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.
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
SlipStream announces compatibility with SP 6.0.32 and the following operating systems:
SP 6.0.32 is still supported on these OSes:
(Note: NOW!Imaging is not supported for 64-bit Internet Explorer; 64-bit FTP/Email clients are not supported on SP 6.0.32)
Eric Sinrod talks about some of the problems associated with cyber cafés and Internet hotspots.
Your best bet to combat these threats is to connect to a VPN, or have some kind of encryption on your side. SlipStream SP works within VPNs and can help speed up a bogged-down WiFi connection.
Like nomads searching for oases, we roam in our quest to find Wi-Fi hotspots from which to connect to the wireless world. Unfortunately, these cozy areas where everything seems so right actually can be black holes where our private data can be siphoned away....
A hacker establishes his or her own hotspot while naming it the same as the official hotspot and at the same time as routing traffic through his or her hotspot to the official system. In the process, the private data within the Internet traffic, such as credit card numbers, can be harvested.
Hotspots Can Be Black Holes of Hacking Danger - Eric Sinrod - Technologist
Tucows president and CEO, Elliot Noss, comments on the state of Canadian Broadband.
First, and most importantly, is the definition of "broadband" which sets the benchmark from which all measurement and conclusion flows. The "study" uses 1.5mbs as its threshold. 1.5mbps! I believe this was the launch speed for Bell Canada's dsl service in 1998. 1.5mbps as "broadband" borders on nostalgic. This, more than anything else, takes this from "study" to "attempt at persuasion".
It is as if we were talking about hunger and debating how many Canadians are starving. I, and many others, are lamenting how hungry we are. We are complaining that in a country like Canada we should be eating MUCH better.
Tucows Inc. News » Blog Archive » The Sad State of Broadband in Canada
Interesting article from TelecomTV.com. Apparently UK mobile broadband isn't much faster than 1.1 Mbps for a 4.5Mbps connection.
A new survey provides empiric evidence of what, in out hearts and wallets, we already know - advertised mobile broadband speeds are a con. Subscribers are getting less that a quarter of the service they pay 100 per cent of their money for, writes Martyn Warwick.
UK mobile broadband: pay through the nose, get just 24 per cent of advertised speeds
This comes as no big surprise. Now, the question is: are the same speed issues occurring in North America too?
Ever had a sneaking suspicion that your broadband download speeds never quite measured up to the "up to" speeds trumpeted by your ISP--and that everyone around you was probably in the same boat? If so, you now have some solid empirical evidence that this is indeed the case.UK telecoms regulator Ofcom today released the results of a lengthy study that compared advertised download speeds with the actual speeds received by home users, and the results are shocking--average speeds are only half what is advertised.
Upload speeds are especially limited:
When it comes to upload speeds, the situation is just as dire. Average UK upload speeds were a mere 0.43Mbps, not exceeding 0.7Mbps even on 16Mbps plans.
[Source: ars technica]
SlipStream Data Inc. is a subsidiary
Subscribe (Atom)