Are We Getting the Bandwidth We Pay For?

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And the “can o’ worms” topic of the day: Are you getting the bandwidth you pay for?

The United States ranks 11th in the world in what ISPs promise, and what they deliver, as American consumers receive 93 percent of their promised throughput. Ookla found that the average cost per megabit per second here is about $6.13, 20th in the world, and Americans pay 1.2 percent of their per-capita GDP to broadband suppliers, the 12th least in the world.
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I get the promised bandwidth I pay for, I'm just paying too much for it.
 
Actually, I get twice the speed I used to get (in Alaska) for $40 less so I am happy.

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occasionally. Last couple days, right around 5pm pst till I go to bed my connection has been a solid 100KB/sec tops. About the only time I see my full bandwidth capability is downloading through Steam, and even then it's only in fits and bursts.

$50/mth for an advertised 12Mb/1Mb service that averages monthly ~8Mb/512k and at least two or three network crashes a month. Cox Cable.
 
Yep, I'm pretty much get what I subscribe. In fact I get 50% more than I pay for. Well, 50% out of 1mb/s aren't exactly much :(. It's unlimited tho.
 
Cable companies in the states are rip-offs. ComCRAP in San Francisco are pushing the 100MB package and you still don't get that speed on the down. At least when I lived in Rockville, MD and had Verizon Fios I got super fast speeds for the amount of money I paid for that service. My friend in Korea get 1GB down for $40 a month. Another friend in Holland get 50MB down for $25 a month. Neither one of those people have no contracts either?!?!?!?!? WTF?!?!?!?!? Back in the mid 90's when I first had DSL in NYC, I was told that as it becomes more avilable, it will become cheaper for service.....HORSESHIT!!!!!!!! FUCK YOU COMCRAP AND AT!!!!!
 
Steve said:
Actually, I get twice the speed I used to get (in Alaska) for $40 less so I am happy.

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anything's faster than couriering thumb drives via sled dog express. ;-)
 
I have comcast business 12/2. I get exactly that, not more, not less.
 
I have speedtest PC set up in every hub to make sure customers are getting reasonably close speeds. and typically its right on the money. If you're paying for 30/5 at worst you might get 25/4 but thats PC overhead website latency etc. Really you should use multi-connection nntp or p2p traffic to measure your bandwidth. Speedtest websites are using far more overhead.
 
wtf is with the per capita GDP as a gauge to if we're getting rip off, its that kind of thinking with the GDP that's gotten us into such a massive debt...
 
I am supposed to get 20mbits (fuck you megabits creator) (2.5mb Proper mb) and get 750kb/s (bytes). But they do say UP TO...the day I get 2.5 is the day I forgive people.
 
I get what I pay for from Time warner. And getting 93% of promised bandwidth is far from bad.
 
Cableone here in texas limits everyones connection from 12pm to 12am.

So if im paying for 12meg connection I only get either half sometime or 1/4 of that.
 
Steve said:
Actually, I get twice the speed I used to get (in Alaska) for $40 less so I am happy.
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DOCSIS 3.0 is making its way out here slowly. If the pricing is to be believed, I should be able to get a 30Mb/2Mb connection for the same price as my current 7Mb/640kb service.
 
srangara said:
DOCSIS 3.0 is making its way out here slowly. If the pricing is to be believed, I should be able to get a 30Mb/2Mb connection for the same price as my current 7Mb/640kb service.
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in your wet dreams
 
I pay for 20/5 megabits service.

During peak hours I get around 15/4 usually, but it can dip as low as 7/2 on occasion.
On very off peak hours I can hit 37/9 speeds though.

So my speed fluctuates greatly through out the day.
 
nope
have Rev A EVDO can get 4000+kb/s
mine barely gets 1000 kb/s

hate living out here in the sticks
 
$35/mo for my first 18mbps / 1mbps connect. I can't get any more than 1mbps because Time Warner sucks. Even if I write them a blank check, they won't give me more than 1mbps up in my apartment.

I pay $95/mo for two 18mbps / 1mbps connections... I have not yet bought a load balancing router. One connection is for downloading, one is for gaming.
 
I pay $99.99 for 16/3 Mbps from Comcast, I then added a Docsis 3.0, now I get 90-100 Down and 5-8 Up. :)
 
I pay for 15mbps/5mbps. I actually get around 30mbps/22mbps. I freaking love FIOS. :D
 
I pay for 15/1 from Shaw Communications, I receive upwards of 25/1. Their upload caps never change, but their downloads are quite rad. I was thinking of upgrading to their 50/3 for twice the price (triple the bandwidth for twice the price? very tempting).
 
IRSmurf said:
$35/mo for my first 18mbps / 1mbps connect. I can't get any more than 1mbps because Time Warner sucks. Even if I write them a blank check, they won't give me more than 1mbps up in my apartment.

