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The Internet

How Much Does Your Broadband Cost? 143

Posted by Cliff from the huge-market-for-last-mile-fat-pipes dept.
Anders Höckersten asks: "Recently, the Vice President of Sweden's largest ISP Telia declared that broadband is far too cheap in this country, compared to what it costs internationally. Meanwhile, surveys have shown that people aren't prepared to pay more than what they are currently paying. My question is simple: How much do you pay for your broadband, and what upload and download speeds do you get? As a reference, getting 1024 kbps (that's kilobits) download and 200 kbps upload from Telia currently costs 295 SEK (around $30)."
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How Much Does Your Broadband Cost? More

How Much Does Your Broadband Cost?

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  • My broadband is free, I leech off the local 802.11b.
    • US $90 per month for 256K down / 300K up (that's right, up is higher than down - why? funny configuration by NorthPoint just before they closed down). This also includes 5 static IP addresses.

      I'm about 1700 feet too far from the C.O. for PacBell DSL.

  • I'm paying upwards of 50 dollars a month for cox cable latest highspeed service.
  • ...on a dedicated pair 12.6 kft from the C/O, from Internet America [airmail.net] in the Dallas, Texas area.
  • I'm paying USD 44.95 for 3 megabits down, 1 megabit upstream.
    • Where can I find that! I live in OP and I get 256 k down, 128 up (or something like that). I use time warner road runner and pay just about that same price.
  • We pay $50usd a month for 1 megabit down, can't recall how fast it is up. As a side note, the initial statement is absurd. There is no such thing as "too cheap."

  • $50/month for standard cablemodem service (Score:3, Informative)

    by Paranoid ( 12863 ) <my-user-name@meuk.org> on Thursday February 07, 2002 @06:24PM (#2970532)
    1.2Mbit down, 128Kbit up.
    $40/month for the service, + $10/month cablemodem rental.
    Charter Pipeline, South Lake Tahoe, California.
    • In the Worcester, Massachusetts area, I'm paying $30/month for Charter Pipeline. 1M down, 128K up. This is down from $50/month for two reasons:

      1) I bought their digital cable service at the same time, which takes $10/mon off the price of Pipeline.

      2) I bought the modem, which saves an extra $10/mon. Why wouldn't anyone do this? The price on their Motorola Surfboard is down to $100; you'll make your money back in 10 months.
  • $40/month Canadian (thus, less American)
    Cogeco Cable Solutions (in Ontario). Incidently, I believe they were also the first provider to drop @Home (they did it shortly after @Home filed for protection, and well before they actually announced actual loss of services -- the transition was wonderfully smooth, and speeds have increased). Anyway, my d/l speed seems to go as high as 300K/sec at times (though this is rare), and probably averages 100K/sec. Upload, I've never tested, and Cogeco's site is sparse with the details (x times faster than dialup, etc, etc).

    • Re:40 Canadian - Cogeco caps at 2048/384 kbit/s (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The info about speed is hard to find, but Cogeco caps downloads at 2048 kbit/s, and uploads at 384 kbit/s (I read these values directly from my modem using SNMP - the public community string is "rcgoips", and you can find your modem's IP address by pinging 255.255.255.255).
  • Paying around $50 a month and get around 200kbps down and capped at ~35kbps out.

    you're deal is in fact pretty good!
  • I pay $49 per month for 1.5Mbps down, 384Kbps up, with few AUP restrictions through Earthlink.
  • I pay ~$60* a month for 640/272 DSL access through Qwest. I could be paying less but I upgraded to a business account so I wouldn't be assimilated by MSN. It's a little on pricy side I know but, cable is not available in my area and I haven't had any real problems with Qwest (USWest) since I first signed up 3.5 years ago.

    *This also includes dialup access in various states across the US.
  • $39.95/mo. for 768/128Kbps.

    Bit more expensive than the price given for Telia in SE, but compared to some of the third-party resellers that have to lease through others like Covad and the phone company, it's a good price for the area. Service has been wonderful for the past 2 years (i.e. no more than 30 minutes of downtime every 4 or so months).

    Unfortunately, I don't qualify for the faster services yet. But, the only thing that really would be useful in addition to what I have (for me, the 768 down is fast enough, and I don't host anything from home) would be a static IP. I would only need one, just enough to be able to SSH in to home from the office when I forget my laptop but need a file off of it.

    For now I just have a script set up that "phones home" to my office machines every hour or so. It works, but it's not as convenient as knowing the IP by memory (for those extremely rare times I'm not at home or the office).
  • home users $40 for 128kb down and 32kb up (kilobits) max download speed is about 14 kilobytes/s, upload is very slow.

    office users pay from $60 up depending on speed.

