Hey, We Americans Don’t Always Get The Good Stuff!

By on August 18, 2008 in Windows Home Server

I’ve been reporting several articles recently that discuss services which are available only to U.S. residents.  I came across an article that indicates that we are not always #1 in the good stuff.  I pay about $27/month for the cheapest DSL connection available, which is 1536 kbps incoming and 800 kbps outgoing.  My “Price For Life” guarantee connection.  While this connection is much better than dial-up, it does lack that raw speed and bandwidth that the European market has.  Ars Technica has an article about a broadband study in the U.S. and compared it offering elsewhere.  To quote:

With the caveats out of the way, what are the results? The median broadband user in the States is getting about 2.3mbps and uploading at 435kbps. That compares pretty unfavorably to some of the industrialized Asian nations, where the median download speed is 63mbps, or Korea, where it’s 49mbps. European nations also do well, with Finnish users getting over nine times the bandwidth, and France over seven times. Even going north of the border to Canada would likely to get you a substantial increase in speed, as the median downloader there gets 7.6mbps.

I just wanted to let you guys overseas know that you do get some of the Good Stuff that we Americans can only dream about.  If I had the broadband capacity of Japan, I might be able to turn my WHS in a decent Web Server.  According to the article, maybe in 100 years we will be where you guys are at today.  I doubt very highly that I will care about Internet speeds in 100 years, though…


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About Jim Clark

Hello. I’m from the heartland of the U.S. Lots of corn and beans, although Iowa is a lot more than just farmland. It also has a few computer enthusiasts (no, not me!). I’ve been around PCs since I got my 1st PC XT aloooong time ago. WGS is one of the first sites I found centered around WHS. And the best. Every once in awhile, I do get away from the KB and enjoy time with and my wife and our 4 kids. And I do have a day job.
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  • https://technocore.homeserver.com/ Drashna

    Yeah, and what is the excuse that US ISP give? They don’t have the infrastructure to support faster speeds. What, you charge us a lot of money, and practically rip us off but don’t have the money to upgrade your infrastructure? Ah, capitalism at its worse.

  • http://geocline.net/ Stephen

    In Australia here, through Telstra, my cable connection is 17-20Mb/s down and 256kb/s up……….
    That’s sad. I’m waiting for the upgrade to 30Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up.
    I could change to ADSL, but that means I’d need a phone line, which seems like going backwards.

  • http://www.cybergamers.nl GaMeR™

    True, I have a 20Mb/1Mb connection for only 20,- euro a month. But having a fast download is worthless, most sites don’t even come close on that speed.

    Personally I’d love to have some higer upload speeds instead. I’d be happy with 5Mb/5Mb it that was possible for a nice price.

  • Almonde

    Enjoying 24Mb down and 2.5Mb Up here in UK for £22 with unlimited data. Excellent for streaming video from the WHS via Orb :)

    Unfortunately for people in the countryside the situation is much worse, poor reliability, no choice of LLU, poor speeds. All those things dont look like changing in the next 10 years.

  • Tom Miller

    I feel quite lucky to have Verizon Fios in our town. For those of you that don’t know what that is, Verizon brings fiber optic cable right to my house, and offers unbelievable speed. I currently have the 20mb/5mb package for $52.99 per month. I just found out that I could get the 20mb/20mb package for the same price if I combine my wireless and internet on the one bill package. I think I will have to look into this.

  • Urmaster

    Looks like ISPs all over the world don’t want users uploading or hosting. I’ve got 20/1MB connection from virgin cable/fibre optic. I pay nothing for it but that’s beside the point.ATM my WHS web share suffers from slow downloads outside my home. Well Virgin have done 2 infrastructure upgrades in the past 2 years so by the end of the year I’ll be on 50MB down. Virgin is doing trials on 100MB down right now so in the next 2-3 years I’ll be a very happy man. Looks like broadband in the UK isn’t bad once you get it setup.

  • Galantti

    woot finland rocks!

    Thou i have only 8/1 MB line for like 34.90 € (~51.64 $) /month

  • verbekew

    Well, here in Belgium, it’s not all sunshine. Ok, we have the good download speed (I have 12mbps down – till last month it was 3.3mbps, 512kbps up), but there is a hard limit of 25GB/month (there has bene an upgrade, till last month, it was 12GB), witch means that you can consume your whole limit in 1 hour. after that it goes back to 54k speeds. For the package, I pay 41€ (~60,42 $)/month

  • http://www.cybergamers.nl GaMeR™

    verbekew: Get yourself another provider. Not all providers have hard limits on thier packages.

  • Rick (RB 1)

    I am with UK provider Virgin Media, Until recently was paying £25/month for a 4mbps down and 380kbps up. But now after a free upgrade am on 10mbps down and 460 up.

