It might actually happen!

[Art Blade]

that's already very expensive, 1k for 10Mb. And apparently we'd all expect to pay somewhat less if we order more, some type of discount.

[PZ]

 

[fragger]

Briefly getting back to everything going digitally downloadable, there's a DVD rental in my little town which seems to be bucking the trend. I wouldn't have thought that a DVD rental would stay afloat in a little town of about 6,000 souls, but they continue to do quite well. I realized why recently - age. Most people in this town are retirees who generally aren't into the online world, so they still get their movies from the shop. This suits me just fine. I could go the Netflix route for my movies, but I'd rather hire a DVD since that doesn't use up any of my data allowance. As far as music goes, most of what's around today doesn't interest me much anyway. I'm not set in my ways, but I generally hate today's "music". Or maybe I am set in my ways - not that I give a flip

[Art Blade]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Spectrum (the conglomerate cable company that I might be using if they ever install wire) advertises "up to" 60Mb/s for $50 if you just get Internet. Introductory price, of course, only good for the first year. Who knows what it goes up to after that, they don't list those prices. If you get the phone-TV-internet bundle, it's about $80. Still, that would save me considerably, as I'm paying almost $100 now for satellite TV and $60 for 3G wireless internet, and about $28 for phone.

[Art Blade]

I hope that it will w0#k out for you

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, an update or two. Trucks were outside my house yesterday (again, I heard this second hand as I was at w0#k) installing the first part of the cable install, which is the sturdy stranded cable that actually holds the data wire, which gets lashed to the strand later on. I also figured out why I hadn't seen any progress on my road since that first little bit last spring. They are running the lines from the other direction. I live essentially centered between two small towns. So instead of coming up my road from the town on that side, which is where the closest cable line is already installed, they are wiring me from the other town, which means I'll be second-to-last on the cable run from that end. I was wondering what they were going to do, because coming from the other side to wire up the several hundred people near me, they'd have to run a lot of new wire over top of what's already there, and I'm under the impression that's a pain to do. So they are running completely new wire from the other way, which is fine by me, hopefully there will be less issues that way.

So progress is being made, maybe before the end of the year, I'll be able to get a decent connection.

Speaking of, as I said before, I've been using a wireless connection to Verizon for my internet for the last 6 or 7 years. Well, when I first got the thing, I connected it to my laptop, went outside, and saw what kind of connection I could get. I had a decent 3G connection and thought, well, it will just have to do. So I've been using that since then, as I assumed, for some reason, that the modem would automatically find the best connection and use that. Not true, apparently. I'd been having issues lately and was fooling around in the settings menu for the modem and found the selection for 3G or 4G LTE. So, I put it on 4G just to see if it would make the 3G w0#k better once I switched back, but no, it immediately picked up the 4G signal and connected no problem.

 

So, because I just assumed it was smart enough to switch automatically, and it isn't, I've been using a slow connection for who knows how long. Thing is, now with the speedier connection, I can hit my bandwidth limit all the faster now.

[Art Blade]

Great! And, great.

[fragger]

Cool

Me, I'm facing a kind of opposite thing to that. I've been enjoying a stable and quite fast connection for the last few years since I switched ISPs. I haven't had a single dropout in almost four years, compared to my last crummy connection which would drop out if the dog farted and was as slow as a wet week. But the NBN (National Broadband Network) has now come to town, and I have about a year to make the switch before the "old" system gets shut down for good.

A quick rundown on the NBN: Beginning its roll-out in 2013, the installation of this new system was supposed to have been completed in 2016 (needless to say, it hasn't been. This was a government initiative - say no more. They're now bandying a 2020 completion date about). It was envisaged as an all fibre-optic network, i.e. the FO cable would come right to your premises. Since it was begun, and politicians being politicians, they have introduced compromises and cutbacks and all the usual guff, so that it is now a mashed-up mix of fibre and copper and catgut and God knows what else. The upshot is that the results are very hit-and-miss. Some people (in my region) have reported a vast improvement in access time since making the switch, while others are saying that it's a pain in the derrière with very noticeably slower speeds in peak hours, lags and drop-outs.

The NBN covers phone as well as internet, so the old phone plugs in the walls won't w0#k any more. Everything phone-wise will be WIFI and cordless. Which means if there's a power outage, which happens in these parts albeit very occasionally (like when a severe thunderstorm knocks stuff out or a koala decides to play Tarzan on the power lines), the phones won't w0#k. Great. It also means there'll be a couple of useless sockets defacing the walls.

The maddening thing is that there is a possibility that I'll be giving up my quick and dependable net access for a big fat slug. I won't know until I get it happening, but I'm reluctant to switch over. I'm happy with what I have now, I don't want to go backwards - which I shouldn't bloody have to!

Someone needs to explain the concept of progress to these penny-pinching imbeciles in govt

[Art Blade]

that's complete and utter rubbish what your gov is doing, mate 

[LowPolyOWG]

Aww, that's shitty. I remember when we got Altibox fibre in our neighbourhood. It works flawless and it's a 35 Mb/s line both in download/upload. Now, my family are struggling with the old router as they haven't replaced it yet.


Since I moved to Hamar, I am enjoying this

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[Art Blade]

F me sideways

[LowPolyOWG]

At least I don't have to worry about downloading games during the night

[Art Blade]

damn.. it looks poor by comparison 
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[LowPolyOWG]

  At least it says faster than 84% of Germany