  • using Qwest Biz DSL (Score:3, Informative)

    by kootch ( 81702 ) on Thursday February 07, 2002 @06:29PM (#2970566) Homepage
    I'm paying $150/month for 768k/768k

    I also was given the opportunity to buy blocks for IP addresses at 5 IP's for $50 (one-time fee)

    I can also upgrade my service to 1.5mbit/1.5mbit for an extra $50/month (total of $200/month)

    These is a slight discount if you engage in a 1yr or 2 yr contract with them also.
  • UK here (York). 578 down and 256 up. £50/month (~$80) and was £80 (~$110) for the install. Yes it's a rip off, no I can't live without it.
    • Bloody ISDN is worse... The only thing I can get here (12miles from a major city and 1/2 a mile from the exchange[1]) that's faster than 56k and less than a grand a month is ISDN.

      £19.99 a month to Demon. [2]
      £19.99 a month to BT for Anytime.
      ~£26 a month for ISDN line rental.

      Absolute fucking ripoff - can't wait til I move...

      [1] You can almost see it from the window in my office.
      [2] Yes I know there's cheaper ISP's , but they're shite. I know I've tried them.
  • I pay Qwest $32 a month to run a 256k up and 640k down to my ISP who is Visi, who charges another $19.95 a month for their end, providing me the same to the internet. Kinda a VPN thing over Qwest's ATM's to VISI's. I do get a static IP though and they don't care what I run on it, (web, ftp, ssh, straming media,) as long as I don't harrass other users of the internet (ie DoS).

    Life is good for the most part, I just hate seeing a $72 a month bill to Qwest for DSL connectivity, land line, and caller ID. But oh well... I also use my cell phone for all long distance. I love confusing AT&T, Sprint, and MCI telemarketers saying I do not have a PIC code on my line and I do not want a PIC code on my line.... You know what that is sir?....sorry for your time sir...
  • $39.95 here for 2Mbps down 384kbps up. Rock-solid service too.
  • I live in a smaller rural area outside of the local major city (which isn't too big, actually) and I'm getting an average of about 2.5-4 Mbps down and about 500Kbps up. I ocassionally get about 6Mbps down on certain sites (such as kernel.org), but it's rarer. I'm paying 39.95 per month (before a zillion Canadian taxes - so about $46 after taxes, I guess).

    I like the speeds I'm getting and surmise that it must be due, at least in part, to the fact I'm living in a very low density community. Other Shaw Cable subscribers in the "City" are seeing speeds on average of more like 1-2 Mbps down (although I'm not sure about speeds up). Same price, of course.
  • I'm at $93.41/mo for Speakeasy's 1.5 down/384 up package with 4 static IP addresses and all taxes, etc. In the six months since I got it, there's only been one brief trouble period. It's been better and faster than my last employer's fractional T1.

    New customers only get 1.5/128 at the price I'm paying, so I guess they've effectively hiked the price. Existing customers are grandfathered in.

  • What they really want to know is... (Score:3)

    by Webmoth ( 75878 ) on Thursday February 07, 2002 @06:49PM (#2970684) Homepage
    Appears to me that they've realized that they can charge more to increase profits. What they want to know is at what price point (as price is increased) will the revenues lost to unhappy customers outweigh the increased revenues from remaining customers?

    So Telia figures that Swedish customers are getting a great deal. Too good of a deal, because customers elsewhere in the world pay more. Doesn't this tell you that we in other countries are getting soaked, that it really DOESN'T cost them $44.95USD to provide me with broadbad; that they could be charging $30USD and still make a profit?

    That's $44.95USD for 1024kd/256ku for AT&T Broadband cable I'm paying.
    • Doesn't this tell you that we in other countries are getting soaked

      Umm, compared to other countries, we in the US are not getting soaked. The reason is that in most European countries you still pay per minute charges for connected via dial-up modem. So $40 - $50 month is what you can expect to pay for a reasonable amount of connect time via dial-up. (you wonder why mobile phones are big in Europe, its because POTS phone service is more expensive than mobile service). Even in the US, when you add up all the charges for having second dedicated phone line plus the standard $20/month ISP charge, you're paying very little premium for the extra bandwidth of DSL or cable.

      I pay $39.95/month for Verizon DSL in the DC area. Because I signed up early on, I still keep my static IP. No concerns about NAT so far, so I run a small LAN at home. Other than a 1 to 10,000 port sweep originating from Argentina, my firewall [digitalriver.com] logs haven't picked up any sign of script kiddies trying to get onto my system.

      Digital cable with cable modem service is supposed to be coming to my neighborhood soon, but since I have had no downtime that I can recall in over six months, I doubt I will switch unless the price for cable was less than $30/month.

  • I pay $49/month for service with cable modem rental, and the first six months are at $19/month. I tested the line and get 1434kb down and 124kb up.
    • Same here on ATTBI.

      Stupid 1.5mbit downstream cap.
      Stupid 128kbit upstream cap.

      Stupid ATTBI.

      And now we're gonna get bought out by ComCast, which I hear is even stupider. I hear they're dropping newsgroups too now.
  • In New York City we pay $50/mo ($40 if you have TW services already) 250Kbs / 45Kbs.
  • $39.95 CDN ($25 USD) for 1.5Mbps downstream, 512kbps upstream in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from Telus Communications [telus.net]
  • I am currently paying $50 for 1.5Mbit down and 256kbit up. I also get a static IP.

    Pretty nice quality for only $50.

  • Even with Bt being arses and not opening the local loops.
    Ntl provide 512 down/128 up (as standard - can go up) at £25 per mo. (That's around $33). Good price considering 4 64k ISDN lines costs my parent's business £100 per mo.
    • Oh and completely forgot the interesting anecdote around me taking up broadband (which is new in the uk).
      I used to have a second line installed in the house (which I payed for (£10 a month)), and a dialup 56k'er, the service costing me £15 a mo.
      So when broadband was introduced five months ago, for £24.99, I took it up. Ten times speedier internet, and one penny cheaper. :)

  • In Mountain View, CA

    I'm only about 2k wirefeet from the CO (really!) so I'm pretty lucky. It's not the cheapest, but I've been happy with the service. Hopefully XO pulls out of their financial woes and keeps the bits flowing.
  • AT&T Broadband Cable in eastern Mass, USA. I think it's about $40-50/mo. $10 off for having one of the other broadband services (cable tv/digital phone). I have all three. Just tested, and got 577kbits down. Estimate up speed at around 256kbits (only basis for measure is the ability to stream 2 128kbit mp3s at once :-). I find burst speeds to be very good up and down.

    Had DSL service a year ago thru Flashcom (tanked) and Covad at ~$50/mo I think. Service was solid when up, speeds were maintained. 640/128kbits. Service did seem to go down more than cable has or had before. Only real benefit was the fixed IP. Got DSL cause I moved somewhere not serviced by cable (big mistake!). Best part about that experience was that I got 1) about 1.5 months of free service after Flashcom tanked and stopped billing, and B)A reasonably decent DSL modem. Lot of good it does me now though.
  • I get 384 Kilobit up and down for $45 per month, with static IP.
  • I get about 2Mbps downstream / 400Kbps upstream for $40 CDN$ (about $25 US$) per month, unlimited bandwidth usage. It's quite a sweet deal. :)

    My provider is a subsidiary of Bell Canada (my DSL service is technically Sympatico High-Speed, but IMO is much better than what they have "down south" (by Toronto et al.)).

  • professional service (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i pay $88/mo to qwest for my DSL line. and $75/mo to theriver.com for my DSL(formerally oz.net). that includes the line, unlimited bandwidth, 8 static ips, reverse dns entries, and ability to run whatever servers i want. from several friends i have heard that my isp is the only one in the area that allows unlimited transfers(off of qwest dsl). I haven't tried others a former co worker told me about oz.net a couple years ago. i wouldn't use any other service. My speed is 1024k up and 1024k down (technically 876k up, due to !#$@ DMT). the network i am on is outstanding, very fast, extremely reliable. hooked to multiple backbones(via SIX - seattle internet exchange). far superior to the qwest T1s i use at work. i get faster ping times to my colo in san fransico(from seattle) then to my office 2 miles down the road using a qwest t1. new customers have to
    pay a lot more, my pricing is mostly leftover
    from the oz.net days. back when i started
    it was $25 for my service+1 ip. then they merged and the price went up(which im happy for, if it helps them make money and continue giving me service). I despise cable because they don't give you this option(option being, pay more, and get more). their network isn't designed for users like myself. DSL on the other hand is a very generic network suitable for many tasks.
  • Of course, it's much more than I pay for. Hey, the DOCSIS 1.0 standard is weak.
  • I would have chosen:

    "I pay CowboyNeal minimum wage + gas money to drive a station wagon full of tapes around the county."
  • I'm getting 1.5mb/s down and 384kb/s up for $90/month from Speakeasy.net in San Diego.

    Doug
  • Gosh I like living in college.
  • $80 + $2 a month. Sierra Vista, AZ. theriver.com.

  • I've got Speakeasy DSL [speakeasy.net] which runs about $100/month for 768 down, 384 up. It may have come down a bit (my better half handles the bills), and I might be able to shave off a few more bucks if I trimmed unnecessary services (like the shell account), but it's still more than the local telco (PacHell), which is cool by me because Speakeasy is really customer focused. They happily set up reverse DNS for my (static) IPs, they have no problem with me running servers, they give advance notice of outages, and much more. I believe that level of service is worth paying for. Most people I know don't. They're happier saving $10 month.

    I think the head of Sweden's telco is probably right - that does sound cheap and people will not voluntarily pay more, but guess what: if those rates are raised $10, people will still pay - they'll just complain about it. Remember when AOL raised rates from like $19.95 to $21.95? It made headline news in the states. I remember everyone grumbling about it. But a month later everyone forgot and AOL continued to grow exponentially after that time (I'm sure they've leveled off since though). One thing I'd be curious about is how are they able to keep rates so low in Sweden? Was part/all of the network government sponsored? Does the unique low price of broadband give Sweden a competive edge to attract high-tech companies to set up shop there over other countries? I don't think the existing customers will be much of a factor in any price increases, but I think they should keep bigger issues like these in mind.

    -"Zow"

    • it's still more than the local telco (PacHell)

      But I assume that Speakeasy only billed you for services you actually received. The same may not be true for PacBell [yahoo.com].
      The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) said Thursday that it has opened an investigation into charges that SBC Pacific Bell--owned by SBC Communications--overbilled customers for DSL (digital subscriber line) and other services. The commission is also looking at whether SBC Pacific Bell underreported complaints regarding "cramming," the practice of putting false charges on customers' bills that are unrelated to actual telephone use.


  • DSL (Score:1)

    by mini me ( 132455 )
    $40 CDN for 1M/128k...

    I'm just happy having broadband at all seeing as how I live out in the middle of nowhere!
  • NZ's only residential DSL supplier is Telecom NZ (various other parties onsell it with their own international bandwidth for slightly less in some cases). NZ$1 ~= US$0.42

    Domestic only midband DSL 128kbps/128kbps midband for ~$NZ65. No static IP, no servers. Data cap of ~10GB/month from some providers.

    Broadband DSL has traffic charges at a variety of rates depending on how much you pay up front for - 2Mbps/250kbps & 400MB traffic for ~$NZ61 + $0.18/MB over 400MB; up to 1000MB traffic for ~$NZ900 + $0.11/MB over 1000MB. Static IP for an extra $NZ27 per month. Run what you like, but watch out for $10,000 bills if your kids install Morpheous and leave it running for 3 months.

    Some other providers supply DSL-like connections to commercial customers - we get 2Mbps for NZ$400ish from Clear, who don't supply high-speed connections to domestic customers (for the most part). In a few areas there's cable internet available, and there is high-speed wireless available in some areas too, for I think costs more or less comparable to DSL.

    One company is pushing for a multi-ISP service with normal downloads through your regulay dial-up ISP, and sattelite-download on demand through their system at speeds of up to 1Mbps for when you want high-speed downloads. Sounds like a mad plan to me. - see http://www.getultra.info/ [getultra.info]. It might be good if you live in a rural area, because that's the best you're going to get, but I can't see it being a huge success, especially when the setup costs are around NZ$550.

  • I think it's a completely absurd to compare how much users in one country pay for broadband as opposed to another. Lets look at what some of the major costs are involved in providing broadband access in the US:

    1. Pipelines of fiber across the country so that users throughout the majority of the country can have access
    2. The cost of piggy-backing off of someone else's infrastructure for the last mile (DSL service providers having to make deals with local phone companies)
    3. TAXES! It's a utility, it gets taxed.
    4. All of the routers and switching stations for all those thousands of miles of fiber.

    Now, lets compare the country of Sweden to the US. It's smaller requiring less mileage and switching/routing infrastructure, it's got different taxes (i'm guessing), and I'm sure there are other factors at work that would affect their cost comparred to the US.

    Now, this isn't even taking into account the fact that maybe Sweden doesn't even have a national landline phone network to piggy-back off of.

    And what about supply and demand? Do those two things have NOTHING to do with the cost that a company can charge? If the above stated price is what users in that country are willing to pay for broadband, then Telia can either raise the price and see what % of their user base leaves, or they can try to optimize or increase profits some other way.

    What an absurd statement.

    • Re:Bizarre comparison (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 )
      God, just shut up.

      This is the internet remember? You can find anything if you know what to look for. GDP, average incomes, tax rates, tax brackets, population densities, urban plans, street maps, bandwidth prices...

      But have you ever tried to find an ISP or cable company in a country you've never lived in? Keyword searches don't work too well, since most companies assume you know where they are and who they service.

      By finding out from customers (such a diverse array of customers as this) you can find out that (maybe) Americans are paying more than Canadians and Germans, but maybe Germans are paying more than Canadians. Then you can compare that against economies and get a good idea of what's what.

      Add on to that the fact that a lot of broadband providers don't even quote exact speeds that you're rate-limited to, let alone that you're likely to get.

      There have been some sincerely stupid [slashdot.org] Ask Slashdot questions in the past, but this isn't really one of them.

      --Dan

  • 1.5 Mb downoad/ 784 upload

    + 3 fixed IP Addresses

    = $81/month

  • What matters are technicals parameters that sound too complicated at first glance but that do reflect the quality of the conection more than all those nifty hundreds of Kbps.

    These are:
    1. Presence/absence of proxy servers (lots of providers install non-transparent proxies at the most common ports, like :80)

    2. Openness of ports (Yet again, many providers use to filter all incoming connections to ports lower than 1024)

    3. Correctly configured of revese DNS zone (without this, you will not be able to access some irc and news servers and probably have some troubles with mail and even web browsing)
  • With NTL - the service is fairly stable, I've had a few days downtime since it was installed, that was about, um, 6 months ago.

    Speeds are good, it's actually 600kbps down in some areas (mine included :), but the service is pretty basic; support is practically non existant (NTL are in way too much debt to pay monkeys to sit at helldesks :)

    There are no up/download limits, and their news setup is excellent. Aside from a transparent HTTP proxy which goes pear shaped every so often, there are no blocks to, for instance, port 25 in/outgoing.

    So that's £25 (~$35) for the CM, plus £15 (~$21) for the phone/TV.
  • For about $69 with 5 static ips and the ability to have as many netblocks as I want attached to the dsl. My roommate owns three class C and they can be attached to the dsl for free. The dsl modem does NAT or 1to1 NAT or routed and its pretty nice dsl as long as its up.

    This is with atg ( http://www.callatg.com [callatg.com] ) but to get anything done, or to have any support you are out of luck.

  • ISP: $15
    DSL Line: $30 (Qwest DSL Deluxe)
    -----
    Total: $45 montly (not including telephone line itself)

    256 kbsp down guaranteed (burstable to 640), 256 kbps up (not guaranteed)

    To be fair, my ISP charge should be $20 a month but I'm on a very ancient pricing structure and because I'm a long-time customer they have never raised my price.

  • Maximum of about 300 KByte downstream and 16 KByte upstream (lately more around 200 KByte down)
    for 40,39/month ( about $35 )

    And that's pretty affordable even for a student
    ( when you split the bill with your roommates ;-)
  • Cincinnati Ohio USA

    Cincinnati Bell Zoomtown ADSL

    768 kbps / 384 kbps 39.95

    Time Warner Road Runner Cable Modem

    2 mbps 39.95 recently increased to 44.95
  • In Halifax Canada there is pretty good competition between the cable Internet, EastLink [eastlink.ca] and the DSL Internet, Mpowered [www.mtt.ca]. Free install, special offers etc.

    They're both about Can$40 a month. I have no idea about up/down speeds. Maybe between 100 kilobytes/s and 300 KB/s for a fast site. As far as I know the cable is symmetric. I upload tens of megs of digital photos plenty fast enough for me, anyway.

  • Ok, so I get a one bedroom apartment with a loft and a phone line included with my bandwidth costs. But it is really worth it :-)

    I live in student housing for the University of Washington. All the apartments here have 100Mbps built into the wall. So I either pay nothing or some % of $860. You figure it out.

    Oh, and we are miles away from campus. How did they get all that bandwidth all the way out here? Beats me! I heard a rumor that they are renting it form the phone company, but who knows.
  • 6MBit down, 768k up.
    Between Shaw nodes, that goes up. I should be able to saturate my link to 10MBit down, and get a bit better than 1MBit up.

    That's $40CDN a month. If I also have cable TV (I don't, right now...) they give me a multi-use discount, so I pay $30 a month.
  • I pay around $140 NZ - that's about $70 US, for two 256k down 128k up cable connections that each have a 5gig limit/month before paying 20cNZ (10c US) for each meg thereafter.

    I have to have two connections because the companies who provide it (Paradise [paradise.co.nz] and Saturn [saturn.co.nz]) won't sell any sort of increased bandwidth option for thier accounts.

    On the bright side, they do give you a static IP, don't mind you running servers, and specifically allow you to share you NAT your connection to multiple machines. They (Paradise) also run a few "free traffic" servers for gaming, shoutcast relays, usenet etc.

  • Up to 768K down, 128K up.
  • Well, cable modem is $30 a month for what appears to be 6 megabits down, 1.5 megabits up. DSL is $65 a month for the ISP (this includes static IP, secondary DNS (I host primary), and 8 additional IPs (for a total of 9). The line itself is an additional $30 a month or something. Still *less* than I was paying for a dedicated 56k dialup with the same services attached to it (through the same company [cyberzone.net].) I consider both to be worth it for the services provided (cable: insanely fast bandwidth, DSL: everything else.)

    - A.P.
  • 1.54mbit/1.54mbit SDSL, 6 static IP addresses (with more if I ask for them), no bandwith metering or limiting, no restrictions on ports, services or what I do with it.

    $85/month

    and worth every US$0.01
  • IgLou (www.iglou.com) $9.99 minimum for any speed DSL, with static IP and servers allowed. The 768/384 ADSL line from Cincinnati Bell (www.zoomtown.com) I pay $29.99 a month for. So $40/month for a single static IP with servers (more IPs for more $) isn't bad.

    The alternative is $44.95/month for RoadRunner through Cincinnati Time Warner cable. Their ToS doesn't look like it prohibits servers either but since I don't use them I can't say for sure.
  • ...For cable modem access:

    downlink : max 300kbs/avg 100kbs/min 0kbs ;)

    uplink : max 12kbs (as per agreement)

    cost : around 40$/month.

    By the way, do not be surprised it's the same everywhere in canada, this is because of a ruling of the government/local FCC equivalent.

    To summarize, in canada, if someone gets BB access at more than 40$, that's somewhat illegal...

    • "... To summarize, in canada, if someone gets BB access at more than 40$, that's somewhat illegal... "

      You apply to the CRTC with what you want to charge, and they say yes or no. I don't think they've ever said no, by the way.

      You need to reapply to change that rate; again a "no" answer is pretty much unheard of, although sometimes they will balk if you can't show the price is reasonable (you need the money for profits, infastructure, etc), so you might have to revise your rate.

      There are plenty of services that are more than $40, although you are correct in that most are in the $40 to $45 range.

      All prices in Canadian Dollars (x 0.63 = $USD).

  • My big problem is address space. I cannot convince Time Warner to give me my own routable subnet, so I have to use NAT (which is evil, evil, evil). This is unreasonable. There is plenty of IPv4 addresses around, and if ISPs are so concerned about scarcity, then maybe they should get of their butts and start rolling out IPv6. I don't know about the rest of you, but I can easily justify a /27 or a /28, and that's just counting the computers that still boot! ;)

    As for bandwidth, I certainly want it fast and furious, but if ISDN was as cheap as cable (2-Mbps down, 384-Kbps up, business-class SLA), I'd think twice about ISDN so I could have real IPs.

  • 199 + tax fees ~ $208 1.1 up and down.
  • I have OptimumOnline Cable Modem Service and pay $40 a month if I am already a cable subscriber. It's $10 more if you do not use them as a Cable TV provider.
    http://www.optonline.net
  • Well, I just took my cable modem back in today after having it for more than a year. Charter Pipeline can kiss my ass. I talked to a customer service rep shortly before the @Home debacle, and was told that my price wouldn't go up and that I would get half price service for the first two months. Two months later, a bill comes saying I need to pay 15$ more a month for service, $56.40 (includes modem rental) and I didn't get my half price month. I called billing and the lady basically said that I couldn't prove that someone told me that, and there wasn't anything I could do. Taking the modem in today, and the service desk rep was a total bitch to me and quite rude. There were also about 15 modems in a pile on a desk behind her... I assume that I wasn't the first to bring my modem back.

    Needless to say, that type of service has me subscribing to DSL at the end of the month. Of course, it's dial up till then. *guh*
    • That's who I'm with now. I wish @Home hadn't gone under, they kicked ass..

      The secretaries (I'm hesitant to call them much more) tend to be a bit nicer if you show up just after lunchtime around here. Maybe they take happy pills as dessert or something. *shrug*

      I was told that my "service will not change" when I "switch to Charter Pipeline" (as though I had a choice, @Home died!!).. it was a load of crap though, for two simple reasons: @Home did NOT enforce their caps, and everyone had a STATIC IP. My service changed from "Useful" with that static IP to "Utter Crap" with this dynamic broadband bullshit. I can live with capped speeds, especially since it's still considerably faster than dialup.. but they should have defaulted the IP ranges that local cable companies were "assigned" by @Home to those local cable companies.

