in News, Society 123 Words

How Fast Is Your Internet?

I do not usual write about tech stuff………mainly because I am far from knowing enough to write with any authority…..but from time to time I break my little rule…and this is one of those times…….

I bitch constantly about the speed of my internet….I pay a premium price for a snails pace……then I read an article about a US city that has a great internet……

We head to the rural American city of Chattanooga to learn how citizens secured the fastest Internet in the country.

Source: The US digital divide: Who gets high-speed Internet? – Al Jazeera English

Since we Americans live on-line is it not time that we demand a good internet service at a reasonable price?

15 thoughts on “How Fast Is Your Internet?”

    1. My fingers are too fat……I have a hard time using my phone to write anything…..my laptop is also used for the class I teach and a better service would make that so much easier….chuq

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  2. Again, too many points to rant about…. The TPP is our next target for stopping; it will give the corporations more power to fuck with us as they wish, including our connection speed….. They want it all, ffolkes, and they’re not going to go away….

    gigoid, the dubious

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  3. My Internet Service Provider is my local cable monopoly. They’re a MAMMOTH Canadian company involved in every variety of media there is. They’re Canuckistan’s version of Time Warner (or is that AOL Time Warner?)

    Price? Jesus Christ! I could buy a couple good used cars every year for what I pay for cable & Internet. It’s funny how the “cheapest” TV package they offer is only about $30 bucks less than one with 400 more channels.

    Quality wise, the “service” they provide is as unreliable as a crackhead with a gambling problem. The Internet craps out 3-4 times an hour (to get a hit?) and random TV channels disappear for hours/days at a time. (classic crackhead move!) It “reboots” itself at least once a day while I’m using it. Yet the service, while just as jittery as the crackhead, is FAR slower moving. As a matter of fact, I often have enough cable/Internet “hang-time” in a day to write my oversized, tangential comments. (For example, this one was written while my Internet was down for no reason at all, yet my cable was still working.)

    Not only was analog cable far more reliable, it was much faster to use! Actually, I could go more old-school than that. Some days, I can get up from the couch and manually change the channel in the same amount of time as it takes for my “state of the art” digital cable box to respond. Fucking ridiculous. My Internet is even slower to respond. The company claims they don’t “throttle” etc, but they’ve been caught lying before. Actually, my old dial-up modem could give this cable-Internet a decent challenge.

    Not only is the service itself over-hyped, overpriced, shit, the “thinking” behind it’s design only makes its inadequacies more noticeable. Yeah, the complaints below are trivial. But it’s important to note that this emanates from one of the biggest, most profitable, companies in all of Canuckistan. It is a major player in the media oligopoly and is a major influencer of government policy. It also has some of the highest paid “genius” executives in the country.

    The digital cable equipment they provide is “capable” of doing all kinds of flashy things that look good in commercials. However, most of it is useless shit nobody will ever actually use. For example, a Tetris game that takes over the TV, but only occupies 33% of the screen. (Why & why?)

    Another example, after watching a show you recorded, it gives you a list of other shows you’re supposed to enjoy because you recorded that one. Unfortunately, Big Brother knows everything I watch, but he has NO fucking clue what I actually enjoy watching. For example, I watched an episode of Downton Abbey. According to them, that means I want to see other shows “just like it”. The actual list they provided included CSI Miami, Call Me Cait, Don Lemon’s CNN show and the movie “Dracula vs Frankenstein”. (Okay, I would watch that movie again.) Rarely do they suggest anything remotely resembling the show I just watched. But even if it did, what’s the damn point??? What’s the point of monitoring what people watch and giving lists of “similar” shows? I’m sure every single customer would rather regain control of their TV than be forced to wait the 10 seconds it takes to load the completely useless list. Maybe this is why their service is so fucking slow. Their server (likely an IBM 286) has to process meaningless info and send a list every time somebody watches a recorded show.

    Meanwhile, basic TV stuff everybody would use, even stuff their “old & obsolete” box used to do…NOPE! You used to be able to advance one frame at a time to see things that appeared briefly on-screen. Or, you could switch between a live show and a recorded one without loosing your spot. And just try to navigate the menus! Every time you do anything, it’s back to the opening menu and you got to press all the buttons again. Like one of those damn “Your call is unimportant to us. Press 3 for service in Punjabi.” telephone mazes…which is exactly what you get if you call them looking for assistance. (Last time; 4 fucking hours on the phone, 3 different Indians, 463 curse words, and not one iota of help!)

    In all, I probably WOULD be happier (and certainly less poor) with my old dial-up and a good digital ariel antenna. Free, hi-def, Internet porn be damned! If the channels I watch the most were broadcast over-the-air, I honestly WOULD return to ariel & dial-up.

