Internet Service Comparison

Kumabjorn · 07-05-2012, 02:59 AM

Discussing Cloud vs. SDCard it became apparent that we really don't know what kind of service others have. It is easy to assume that everybody else have the same kind of service as you do. I thought it might be useful for us to have something to compare with. So, when you feel like it, please list your service, speed, price etc.

Mine are:
Local cable provider. Installed fiber optic cable to the house. Gives me 30 Mb down and about 7 Mb up. Price is $42 (exchange rate fluctuations apply) a month. No caps. Service works fine, 2 - 3 times a year the service may be down for a while, a whole day if it is a Saturday or Sunday. I think this service is becoming expensive.

Phone:
I use a pre-paid contract, hence I load it when running low. To this I have a Surf Plan. For a yearly fee of $71 I get 0.5 GB a month of internet access to my phone. When I hit the 0.5 GB (happened only once) the speed is reduced to 256 Kb/s.

Mobile Internet:
This is the latest. For $35/month I have unlimited mobile internet, in essence a SIM card without phone capability. In my case I put it in a tablet and use that as a HotSpot for tethering. I have ordered a Huawei E589, a pocket WiFi or MiFi device that functions as a roving router. I get 16 Mb down and 5 Mb up on that. No caps on data usage. This device is probably good enough that I no longer need the fiber optic connection.

So for about $40 a month (if I cut the local cable provider) I will have all my Internet needs covered at a speed that is fairly decent. If I feel the speed to be insufficient I can upgrade to the 4G service plan, this will cost me app $75 a month and gives me 80 Mb down and 20 Mb up.

Belfaborac · 07-05-2012, 03:39 AM

ADSL over phone line, 30Mbps down, 5Mbps up, no caps. Service experience as in OP, roughly $65/month. Pretty expensive compared to some places, but then everything is pretty expensive here. I also have the option of having fiber installed, which offers up 120/120Mbps at about twice the price, but that'd just be silly for my purposes. Still nice to have the option though.

Phone and mobile internet: never used it, so I've no idea.

Soldim · 07-05-2012, 04:01 AM

Glass fiber. ~30$/month. In theory 10Mbps down, 2Mbps/up, but (as I had heard from friends subscribing to this cheapest package available) in practice it is way faster. These days I tend to get 100-120Mbps down and generally around 10 Mbps/up. This year the service was interrupted for two hours, last year for half a day during a power failure that affected my place as well -- didn't quite notice that inconvenience

Ekaros · 07-05-2012, 04:11 AM

At the moment pretty good, Student Union's apartment with free Ethernet/fiber 100M/100M connection with out any caps or limitations. Might be updated to 1GB/1GB some time in the future.

15€ month unlimited phone plan, which caps at around 500KB/s at best, usually much lower. Still something I like to have for visiting parents on weekend...

HarryT · 07-05-2012, 04:16 AM

Almost all ISPs in the UK have usage caps. My provider, for example, caps at 60GB/month for the account that I have. That's more than enough for me - even with downloading quite a lot of stuff from BBC iPlayer, my usage is typically around 30GB/month.

(As a matter of interest, when my ISP introduced usage caps, they said that their reason for doing so was that under 0.1% of their customers were using 70% of their total network capacity, and that capacity has to be paid for. It's not fair for a tiny proportion of users to degrade performance for everyone.)

Lynx-lynx · 07-05-2012, 04:21 AM

For various reasons I only use prepaid 3G mobile internet portable wifi - 5 device simultaneously capable. That costs me AUD $100 for 28GB (on a special deal) to be used within 6 months.

Believe it or not I haven't required any more data than that, and occasionally I do download tv programs as well.

I use this device to power my desk top, lap top, Blackberry Playbook and could use it to power my Blackberry phone + IPod Touch (rarely).

However, as my Blackberry phone, AUD $ 34 per month includes 500mb Blackberry Internet Service data, + 500mb Telco internet data I always have oodles of data usage over.

