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Japan's J:Com provides broadband service upgrades at bargain basement prices

Last week, DailyTech brought you news that Time Warner Cable (TWC) is extending its metered internet service to markets in Austin, San Antonio, Rochester, and Greensboro. TWC is choking customers' monthly bandwidth to 5GB, 10GB, 20GB, and 40GB at prices ranging from $29.95 to $54.95 per month.

The highest priced tier, 40GB/$54.95, offers customers download speeds of 16 Mbps.

Over in Japan, however, customers are seeing download speeds ten times that limit at comparable prices. According to a recent article from the New York Times, J:Com -- Japan's largest cable provider -- is touting its 160 Mbps consumer broadband service. The interesting piece of information to take away is that J:Com's cost to upgrade its systems to handle the 160 Mbps speeds was just $20 per household.

For comparison's sake, Verizon's high-speed FiOS service costs the company $817 per household and an additional $716 for equipment/labor costs per household.

The only piece of equipment that J:Com customers need to take advantage of the higher speeds is an upgraded modem which costs $60, roughly twice that of the standard modem used for slower service plans.

As for internet service pricing, J:Com customers also appear to get a rather sweet deal. The 160 Mbps service only costs $60 USD per month, while the 30 Mbps service is just $55 per month.

When it comes to the United States and sky high pricing for internet service and service upgrades, the finger is pointed at less competition in the marketplace. Broadband internet offers the highest profit margin for cable companies and many providers state that there just isn't much demand for such "super-high speed" internet service.

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well
By AntiV6 on 4/5/2009 5:00:48 PM , Rating: 5
Japan's broadband market seems to be near a perfect competition. When many companies offer similar products, prices go down and performance goes up.

In America, it seems to be a small monopoly in most areas. With few choices people can pay $10 a month for Dial-up, or $40+ a month for the only broadband company.

I wonder if companies will actually get competitive in America. :I




RE: well
By Clauzii on 4/5/2009 5:25:29 PM , Rating: 5
A 5 Gigabyte at $29.95/month can be used in 5 1/2 hours with a 2mbit connection. And downloading a movie is basically 25.95, legal or not. (doing it legal would add the price of the movie itself of course).

If there where no bandwidth restriction, it would be a fair price, but $29.95 is WAY too much for 5GB. What is the price per extra GB, $5?

Flatrate is the only way, as I see it, no matter if one has a slow or fast connection. No need for 'overloaded' account or some other costly extras.


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/2009 5:37:55 PM , Rating: 1
speed is almost irrelevant here, you cannot really download all the quickly from a 160mbps connection: no server would feed you the data fast enough. and if you connect through a 100mbps wireless router... well you get the idea.

the problem is (and has always been) that there are limits on HOW MUCH you can download before they start charging you by the gigabit. i used to have videotron unlimited, but they quietly made that unlimited service limited (they're calling it ultimate extreme or some other nonsense now), and that cost me an additional $50 for the month a few months ago.

i'd be happy with 10mbps if it meant unlimited usage and came with good latency (for gaming).


RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By danrien on 4/5/2009 6:32:16 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
english is not a difficult language to learn, please put some effort into it. this is a good place to start: http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/


I don't think I've ever read anything more ironic in my life...


RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/5/2009 6:51:54 PM , Rating: 1
Well I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were making up arbitrary facts. I don't see it stated anywhere that any of these services were limited. But hey, if you want to point out what I missed then please tell me.


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/6/2009 2:26:29 AM , Rating: 1
I think you have it backwards my friend. You say that having 160 Mbps speeds are useless since you wouldn't be able to use it. I was refuting that position. I believe you are the stupid one my friend, as is obvious since you only resort to flaming instead of actually trying to make a counter-argument. But hey, I guess not all of us are cut out for high school.


RE: well
By lco45 on 4/6/2009 3:08:04 AM , Rating: 5
They say that arguing on the internet is like racing in the special olympics.
Even if you win you're still retarded.

Luke


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/6/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/6/2009 1:11:52 PM , Rating: 2
Well you said speed is irrelevant, aka useless. I'm only responding to like the first sentence of your post, not the whole thing. If you don't have unlimited download then that's not our problem. I'm just responding to your first sentence about the speed of the internet in the article so I'm going off of that. I don't know what's so hard for you to understand.

I'm not saying that 160 Mbps would be worth it if you had a download cap of 100 GB, but since none is specified I assume it's unlimited. I'm not comparing your crappy internet service to the article.


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/6/09, Rating: 0
RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/7/2009 1:27:37 AM , Rating: 2
Most people use their brains to figure out which part of their post I was replying to, guess God left that out of your brain though.

It's rather amusing to sit here and watch all your posts get downrated because you can only flame people. You might find this hard to believe but not everyone in the US has bandwidth caps and overpriced internet. Of course just because you live outside the US doesn't mean that you have better internet either. Congrats on your unlimited dial-cup connection you have in the middle of the Amazon jungle though. I'm really impressed they even got internet in the most uncivilized part of the world.


