that's one of the perks about living in silicon valley, you get affordable gigabit internet services.
The regional stats aren't correct. In looking at the regional winner for Georgia, I see it's Verizon FiOS. That would be news to VzT (Verizon Telecom) since they have zero presence in Georgia (AT&T, formerly BellSouth territory). People in AL, TN, SC and NC would also agree. My guess is that the numbers for Tampa (LEC is VzT) destroyed the performance for the rest of the ISP's checked in the other states.
I would love to see a similar test performed, at a higher level of quality, for ISP providers in data centers.
why would Google make it onto the test when EPB doesn't? this obviously has naught to do with "fastest ISPs," whatever that would even mean. really they mean residential "broadband" access speeds over international common carriers.
sadly, they would probably include Google among this list just for political reasons.
Neither the right nor the left want to legalize fully-automatic assault riffles (aka. "machine guns"), and neither side wants to entirely outlaw fire-arms, either.
Gun control is one of those "wedge" issues, like abortion, euthanasia, illegal immigration, and more., which both sides talk about continually, but neither side really wants to actually act upon, other than some token measures here and there.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
national*
You're oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness. Socialists and Fascists may both prefer central planning, but the way in which they do so is diametrically opposed.
Democrats (left wing) are more of the Socialist bent, and Republicans (right wing) are more of the Fascist bent.
Right-wing'ers in the US most certainly still want central-planning, they just opt to give one company a de-jury right to monopoly control of an industry. They certainly don't want competition, that's just how they "spin" their actions, since publicly admitting to Fascism is political suicide.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why Google Fiber isn't #1? Just asking...
Speed means jack squat if you are being throttled. My ISP is the fastest of my area. But they don't tell you about their Accepted Use Policy or whatever they call it now. Regardless if you are a 'heavy user' or not.
- -= Napalm means serious BBQ =-
OK, and North Korea is known as The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. Holy crap, democratic republics are evil... wait... isn't the United States of America a democratic republic? Damn, I didn't realize we were so fucked as a country.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Here in Montreal, we have a ridiculous 50GB/month quota with Quebecor owned Videotron. Meaning no Netflix unless you upgrade to a more expensive plan (giving you more GB, but it's still ridiculous compared to other countries.)
You don't really have a choice, it's either Cableco or Telco (or their resellers) and really small bandwidth allocations.
This is where political discourse goes wrong in this country. Was the Tea Party left-wing or right-wing? Was Occupy Wall Street left-wing or right-wing? Which one called for limited government? Which one called for more government regulation?
I will say this, the Democratic Party says they love the poor. I believe them, why else would they work so hard to make more of them? The Democratic Party says that the Republican Party loves the rich, and once again, I believe the Democrats, because why else would the Republicans work so hard to make more rich people?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Deregulation" is code for letting big companies do anything they want. Republicans say they want lower taxes, but they really mean they want the rich to pay lower taxes, but they still want all the government spending to continue.
Name ONE president who has campaigned on "smaller government", and followed through. There are none. Regan slashed and burned a bunch of essential public services, then spent even MORE money on defense, eliminating any gains he claimed. This kind of pattern goes back as far as Thomas Jefferson...
You've made your bias quite clear... You're one of the "I got mine!" crowd, who just wants to pay less in taxes, and is happy to screw-over everyone else in the process.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
In Austin where i live, its basically Time Warner or AT&T, its like two really crappy choices. I've been a TW customer for years now, but this is the company that gave me 10/1.5 in 1998. Back then it cost me $40 a month, and I was a _REALLY_ happy camper. It got faster for a few years until I had ~15/3 in ~2000, then it started getting slower and slower until it was 8/.5, and TW added another tier, Turbo, so I upgraded and now I was only paying something like $55 a month for 20/2 with "turbo boost" which regularly would hit 30/2. That is pretty much where it sat until a couple years ago when they finally announced DOCIS 3, would roll out with a 30/5 and a 50/5 tier. By the time it was available it was only 50/5 and 30/2. Sure enough as soon as those came out turbo dipped to 18/1.5, now its 15/1.5, and i'm thinking I have to pay them $75 to get 30/2.
