Comments on: 200 KBPS is Not Broadband

By: sangokushi-taisen

sangokushi-taisen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:17:52 +0000

you know what, now everyone in korea/sweden got fibre-optics at home and we’re still stuck with the same old crap

By: Daniel Sofer

Daniel Sofer — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:52:41 +0000

Broadband has traditionally been defined as an always-on connection, something over 200kbits. I think that is fine as a definition of broadband.

But I think we need a different term for the types of internet connections we have now. 6, 15, 50Mbits/sec is something very different than plain old broadband. VideoBroadband or something like that...

By: d3vdutt

d3vdutt — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:10:54 +0000

I got 512 kb “broadband” from a provider called 7 star in bombay, india. Paid double for what I pay in uk for a 1mb connection. Well the speed is no way near 512 kb. When I checked it online it was 70 kb and the download speed was 8 kb. I was like WTF ? . Called in the engineer , and he tells me that they promised me 512 kb but with fluctuation. Ohh so that 512 kn comes like 1,s for a few seconds every hour and then it keeps fluctuating around 70 kb, for the rest of the period. I tried arguing but to no avail. And they tell its unlimited broadband. Meaning you can leave your connection on. but with a 6gb limit for the whole year. I use 60 gb every 2 months in UK. 6 bg unlimited braodband. 512 k. WOW.. [still waiting for my hotmail to open up.] They need to catch up here and stop giving shite services. “India mai to ashe hi hota hai” [In india it is like this only.. the engineer told me..] lol

By: prasanth

prasanth — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 14:44:30 +0000

altealst calling it broad band seems to be making it impliment faster in india. so thats a good thing. we have been using dial up connection since the internet began so this is a big step. with dial u we only get about 5 to 6 kb which is very good. and i am running an internet center on this. so getting anything more than 50 kb and all day long will be a major boost. 1 mb per second may be that will come in the next ten years.

By: bhagesh_s

bhagesh_s — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 11:29:24 +0000

anand i agree to u 3 points iwould like to say 1st government is of no use due laymen have joined it

2nd that people not willing to come forward bcos no one listens to them.

3rd bcos of cost factor compare it with US or Korea with India .(1mbit=95USD AND NOW 6mbit=40USD) An Indian has to pay 15.5 times more to US citizen.

By: Karan

Karan — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 09:17:08 +0000

India is still years behind in terms of infrastructure of the telecommunications network, but you what would expect of a country that's relatively well developed, like, say, Australia? 256kbps "Broadband". It is without a doubt utter bullshit, mere marketing fluff to get people in and charge premium prices for barely acceptable service. For consumers in Australia, it simply isn't possible (economically or otherwise) to get anything above 1.5Mbps.

We hear stories out here of the fabled 6Mpbs, and the mythical 100Mbps and we sigh and return to our dark information caves. Be happy with what you've got :P

By: bl

bl — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 06:17:42 +0000

all i know is that i’m working in tokyo this summer and my bittorrents at home download max out at around 450kB(bytes-kiloBYTES)/s at the same time uploading at 300kB/s. downloads with multi-threaded HTTP requests get about 700kB/s and direct connections via FTP to local tokyo machines can be 900-1100kB/s. this is over ADSL, by the way.

By: Anand

Anand — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:38:21 +0000

Its more to do with the economics in India rather than the availability of technology. I used a 1.5 Mbps Cable Broadband connection and paid 2650 $ per month to a National ISP. Now in US, I pay 20$ for a Comcast 6 Mbps Cable Broadband.

