Hardline/mobile bandwidth not keeping pace with technology

**Urshulgi** · 11-14-2011, 12:42 AM

This is just an opinion piece.

How many of you are really satisfied with the speeds you get with your "high-speed" internet at home and data plans on your phones?

With home internet, does streaming video tend to lag, especially if more than one user is trying to use it at once on different devices in the same household? If you're playing an FPS or other game that requires connectivity, do you experience latency during primetime hours?

For mobile devices, are you frustrated with how long it takes to load video, photos, and web pages?

I ask these questions because technology, both hardware and software, is pushing more and more applications and functions towards the web, thus requiring a steady and fast internet connection. How equipped is our infrastructure for that though? The cable companies have been quite happy to not drastically improve connection or bandwidth since the early 2000s, while steadily increasing the price. Mobile internet tends to be slow outside of wifi hotspots, and not well-suited to video. If you go to any big concert, the concentration of users can make any internet based connection extremely slow at best, and unusable at worst. If you've ever been to a really big concert, text messages can take 30 minutes to go through, and phone calls become impossible.

The future calls for cloud-based services, but the connections to the cloud don't seem to be all the great. They want you to stream music from cloud storage to your mobile, but right now I just don't see that being very feasible. Do you think that the future of high-speed internet will be some sort of area based wifi, or do you think cable infrastructure will continue to dominate?

p.s. U.S. users are getting absolutely fleeced for their mobile and home internet. My cable internet bill was on average $60,and my AT&T data plan plus 400 minute plan was around $70. This was in Houston, for those of you looking to compare geographical differences in price. In Moscow, I'm paying $15 a month for an internet connection that is faster than any of my cable connections were, another $13 for unlimited data on my phone, and around $13 for the amount of minutes I use for calls/texts. *I don't make very many phone calls, but I do a lot of texting* That seems like a pretty big price discrepancy, especially given that Houston is, overall, a much cheaper place to live than Moscow.

**The Journey** · 11-14-2011, 12:57 AM

I'm definitely happy with my internet speed.

**Zsych** · 11-14-2011, 01:41 AM

Well its expensive, and not as good as it should be.

**insert name** · 11-14-2011, 02:35 AM

i live in the uk and i remeber seeing a video from the 70's showing BT's plans to get a 100% fibre optic network by the late 80's......40 years later, pretty much playing catch-up
and we could of had ipv6 by now as well but isps decided instead to bury their heads in the sand
we should of prevented exhaustion, not waited for it

i hate living in the uk, we are probibly one of the most technophobic developed nations on earth, maybe just behind ireland
statistically romania have faster internet connections than us

as far as cloud goes, i don't think it'll have a massive future
as long as our isps are going to be useless, the cloud is going to be useless

**sirius** · 11-14-2011, 02:45 AM

It's just too expensive, it's worse in Canada than in the U.S afaik. We have bandwidth limits, and have to pay for every extra gb that goes over that limit. The ISP market in Canada is also an oligopoly, with only 3 companies. I mean, I think there might be others, but they're so obscure that I have never seen, nor heard of them. I never get what I'm actually paying for either, I bet this is an issue with all ISPs though. I'm paying for 30 mbps but I'm getting 22 mbps, and it's 5:30 am. In a major city too, it's not like I'm out in the boonies. In addition to all of this, my ISP throttles p2p connections so torrents download at like 5 kbps. The throttling is so bad it'll lag skype sometimes and make any online game completely unplayable. Basically if I want to torrent something I have to leave my pc on over night.

I had more stuff to say about ISPs and phone providers in general (less personal qq) but I haven't slept and forgot, maybe it'll come back to me later.

**Kunt Punt** · 11-14-2011, 08:01 AM

I'm Australian, we are known for the slowest and most expensive internet there is.
I'm absolutely fine with my speed and I'm just grateful to have access to something as amazing as the internet.

**Warrior** · 11-14-2011, 08:18 AM

I'm fine with my home internet speeds. I pay for 5Mbps down and 3Mbps up, which is much more than enough, but I get about 8Mbps down and about 5Mbps up. I do not do a lot of video streaming and no gaming, so my usage is mainly email and general web browsing. The occassional Hulu or Youtube video works okay and pauses are not really an issue.