Using Bridge I can (and do) use my BB phone's Blackberry Internet Service data with my BB Playbook when I'm out and about and it works great and I find this very, very useful. (It's not tethering, it's bridging and the Telco can't determine that it's not the phone internet that is being used)

sherman · 07-05-2012, 04:32 AM

Paying ~$92* for a combined phone and internet package.

Internet is ADSL2+ and is "max attainable line speed". In our case, that's around 8.5Mbps-9Mbps down and ~900Kbps up. We have a 120GB data cap (includes both download AND upload).
Local calls are free, but we have to pay for any other calls made.

For mobile phone, I am on a plan that costs ~$31* per month. With that, I get 220 minutes (outgoing) to any landline or mobile number in the country. I get 2500 text messages, and 1GB of internet data. The mobile network is HSPA+ I believe.
I can also share my plan data with up to five other devices (I have a USB 3G modem), which is currently free until December.

*Prices in US dollars at today's exchange rate

BWinmill · 07-05-2012, 04:36 AM

I predict that there will be no MR members in North America by this time tomorrow, since we will all be immigrating to Europe. 10 Mb/s, 120 GB/month cap for $45/month + basic cable. The only reason why the caps are that high is because of a huge public outcry last year. (Personally they don't affect me,but I can understand why others would be outraged since video streaming is a hog.)

sherman · 07-05-2012, 04:53 AM

They certainly won't be migrating down here, that's for sure.

*Sherman has no sympathy for those NA's who are crying and whinging over the introduction of data caps to their country...*

JeremyR · 07-05-2012, 05:04 AM

Me, I'm stuck with Satellite internet from Hughes. $80 a month which peaks at 500 kb/s and more like 250 (and 25 in prime time hours). But it's largely a moot point since i have a 500 megabyte a day cap.

(But it's either that or dial-up. And dial-up isn't even feasible, since that's like $30 for a phone line and then if I actually use the phone line more than a few hours a day, I get hit with a $30 fee for using it too much.)

Don't have a phone with internet.

Soldim · 07-05-2012, 05:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soldim

Glass fiber. ~30$/month. In theory 10Mbps down, 2Mbps/up, but (as I had heard from friends subscribing to this cheapest package available) in practice it is way faster. These days I tend to get 100-120Mbps down and generally around 10 Mbps/up. This year the service was interrupted for two hours, last year for half a day during a power failure that affected my place as well -- didn't quite notice that inconvenience

Didn't mention: no cap. I have to admit that I have no clue how much I use -- I am pretty often connected to our work servers with remote desktop, but I don't know if that's traffic heavy or not.....

JoeD · 07-05-2012, 05:37 AM

Unlimited up to 20MB/1Mb but in reality 5Mb/1Mb for £7.50p/m.

There's still a small number of ISPs in the UK that offer truly unlimited data services. It annoyed me no end when other ISPs claimed to be unlimited* with fair usage caps, I'm glad they're now showing actual cap limits.

Harry: I agree it's not fair for a tiny % in general to use so much of the bandwidth. However, usage is generally increasing across the board now. It's no longer just people illegally downloading that are high consumers now, so that top % is likely to go from 0.1% to a much larger % of their user base, eventually what was considered high usage for 0.1% may be common usage for the majority of broadband users.

With so many on demand services, just watching one film per night on Sky Anytime+ would use up 15-30GB of data and many households have people watching more than one film or different films/tv shows in different rooms. Add to that people using voip/video conferencing, downloading game patches and other streaming services, bandwidth usage is going through the roof.

Whilst it depends on the home, if there's just one user then bandwidth could be anywhere from 1GB to 30GB a month quite easily. Take that to a multi-user home though and I can see families using anywhere from 10GB to over 100GB per month without trying.