By: triton

triton — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 01:16:20 +0000

i kind of understand what you people are saying about people with 128/128 DSL, i think part of it might be its not that they dont want more bandwidth it might be that they cant afford to pay for it!, where i live the only option i have is dialup (10$ a month) dsl (25$ a month, 256kbps) or directway (1200+ for the first year, appx 99$/month or 60$/month plus 500 instation) for a person with limited funds any hight speed option might be out of the question (cell phones are bad enough

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 22:24:38 +0000

Matt, you make it hard by taking out the porn option. After all, if not for porn (of the softcore variety) there’d probably be no cable tv right now. There is an answer — the ability to telecommute. If I am going to work from home, I am going to have to send and receive some large emails. It’s not going to be good if every time I get such an e-mail it basically shuts down my internet access for 30 minutes. To me, part of broadband is never having to wait more than 5 minutes for an e-mail to download.

In the end, though, you face the the same issue that always haunts technology. When it comes to something new, you don’t know you need it until you already have it. I never understood the utility of a cell phone until I got my first through work — now it is my only phone even though I pay the bill myself. I was perfectly happy with dialup (for casual surfing) until I tried DSL — then there was no way I could go back. As a tried more bandwidth hogging applications, I quickly discovered 768k DSL was not fast enough. There is a whole world out there that you have never even seen if you only have 128k, but if you’ve never seen it how do you know what you are missing.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 22:14:52 +0000

Jeff, 384 kbps was the 3G cutoff for a limited mobility scenario. EVDO meets that criteria, for the downlink at least. What makes me question whether it is really broadband is that the uplink is generally limited to far less than 100 kbps. Of course, Verizon was claiming 1xRTT was 3G when it only delivered 70 kbps down and 20 kbps up, so there is really no point in trusting anything they say on the subject.

By: John

John — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 20:25:12 +0000

Very interesting read. Lovin’ the Tori Amos reference.

By: Jeff Carroll

Jeff Carroll — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 19:25:20 +0000

iirc 200 kb/s was ITU's low-end cutoff for what constituted '3G' in the IMT2000 spec. Good luck trying to get Verizon and Sprint to admit that even EV-DO is not "broadband".

It wasn't that long ago that I was convinced that anything more than 2400 baud was a waste of bandwidth because I couldn't type any faster than that. Consumer expectations of data networks in the US are enabled by a couple of cultural idiosyncracies: the profligate deployment of dark fiber by US telecoms in the late '90s, and the preexistence of cable television networks in practically all American towns. A third unique condition in the US market is the legacy of AT&T universal service; practically all dwellings, urban and rural, in the US have been provisioned for POTS service for decades.

A society in which these preconditions are not met is going to have difficulty climbing the bandwidth-to-home curve at the rate the US has. It's futile and kind of silly to insist that "broadband" can only mean a pipe so fat that practically no one can afford it.

By: Dmitry

Dmitry — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 19:00:07 +0000

Fiber or no fiber, when WiMax gets here there is going to be another excuse.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 18:21:00 +0000

In Korea fiber is delivered to the high-rise apartment type complexes which koreans prefer to live in. LA would require significant cost in the last mile. Even NY is not like Korea. NY high-rise community isn’t as big as that of Seoul Korea. Having said that I don’t think cost overrun is so high that it can’t be done in US. I think government is partly to blame, they are involved too much. They should let it a dog eat dog world of telecom.. I would love to raise my own 50 feet pole and serve up my community. It can be done pretty cheap now a days.. Try doing that… Municipality that is frustrated are putting up their own wireless system. What do they get for that? lawsuit and telecom backed bills to block their meager effort to serve their community… I think Philadelphia model is pretty good. I just think they shoud upgrade to wimax soon from wifi plan. all in all i think the problem is with government not with technology or lack of interest of the people. I think our Utility overall is lacking..too tied up. we need strong political leader that remove ties that bind innovation and spread of technology. we are already behind and that worries me..

By: bala

bala — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:02:55 +0000

Om,

I would gladly accept 200 kbps as broadband if it were indeed 200 kbps. what you actually get is far slower, even slower than a dial-up during peak hours. i have tested my 256 kbps connection on independent speed test sites and have got horrendous results, as low as 42 kbps. so much for broadband in india! and remember I am sitting right in the heart of bangalore, literally stone's throw from m.g. road, if you know bangalore.