    Great free upgrade in terms of down load and to be honest can’t see the need for any faster. 50/100mbps are a tad pointless. What we all need is better upload! 10mbps to 460kbps is rubbish.

    With technology like WHS, ORB, Slingbox etc sounding great in practice for streaming video when away from home…. the crippleing upload spoils all the fun.

    Personally i think providers should offer more custom options so you can pick your download and upload speeds.

    It would be interesting to see what upload the likes of korea/japan are getting with 49mbps or more down!

    Rick

  • JeePee

    Hi,

    I am in the Netherlands and have 20/1 for € 19,95 (~ $ 30,-) including a phone connection with free local and national phone calls (from Telfort).

    The ‘bad’ thing of my ISP is that they hook you up with a 2 year subscription. In the mean time they never upgrade your speed when speeds of competitors increase (and you can’t leave because you have a 2 year contract). In stead, they stop selling the package you are on and they make 2 new packages
    - one with the same speed as the package you have, but for a lower fee.
    - one for more speed as the package you have, but for the same or a higher fee.

    While you contract is valid, you cannot switch to the package with the same speed/lower fee, but of course you can switch to the one with the higher speed. From that moment on you start a new 2 year contract.

    You also have to be careful when your contract expires, because if you don’t your contract is automatically extended for another year with the same conditions (so again they don’t automatically upgrade you).

    –
    My parents do better, they are in a town where they are putting fiber optic now. They get 100/100 including radio, tv, phone and free local and national calls for € 58,95 (~ $ 68,-). That sounds expensive but if you sum the separate charges of their old radio, tv and phone providers, then they have ended up only paying € 12,95 (~ $ 19,-) more for the 100/100 internet! Later, when the whole town is connected they can even get functionality like movies on demand, digital tv, hdtv and a lot more.

    I wish they were putting fiber optic in my town…

  • Kyle B

    I live in the styx when away from college, and i need to rant for a moment. There are many locations around my home that cannot even get dsl no matter what the speed. It is 2008 and I have family members paying $25 USD a month for 56k! While at college i have forgone TV and instead got the fastest Cable internet available in my area, (so that i may also watch tv :) ) which is 10/1 and costs almost $60 a month. Like others have said, screw the DL speed, what good is it if everyone else is limited to 512 kbps upload? There are only a few sites that i can think of that have faster than 8 mbps upload anyways. Have you guys who have 15+ down ever maxed out your DL speed?

    Anyways, I would take a package that is 6/2 or 8/4, even if i had to pay a little extra.

    I suggest we all upload HD movies as much as possible at all times and “saturate” their infrastructure, download and upload :)

  • Jim Clark

    Actually, the upload/download differences do actually make a lot of sense. The reason for download speeds is for bandwidth in your home. Ever have 2 xbox’s, 3 computers, etc. all using the internet at the same time? You need that bandwidth.

    If upload/download bandwidths were the same, 1 machine could kill the connection for the others.

    From the opposite side, if everyone had the same upload/download bandwidth, a server could overwhelmed quite quickly with everyone sucking away at 20Mbs each. Less bandwidth, fewer people can access/use. They go elsewhere, and a site loses traffic.

    Bad for business and bad for the consumer.

  • https://technocore.homeserver.com/ Drashna

    That and uploads are mainly used for http requests, and those are generally 50-80bytes per item. For the page, each picture, video, or other content. So you don’t *need* fast upload. Or so ISPs reason. The only reason you would is to host content, like a website. Which is usually against the terms of usage agreement for most ISP that I’ve seen. Unless you get a business package, but you have to be a business… and then you violate the Terms of Usage for WHS if you host commercial content on the WHS website….

  • http://geocline.net/ Stephen

    My ISP charges for uploads too, so they don’t mind you operating servers (grrr)

  • Kyle B

    charges for uploads? in what way?

  • http://kritiker.se Marcus

    Here in Sweden I pay $39/month for 100 Mbit/s (optical fiber). And that’s from a house, not a flat!

  • Kevin Voet

    Here in Belgium you even violate the user agreement when you just host a site. There isn’t a single form of server allowed and it’s damn expensive, I pay 60 EUR for a 20 Mb/s connection with a hard enforced download limit!

    But I’ll shut now or I’ll just keep on rambling :d

  • GuustFlater

    The cheapest ADSL in The Nethelands is 20 EUR/month for a 20Mbps connection (upload is 1 Mbps). For an additional 10 EUR you also get unlimited national phone calls.

    Major limitation is the disctance to the exchange. Above 1.5 km (~ 1 mile) down and up speed drops dramatically. I have only 14 Mbps down and 0.8Mbps up. ‘Of course’ for the same fee.