Bottom line, my internet isn't getting faster, especially when you consider the download rates. The price is slowly creeping up. At this rate by 2025, i'm going to have 25/1 for $300 a month.
So basically TW is fucking us, especially if you consider that a basic base DOCIS is 4 channel config is 177/122, or basically at 20M down I should be getting 13M up.
Um, that word 'FACT". I do not think it means what you think it means. Anecdote !=fact. Ditto for anything you expect us to believe 'just 'cuz I said so'.
Liberal economists aren't Keynesians (Krugman, for a moderate liberal; socialists for the opposite extreme), there most certainly are valid nonAustrian economic models. IANAE, but it sure seems to me that we're seeing another demonstration of how Austrian pure-play capitalism is as bad an economic model as pure socialism/communism. I prefer social engineering via regulated capitalism: Balance wins handily over either extreme.
That paragraph about gun control is a bread-n-circuses distraction to left/right economic positions, and as such matters as little as abortion (and is certainly not a litmus test for either part).
Everyone pays taxes (so of **course** you are affected by them despite not being a 1%er), but most of us in the US are paying less than we would have during the 50's, 60's, 70's. The social safety net is alive and well in Germany, despite it being the healthiest economy in the developed/1st world. But they're aggressively taxing businesses, then using the proceeds to keep manufacturing in-country.
Giving money to the poor is loaded language. The depression was **solved** by handouts and governmental borrowing/deficit spending (the government giving poor people money and jobs when nobody else would hire due to illiquidity of finances and markets).
Well, that and Hitler.
Likewise, the stimulus worked this time around, although Krugman and other economists are building up plenty of evidence that more would have been better. The US House's Republican plan of Austerity economics aren't helping and seem to be pushing toward rekindling another Recession.
Grants and other 'given' money helps the weak/infirm/old survive with dignity and helps the children of the poor and helps people bootstrap themselves out of poverty. Tax breaks for the wealthy, OTOH don't trickle down nearly as well as Reagan and the Heritage Foundation pretend.
Government inefficiency is a bogus meme: Social Security has repeatedly been analyzed and scored better than private pensions for their operational efficiency. Ditto many other government programs -- you've fallen for a conservative talking point there. As for them being the least efficient means of putting money into an economy, nothing could be further from the truth: A $1 tax increase diminishes your personal spending less than a buck, since you (as a healthy middle-class wonk) were investing/saving part of it. OTOH, a buck in the hand of anyone near the poverty line gets spent that week. All of it. Every time. By the time that welfare buck cycles twice through local economies (once if it went to WalMart or other corporations that suck the profits out while they pay their staff less than a living wage), it's usually kicking the ass off the fractional buck given to you or me.
As for that founding fathers quote: it's one great man's opinion, taken out of context and across 200+ years. Relying on it as gospel is your most absurd prose of all. I honestly can't imagine a quorum of flaming liberals like our founding fathers liking Washington or Wall Street or most of your other claims.
Ya wanna fix the economy? Change international trade regulations, reinstate a steeper progressive tax structure, and stop spending half our taxes on war. Then, maybe we could stop pretending like the only options for healthcare are the extremes being debated and start emulating nations whose healthcare laws are working better than ours (Frontline did a nice show a few years ago comparing US, Germany, the UK, Japan and another nation's, for reference). Then let's talk seriously about the long term -- we can adjust retirement rules and tax rates (raise the ceiling, set different rules for knowledge workers and blue-collar jobs that literally physically wear out the people doing them by 55 -- the number of unemployable old construction workers at your local homeless shelter sho
Marx had a slightly different conception of democracy in mind
Even Toqueville's definition is at odds with the contemporary Democratic thought, though both would probably admire a broad middle class society.
