Quote:
Originally Posted by AlienQ
Soon we will be measuring gigs per second.
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Not sure where you are located, but where I am at guys drive pick-ups, chew snuff, and wear cowboy hats, and believe me, the network isn't very good. And nobody knows the difference.
The gigs per second might be true in Europe, where most telephone companies have been extending their fiber optics networks in the past 10 years. Everything is below ground top notch shit there, Japan is even better. There aren't any telephone poles in the civilized part of Europe any more. With the cheapest Telekom DSL connection I get a transfer rate of 500 KB/s down in Berlin, in the US I am lucky if I get 180 KB/s on a good day.
Up sucks even more: around 40 kb/s. Ever tried to up a 20 GB page at 40 kb/s? I overnight it to my computer geek in Europe who has T-Online VDSL25000 and gets 5400KB/s down and 1100KB/s upload, no shit.
I don't doubt AT&T's claim that they are running on the edge. Just look at our jerry-rigged telephone system, even in some big cities. Telephone poles from the 20ies.
If I understand the article correctly, it seems as if 5% of users are using 80% of all bandwith, and I truly believe that the big five in the telecommunications market are going to find a way to get rid of those 5%, which they call "powersurfers". One way is to still offer unlimited bandwith for moms & pops, who are not using much anyway, but simply turn the tap off if someone burns excessive bandwith.
It's comparable to oil companies. You've got 200 million customers in this country and only 5 suppliers. If the big five raise gas prices, a single gas station (=ISP) can't do shit.