[ale] A bit of a bandwidth/services/price rant..

[Mike Harrison]

> three years til they finally put FAST(?) access DSL in.  The $60 a month 
> for Direcway is steep and they limit bandwidth in any one 24 hour 
> period.  Direcway's download speeds weren't heartwarming either.  Seems 
> like someone would deliver what they advertise.
> My rant for the morning. 


Jim, I had to chime in and share my perspective. 
Once upon a time (1994) a couple of visionary geeks and I started 
in ISP in Chattanooga TN.. and bought a 128k fractional T1 line
from Sprint. For just under $3k per month. When I sold my shares of the 
ISP in 2003, we were buying near Tier 1, DS3's (45mbps) on fiber for about 
$6k/month. 

I'm sitting at home, and my Comcast bill is about $150/month.. 
I like the movie, Sundance, etc.. channels.. and have been impressed
by their bandwidth and QOS. I'm rsyncing an 80gb remote drive, while I 
type this remotely via SSH.. Don't notice any latency. While it's not the 
same as having multi-homed DS3's to my local network, the 80gb sync has 
been running all night, I'm very happy for the price difference. :)

---

My point is, the people on this list are either IT professionals
and/or their technology addiction is a major factor in their lives.
None of us are stupid (compared to the average person), and should
be gainfully employed or self-employed (students being, of course, an 
exception). Most of us are saving lots of cash using FOSS software and 
OS's.. 

   So why are we so cheap when it comes to internet services?