SlipStream News

Internet prices may go up. Now's the time to be looking at ways to:

  a) Reduce your bandwidth use;
  b) Generate additional revenue from add-on services

Imagine a revenue-generating add-on service that also reduces your bandwidth usage.

Internet users may pay more in the future as a result of the CRTC's latest ruling on internet billing, independent internet providers say.

"This will not result in lower costs for Canadian consumers," said Tom Copeland, chair of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, said a day after Tuesday's release of the decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Under the new pricing scheme, "ISPs will incur higher costs as consumers use more bandwidth," Copeland said.

"Average cost per customer goes up and therefore the retail price may also go up unless other economies of scale can be found or other add-on services allow ISPs to generate additional revenue and profit."

CRTC internet ruling may boost prices - Arts & Entertainment - CBC News

Actual broadband speeds may vary ... by quite a bit.

Looking through the FCC's rankings, Comcast came out top with a better-than-advertised speed of 144 per cent (thanks to its investment in bandwidth-crunching DOCSIS 3.0 technology), followed in a distant second place by Verizon's FiOS FTTH service with 116 per cent. However, the bad boys were Cablevision and Frontier - with Cablevision scoring just 50 per cent and Frontier doing not much better (surprise, surprise) with 67 per cent.

TelecomTV | News | DSL suffers as the FCC measures Broadband America

Looks like almost half of all homes aren't getting the speeds that the Readiness Index requires.

The Readiness Index assesses the progress of counties in reaching broadband infrastructure benchmarks established in the National Broadband Plan. These include universal access today to broadband at 3Mbit/s download and 768kbit/s upload speeds; 98 per cent availability of mobile wireless service; and 85 per cent availability of access to 50Mbit/s fixed networks.

TelecomTV | News | 46 per cent of US households don't meet National Broadband goals

New research published today from Ovum suggests that 3.6 billion people will be able to access either fixed or mobile broadband by 2015, which represents half of the global population.

TelecomTV | News | Broadband to reach half the world's population by 2015

Direct Internet 3 takes advantage of new data compression, caching and network optimization techniques to enhance Internet connectivity through the Iridium satellite network. Powered by SlipStream® SP6.0 with Now!Imaging™ compression technology, Direct Internet 3 uses concurrent object delivery functionality to accelerate page download speeds for image-rich websites.

According to independent testing conducted by appLabs Technologies, an international third-party independent product/solution testing and certification organization commissioned by SlipStream Data Inc., Direct Internet 3 makes Internet browsing up to 5.4 times faster than with no acceleration or Internet optimization technology installed. This is 20 percent faster than the previous optimization software, Direct Internet 2.

Iridium Introduces Enhanced Internet Connectivity for Iridium Satellite Phones and the Iridium 9522B L-Band Transceiver (LBT) | NewsyStocks.com

Where average speeds are roughly half of what the advertised speeds are, what are the minimum speeds like? Could they be improved upon?

Given the massive disconnect between the actual and advertised speeds, how is a broadband buyer to know in advance how well the connection will function?

What if ISPs had to advertise minimum speeds? In Hungary, they do

Not too surprising. What they need is a way to speed up broadband connections.

In reality, no one gets these speeds. That's not news to the techno-literate, of course, but a new Federal Communications Commission report (PDF) shines a probing flashlight on the issue and makes a sharp conclusion: broadband users get, on average, a mere 50 percent of that "up to" speed they had hoped to achieve.

After crunching the data, FCC wonks have concluded that ISPs advertised an average (mean) "up to" download speed of 6.7Mbps in 2009. That's not what broadband users got, though.

Your fears confirmed: "up to" broadband speeds are bogus

Interesting article from Time Magazine:

But these incidents aren't just stories of human folly or corporate greed, they're subtle signs of a deeper issue: the increasing shortage of bandwidth relative to Americans' growing appetite for it. In the U.S. in 2010, a family can easily spend hundreds of dollars a month on cable, mobile phones and Internet and telephone services. Some families already spend at least as much on bandwidth as they do on energy. Face it: Americans love their smart phones and Internet television as much as they love their cars and air conditioners.

Bandwidth Is the New Black Gold - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME

Cost and bother were cited as reasons for not getting broadband at home. But what if it could be cheaper and easier?

Not surprisingly, more than a third of broadband laggards, 36 percent, cited the high cost of broadband and technology, even as entry-level computers and laptops have become very affordable. But survey users report they spend an average of $41 a month on broadband -- which comes to nearly $500 annually.

...

Nearly 20 percent without broadband say they don't bother to subscribe, because there are 800 million web sites, but nothin's on -- or if they have dial-up, that there's nothing worth getting faster.

Cost, Crotchetiness Keep Broadband Out of 1/3 of U.S. Homes | Epicenter | Wired.com

A study from the Center for Social Inclusion found a link between economic opportunity and broadband access in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions of the U.S.A.

Findings:

• People of color are the majority in zip codes with zero access to high speed Internet.
• Mississippi's Second Congressional Districts has the largest population of people of color and the lowest levels of broadband access.
• Broadband builds the economy. Therefore, poor communities of color are less able to build their economies or the state and national economy:
  • Zip codes with 8 or more Internet providers average 811 businesses. Those without high-speed internet access have a mere 7 businesses on average. Zip codes with 8 or more Internet providers average 13,212 jobs. Job opportunities in places with one, two, or even three Internet providers are a mere fraction of that, with an average of 646 jobs.
• Of the 124 applications for expanding broadband access in Mississippi, 87 were rejected and 37 are still awaiting a decision.

Poverty Worsened by Poor Broadband - Center for Social Inclusion