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    2. Sounds like your service is as bad or worse than ours here in the lower part……I like news and the best I can do is CNN, MSNBC and Fox…..for me that just sucks none of them are worth a crap…..there are only about 2 maybe 3 cable companies any more….and their service sounds a lot like yours…..

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      1. 1) Not that I watch any of them, but CNN is an embarrassment of its former self. It’s like watching Mike Tyson get his ass kicked by, not just Buster Douglas (post cheeseburgers even), but Busta Rhymes. Actually…it’s more like Tyson getting his ass kicked by Humpty Hump!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byIkY9qsTdU

        And these “news” channels are the best options to “choose” from…unless you want to pay $250 a month to get the package with BBC, Al Jazzateria or Russia Putin Today.

        2) Yeah, Canuckistan’s cable/Internet/phone situation is at least as bad as yours. Three companies control 95% of the action. Not only that, they own 90+% of the TV channels…and most of the radio, papers & magazines too. But when the VP of my cable company is banging the head of the laughable federal “regulatory” body (as was actually happening 10-15 years ago) you tend to get away with ANYTHING!

        And don’t get me started on the INSANE period when divisions of said oligopolies spent untold millions running ads attacking other divisions of their own parent companies!!! Divisions of these media giants formed an alliance with similar divisions of rival companies (aka their direct competitors) and entered into a lengthy PR battle…against their own parent companies!

        You know you’re “Too Big To Exist When”….

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-for-carriage

        3) But with regards to cost & “promises vs delivery”, as if right on cue….

        Since posting my previous comment, I got the notice that my bill is going up by $7.50 plus tax a month. And my cable company has started hyping the bejeesus out of their new “jaw-dropping” 4G TV service….whatever the fuck that is. All I know is the ad runs every damn commercial break. Instead of explaining what it is, the ad features families on their couches alternating between mouth-open paralysis and group orgasms. I’m sure the actual result will be an even less reliable service for $20 more a month.

        4) Most people think I’m kidding. But if I could get 4-5 cable-only channels of my choice to broadcast over-the-air, I’d ABSOLUTELY go back to ariel TV…if not bunny ears a dial-up modem. Most channels are total wastes of space and the Internet is, on the whole, as worthless as it is popular. Certainly not worth the $30-ish a month I’m currently paying for the LEAST expensive Internet package. (Jesus! It hurts just typing that.)

        Man, I could buy the house next door with a monthly mortgage payment about the same size as my cable & Internet bill….AND I’d get to kick those loud, drunken, assholes out and pull their spy cameras down!

      2. I agree with you about CNN….back in the day they were a good news group….now they are just a regurgitation of the propaganda of the day……

        The cheapest you can get off around here is about 75 a month and the channels suck…..chuq

      3. $75 a month??? Is that the lowest tier “basic cable”? Shit, I pay double that…even without my Internet. Mind you, I had to get the Uber-Deluxe 900 Package, because it’s the only way to get the 5 channels outside the lowest tier package that I’d ever watch. (Coincidence, no doubt.) But even for $75/month, you really should be getting a free “handy” a month for that kind of money…Or at least enough weed so that you don’t mind the digital box hang-time as much.

        And yet again….It’s as if my cable company is monitoring all my communications (“as if” haha! More like “send straight to CSIS & the NSA”) and punishing me for what I write about them….

        This very morning, without warning, there was a total reworking of my digital TV box’s software. And guess what? EXACTLY as I said, they made it glossier & more colourful…. but actually LESS functional than before, which was less functional than the software version before that! Progress -eh?

        There’s more pointless “If you liked this show…” menus, but now with pictures! I guess the idea is to appeal to all the illiterates out there…and slow the box down even further! Gone are the simple, quickly navigable lists of recordings, the one half-decent feature of the previous system. Text based lists have now been replaced with pictures of the shows. They take up 5 times the amount of screen to communicate the same thing as text, thus taking me 5 times as long to scroll to the show I want. And to occupy even more of my time, “toggling” button commands have been replaced with even MORE “family tree” style menus, so it takes longer to do what once took one button press. Arrrgghh!…But nobody wants to hear me bitch & bitch & bitch about this.

        There are other pointless, annoying, changes, but not one of them do anything useful or are improvements in any way. Yet in all likelihood, the company took 2 years and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make their lousy box work a bit slower and make the viewer do more work. THIS is why the “geniuses” in charge get paid the big bucks!

        Two of my favourite things; Too Big To Exist corporations and good ol’ reliable digital technology!

        Okay, cue the 48 hour cable blackout on Sedate Me’s house.

      4. That price does include internet access that is another $80…..the service is always slow and unreliable and I am told there will be a rate increase next month….gee I’m so excited to be screwed I can hardly stand it….chuq

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