What are my high speed internet options?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

I feel sorry for you... here in the UK we are a bit spoilt - Basic DSL is now at 2Mbps for most people, and many are even on 8Mbps. 24Mbps is just around the corner and the only obstruction is swapping out that ADSL equipment for ADSL2+.

In my experience, as a two-year satellite user, I had nothing but problems: day-to-day connection issues and recurring maintenance calls caused costs to skyrocket and made it absolutely not worthwhile in the end.

How can am check what time and where was my last login in to
my ICQMAIL account?

I live in a semi-rural area of Northern Virginia (near D.C.), with no cable or DSL. We were limited to dialup until just a couple years ago, but now use a "wireless DSL" service. The ISP installed a repeater antenna on the top of a neighbor's house (the highest one in the subdivision). Each subscriber has a 1' square panel antenna, about 2" thick, which is mounted anywhere it has a line-of-sight shot at the repeater. Mine is tucked up under the eaves on the back of my house; others have them on a mounting pole on top of the house. The panel is a complete antenna and modem, with a simple CAT5 Ethernet cable that runs directly to your computer or router. There is a little power inserter in the line near the computer to power everything.

I get at least 1.5m down and 768k up on my plan, but faster speeds are possible for more $$. The service is rock-solid with one minor outage in over a year. I have a static IP address and no restrictions whatsoever, consistent speeds and very low latency. Cost is $59/month, so not cheap but at least in line with alternatives. So if you have a service like this available, it's a great alternative until something better (like Verizon FiOS) comes along.

FYI, www.dslreports.com is a good site to find local broadband suppliers that also includes lots of user ratings for each service.

Rob

It's interesting to note people from other countries talking about getting speeds that we in the U.S. can only often drool about. Sadly, one thing that's contributed to this, is the U.S.'s rush to adopt new telecommunications technologies during the 20th century.

Because the U.S. glommed onto these new technologies quickly, the oldest population centers also have some of the oldest infrastructure in the developed world. They got wired first, and upgrading them is a much more difficult project than areas with newer wiring.

So, while the telcos and cablecos bleat about their newest technologies, it's taking years to roll them out and it often seems the last ones to get phones and cable are the first ones to get the new broadband features because they have the newest and easiest-to-upgrade infrastructure.

In the 90s, I lived in West Toluca Lake, a densely populated San Fernando Valley suburb, a stone's throw from the freeway and two major surface streets. I could drive surface streets to Disney's studio lot, Warner Brothers studio lot, a CBS satellite studio lot, or NBC's Burbank headquarters in 10-15 minutes. It got cable TV service in the 1970s.

My father, 40 miles to the south, in a tiny little beach community that didn't get cable until the early-80s, with a population of 12k, had consumer broadband via cable modem over a year before DSL rolled out in my area, and 2+ years before cable modems became available.

Even now, Verizon's first FIOS installation in Washington is following that pattern.

http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=93018

By the end of 2006, they'll be able to offer FIOS to 60,000 homes and small businesses in Washington. According to the 2000 Census, there were 2.2 million households in Washington State. Based on population growth estimates, around 2% of the population of Washington will have FIOS available by the end of this year. And that population will be out in less densely populated suburbs, dozens of miles from Seattle.

Now, it's possible that my neck of the woods could be in the early 2007 plans because we're just on the border of the areas where they're laying fiber in 2006. Of course, they could also leave my area neglected for 3-5 years.

Luckily, I'm in a housing development that was built within the last 3 years and have 8 megabit cable through Comcast, so I'm not going to die while waiting for 25 megabit fiber from Verizon. But the pattern of infrastructure upgrades is interesting.

Hi, I live in downtown, Toronto, Canada. With $25 a month I get basic high speed ('ultra-lite' is what they call it). I was wondering, all those options mentioned above, is it any cheaper than what I'm paying right now? Surely the speed seems a lot faster than what I'm getting.

I also live in an area that borders optical fiber service, but like Mr. Bulmash stated, I don't want to wait years for the telcos to decide if it is cost effective to hook up my small rural community. My production is kept at a 52k dial-up crawl. I am to far from a Central Office to use DSL (15 miles one way, 20 the other). How can one lobby the telcos or legislatures to have broadband service installed? Any answers out there.

I have a wireless internet dsl connection.
There is a yagi antenna on my roof pointed toward a site that is 10 miles away. There, it connects with a strong dsl line by wire. I rreally dont know what my speed is but it is good enough for me. All signals are encrypted to prevent use by someone tapping into the 900 mHz signal. It goes thru an encrypted firewall on the other end also. This works for me. Does not tie up my phone line or cable line. I lease the radio and antenna. My cost is 40 US$ a month.

I am a beginner to WIMAX. How would be the Architecture of WiMAX Network? With wireless switches and wireless routers?

How would be the Architecture of WiMAX Network? With wireless switches and wireless routers?

To post a comment on "What are my high speed internet options?", please return to that article's main page.