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Old 11-13-2009, 07:03 PM  
rowan
Too lazy to set a custom title
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 17,393
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jake View Post
I don't think it's quite that simply. Based on your theory then you should see the same effect with cable TV/Internet, which you don't.
Simple, cable internet has far more bandwidth available. Satellites have limited bandwidth because they use "free air" radio rather than an enclosed cable. The radio spectrum is a precious resource. In addition adding capacity is not as simple as pulling new fibre between two points - building and launching a satellite is logistically and financially prohibitive. So the overall bandwidth allocation is pretty much fixed while they just keep adding on more and more customers.

Broadcast TV suffers too... to add a new channel they might reduce the bitrate of the others slightly... add 10 more channels (or go HD) and you'll start to notice the difference.
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