[Achmedisdead]

   
 
Bastards. I hope every single one of them steps on a Lego.

 
Aim higher! 

 

 

[MuppetFace]

MF, you got the Geek already? I ordered one ages ago and still waiting.

 
No, it's set to be released early next year, but they've had demos of it available at shows.

 

[gikigill]

I was talking about the Geek Out. Did you place a pre order for it?

 

[drez]

It could be worse. We used to have 3 mbps down. The 12 mbps is an upgrade for an additional $10 per month. I think we could get up to 20 mbps on the AT&T U-Verse package. I seem to recall seeing that 105 mbps is available for something like $100 a month, but it's an ala carte thing and I might be confusing it with Comcast, which is our only other option for Internet or line-based television service. Either way, we're never going to get it, so it's kind of a moot point.

Your suspicions about the ISPs' intentions are probably pretty close to accurate. There's the whole "net neutrality" debate going on, and the ISP and TV providers are dead set against it. They want to be able to categorize and prioritize different kinds of traffic, for all the usual marketing BS reasons (e.g. "an optimized experience"), meaning they have another, more lucrative agenda they're not telling us. For one thing, they are under a lot of pressure from the likes of the MPAA and RIAA, and so they figure the best way of placating these groups is to throttle any traffic that might be infringing. The real goal, however, is to degrade the quality of, and eventually stamp out, competition like Netflix, so that they can instead offer their own fragmented, unintuitive, and inferior streaming services, at whatever price they decide you should pay (with obligatory price hikes over time). What they also ultimately want to do is move everyone to a metered, pay-as-you-go system so they can charge us up the yin-yang for our data use, and setting up arbitrary limits for specific big bandwidth traffic (e.g. you can only stream so much Netflix before you have to pay a set fee for each additional gigabyte) is the stepping stone they want to use to get us there.

If they can justify being able to prioritize traffic by claiming that they're defending artists' rights (by curbing piracy) and by feigning infrastructure limits and turning everybody against the "big data users" (i.e. Netflix users) who are, like totally soaking up all the bandwidth; they figure they can get us used to the idea of throttling and a metered pay structure, and then they can roll in the megabux for all of time with no threat from competition.

Bastards. I hope every single one of them steps on a Lego.

The ability to discriminate between traffic is totally anti competition, US needs to step in and regulate their ISP's more esp if they are giving them financial assistance.

Personally I have no problem with transfer caps, as long as it doesnt discriminate between traffic types.

 

[barleyguy]

The town I live in passed a bond for muncipal gigabit fiber. I think that will ultimately be one of the ways to break the strangle hold of cable and DSL. If they have to compete against cheap fast municipal solutions it may wake them up. Another option is co-ops. That's when a group of people get together and create their own solution and sell it near cost.

Ultimately I think if the current ISPs get evil, people will simply route around them. In the long run they have less power than they think they do.

 

[DigitalFreak]

Can't speak for the American ISP's but the Canadian ISP's, especially the handheld services, became evil empires ages ago. Welcome to the gulag Igor. Be prepared to sell the soul of your first born to the faceless dark ones.
 
(goes back to handing out his cry freedom pamphlets)

 

[billybob_jcv]

Don't get me started on the US telecom companies. They literally make the airline companies look good - and that's really saying something! They *all* suck like great whooshing vacuums - and it doesn't matter how big your company is or how much you are willing to pay - you get what they give you and if you don't like it - too bad - go pound sand. I've worked with all the major telecom providers at several locations across the USA. Their pricing is a complete mystery, their service is horrible and they absolutely refuse to take any accountability for anything. They will make changes that completely hose your business service, and they will admit nothing - claiming they made no changes. But, mysteriously, it will begin working again after you change your side of the circuit to match their new configuration (which they claim didn't change). I have had more Monday mornings, late nights and holidays ruined by telecom companies than any other single cause. I HATE THOSE B@STARDS!!

OK, I feel better now...

 

[Argyris]

Don't get me started on the US telecom companies. They literally make the airline companies look good - and that's really saying something! They *all* suck like great whooshing vacuums - and it doesn't matter how big your company is or how much you are willing to pay - you get what they give you and if you don't like it - too bad - go pound sand. I've worked with all the major telecom providers at several locations across the USA. Their pricing is a complete mystery, their service is horrible and they absolutely refuse to take any accountability for anything. They will make changes that completely hose your business service, and they will admit nothing - claiming they made no changes. But, mysteriously, it will begin working again after you change your side of the circuit to match their new configuration (which they claim didn't change). I have had more Monday mornings, late nights and holidays ruined by telecom companies than any other single cause. I HATE THOSE B@STARDS!!

