Just curious... What "speed" is your internet connection? and also how much do you pay in your area? I realize around the globe, some of our friends have to pay by the hour, and some other areas we get charged more than we should, just because company-x is one of the only providers... I'm using (s)low-speed internet here in Toronto. In Calgary, my family uses "high-speed" internet, and running about 1.5-3mb download speed whatever that means... But now one of the companies is now offering "Extreme-I" or "Extreme-Internet" running at up to a 5mb download speed, and 1mb upload. When I go back to Calgary, I'll probably switch over to the newer type connection just to test it out, and also see about it's reliability... I hear, and see that connection/data transfer speeds of DSL remain reliably high. I pay about $24.95/month (Canadian dollars) before taxes for (s)low-speed cable internet in Ontario. In Calgary I pay $42.95/month for so called "high-speed internet" and the Extreme-I connection will run $57.95/month again before taxes. Just wondering what kind of deals other people get out there. -Kelvin
I got enough of computer at work, therefore, I use dial-up (56k) @ home for USD$9.95 per month. Yeah, I know this sounds cheap, but I just got way enough of computer at work for the day. This is at least good enough for email (attachment is a pain though), chatting, and surfing BC/BF. If I need to download a huge file, I either bring my computer (with an ethernet card) to my friend's place to use his cable modem, or just bring blank CDs to ask him to do the work.
here in the Uk, we are paying £27.99 (67 CAD, 50 USD) a month for "broadband" which only has 512kbs download and around 100kbs upload....hehe...rip-off-britain
I presume that is the price of BT Broadband; NTL charges £23.99 for a 600KB connection; however, I agree that ISP's in the UK charge ridiculously inflated prices. Dill, for example, pays almost as much as me for a connection which is four times slower.
Yeah; you can see the packages available here http://www.ntlhome.com/ntl_internet/broadband.asp?cust=ntlworldportalnavbroadband . I'm, ahem, told that it's possible to get the basic service then uncap the modem; but if you get caught, they certainly won't offer you broadband internet again.
This is in Malaysia and I don't quite understand the categories in which you call high or low speed cable, but I pay RM 77 or about USD$20 for 384kbps/128kbps unlimited access per month. Is that expensive or cheap by US or UK standards?
20USD @ 10MBS (claimed) Various other cheaper packages e.g. 16USD @ 3 to 6 MBS. So rather cheap in HK
Check out www.dslreports.com It is full of broadband information. Korea and Japan are the cheapest place for broadband and are also the fastest. 1 gigabit per second connection is available in Japan for selected residential areas!!!
That's amusing since in most cases people don't even have LAN cards that fast, and usb 2.0's theorectical max speed is 440 Mb/s (not that it even gets close). Actually running at 1GB/s is impossible through PCI anyway. Then again if you can afford to live in Japan, you can probably afford a chipset with onboard Gigabit Lan (I've just got to find someone else who has it just to see how fast it really is ). Oh I nearly forgot, it costs me about $20 Oz for my connection, but since it's shared bandwidth (with the cable TV) performance is higher variable everyone else goes to bed. PS what do you need 10MB/s for Cheung? Even a geek like me only has 1.5 MB/s. Most servers can't provide enough data to saturate my link let alone 3MB/s.
$20 for a 10mb/s connection? I'm so jealous. You can't even get an 128k ISDN line for that price in the UK.
You are quite right Pecheur. I do not need that fast a connection. It's a marketing strategy However, this particular vendor was chosen because it was a cheaper option with a deicated line that time compared to other companies. However, the other companies have caught up and reduced their prices. One thing to be careful of in HK is the mailbox. One of the largest vendors sets a 6Mb limit (I think). However, if it overflows, they charge extra for the storage space. i.e. they do not limit the messages. Also this company doesn't limit spam. Quite a number of consumers have been caught out e.g. leaving HK (therefore cannot clear the inbox), or computer illiterate (didn't even know about the inbox). In a very recent article in the newspaper, a guy ended up with a 3000USD bill for extra storage... because he didn't know about the inbox. Even if he did, he wouldn't know how to clear it...
The 10 megabit/sec residential service in HK doesn't come with constant bit rate guarantee. So, if lots of people are using the network, d/l and u/l slow down. The access technology is metro ethernet. The 10 megabit/sec commercial service comes with constant bit rate guarantee but you have to pay an arm and a leg for it at a whopping HKD 15,000 per month