RE: well
By dxf2891 on 4/8/2009 8:58:06 AM , Rating: 2
Rolling on the floor Laughing My Big Fat @$$ off. That has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever read.


RE: well
By LRonaldHubbs on 4/6/09, Rating: 0
RE: well
By jconan on 4/6/2009 1:37:05 AM , Rating: 2
interesting j:com price structure http://www.jcom.co.jp/english/services/net.html if everyone petitioned to the fcc about the pricing or demand their congressman or representative do something maybe then possibly something will be done by the current government about these telecomm pricing structures...

i think there is too many conflicting interests. first off many of these companies don't just serve internet, they also serve content. so if all the bandwidth is used by downloading some content it will affect their content delivery or decrease vod revenue for the telecos.

i think the fcc should split the media and content infrastructure business so that way there are no business conflicts.


RE: well
By Wagnbat on 4/6/2009 4:08:04 AM , Rating: 2
Sounds like a good basis for an Obama supported Internet Stimulus package.


RE: well
By inighthawki on 4/5/2009 6:17:44 PM , Rating: 2
true, but maybe your forgetting that you cannot get 100mbps on a 10mbps connection, and you can get a gigabit router to handle the extra 60mbps. Just a thought.


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/2009 6:22:41 PM , Rating: 1
gigabit wireless?


RE: well
By GaryJohnson on 4/5/2009 8:24:36 PM , Rating: 2
~200mbps real-world speed on wireless N with channel bonding.


RE: well
By inighthawki on 4/5/2009 8:55:17 PM , Rating: 2
you are aware there is a such thing as a non-wireless connection? I thought it was obvious i was referring to getting a wired connection


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By inighthawki on 4/5/2009 11:21:26 PM , Rating: 3
lol i am completely aware of that, and i was just mentioning that if u wanted the full 160mbps you have the option of going the wired route with a gigabit router, too hard to understand?


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By littlebitstrouds on 4/5/2009 11:54:32 PM , Rating: 5
Well aren't you just a prick in just about every post you make


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/6/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By dxf2891 on 4/8/09, Rating: 0
RE: well
By jimbojimbo on 4/6/2009 4:02:45 PM , Rating: 2
Why the hell is everyone assuming that the 160mbps would serve one personon on one computer doing one thing? Oh yeah, you guys all live by yourself.

Really, in a household of say 4, if the son and daughter were streaming YouTube videos, the wife is video chatting with a friend, and you're trying to stream NetFlix, all the while using torrents in the background you could put a hell of a dent on that connection.

Also, sure wirelessN will only give you so much speed but has anybody assumed that maybe one computer is connected via a cable?

The only bottlenecking I see here is maybe the WAN port on a router. The newest routers all have gig ports but I'm not sure about that WAN port. I guess if you're using it in the US though you won't ever have to worry about that.


RE: well
By Bruneauinfo on 4/5/2009 8:47:34 PM , Rating: 5
i'm sure in Japan the servers there dish out 160 mbps or they wouldn't have the option available. supply and demand or something.


RE: well
By Tsuwamono on 4/5/2009 10:46:49 PM , Rating: 2
Which is why I'm fine with my connection here in Canada. I have low latency and 5mbps with unlimited bandwidth in both directions.


RE: well
By ToughHoBo on 4/6/2009 2:59:35 AM , Rating: 2
Really? Unlimited bandwidth?
Care to share with us your provider?


RE: well
By nosfe on 4/6/2009 7:48:16 AM , Rating: 4
what's the big deal about unlimited bandwidth? here in Romania we've had it since a couple of years now and we're a developing country


RE: well
By rdeegvainl on 4/6/2009 9:14:27 AM , Rating: 2
im so moving there!!!!11!!1one!!1


RE: well
By ToughHoBo on 4/7/2009 12:41:02 PM , Rating: 2
We're capped at 100GB/month and that's on the most expensive premium account. It isn't the unlimited bandwidth that's attractive but the ugly fact that our providers like to roof a low cap and charge $1-3/GB(Downstream+upstream)extra for going over.

Since Romania is a developing nation with unlimited cap and Canada is a developed nation and with caps. Doesn't the backward thinking frustrate you a little?


RE: well
By akosixiv on 4/10/2009 4:42:49 PM , Rating: 2
ouch...

I get like 3mb/1mb here but its uncapped and costs less than $20 a month.

and I'm not even in a city, farms all over the place and with the beach just a 15 min drive from the house. (it just takes 5 mins if the roads were not that bad).


RE: well
By DASQ on 4/6/2009 11:12:45 AM , Rating: 2
I'm with Shaw and while I apparently am limited to 300GB a month, I have not once receive a complaint about going over that cap, and I have BLOWN past it, I think I hit over 700GB (just download) for 3 months running last summer.


RE: well
By jimbojimbo on 4/6/2009 4:04:07 PM , Rating: 3
Get ready to bend over when your bill arrives.


RE: well
By DASQ on 4/7/2009 11:20:57 AM , Rating: 2
Bill already arrived, no additional charges were applied. Again, I said LAST summer.


RE: well
By Gul Westfale on 4/6/09, Rating: 0
RE: well
By MadMan007 on 4/5/2009 11:47:29 PM , Rating: 2
Or maybe you download from more than one server at a time? der.


RE: well
By chick0n on 4/6/2009 1:57:12 AM , Rating: 1
That simply means u've never been to a data center before.

when you're there. is not that hard to see a 1 gig file flies to your hard drive, not even a minute.

ok fine, home use, 100 mbps ? oh come on. most routers these days have GigE already.

The problem is monopoly. Cable companies are so full of shit. Most users dont need that much downloads? Give me a fatter pipe I will show you what I can do with it (my connection is on 24x7 anyway, haha)


RE: well
By kyleb2112 on 4/6/2009 4:12:54 AM , Rating: 3
I'm in the same boat. I rarely approach my speed limits even with full torrents blazing. My monthly cap on the other hand is a complete ball breaker: 15 gigs up, 40 down. I have to use monitoring software just to avoid the wrath of of my ISP. I would GLADLY trade half my speed for double my cap limit.

But I don't want to be accused of saying "we should just stop upgrading then". Wouldn't want my "logic" challenged, since that's such a logical conclusion to draw...


RE: well
By MrPoletski on 4/6/2009 7:25:36 AM , Rating: 2
While I don't agree with the idea that 'nobody needs 160MBps' it would be very interesting to learn about any throttling regime present on this ISP... which are present in so many other ISP's in the west.


RE: well
By seraphim1982 on 4/6/2009 10:09:37 AM , Rating: 2
That kind of connection speed is NOT irrelevant.....
Despite the fact you cannot download that fast, you can download more from multiple places and very likely is it an also an upgrade in upload as well if we're seeing such an increase in download speed.

Argument at hand in the article is more about price and how North America gets ripped of, but they do not include the fact that Japan is tiny and infrastructure costs are much different of those cities and rural areas of the US. Although, just about every Asian major city has a high-end internet, roughly 5-10times the speed of (north american) ISPs at rough only 5-20$ at max (Not including exchange rate) making the difference minimal at best.

I do believe American ISPs are lazy in their plans to improve their customer experience, but rather gorge them of money. All the ISPs have created a cartel to reflect this. There isn't an ISP that continually improves performance and charges a reasonable price. That is why all the top ISPs are pretty much the same with regards to performance/price.


RE: well
By jimbojimbo on 4/6/2009 4:08:46 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
fact that Japan is tiny and infrastructure costs are much different of those cities and rural areas of the US
Yeah, you're right. Since I live in Chicago you're saying I should have the same level of service for the same price right? Yeah. How about $50/month for 3mbps/384kbps? My math may be shady but 3mbps I believe is less than 160mbps.


RE: well
By EricMartello on 4/6/2009 1:32:56 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
speed is almost irrelevant here, you cannot really download all the quickly from a 160mbps connection: no server would feed you the data fast enough. and if you connect through a 100mbps wireless router... well you get the idea.


Actually, not. First of all, this is 2007 and most of us in the know are using Gigabit networking equipment. You mean you're not?

While it is true that you may not be able to max out 160 Mbps from one single server, it would be possible to download simultaneously from multiple sites, bit torrent or any of the other P2P networks that work in a similar way.

I have fios 15/2 now and the price was recently jacked up from $52 per month to $62. I'd like a fixed price around $50 per month and 50 megs in both directions. It would also be great if I could get multiple static IPs so I could run a server at home.


RE: well
By SimpleLance on 4/6/2009 2:18:52 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
speed is almost irrelevant here, you cannot really download all the quickly from a 160mbps connection: no server would feed you the data fast enough. and if you connect through a 100mbps wireless router... well you get the idea.


But you can download simultaneously from different servers. You can watch movies while updates are being downloaded. File sharing protocols would also benefit greatly because they download from multiple sources. Multiple computers at home would also not affect each other (your wife would not complain that you are affecting her internet usage).


RE: well
By andrejs on 4/6/2009 3:30:49 AM , Rating: 2
well.. usa is geting behind europe... and geting there fast

i have cable tv company internet acces... and unbundled internet unlimitet access is

1mbit - 20 usd
4mbit - 30 usd
16mbit - 81 usd

and competition just got speed upgrades for the same price.. so i expect speed upgrades also :)

and bundled triple play package with unlimited 2mbit internet and unlimited phone in national calls, and basic 40 channel tv package is 43 usd. to get this 40 channels in digital format and aditional 30 channels you pay extra 5 usd monthly. in this package upgrade to 6 mbits unlimited is 20 usd and to 16mbit unlimited 54 usd

and this is truly unlimited service...
i dont download that much.. only around 100 gb a month... but my friend fills his hdd with hd movies regulary so.. its probably 300-400 gb monthly :)

i just go to him with my external hdd and take what i need :)


RE: well
By andrejs on 4/6/2009 3:36:16 AM , Rating: 3
p.s. i'm writing from croatia :)


RE: well
By Hiawa23 on 4/6/2009 8:54:51 AM , Rating: 2
That is interesting. I have Brighthouse here in Central Florida & I think my connection is 7mbs could upgrade to 15mbs for $10 more per month & this seems interesting. I think my broadband is either $29 or $39, but seems like a ripoff if these numbers are possible out there somewhere.


RE: well
By quiksilvr on 4/5/2009 6:27:07 PM , Rating: 2
At home we have 1.5 Mbps down / 256 kbps up for $35 a month. Kinda crappy but there's no cap limit. At that speed though, something like that should only cost $20.

I do hope for a day when we can get cheaper high speed internet. Hopefully when some bills get past to build up the infrastructure, it will become cheaper for cable providers to give us tasty bits at tasty prices.


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/5/2009 6:34:55 PM , Rating: 5
Bandwidth limits are unheard of here in Finland, Europe. (Like you guys say it at DT, "socialistic Europe" ;) )

I have been using broadband for 10 years, never had any bandwidth limits. Only the speed has increased, because of better technology and competition.

You don't need Tokyo or skyscrapers or mega-cities to have very fast broadband. In Helsinki and in the area (with the neighboring cities in the range of 30 miles about 1 million residents) you can get
http://www.welho.fi/yksityisille/laajakaista/laaja...
110/5M broadband for 54,90 euros per month, no bandwidth limits. That cable company is also providing cable tv-channels, and is using the existing tv cabling (coaxial) for then broadband connection. The cabling is from the 1980's, long before we knew about the net. :)

If you live in small hut ( :) ) in the forest with no cable tv, using the existing phone line for a DSL broadband you can get 24/1m for 48.90 euros per month.

http://saunalahti.fi/internet/adsl/adslhinnat.php?...

There are about ten different companies providing over 10M connections in Finland, not one of them is using any limits. Or has been previously.


RE: well
By yacoub on 4/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: well
By Zoomer on 4/5/2009 7:16:31 PM , Rating: 5
Do you really believe that now?


RE: well
By toyotabedzrock on 4/5/2009 7:31:22 PM , Rating: 2
RE: well
By Bruneauinfo on 4/5/2009 8:51:12 PM , Rating: 2
none of them look like sites i would go getting up in arms about being banned either.


RE: well
By Hyperion1400 on 4/5/2009 8:59:25 PM , Rating: 3
Hmm, only thing I saw on that list was a bunch of child porn sights. So, in that respect they aren't really censoring anything at all.... just abiding international law. So much for my unfounded fears of Socialism ;)


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/5/2009 9:50:26 PM , Rating: 3
Yes, it's the child pornographic site block list.
Most ISP:s don't even use that list, because everyone knows that those bastards can't be stopped with a list like that. They use anonymous proxies and what have you. The no-go list is more like to prevent young newbie surfers ending up in wrong places with their Internet Explorer.

And the wikileaks page loaded up in under 1 sec for me ;)

But we are little envy to the Swedes, are darling neighbors. Their government made a political decision to put fiber everywhere about 15 years ago. They considered fiber as essential part of infrastructure, like roads and railway and so on. All small towns and even villages have fiber, of course the bigger ones, too. That's why the Swedes have 100/100 connection for $20-30 per month, not capped. The private ISP companies share the same fibers (unlimited bandwidth) and compete with price. The ISP:s pay rent to the government, so the government get their investment back in 20-30 years, just like in roads, bridges and ports.

We (the Finns) are doing somehow the same, but the Swedes got a 10 years head start.

That's the reason Japan, South-Korea and Japan are the most advanced broadband countries in world.

In those countries government made some good strategic decisions,and hundreds of other governments missed that.

(at DT good government decisions are called socialism. I laugh every time I see the S word here, that is daily :) :) )


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/5/2009 9:56:38 PM , Rating: 2
Typo:
Sweden, South Korea, Japan


RE: well
By CommodoreVic20 on 4/5/2009 11:13:21 PM , Rating: 2
Upgrading the U.S. network infrastructure is an order of magnitude higher in complexity, cost and difficulty than Finland. Most American cities, which are VASTLY larger than Helsinki, are fibered very well and offer relatively inexpensive uncapped high speed broadband connectivity. The problem comes when you need to cover millions of square miles to support the rest of the country. U.S. companies has been installing fiber everywhere for many, many years. Hundreds of thousands of miles worth. Keep in mind that it isn't just fiber but the back end equipment and immense workforce to maintain it. Connectivity between major cities etc...

The question I have is as countries worldwide upgrade their internal networks, how are the connections between countries keeping up?


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/5/2009 11:30:51 PM , Rating: 5
Finland is the 5th biggest country in Europe after France, Spain, Germany, Sweden

Finland is bigger than Colorado or Arizona, and almost the size of California.

So what prevents let's say California of doing what Sweden (which is bigger than California) has done, or Finland. I can't believe that California, Colorado or Arizona are not wealthy enough. You can always borrow some more cash from China :)
It's all about political willpower, or lack of.


RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/6/2009 2:41:51 AM , Rating: 2
Probably the fact that those STATES aren't the national government. I couldn't say anything concrete though. I don't really know the inner workings of the government.


RE: well
By MadMan007 on 4/6/2009 3:11:45 AM , Rating: 2
Municipalities can do it, at least after battling the legacy ISPs in court for years: http://www.lus.org/site.php


RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/6/2009 9:52:14 AM , Rating: 2
Must not be a priority then. They'd rather just have higher salaries.


RE: well
By MadMan007 on 4/5/2009 11:56:39 PM , Rating: 5
The geopgraphic argument is silly, it's all about lack of competition. Many markets are monopolies for braodband, some are duopolies but with different speed services (1 DSL, 1 Cable) and a few have what might reasonably be called competition. Not surprisingly in the last category prices are lower and services better.

The difference is in the deployment model. In the non-US countries mentioned the government installed the infrastructure and has a longer-term outlook on the ROI, then they got out of the way and let the companies compete. With the short-term ROI mentality of for-profit corps they aren't going to spread cost out over decades to wait for a return. There are some small instances where government has done something similar in the US. Lafayette LA is the main one I know about, the municipal government did it there.


RE: well
By Darkskypoet on 4/7/2009 3:52:16 AM , Rating: 2
Actually.. the funny thing, is that competition in this case (if the infrastructure doesn't already exist) will hurt rather then help in small markets. This is exactly why the cities are getting FTTC, and the smaller rural areas are getting the shaft. Honestly, in most of these other countries that are far ahead of the US in fibre to the home penetration rates, is because there is a crap load of government spending involved in building the infrastructure. For SK, and Japan, the fiber landscape is seen to be as vital as the interstate system is here. One thing that would be great to see is an FDR-esque plan by Obama to implement FTTS!!!

Yes, that's right!!! Fiber to the shack! Rural areas rejoice, for the next great make work project, we'll follow the likes of FDR and Hitler, and build something useful for the country, rather then feeding the overcapacity in the domestic car manufacturing sector.

All kidding aside, most rural residents are subsidized by urban residents in a sense, especially if you are using a national, or multi-state firm to get your service. the reason, is that of course it is a heck of a lot more expensive to run a fiber trunk to some little town in the midwest, then what it is to run that same trunk 2 miles to the next suburban subdivision with equal population.

Similar to Municipal cable, I'd prefer to see the fed or state governments (or both) run fiber trunks out to every single little village in the US and then lease access to the lines back to the content / service providers. As well if need be, run it further in to the apartment buildings, civil authorities offices, schools, etc. Not quite necessary to every home, but I am talking real capacity building here. The issue is a government can be ok with receiving a very long term low intensity payout for such a project, most private firms simply cannot. Shareholders hate doing such a thing. Its sad, but capacity building depletes profits. Profit is what drives the private firm, not QOS, or high speed access, etc. Unless (and you don't have the market size in mot smaller rural places for it) you have the critical mass of subscribers to make higher speeds, and higher throughput a reality, it simply will not happen for a very long time.

In Canada, we have a huge problem with very small markets, with massive geographical costs to run any major services north. We dealt with it initially with crown corporations. Unfortunately those are being privatized. Which is sad. Because we have massive fibre trunks going to our northern communities only because the government could run the initial loss, and then recoup over 20-30 years. they didn't every year end to be in the black.

Our Electricity provider in Manitoba, thankfully, is still a crown corp, and because of this we have the cheapest power in North America. Sometimes its second cheapest, but that's fine. In addition, its profitable, posted a 17% ROE last year, and is among the most reliable, and best for customer service in NA. Resaon A: Hydro electric capacity Reason B: Government can afford to dump billions into a new project to build capacity, and pay it off over 50 + years. The only alternative to this, would be to pull in some massive American firm to do it, and then try to regulate it so that we'd get the incentives right to get the same effect. this way, we don't. if it makes too much money, the government can call for a dividend, reduce rates, or plow more money into investment and capacity building. Its funny, we are one of only 2 or 3 jurisdictions that I know of that has a serious group of individuals lobbying in a sense to raise our power rates. Or at least the bulk corporate purchasers (~3 cents / kwh).

Municipal fibre, Provincial fibre, national fibre; i don't really care either way, but I'd rather build the capacity we need and over do it... leasing it back to private firms to provide services (that's how Finland has 10-12 companies competing no prohibitive cost of entry) and let the gov make the investment, and reap the ROR from being long sighted, and leveraging economies of scale.


RE: well
By jimbojimbo on 4/6/2009 4:12:58 PM , Rating: 2
But those are the only sites Yacoub is interested in!


RE: well
By rs1 on 4/5/2009 7:53:10 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Bandwidth limits are unheard of here in Finland, Europe.


Surely you mean "throughput limits", no? The only bandwidth limit in place anywhere is the connection's physical bandwidth limit. The 40 GB monthly caps that U.S. ISP's are rolling out are caps on throughput, not on bandwidth. You "always" get to use your connection's full bandwidth, but once you hit a certain amount of throughput, that's it.

And that's what makes these monthly caps so ridiculous. What's the point of having a 16 Mbps connection if you can only use it at its rated bandwidth for about 6 hours before you reach your throughput cap? If the connection is only good for downloading 40 GB over the span of a single month, then it should be marketed as a 128 kbps connection, because that is the actual realizable monthly bandwidth. Of course, nobody would sign up for such a connection, because it exposes the throughput caps as the nonsense that they really are.

What the U.S. ISP's are doing, in essence, is moving from selling bandwidth (i.e. "you get a 3 Mbps connection that you can do whatever you want with") to selling throughput (i.e. "you get 40 GB a month worth of traffic, which you can reach as quickly as you want, but once you reach it, that's it"), without changing anything about how they are marketing their product. I think that's a serious problem, because as far as I'm concerned, if an ISP approaches me with what it advertises as a "16 Mbps for $60 a month" connection, then I expect that I should be able to use my connection at its full rated speed, for the stated price of $60 per month. Any level of service less than that is nothing more than false advertising. If what I'm really buying with my $60 is 40 GB of throughput per month, then the maximum bandwidth supported by the connection shouldn't even be mentioned, as it's no longer even relevant to the product being sold. I can't operate my connection at the claimed 16 Mbps anymore, because if I do, I run into the cap long before the month is up.

Shame on the ISP's for trying to make this switch, and shame on every single user that doesn't ditch their ISP if/when it tries to make such a change.


RE: well
By Clauzii on 4/5/2009 8:11:50 PM , Rating: 2
I use that wrong too, then. 'Free traffic' would go too then. Thanks for pointing out :)


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/5/2009 9:20:45 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, throughput limits, or caps, or something like that


RE: well
By StevoLincolnite on 4/5/2009 10:07:52 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If you live in small hut ( :) ) in the forest with no cable tv, using the existing phone line for a DSL broadband you can get 24/1m for 48.90 euros per month.


You wouldn't get ADSL 2+ Which is the 24/1mbps speed, or 2mbps upload if it's Annex M.

ADSL 2+ is very distance sensitive, you would need to be in around 5km's from the ADSL 2+ Enabled Exchange to get the service, any farther than that and you might as well get ADSL 1 because your Signal to Noise Ratio would be to low, and the attenuation way to high, Plus ADSL 2+ is highly sensitive to the quality of the copper, and even the wiring in your own home.

Then you need to make sure you aren't on any RIMS, Rims were used in various places where new housing was built, instead of decking out the exchange with more ports, they place a rim which works as a "Mini Exchange" which more often than not doesn't support ADSL 2+ Speeds, they did it so that more people could have a home phone without having to build more exchanges.

Here is a Graph of ADSL speeds over a distance: http://www.internode.on.net/residential/internet/h...

I have ADSL 2+ I'm 2km's from the exchange but my Attenuation is 40, which in theory should give me around the 9mbps mark, but because of my poor copper my Signal to Noise Ratio causes my connection to loose sync, hence my connection is speed limited to 5mbps to get a stable connection.

ADSL 2+ is not a good kind of connection for country area's in my opinion, Fiber to the Node/RIM would be a better alternative with VDSL.


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/5/2009 10:32:21 PM , Rating: 2
Of course ADSL is the worst option, and the 24M is the theoretical maximum, like the ISP says in small print. ADSL is using over 100 years old copper wire technology also known as telephone line. Distance to the switch and quality of line determine the speed. Something between 8-24M.

The Finnish government has made a decision to make fiber available for everyone in the whole country before the end of 2015. In 2015 the distance from fiber to consumer is maximum 2 kilometers (1.24 miles). Only a few thousand households are out of reach then (this is a big country), out of 5,2 million Finnish residents.

But up until that, some people has to cope with ADSL.

Sweden went all fiber long ago ;(, only couple of hours from here. Should I move there, I speak Swedish, too...


RE: well
By StevoLincolnite on 4/6/2009 12:40:21 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Distance to the switch and quality of line determine the speed. Something between 8-24M.

Try 0 to 24mbps, Basically there is no "Minimum" speed that ADSL can achieve, here if your ADSL 2+ connection cannot exceed 1.5mbps you will be switched over to ADSL 1 or you don't get ADSL at all.

It's also sad that here our ADSL 1 is capped at 8mbps down and artificially the upload is capped at 384kbps, even though the technology can handle 1mbps upload speeds.

quote:
The Finnish government has made a decision to make fiber available for everyone in the whole country before the end of 2015. In 2015 the distance from fiber to consumer is maximum 2 kilometers (1.24 miles). Only a few thousand households are out of reach then (this is a big country), out of 5,2 million Finnish residents.


That's FTTN (Fiber to the Node) which they will probably use VDSL to connect to the nodes, great thing about that is that the "nodes" can be built anywhere, inside of a business building, side of a street etc' it's not limited to just the DSLAM where they can be rim blocked, Telstra actually propositioned our government for a similar scheme, however they wanted to charge people $30 a month for 200mb of downloads at 1mbps.

As a side note, some RIMS can be ADSL 2 enabled, but the speeds achieved from it are less than stellar, and it's usually better to get ADSL 1.

Personally I would like to have FTTH (Fiber to the Home) or FTTC (Fiber to the Curb) - but that would be un-feasible in the country areas unfortunately.

The sad part about VDSL is that the maximum available bit rate is achieved at a range of about 300 meters from the Node/DSLAM; performance degrades as the loop attenuation increases, at only a few kilometers it's speed is no greater than ADSL 2+.


RE: well
By Eri Hyva on 4/6/2009 1:05:52 AM , Rating: 2
If you can't get over 8M on a 24M/1M ADSL2 because of distance or bad quality line , then ISP changes you to cheaper 8M/1M contract type. You save $10 per month.

If your internet needs are not the standard web surfer needs, you can get more "exotic" lines for your servers and company network
http://www.nebula.fi/nebulazone.php
like 8M/3M ADSL Annex M or VDSL2. Competition and a wide selection of ISPs is a good thing.

The minimum speed for broadband in year 2015 after all the fiber has been deployed is 100M/100M per household or customer. By paying extra you get more than 100M/100M. There are of course plenty of fiber installed already, but not in the small towns and countryside, yet.


RE: well
By StevoLincolnite on 4/6/2009 7:12:52 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
If you can't get over 8M on a 24M/1M ADSL2 because of distance or bad quality line , then ISP changes you to cheaper 8M/1M contract type. You save $10 per month.


Not here they don't, here 8mb ADSL 1 is generally more expensive than ADSL 2+.
And if your ADSL 2+ speed is higher than 1.5mbps then they don't care.

quote:
If your internet needs are not the standard web surfer needs, you can get more "exotic" lines for your servers and company network http://www.nebula.fi/nebulazone.php like 8M/3M ADSL Annex M or VDSL2. Competition and a wide selection of ISPs is a good thing.


That website really on shows me connection types and speeds, I'm English speaking only.

We do have other plans available here however usually under "Business" but they are usually re bagged ADSL lines, however some company's like Internode have done some good stuff there by combining several ADSL Lines to increase throughput and reliability, but they usually go for $1500 or more and still have a download limit. (With the most expensive of plans being unlimited).

quote:
The minimum speed for broadband in year 2015 after all the fiber has been deployed is 100M/100M per household or customer. By paying extra you get more than 100M/100M. There are of course plenty of fiber installed already, but not in the small towns and countryside, yet.


Again those kinds of speeds and availability is highly dependent on the country and market conditions.

For instance here in Australia our largest ISP Telstra had hundreds of ADSL 2+ enabled exchanges for many years, the only time Telstra would flip the switch and enable an exchange is if a competitor had ADSL 2+ hardware in the exchange.

Then they literally lost Billions when the government kicked them out of the National Broadband tender, which was a promise to provide symmetrical speeds of 12mbps or more to 98% of the population.

So because of the increased competition from the possibility of the NBN; Telstra upgraded it's Hybrid Coax Fiber cable to 100mbps down and 1mbps up. (And that is only available to very few people in the country).

Unfortunately we need to remove the monopoly via structural separation or nothing will ever improve here, Most other developed countries in the world have broadband take-up that is 3-4x greater than our own.


RE: well
By mmntech on 4/5/2009 6:55:23 PM , Rating: 2
It's the same in Canada. If you want internet, you have three choices. Go with dial-up, go with Bell DSL (which is god awful slow, not much better than dial-up), or go with cable. We have the latter. It's $44/mo for a 10mbps connection with a 60gb cap through Cogeco. That's the bundle price, it's $10 more a la carte. In reality I only get half that speed but I think we're under the older plan. I have to check my bill and phone them. They throttle P2P traffic like hell though. Try downloading a Linux distro and it takes all night.