OK, I feel better now...

 
Deep breaths, deep breaths. 

 
I hear you on the lack of transparency. It doesn't surprise me, since it's almost always stuff that would make them look bad worse if they owned up to it. I love how, for instance, AT&T denies vehemently that it throttles YouTube, and yet when I fire up the VPN to my university when YouTube is being ridiculously slow, often times the bottleneck miraculously clears up. 

 This isn't always the case (sometimes it's just slow on YouTube's end), but it has been the case enough times that it being a coincidence is unlikely. AT&T's forums are populated by a few volunteers (don't know if they're paid or not; could just be some jerks who like rattling frustrated people's chains) who basically repeat the party line over and over again whenever the subject comes up.
 
I also love how, while all AT&T customers have had a bandwidth cap since sometime in 2012, they don't actually give you a way of monitoring your usage. They claim to have such a service, but the link just redirects to the hub page for the section. Supposedly, they don't actually enforce the cap on U-Verse customers, but I don't think anybody can actually access this usage monitoring service. They seem to be hoping you'll go over and not know it so you get slammed for the extra fee (I seem to recall it's something like $10 per every extra 50 GB).

 

[billybob_jcv]

Our office pays $1800/month for a 100 Mb/s fiber circuit that includes an MPLS VPN connection to our other sites. Today, after seeing the speedtest posts in this thread, I ran a test. I'm seeing 26 Mbps down and 16 Mbps up. Clearly, something has changed AGAIN. Hmm, we have an SLA that specifically obligates the provider to monitor our line and guarantee our service. Did I get a warning or notification of the issue? Nope - nothing. Time to submit another helpdesk ticket...

 

[eke2k6]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch-tops-500.html
 
One of the more anger-inducing things I've read in a long time. The US health care system is in such a crappy state. I took this Hospital Pharmacy elective this semester, and we were discussing how an acetaminophen tablet that costs 20c at your local drug store can cost you $20 (per tablet!) in a hospital. It's a truly depressing scenario.

 

[Coq de Combat]

Billybob, don't worry, it's just the NSA having a peek in your systems for terrorists. That's where the bandwidth is going. After they have cleared your company and saved your lives by not finding anything, you'll get your bandwidth back -- if your ISPs are feeling nice and gentle, that is.
 
I'm sure our ISPs over here aren't saints exactly, but they're at least somewhat better. A few years ago our ISPs were competing by creating ads telling us how long it would take to download DVD movies (yeah, "legal" ones). Our ISPs are always telling us about our rights as customers, and furthermore, some of them clear their logs every night to protect their customers from the big bad wolf (the bureau of anti-piracy). It's a long and complicated story, but basically, this is the gist: the bureau of anti-piracy has gotten (through hollywood paid lawyers) way too much power over here, and the ISPs over here are very much against it. In fact so much that they have formed some sort of group working against these anti-piracy people. 
 
I think it's easier over here. None of the ISPs own the fiber infrastructure here, so while they are theoretically free to cap our traffic, we're free to change ISP to any other of the ISPs in this town that offers internet through our fiber network. It would be the death of an ISP company to cap traffic at this point in time.
 
They're definitely not saints, but they're better. Privacy is important here in scandinavia.

 

[billybob_jcv]

CdC: You might enjoy Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow. It's a fun read, although very idealistic fiction (as all of his books are).

 

[Coq de Combat]

Billybob, I'll look it up, thanks. I've been following Cory Doctorow for a while, because of his quotes and talks about DRM. He's got some sane opinions on said matter.
 
By the way, I tested my speed at work:
 

 
I think we're supposed to have 1 GBit. Considering it was about 10:20 AM here when I tested and people are sitting and doing work, I can't really make anything out of those numbers. BTW, I pay about $45 for 100/10 at home. 100/100 was $10 more a month and 1000/1000 was about double the price. I can't find reasons for having more than 10 MBit up, so I'm satisfied with what we chose.

 

[MuppetFace]

I was talking about the Geek Out. Did you place a pre order for it?

 
Yes, I have both the Out and Pulse pre-ordered. AFAIK they aren't going to be released until next year. They've brought the GEEK Out to shows, however.

 

[Argyris]

  BTW, I pay about $45 for 100/10 at home. 

 
I think that's exactly what we pay for 12/3. Broadband really sucks around here. If I ever get a smartphone, I'll almost certainly have a faster connection on my data plan. However, if a 250 GB/mo cap on broadband sounds bad (I would venture to say that very few, if any, months have we ever broken that), with cellular providers, welcome to a world where 2 GB/mo sounds reasonable.