I'd say for what I do on my mobile, standard 3G data rates of a few hundred kiloits per second are fine. Again, I think my expectation is realtively low. I don't do a lot of high-bandwidth "stuff". I also have the advantage of knowing where and when my carriers network performs the best, so I can tailor my usage based on that information to get the most out of mobile data that I can. Mobile data will always be a challenge due to coverage and capacity constraints in wireless networks - public venues in particular, which are often combinations of the worst in both areas.

**spect** · 11-14-2011, 08:21 AM


	"bandwidth not keeping pace with technology"

have you considered whats involved in upgrading an entire communications infrastructure?

**Urshulgi** · 11-14-2011, 10:22 PM

	Originally Posted by spect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	have you considered whats involved in upgrading an entire communications infrastructure?

Yes, that's why I'm curious as to why a nation like Russia has significantly cheaper prices for faster speeds. Their carriers obviously did something right, when it came time to plan and upgrade their network. If the network didn't exist before, then they apparently built a brand new one for some cost that is lower than the cost that U.S. internet providers are paying to upgrade the infrastructure.

All of these cloud devices and services are originating in the U.S., which seems to be a country that doesn't actually have the infrastructure to provide them.

**spect** · 11-15-2011, 10:27 AM

there's many reasons and it's too much for me to go into. but cloud computing is mostly a new abstraction of what already exists.

**Photolysis** · 11-17-2011, 02:08 AM

The US's internet infrastructure is bad, to put it bluntly. A general lack of competition doesn't help; cable companies can provide a bad service and get away with it simply because there is no one else in a lot of areas. Unlike other parts of the world where ADSL is widely available and there's a lot more competition... and the quality of the service as well as speeds tends to be much higher.

Playing on a US server run on a crappy cable network it just painful. I love how my packets disappear after reaching New York!

Originally Posted by insert name
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

i live in the uk and i remeber seeing a video from the 70's showing BT's plans to get a 100% fibre optic network by the late 80's......40 years later, pretty much playing catch-up
and we could of had ipv6 by now as well but isps decided instead to bury their heads in the sand
we should of prevented exhaustion, not waited for it

i hate living in the uk, we are probibly one of the most technophobic developed nations on earth, maybe just behind ireland
statistically romania have faster internet connections than us

as far as cloud goes, i don't think it'll have a massive future
as long as our isps are going to be useless, the cloud is going to be useless

To be fair the UK's network is hard to upgrade because of all the existing infrastructure in place, a lot of old buildings that must be preserved, etc. Yes, for years it has been put off but that's cost/benefit analysis for you, as well as the utterly mediocre aspirations of the previous government with making 2Mb/sec widely available by 2012. In contrast, 40-100Mb/sec should be quite widely available by the end of next year unless you live in a rural area, given the pace of the new upgrade plans, which are actually progressing ahead of schedule.

**sed0007** · 11-22-2011, 09:44 AM

I just bundled with a cable company, got 15 down and 1 up and my computer actually digressed in performance .....it's now as though I had gone back to dial-up!!....surfed the web, found that 'tweaking" the cache sizes and other stuff like that in the networking tab is not possible with Windows Vista Home Premium. Saving money, but really disappointed with the slowness and constant connection lapses..........Cable guy said it's my network interface card....however it worked fine and 6 times as fast on my old DSL connection.

Any recommendations from any techies out there?....Thanks in advance!