This article highlights the reason why streaming on-demand video and that On-Live thing are not going to replace DVD, Blu-ray, or gaming consoles any time soon. By my math, the average 2hr BD movie is about 18-20gb in size (assuming 20mpbs average bit rate). Right there, you're eating up half of TWC's cap for the top $70/mo plan. The only reason caps are being put in place is because current net infrastructure cannot handle the traffic. I remember Cisco predicting a couple years ago that the net would collapse because it couldn't and was never meant to handle the rising popularity of online video. There has been a failure to invest in it, and because these companies have a monopoly, there is no incentive to invest either. What, did they thing this whole Internet thing was just a fad or something? Dumb.


RE: well
By MadMan007 on 4/6/2009 12:01:23 AM , Rating: 2
Caps are put in place for another reason, related to your second paragraph. Cable and phone companies who sell content don't want you going elsewhere (internet sites) for content. It's quite frankly anti-competitive monopoly abuse by leveraging market dominance in one area to another and imo the ISP and content services divisions ought to be split up. They have good lobbyists though :(


RE: well
By jimbojimbo on 4/6/2009 4:16:45 PM , Rating: 2
Correct. As long as they provide their on-demand services they don't want you going to Netflix and watching whatever you want for cheap.


RE: well
By Chris Simmo on 4/5/2009 9:10:40 PM , Rating: 1
Here in Australia, the prices vary greatly depending on who you are with. If you are with Telstra for eg, you get 'Unlimited' internet (12gb before throttling and I think its 1.5Mbps or 12Mbps depending on the area, for $60-70 AU. If you go with one of the other companies that aren't money grabbing ripoff arseholes, such as TPG, iinet or internode, for the same $70, you get up to 20Mbps and 150GB before throttling. Speeds are pretty consistent. Does depend on where you live though.

Telstra has been trying a new trick to get more money too, with their 'wonderful' wireless board band. This shit is hopeless. You may get up to 5mbps, but the downloads are hopeless, and they credit uploads as downloads! As well as its incredibly unstable.


RE: well
By StevoLincolnite on 4/6/2009 12:51:37 AM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately Telstra is dominating Australia's Telecommunications because of "Advertising" - even though they have the worst plans in Australia the average joe doesn't know any better, it's like when Intel had the Pentium 4, and AMD had the Athlon 64, despite the Athlon 64 dominating the Pentium 4, intel still sold more processors because of Advertising and brand recognition.

Second in place is Optus, who does have decent advertising but still no where near on par to that of Telstra's.

Then third down the line (And there is a massive gap in consumers using it) is iiNet as the 3rd largest ISP who basically does no advertising, and they are only the 3rd largest ISP because they bought out Westnet and there entire user base.

Several things need to happen in Australia for there to be better pricing/speeds/download quotas:

1) Give the National Broadband Network to the Terria Consortium and Axia and make the NBN controlled by a 3rd party so that all ISP's get equal pricing and equal access.
2) Structural separation of Telstra and Bigpond.
3) Give the smaller ISP's free advertising so that there is more brand recognition in the market place.
4) Once Telstra and Bigpond are separated stop giving Optus millions/billions of cash to improve it's networks, let competition do that instead, and then place that money into the National Broadband network.


RE: well
By descendency on 4/5/2009 11:43:37 PM , Rating: 2
I wonder why they need 160Mbps of hello kitty...

(I wish I lived in Japan some days... until I realize I don't speak japanese)


RE: well
By jimbojimbo on 4/6/2009 4:17:52 PM , Rating: 2
With 160mbps you can watch episode 2 of FullMetal Alchemist mere seconds after it's released!


RE: well
By Alexstarfire on 4/7/2009 5:45:04 AM , Rating: 2
I feel like this is sarcasm, but I really don't get it. FMA has been finished for a long time.


RE: well
By applepies on 4/6/2009 6:55:20 AM , Rating: 2
The interesting piece of information to take away is that J:Com's cost to upgrade its systems to handle the 160 Mbps speeds was just $20 per household.

For comparison's sake, Verizon's high-speed FiOS service costs the company $817 per household and an additional $716 for equipment/labor costs per household.

It's an upgrade you quote Verizon's initial build costs. Not quite the same.


RE: well
By FITCamaro on 4/6/2009 8:00:06 AM , Rating: 2
It's not an issue of companies not WANTING to be competitive. It's that they don't have to be. The government stifled competition by MANDATING those monopolies. Given the ability, Verizon would roll out FiOS to the entire country. But they can't because anywhere Comcast, Time Warner, etc. exist, they face legal opposition to do so.