Politics is too complex to be controlled by one sentence definitions. After all, the fundamental break between a liberal and a conservative is that the liberal believes that we should aim for a "a government of laws, not of men" and a conservative tends to believe that such an aim is not only impossible, but counter productive as well. This is philosophy, not lexicography.
If you don't mind all the freaking ads. Ziff-Davis should be shot. My AT&T gets 28 Mbits very easily. Upload speeds are a little slower at only 3 Mb however.
Also known as The Slowest ISPs in the World.
My buddy has charter, he pays for service that equals to 30mb/sec (advertised as 240 megabit, which sounds really intense to me with my DSL). Anyways, speedtest.net and other sites say he gets 36mb/sec sustained download and all that. But when actually browsing sites the connection is poor. He can't watch netflix or youtube in hd, and when he tried to download the customer preview ISO for windows 8 it was downloading at 20kb/sec. Torrents and other filesharing downloads are simlarly 20kb/sec.
My point is, fastest doesn't mean shit when the connection is fucking throttled. I was actually surprised in his case, and assumed he must have had some other shit running. But when I connected my laptop to his router while he ran a virus scan, I got the same shitty performance! Fuck throttling. I want internet to be treated like a utility. Surely it can't be that expensive to secure the bandwidth?
I'm in New York using Time Warner's Wide Band and I consistently get 50MB + on my DL. I don't understand how the article completely dismisses that (it's not even listed).
They will not include Google in the 'competition'. However, Google has plans to go national, and as such, there is little doubt that they WILL be included next year but most likely in a side box that has results.
America has lost its way with lack of competition. It is companies like Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX (and blue horizon), MakerBot, Amazon, and Google that are saying enough and lighting the way.
I am left wing and I want to legalize fully automatic assault rifles.
Holy cow, all of you need to get your butts *quick* over to the Dictator's Handbook http://dictatorshandbook.net/ and have a quick read. Nobody calls theirself a dictator anymore. There are too many creative ways to be "democratic."
That's the game, of course.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
What about the initial internet service request? When I click a link or enter a URL, there is an ever increasing pause before the actual data starts moving. Comcast is the provider here, and while the speed tests show generally good rates (once commenced), it STILL takes a while to start, and it is getting intolerable. The ping tests are getting intolerably longer. I have quadrupled the check of my equipment, including router settings (have even replaced it), virus checks, and cache clearing. Even on other PCs, my connection still gets sluggish.
One could surmise that Comcast is actively playing with connections in hopes of prompting the user to upgrade service - and therefor the subsequent fees!
Is it me; does that seem a bit unethical? Perhaps outright wrong?
It has been objectively proven that deregulation has destroyed the economy and directly lead to this last great recession, as it led to the great depression almost a hundred years ago.
I have never heard the claim that deregulation caused the Great Depression previously. Perhaps you meant to say lack of regulation? There were some laws passed afterwards that some felt would have helped. The main cause of the Great Depression was a shrinking money supply. The immediate trigger though was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which ended the cycle of the United States loaning Germany money to pay war reparations to Great Britain which then bought products from the United States. Who favors protectionism these days? Oh yes, it's the Democrats.
The current recession was triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble. What caused the housing bubble? A regulation requiring that banks loan money to subprime borrowers. That's not deregulation; that's over-regulation. The current recession was exacerbated by a shortage of cash in late 2008. In other words, the Fed screwed up again. Whose fault was that? I'd blame Ben Bernanke. Who reappointed Bernanke in 2010? Oh yes, it was Obama.
Latency has a greater impact than raw throughput when it comes to anything interactive and they don't necessarily correlate. For example Comcast vs. Centurylink here in OR. Comcast is the fastest and Centurylink the slowest. Yet Comcast routinely has ping times of 80-100+ms where Centurylink gets around 20-30ms ping times (using the same google ip as an example for testing). The difference is noticeable.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus