Dont borrow AOL's strategy



  • Just listened to sales pitch (this happened around 5 minutes ago) for switching to a competitor's "broadband" [This is in quotes for a reason not yet disclosed] service. It's a sum of WTF and FUD.

    "Your ISP uses optical fibre. That is very slow. We're using pure cable end-to-end. So the same plan of 300 kbps (yea, WTF) will be available to you for Rs. 750 (approximately $20) per month."

     Seems like we have to switch countries to get internet services.



  • Your post makes no sense to me.

    You talk about switching countries, but don't say where you are, or why you think you need to change country.

    This quote is for a 300kbps system - but you don't say what you currently have (or how much you are paying, compared to the Rs. 750 quoted)

    Any chance of shedding some light?
     



  • [quote user="GettinSadda"]

    Rs. 750

    [/quote]

    Sounds like India. Pathetic speeds here. 128 - 256 kbps is the norm. And ISPs rip you off. The cost of having internet access with the same speed in the States or West Europe would be half or quarter of the rates here.



  • [quote user="byte_lancer"]"Your ISP uses optical fibre. That is very slow. We're using pure cable end-to-end."[/quote]

    Tell me about it!  My boss keeps trying to downgrade us from this 1 mb cable connection to a 10 mb fiber connection!  I keep telling him, cable is so much faster!

     



  • [quote user="kuroshin"][quote user="GettinSadda"]

    Rs. 750

    [/quote]

    Sounds like India. Pathetic speeds here. 128 - 256 kbps is the norm. And ISPs rip you off. The cost of having internet access with the same speed in the States or West Europe would be half or quarter of the rates here.

    [/quote]

    I think I read elsewhere in these pages that in India, the term "broadband" gets abused a lot. Seems like I read about internet cafes where a single 128kbps connection would serve the whole place.

    National Lampoon used to run candid photos of real store signs. One read "Fresh" Fish (it was painted, not made of letters, and yes there were quotes around "Fresh"). Would you buy "fresh" fish, perhaps while the store manager was making finger quotes in the air while he described the "catch" of the "day"? 



  • [quote user="R.Flowers"]

    I think I read elsewhere in these pages that in India, the term "broadband" gets abused a lot. Seems like I read about internet cafes where a single 128kbps connection would serve the whole place.

    [/quote]

     Yes, yes, yes. Reminds me of an internet cafe that I used to visit way back in high school (1999). They did have 128 kbps internet access for the entire place.

    No, it was not ISDN or anything super duper. They had 33.6 kbps modems (5 of them) configured up in RAIM (lol, RAIM = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Modems).

    What was even more funnier was the fact that the phone lines used were public. Want to get someone off the internet because he was hogging too much ? Call the numbers.
     



  • [quote user="byte_lancer"]"broadband" [This is in quotes for a reason not yet disclosed] service.[/quote]

    Why is broadband in quotes?  Broadband means that it uses more than one frequency to communicate.  If I'm right that your fibre optic line is not extremely expensive then it is likely baseband -- uses one frequency to communicate.  Internet over co-axial cable is broadband.  So is DSL.  Did I just figure out the "reason not yet disclosed"?

     Yes, I know I'm a nerd and one of the only people who uses the term broadband in its true sense.  The term is abused everywhere and has nothing to do with speed.  Telephone modems are technically broadband but a marketer would never tell you that (he likely wouldn't know either).
     



  • That damn optical fibre always causes us problems, what with it's reliance on the speed of light, an we all know just how slow that is.

     

    Perhaps they should have a word with Einstein, and see if they can get that troublesome limit upgraded. 



  • [quote user="kuroshin"]

     Yes, yes, yes. Reminds me of an internet cafe that I used to visit way back in high school (1999). They did have 128 kbps internet access for the entire place.

    No, it was not ISDN or anything super duper. They had 33.6 kbps modems (5 of them) configured up in RAIM (lol, RAIM = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Modems).

    [/quote]

    That's cutting edge for 1999. Back in 2000 or 2001, I frequented cafes which served 7-10 computers via a single 56k modem..............yahoo mail took 40 minutes to load, and you could basically forget about checking hotmail. And it's still not difficult to find such cafes these days. Look around, around half of them will be running via a single modem. The other half have either ISDN (and advertise it as "fast ISDN connection") or the big cafe chains which have their own cable network infrastructure (and who refuse to provide connections to home users).

    Even one of the fastest Cafe chains in India, Sify iWay, has a speed of 256kb max, where downloads run at 20 kB/s... but it's quite adequate I must say. I dont know about Reliance (well fuck them anyway). I read somewhere (Digit mag?) about a guy who showed a Reliance WebWorld cafe owner (as recently as last year) that his 300 kbps video stream was stuttering on their claimed 768 kbps connection. He then ran a cnet bandwidth test and it showed ~200 kbps.

    Whatever.... I'm on an ethernet connection now in university (Europe), and I get 6 mbps minimum.. and most of the time as much as 16-24 mbps :D Downloads run at between 800 kB/s to 3+ MB/s.
     


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