I pay $95/mo for two 18mbps / 1mbps connections... I have not yet bought a load balancing router. One connection is for downloading, one is for gaming.
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It would be cheaper if you bought your games rather than paying for a dedicated download connection. :p :D
 
Nope. AT&T DSL says "up to 3Mb/s" download, so I usually get ~2.2Mb/s. Same thing when I had "up to 1.5Mb/s", I'd get around 1.1Mb/s.
 
50/6 service here from Cox, regularly pulls very close to 60 when I yank TV shows off Astraweb so, no complaints here. They offered it to me for 12 months for the same price as the 20Mbps plan so I pounced on it, still got about 6 months to go, when it runs out I'll drop back down since $120/month is a bit steep but for $70/month I just couldn't pass it up.
 
Being on 56k (no choice) for $20 a month, plus a $30 monthly service fee just to be able to have a dial tone... HELL NO!!!
 
bellsouth/att? No. switching to Atlantic broadband? Most of the time it's faster than what I pay for.
 
Hell,no. Verizon DSL doesn't deliver half the speed I pay for. I may give Comcast cable a try. Their TV service sucks,dropped them long ago,but they're the only other option I have here and I'm tired of waiting for Fios.
 
I recently upgraded to Virgin medias 50mb here in the UK. I had the 20mb service but that was traffic managed after 4pm if you download more than 5gb during the day. Dropped the speed to 5mb after that. So basically i was paying for a service i wasn't getting.

The 50mb isnt traffic managed and i get full speed all the time for £8 extra. I dont really need the speed but its nice to be able to get the latest HD episode of Stargate Universe or Dexter in the time it takes to take a piss.:D

 
The Cobra said:
Cable companies in the states are rip-offs. ComCRAP in San Francisco are pushing the 100MB package and you still don't get that speed on the down. At least when I lived in Rockville, MD and had Verizon Fios I got super fast speeds for the amount of money I paid for that service. My friend in Korea get 1GB down for $40 a month. Another friend in Holland get 50MB down for $25 a month. Neither one of those people have no contracts either?!?!?!?!? WTF?!?!?!?!? Back in the mid 90's when I first had DSL in NYC, I was told that as it becomes more avilable, it will become cheaper for service.....HORSESHIT!!!!!!!! FUCK YOU COMCRAP AND AT!!!!!
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You won't ever get high symmetric speeds on cable. it just isn't possible with current technology.

As far as my speed, I got what I paid for when I lived in a higher end part of town, but where I live now, I'll get it late evenings (20/2) DSL isn't a option as the max they can serve here is 3m/512k. I can get clear but 6m/1m was what Comcast was offering five years ago.
 
Verizon FIOS in NoVA

Rated:
35mb down
35mb up

Actualy:
40-43mb down
30-33mb up

Damn, I guess I'm getting cheated... Also, I get these speeds and time of day and on more than just speed tests. I had a 90GB torrent going Sunday night (surprisingly, it was a legit torrent) and it's transfer speed was pegged at 5.2MB/s almost the entire time.
 
Parmenides said:
It would be cheaper if you bought your games rather than paying for a dedicated download connection. :p :D
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I do buy my games and software. I also buy all my music. (Zune <3) I do not consider myself a pirate. That said:

TV shows. I would pay for the shows if they were willing to sell them to me, to watch on my own time. I watch 22 TV shows, over the year. When they are on, they overlap. I literally cannot watch all the shows I want to watch because some shows overlap.

I am more than willing to pay for the shows. I pay $60/mo for my download-only connection and $30/mo for my news service. That is $90/mo I pay exclusively for TV shows. That's $90/mo I would give Time Warner who would pay the content providers... if they allowed me to watch all the shows I want, when I want. Instead, the content providers get nothing because they are so not-flexible. Time Warner's on-demand service is awful, especially compared to Comcast.

Here's an idea. Subscription based television service. REVOLUTIONARY, I know. :p I'd pay $15/mo for HBO, $15/mo for Showtime, $10/mo each for TNT, SCI-FI, and Comedy Central, $5/mo each for TBS, CBS, ABC, FOX, and CNN. Am I really asking for too much? Oh, and 3mbps steams aren't going to cut it.
 
DracoDan said:
I had a 90GB torrent going Sunday night (surprisingly, it was a legit torrent) and it's transfer speed was pegged at 5.2MB/s almost the entire time.
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145 Linux distros in one download? :p 90GB torrent, my god... dare I even ask what the hell could be legit other than Linux distros?
 
I always get the bandwidth I pay for with ATT dsl, I'm very happy with there service. I pay around 35 a month for 640kb down and around 80kb up. Perfect for me. It's very stable. Something I demand more vs speeds.
 
90% of the people I talk to on a daily basis that bitch about their DSL speeds either don't have their filtering setup correctly and are getting astronomical attentuation and near dialup speeds, or are running on 128mb XP systems that take 20 minutes to boot.
 
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