Whether that means those users end up on fixed cap plans and have to pay more than low usage users, we'll have to see how ISPs handle it. At first everyone was unlimited, then all capped, now we have a majority with caps and a few unlimited. Time will tell

dillsandwitch · 07-05-2012, 06:36 AM

I'm with iinet here in Brisbane. have packaged my land-line and iterwebs for between $90-105 per month depending on how many phone calls i make to the rellies down south. 200GB total per month then capped if i exceed that (which unfortunately i do most months

) seriously need to up that bandwidth amount i think. we get on average 7-8mb/sec down most days. the copper wiring to our house is shit and the phone company wont change it

granted there are better deals for more bandwidth/lower price but iinet have told the aus government where to shove it with the 'monitoring of what people look at online" and hardly ever gets drop outs

mobile i pay 30 a month and that includes 700mb of data a month. with Vodafone though so i get no reception most places

but again they dont hassle me when i forget to pay my bill for a month or 3. hehehe

Yapyap · 07-05-2012, 06:56 AM

Home package consisting of uncapped Internet 12 MB down / 1 MB up, IPTV & landline telephone at €30 a month. I work from home over VPN and often need to download several files of 250 MB or more a day, so any sort of cap would be rather unfortunate, even without much streaming media use.

Smartphone package - phone + uncapped Internet at 3 Mbps at €30 a month.

pwalker8 · 07-05-2012, 07:10 AM

a bit over 20 MB down and 2 MB up. No usage cap yet, though they say it's coming. Don't know what my usage is since my carrier doesn't show usage on the bill (that's probably why there isn't a cap yet).

I suspect that while a small percentage of people are databand hogs, the caps are more so carriers can start charging for tiered usage. Carriers already have ways of handling databand hogs without caps.

07-05-2012, 02:59 AM	#1
Kumabjorn Basculocolpic Posts: 4,356 Karma: 20181319 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Sweden Device: Kindle 3 WiFi, Kindle 4SO, Kindle for Android, Sony PRS-350 and PRS-T1	Internet Service Comparison Discussing Cloud vs. SDCard it became apparent that we really don't know what kind of service others have. It is easy to assume that everybody else have the same kind of service as you do. I thought it might be useful for us to have something to compare with. So, when you feel like it, please list your service, speed, price etc. Mine are: Local cable provider. Installed fiber optic cable to the house. Gives me 30 Mb down and about 7 Mb up. Price is $42 (exchange rate fluctuations apply) a month. No caps. Service works fine, 2 - 3 times a year the service may be down for a while, a whole day if it is a Saturday or Sunday. I think this service is becoming expensive. Phone: I use a pre-paid contract, hence I load it when running low. To this I have a Surf Plan. For a yearly fee of $71 I get 0.5 GB a month of internet access to my phone. When I hit the 0.5 GB (happened only once) the speed is reduced to 256 Kb/s. Mobile Internet: This is the latest. For $35/month I have unlimited mobile internet, in essence a SIM card without phone capability. In my case I put it in a tablet and use that as a HotSpot for tethering. I have ordered a Huawei E589, a pocket WiFi or MiFi device that functions as a roving router. I get 16 Mb down and 5 Mb up on that. No caps on data usage. This device is probably good enough that I no longer need the fiber optic connection. So for about $40 a month (if I cut the local cable provider) I will have all my Internet needs covered at a speed that is fairly decent. If I feel the speed to be insufficient I can upgrade to the 4G service plan, this will cost me app $75 a month and gives me 80 Mb down and 20 Mb up.

07-05-2012, 04:21 AM	#6
Lynx-lynx Treachery of images ... Posts: 4,113 Karma: 92523791 Join Date: May 2012 Location: Australia Device: Sony 650, Kobo Glo, H2O, Aura One, Forma, Libra 2, Libra Colour	For various reasons I only use prepaid 3G mobile internet portable wifi - 5 device simultaneously capable. That costs me AUD $100 for 28GB (on a special deal) to be used within 6 months. Believe it or not I haven't required any more data than that, and occasionally I do download tv programs as well. I use this device to power my desk top, lap top, Blackberry Playbook and could use it to power my Blackberry phone + IPod Touch (rarely). However, as my Blackberry phone, AUD $ 34 per month includes 500mb Blackberry Internet Service data, + 500mb Telco internet data I always have oodles of data usage over. Using Bridge I can (and do) use my BB phone's Blackberry Internet Service data with my BB Playbook when I'm out and about and it works great and I find this very, very useful. (It's not tethering, it's bridging and the Telco can't determine that it's not the phone internet that is being used) Last edited by Lynx-lynx; 07-05-2012 at 04:25 AM.

