Just wondering what’s the current standard over there. Downstream/Upstream.
Here in Italy the standard is now a DSL line 7Mbit downstream and 380 upstream.
There’s not really a standard. We have Cable, DSL, Satellite, and Fiber in different markets. Plus some folks still use dialup.
Well, even here we have all of that. But fiber is rare and only in very big cities, DSL in now pretty much everywhere and satellite sucks.
Usually everyone is on DSL if they are covered, and the fiber isn’t diffused enough to be relevant as a standard on the territory.
Cable and DSL are the two main connection types here, really. Fiber and dial-up are both pretty uncommon. My cable service gives me ~10Mbps downstream and ~1Mbps upstream. They also have a new premium service that does ~15Mbps down. The local alternative is Frontier DSL, which only does 6Mbps down and (I think) 400 up, and is more expensive.
My cable modem is about 4800Mpbs down, and recently upgraded to ~420kbps up. That’s about 600KB/sec down and ~60KB/sec up. As little as 4 years ago it was probably 300 KB/sec down and 40 KB/sec up.
Some cable providers around Brooklyn (Optimum Online) had fantastic low-ping, short-hops.
Verizon DSL in NY sucked. It used to drop down to dial-up speeds. They are also very very slowly deploying fiber to the premises - FIOS which promises 15Mbps down / 2Mpbs upload. That’s about 250 KB/sec up, can run game servers on it!
I was under the impression broadband in Italy was ubiquitous as in Korea and the Viking countries (Finland, Netherlands) Apparently in Korea, a government agency rates the broadband in the apartments on a star rating.
What? WHAT?
Broadband here in Norway is just decent, and not anything good as in South Korea (or even like in Sweden across the border). Well, unless you’re willing to cough up premium money for it.
But my cable provider just up’ed my downstream from 5mbps to 6.5mbps. \o/ It’s pretty weird actually, as I think this is the third time they up it (for no extra charge) in the last 6 months or so. If this keeps up I’ll have 25mbps in a year. And my upstream is normally 1mbps, but I pay extra for another 1mbps. If I pay double of what I do today, I can get 26mbps downstream and 3mbps upstream. Not worth it though. The cheapest connection from my provider is 1250kbps/750kbps btw.
Got 5819 kbps down using this: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
I frequently download at 700-800Kbps, and if the server is good, I’ve gone to 1.1MBps.
Wow, what sort of connection is that?
No clue. Provided by the apartment building (Philly).
Uh… No, not at all in Italy.
Mostly because with the privatization the work on the infrastructure basically stopped, and Italy is still mostly hills and countryside, so it’s not economically convenient to cover the many smaller towns.
And also because the infrastructure used is still the same as always the “default” connection is the DSL.
There are a number of countries (Japan and S. Korea come to mind) where there are still national telecom companies and basically the government has subsidized national high-speed internet systems.
However, the US has a mash of private companies in most markets offering various telecom services so the options and speeds can vary quite a lot. For example, I’ve seen ads for a national sattellite internet provider, so that suggests rural areas are particularly limited.
Even on the edge of big cities, though, things can still be pretty limited. I’m living on the edge of the Seattle metro area and my only options are dial-up and a shaky wireless service that is theoretically 256k download, but runs more like 100k. The phone company claims to have DSL in this area, but doesn’t feel they need to bother putting in a booster that would allow it to work at any decent rate. I used to live about five miles from here and had the option of several DSL providers, cable internet, and a good solid wireless service.
I also live near Seattle, I get about 14 megabits down, 2 up.
I get only 3 MBit / 384 KBit until T-DSL gives me a better line to my house. :(
I’ve had 24/1 for over three years, but it’s a bit wasted since I rarely download anything. I think I’d rather have 8/8 actually, that way you can host game-related servers as well (like voice-chat and actual dedicated servers).
I have 6mbps down, 1mbps up. I just did the speed test and it reported 15 down, 1 up(probably Comcast’s PowerBoost kicking in). I am hoping that this year DOCSIS 3.0 is rolled out in my town.
I live in a very high-tech county, but in a rural town in the western edge. So the only choices I have are dial-up or my local “ISP” which is a guy across the street who has a T1 of some sort. I get 768k down and 128k up. With sometimes bad latency.
I was in a house about 4 miles away last year which had a cable modem. Now I feel like I’m dying with this connection speed.
You guys are ignoring wireless. A fair percentage of users go through some variety of 802.11 to some kind of landline that is beefier than either DSL or cable for much of their access.
In theory, in the coming year, 802.11n will start offering 74-248 Mbps download speeds at typical 802.11 ranges (i.e. up to 70m), and 802.16 (WiMAX) can offer 10-70 at metropolitan range (i.e. up to 10km). Again in theory, WiMAX could replace landlines for some home users.
In practice, 802.11n is not yet finalized and has not been generally rolled out, and probably will be throttled down as the landline connection to the hotspot will not be so huge – though there are some pre-draft implementations out there already deployed.
Also in practice, WiMAX has variable rates based on distance (10 Mbps at 10 km, up to 70 closer) and has had some initial business problems being rolled out – Sprint flipflopping on it, for example.
Still, both should see 2008 deployments, and in a couple of years, the choice may be basically fiber to the home or wireless.
Oh yeah, I’m getting 1.5 Mbps / 376 Kbps from basic Verizon DSL, since FIOS hasn’t been deployed yet in my neighborhood.
I used to have Comcast, which is technically superior and considerably faster, but they pissed me off so much with their pessimal, infernally inspired customer disservice (Screwtape is obviously in charge of the division) that I had to give up on them. At least Verizon answers the phone and hasn’t yet pithed the brains out of the operators.