  • Twice as much as before... (Score:3, Informative)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <jason.nashNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday February 07, 2002 @11:17PM (#2972027)
    I had a RoadRunner cable modem for $40/month. My company picked up the bill for it so now it is registered as a business cable modem. They pay $80/month for exactly the same setup.

    To get a static IP I would have to pay a $99 install fee (they change me to a Cisco box) and an extra $50/month.

    But, I'm very happy with it. 2Mb/sec down, 384Kb/sec up and I get every bit of it.
    • I have several customers on business cable modem service. I have yet to see any of their ip addys change since Road runner around here seperated business and residential users. Incidently, my ip on my earthlink cable via time warner has yet to change, and its been three months since I had it installed. I got the same ip with my laptop, and with my desktop after cycling the cable modem power, so it seems my ip is also semi-static.
    • RoadRunner in Kansas City, I asked what they charge for their most basic internet connection: $19.95. Just the internet, no tv. What started out as a constant 2MB/sec up-down has been turning into 3MB/sec bursts both ways. That's two ISO images in just over an hour.

      No port filtering, so I get the usual funny viral entries in my httpd logs.

      Reliability has been nonstop, except for the ice storm just this last week in which the lovely tree in my back yard knocked down the 14 kilovolt wire for the neighborhoods around me. The cablemodem came right back up when the electric company repaired everyone's downed poles a week later.
  • www.SpeakEasy.net [speakeasy.net]

    Only one problem in 6 months. Tech. support is fine...if you don't need to call them ...if you do need to call them...forget it, mostly you only get support through email...and their responsivness is poor. They do seem to be trying to improve though.

    However, on the whole, not too much worse than anyone else I've dealt with, other than Netsight (Chicago, IL)...they were horrible. Never returned calls, email down once a week...on the plus side though...it took them months, and months to bill me

  • from Telus ADSL [telus.net]

    $40 (canadian) for 1.5Mbps / 512kbps

    That's $US 25 ,or 29 Euros

    Although I've never seen it that fast. Large files from MS download at ~1 Mbps.

  • I pay ~50 USD a month for 2 mbit down, 1.5 mbit up, but time warner has their network capped at 200k, so thats about all I get. Where I work, we used to pay 340 a month for 768k SDSL w/ 64 ip addys.

  • Check out dslreports.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Friday February 08, 2002 @12:05AM (#2972218) Journal
    Check out DSLReports.com [dslreports.com] for a lot of ISPs and reviews thereof in multiple countries (US, Canada, UK, and one other afaik).

    Also, I use Shaw, as does another [slashdot.org] slashdot user. I get what s/he gets.

    Also, a friend of mine in Washington state gets wireless internet for free. Not legally, but...

    --Dan
  • Note: I can do this _legally_ because I attend the school I'm doing it to.

    Project still in progress (waiting for special ordered parts). A $20 home built 802.11b antenna and a major university a mile a way, although a decent investment in equipment, I doubt more than the typical DSL or Cable setup.

    1 Lucent Orinoco Silver 802.11b pcmcia card - $75

    1 Antenna cable - $22

    2 N connectors - $8

    1 18" piece of PVC - in the garage

    20' of coax - also in garage

    Had the misc networking hardware already.
    Apartment roof has line of site to an access point about a mile away at school. So taking all this into consideration, my setup equates to a $0 reaccuring cost. If you live in a well populated area you could probably build a similar setup linked to a local business, but that wouldn't be nice, so don't do it. I'd also like to note that when I moved into my apartment, and before I figured all this out, I would have been happy paying for broadband. But there's nothing available here.
  • My narrowband provider is Charter Communications with Earthlink as the ISP. I pay $24.95 for service and $4.95 for modem rental (with the option to buy my own DOCSIS compliant modem from anybody I want). I get 256 down and 64 up which for me isn't too bad. For $39.95 I can upgrade to 512d/128u and then the last upgrade is like $60/mo for 1.5mb symmetrical. For my $24 I get pretty good ping times playing just about anything and consistant download speeds. Their service has gotten MUCH better than it used to be, they actually answer the phone now when you've got a problem.

  • TimeWarner RoadRunner, Western NY (Score:3, Informative)

    by extra88 ( 1003 ) on Friday February 08, 2002 @03:03AM (#2972866)
    US$45/month ($5 discount if also paying for $30+ cable TV)

    2Mbps download cap
    384Kbps upload cap

    Noticably slower at peak times but still satisfactory (can listen to 128Kbps audio streams, load web pages and download files many times faster than dialup).

    Only noticed one case of downtime (couple of hours) in the past 4 months.

    Latency is pretty good, I can always find 100ms Quake3 servers.