07-05-2012, 05:37 AM	#12
JoeD Guru Posts: 895 Karma: 4383958 Join Date: Nov 2007 Device: na	Unlimited up to 20MB/1Mb but in reality 5Mb/1Mb for £7.50p/m. There's still a small number of ISPs in the UK that offer truly unlimited data services. It annoyed me no end when other ISPs claimed to be unlimited* with fair usage caps, I'm glad they're now showing actual cap limits. Harry: I agree it's not fair for a tiny % in general to use so much of the bandwidth. However, usage is generally increasing across the board now. It's no longer just people illegally downloading that are high consumers now, so that top % is likely to go from 0.1% to a much larger % of their user base, eventually what was considered high usage for 0.1% may be common usage for the majority of broadband users. With so many on demand services, just watching one film per night on Sky Anytime+ would use up 15-30GB of data and many households have people watching more than one film or different films/tv shows in different rooms. Add to that people using voip/video conferencing, downloading game patches and other streaming services, bandwidth usage is going through the roof. Whilst it depends on the home, if there's just one user then bandwidth could be anywhere from 1GB to 30GB a month quite easily. Take that to a multi-user home though and I can see families using anywhere from 10GB to over 100GB per month without trying. Whether that means those users end up on fixed cap plans and have to pay more than low usage users, we'll have to see how ISPs handle it. At first everyone was unlimited, then all capped, now we have a majority with caps and a few unlimited. Time will tell Last edited by JoeD; 07-05-2012 at 05:46 AM.

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07-05-2012, 03:39 AM	#2
Belfaborac Wizard Posts: 1,498 Karma: 5199835 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Norway Device: Sony PRS-505, PRS-950	ADSL over phone line, 30Mbps down, 5Mbps up, no caps. Service experience as in OP, roughly $65/month. Pretty expensive compared to some places, but then everything is pretty expensive here. I also have the option of having fiber installed, which offers up 120/120Mbps at about twice the price, but that'd just be silly for my purposes. Still nice to have the option though. Phone and mobile internet: never used it, so I've no idea.

07-05-2012, 04:01 AM	#3
Soldim Not so important Posts: 1,064 Karma: 10181343 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Zurich Device: Sony PRS-505, Kindle 4, iPad, Kobo Glo 4	Glass fiber. ~30$/month. In theory 10Mbps down, 2Mbps/up, but (as I had heard from friends subscribing to this cheapest package available) in practice it is way faster. These days I tend to get 100-120Mbps down and generally around 10 Mbps/up. This year the service was interrupted for two hours, last year for half a day during a power failure that affected my place as well -- didn't quite notice that inconvenience

07-05-2012, 04:11 AM	#4
Ekaros Illiterate newbie Posts: 661 Karma: 1702090 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Finland Device: Sony PRS-T1	At the moment pretty good, Student Union's apartment with free Ethernet/fiber 100M/100M connection with out any caps or limitations. Might be updated to 1GB/1GB some time in the future. 15€ month unlimited phone plan, which caps at around 500KB/s at best, usually much lower. Still something I like to have for visiting parents on weekend...

07-05-2012, 04:16 AM	#5
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Almost all ISPs in the UK have usage caps. My provider, for example, caps at 60GB/month for the account that I have. That's more than enough for me - even with downloading quite a lot of stuff from BBC iPlayer, my usage is typically around 30GB/month. (As a matter of interest, when my ISP introduced usage caps, they said that their reason for doing so was that under 0.1% of their customers were using 70% of their total network capacity, and that capacity has to be paid for. It's not fair for a tiny proportion of users to degrade performance for everyone.)