11-14-2011, 12:42 AM	#1
Urshulgi Member [32%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 1,318	This is just an opinion piece. How many of you are really satisfied with the speeds you get with your "high-speed" internet at home and data plans on your phones? With home internet, does streaming video tend to lag, especially if more than one user is trying to use it at once on different devices in the same household? If you're playing an FPS or other game that requires connectivity, do you experience latency during primetime hours? For mobile devices, are you frustrated with how long it takes to load video, photos, and web pages? I ask these questions because technology, both hardware and software, is pushing more and more applications and functions towards the web, thus requiring a steady and fast internet connection. How equipped is our infrastructure for that though? The cable companies have been quite happy to not drastically improve connection or bandwidth since the early 2000s, while steadily increasing the price. Mobile internet tends to be slow outside of wifi hotspots, and not well-suited to video. If you go to any big concert, the concentration of users can make any internet based connection extremely slow at best, and unusable at worst. If you've ever been to a really big concert, text messages can take 30 minutes to go through, and phone calls become impossible. The future calls for cloud-based services, but the connections to the cloud don't seem to be all the great. They want you to stream music from cloud storage to your mobile, but right now I just don't see that being very feasible. Do you think that the future of high-speed internet will be some sort of area based wifi, or do you think cable infrastructure will continue to dominate? p.s. U.S. users are getting absolutely fleeced for their mobile and home internet. My cable internet bill was on average $60,and my AT&T data plan plus 400 minute plan was around $70. This was in Houston, for those of you looking to compare geographical differences in price. In Moscow, I'm paying $15 a month for an internet connection that is faster than any of my cable connections were, another $13 for unlimited data on my phone, and around $13 for the amount of minutes I use for calls/texts. I don't make very many phone calls, but I do a lot of texting That seems like a pretty big price discrepancy, especially given that Houston is, overall, a much cheaper place to live than Moscow.
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11-14-2011, 12:57 AM	#2
The Journey Member [04%] MBTI: INFP Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 172	I'm definitely happy with my internet speed.
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11-14-2011, 01:41 AM	#3
Zsych Core Member [309%] MBTI: XNTX Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 12,366	Well its expensive, and not as good as it should be.
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11-14-2011, 02:35 AM	#4
insert name Member [02%] MBTI: INTx Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 101	i live in the uk and i remeber seeing a video from the 70's showing BT's plans to get a 100% fibre optic network by the late 80's......40 years later, pretty much playing catch-up and we could of had ipv6 by now as well but isps decided instead to bury their heads in the sand we should of prevented exhaustion, not waited for it i hate living in the uk, we are probibly one of the most technophobic developed nations on earth, maybe just behind ireland statistically romania have faster internet connections than us as far as cloud goes, i don't think it'll have a massive future as long as our isps are going to be useless, the cloud is going to be useless
insert name is offline post a comment

11-14-2011, 02:45 AM	#5
sirius Member [05%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 235	It's just too expensive, it's worse in Canada than in the U.S afaik. We have bandwidth limits, and have to pay for every extra gb that goes over that limit. The ISP market in Canada is also an oligopoly, with only 3 companies. I mean, I think there might be others, but they're so obscure that I have never seen, nor heard of them. I never get what I'm actually paying for either, I bet this is an issue with all ISPs though. I'm paying for 30 mbps but I'm getting 22 mbps, and it's 5:30 am. In a major city too, it's not like I'm out in the boonies. In addition to all of this, my ISP throttles p2p connections so torrents download at like 5 kbps. The throttling is so bad it'll lag skype sometimes and make any online game completely unplayable. Basically if I want to torrent something I have to leave my pc on over night. I had more stuff to say about ISPs and phone providers in general (less personal qq) but I haven't slept and forgot, maybe it'll come back to me later. Last edited by sirius; 11-14-2011 at 03:42 AM.
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11-14-2011, 08:01 AM	#6
Kunt Punt New Member [01%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 22	I'm Australian, we are known for the slowest and most expensive internet there is. I'm absolutely fine with my speed and I'm just grateful to have access to something as amazing as the internet.
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11-14-2011, 08:18 AM	#7
Warrior Core Member [227%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 9,083	I'm fine with my home internet speeds. I pay for 5Mbps down and 3Mbps up, which is much more than enough, but I get about 8Mbps down and about 5Mbps up. I do not do a lot of video streaming and no gaming, so my usage is mainly email and general web browsing. The occassional Hulu or Youtube video works okay and pauses are not really an issue. I'd say for what I do on my mobile, standard 3G data rates of a few hundred kiloits per second are fine. Again, I think my expectation is realtively low. I don't do a lot of high-bandwidth "stuff". I also have the advantage of knowing where and when my carriers network performs the best, so I can tailor my usage based on that information to get the most out of mobile data that I can. Mobile data will always be a challenge due to coverage and capacity constraints in wireless networks - public venues in particular, which are often combinations of the worst in both areas.
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11-15-2011, 10:27 AM	#10
spect Veteran Member [56%] MBTI: inxx Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 2,246	there's many reasons and it's too much for me to go into. but cloud computing is mostly a new abstraction of what already exists.
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11-22-2011, 09:44 AM	#12
sed0007 Core Member [210%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Nov 2011 Posts: 8,419	I just bundled with a cable company, got 15 down and 1 up and my computer actually digressed in performance .....it's now as though I had gone back to dial-up!!....surfed the web, found that 'tweaking" the cache sizes and other stuff like that in the networking tab is not possible with Windows Vista Home Premium. Saving money, but really disappointed with the slowness and constant connection lapses..........Cable guy said it's my network interface card....however it worked fine and 6 times as fast on my old DSL connection. Any recommendations from any techies out there?....Thanks in advance!
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