    Service includes USENET news server (including binary groups), 5 email accounts, 5MB web disk space. No virus filtering on mail.

    The only port I know is blocked is 25 (you can't receive mail on your own SMTP server). Running servers is not explicitly supported but they're not shut down either. Ditto for NAT boxes (tho' they will sell you additional IPs for $5/month if you want). Port 80 has never been blocked.

    IPs are not static but address seems to change only once a year for the same MAC address (if your MAC address changes, your IP changes).

    DSL is available in the area with comparable features & rates. I am pretty happy with my service. I don't think I would seriously consider dropping it unless the rate went over $50/month.
  • "As a reference, getting 1024 kbps (that's kilobits) download and 200 kbps upload from Telia currently costs 295 SEK (around $30)."

    I pay 275sek (~$27) for my Telia ADSL 512/768. But then, I haven't had to pay it for 5 months because the service has been terrible, only recently did I get a good working connection after some ~50 calls to Telia...

    Problem in Sweden is, if Telia raises the price to $100 a month, if you want DSL, that's basically your only option unless you live in one of the major cities. Skanova (owned by Telia) owns the physical carriers, Telia Internet Services leases them from Skanova at a high cost, Skanova makes a lot of money for their dear mother Telia, Internet Services makes a LOT less, but hey, Telia as a corp makes enough to keep it afloat. Daughter companies exchange money back and forth basically.

    However, enter 3rd party ISP, if they want to provide DSL they HAVE to lease carriers from Skanova, unless they want to dig down their own. Skanova eats the profit, smaller ISP makes barely enough to get by, if even that, Telia is happy, consumer is told to bend over, spread, and smile.

  • I've recently got ADSL here in the UK. I've bought it from my old dialup ISP. However, BT [btopenworld.com] provide most of the infrastructure, did the install, and take the lions share of the monthly fee.

    I opted for the business service (you can run services, get static IPs, they promise to only oversell the bandwidth by 50%, instead of the 400% on residential etc), which sets me back £100/month ($140/month) for a 512kbps downlink / 256kbps uplink. Every extra 256kbps downwards costs another £20, and you can't start buying more uplink bandwidth until your downlink is at 1Mbit/s.

    Initially, I got a static IP thrown in with the deal. I've just gone over to 6 IPs (one for the dsl router, leaving 5 for my boxes), and that was only another £20 / month, but that sort of charge is much higher if you're buying direct from BT

  • T-DSL (Score:2)

    by XRayX ( 325543 )
    I'm a slave of the German Telekom and its online-sevice T-Online [t-online.de]. They offer T-DSL, 768kbit down - 128 kbit up, and I'm really happy with it. My Connection is always fast ans stable, it works great with Fli4l [fli4l.de] and it costs just 30 EUR.
  • The long term strategy of companies selling broadband to the consumer market is not to sell bits. There's not nearly as much profit potential in selling bits, which is essentially a commodity market, as in selling content and thus be able to sell eyeballs to advertisers.

    A content company with control over the pipes into consumers homes means that they can capture all of the profit w/o having to share. Remember when AT&T wanted to charge businesses for all ecommerce transactions that went to their broadband customers? This is what AOL/TW is about and why open access matters.

    So broadband operators can take a loss leader on the price of broadband, or sell as close to cost as possible even though there isn't meaningful competition in the broadband market. They need customers so that they can partner with content providers and advertisers. Just wait for interactive TV.
  • I am paying 45$ CDN (~30$ US), modem included, for 1 Mb/s dl, 40 Kb/s ul. Yes, the upload suck but I don't need it much beside the odd ssh session. My other option was the cable co (Videotron) at a similar price for much greater speed, but the service only allow for 6 Gb download, 2 Gb upload IIRC. Plus Videotron like to block port at random (25 inbound, 80 inbound in the Code Red era). Sympatico are cool about running server (at that speed, there is'nt much point anyway). They only block 25 outbound, so you must relay your mail thru their SMTP server.

    Personnally, I am using a Nortel modem but I think (this will have to be confirmed) that those using newer modem (Alcatel) are getting greater speed. I don't complain; the added speed would only be welcome when I download ISO (about 2 hour from a good server).

    BTW, this is residential service. Commercial xDSL service is much more expensive (80-200+ CDN$, depending on your SLA).
  • Of course, it was COX@Home. It was very fast (in excess of 1mbit/second). Now that they've transitioned to their own internet service, online speed rating programs put me at about 580kbit/second on my downloads. Seems to match what I've been seeing, actually.

    Cost? $34.95/month + $10/month cable modem rental. I really need to stop renting that cable modem.

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