07-05-2012, 04:32 AM	#7
sherman Guru Posts: 875 Karma: 2676800 Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Taranaki - NZ Device: Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Forma	Paying ~$92* for a combined phone and internet package. Internet is ADSL2+ and is "max attainable line speed". In our case, that's around 8.5Mbps-9Mbps down and ~900Kbps up. We have a 120GB data cap (includes both download AND upload). Local calls are free, but we have to pay for any other calls made. For mobile phone, I am on a plan that costs ~$31* per month. With that, I get 220 minutes (outgoing) to any landline or mobile number in the country. I get 2500 text messages, and 1GB of internet data. The mobile network is HSPA+ I believe. I can also share my plan data with up to five other devices (I have a USB 3G modem), which is currently free until December. *Prices in US dollars at today's exchange rate

07-05-2012, 04:36 AM	#8
BWinmill Nameless Being	I predict that there will be no MR members in North America by this time tomorrow, since we will all be immigrating to Europe. 10 Mb/s, 120 GB/month cap for $45/month + basic cable. The only reason why the caps are that high is because of a huge public outcry last year. (Personally they don't affect me,but I can understand why others would be outraged since video streaming is a hog.)

07-05-2012, 04:53 AM	#9
sherman Guru Posts: 875 Karma: 2676800 Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Taranaki - NZ Device: Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Forma	They certainly won't be migrating down here, that's for sure. Sherman has no sympathy for those NA's who are crying and whinging over the introduction of data caps to their country...

07-05-2012, 05:04 AM	#10
JeremyR Guru Posts: 973 Karma: 2458402 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: St. Louis Device: Kindle Keyboard, Nook HD+	Me, I'm stuck with Satellite internet from Hughes. $80 a month which peaks at 500 kb/s and more like 250 (and 25 in prime time hours). But it's largely a moot point since i have a 500 megabyte a day cap. (But it's either that or dial-up. And dial-up isn't even feasible, since that's like $30 for a phone line and then if I actually use the phone line more than a few hours a day, I get hit with a $30 fee for using it too much.) Don't have a phone with internet.

07-05-2012, 06:36 AM	#13
dillsandwitch Enthusiast Posts: 39 Karma: 9064 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: Sony PRS-T1, Kobo Aura H20	I'm with iinet here in Brisbane. have packaged my land-line and iterwebs for between $90-105 per month depending on how many phone calls i make to the rellies down south. 200GB total per month then capped if i exceed that (which unfortunately i do most months ) seriously need to up that bandwidth amount i think. we get on average 7-8mb/sec down most days. the copper wiring to our house is shit and the phone company wont change it granted there are better deals for more bandwidth/lower price but iinet have told the aus government where to shove it with the 'monitoring of what people look at online" and hardly ever gets drop outs mobile i pay 30 a month and that includes 700mb of data a month. with Vodafone though so i get no reception most places but again they dont hassle me when i forget to pay my bill for a month or 3. hehehe

07-05-2012, 06:56 AM	#14
Yapyap Guru Posts: 861 Karma: 3543721 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Estonia Device: Kindle Paperwhite, iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge	Home package consisting of uncapped Internet 12 MB down / 1 MB up, IPTV & landline telephone at €30 a month. I work from home over VPN and often need to download several files of 250 MB or more a day, so any sort of cap would be rather unfortunate, even without much streaming media use. Smartphone package - phone + uncapped Internet at 3 Mbps at €30 a month.

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07-05-2012, 07:10 AM	#15
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	a bit over 20 MB down and 2 MB up. No usage cap yet, though they say it's coming. Don't know what my usage is since my carrier doesn't show usage on the bill (that's probably why there isn't a cap yet). I suspect that while a small percentage of people are databand hogs, the caps are more so carriers can start charging for tiered usage. Carriers already have ways of handling databand hogs without caps.