does anyone know of a good broadband service in the US under $20/month?
i currently have a 28.8Kb connection
I don’t think you will find one. Affordable broadband is either going to be DSL through the phone company (depends on your area, no competition except for a few specific areas) or Cable through the local cable company (usually no competition/no choice). Knology and Comcast are pretty much it for cable (I think Time Warner is partnered with Knology). Usually there are some price breaks for the first couple of months and some discounts if the company handles other services (digital cable + internet or phone service + DSL).
On top of that, local city gov’t decides which company gets the franchise. Affordable broadband is usually not even considered as a criteria. Then, the service gets taxed by federal, state, and local gov’ts.
Expect to pay $40-75 a month.
If you want it cheaper, find a neighbor with a wireless network and use his access or offer to pay him $20 a month to allow you access.
I’d love to find a DSL provider for under $20, but in the mean time you can do alot better than 28 Kb with a dial up. First off, get yourself a 56 Kb modem and shop for the best dialup provider you can find. I’ve had pretty decent throughput with Flexnet.com (I think they are nationwide) for $9.95 / month, but there are alot of them out there. If you are having difficulties connecting at speeds of 52-54 Kbps, call your phone company and ask them to check your line. You may have a noisey phone line.
Then download “CableNut” to tweak your system (I’m assuming your running Windows XP): http://www.cablenut.com/
If you’re not using Mozilla Firefox, you should be. It’s much faster (IMHO) than IE and I’ve been very happy with it’s spyware protection.
And lastly, download “Leachget” ( http://www.leechget.net/en/ ) a freeware download accelerator.
It ain’t DSL, but it’ll sure be a heck of alot better than 28 Kbps!!
Hope this helps,
Paul
are you serious?
here 33K - 42K on a modem is standard for everyone. (i know no friends that have ever been over 42)
Alltaken
are you serious?
here 33K - 42K on a modem is standard for everyone. (i know no friends that have ever been over 42)
You’re getting only 33 to 42 Kbps on a 56 Kbps modem? Where are you located? I’m all the way out in the country in Hawaii. I can’t swear to the accuracy of what Windoze XP is telling me, but I average (according to the XP connection panel) 52 Kbps and sometimes 53-54. A buddy on the other side of the island tells me he averages around 48 Kbps, sometimes 50-52, and he knows that his phone line has alot of problems. Again, I really don’t know how accurate this is.
In any event, the tools I’ve recommended should help no matter how fast (or slow) your dialup connection is.
Paul
Its very rare to get connection speeds in the 50s on a modem, generally modems connect at about 46,600 or whatever.
Also, max upload on a standard line is 36,600, and I reckon most major companies would report a 0-5% of users connecting at 50+k.
Anyway now will commence load of people banging on about how they always get 56K connection or whatever.
Cheapest ADSL here in england is about £15.99 so I’m guessing its about the same stateside.
If somebody posts a link to a test site, I can test my throughput speed and report back what it really is. Otherwise, we’re all just guessing…
Paul
New Zealand.
and yeah 48 would be considered an awsome connection here.
BTW a 1Mb(bit) download connection here costs $80 for 500MB of traffic.
a 256K connection costs about $60 a month for 10Gb of traffic.
our internet is hardly the best in the world LOL.
Alltaken
Move to New Hampshire and get Metrocast 
Just look… http://metrocastcablevision.com/internet_plans_pricing.cfm
It’s not under $20 a month, but the lowest you can go is damn close (at $22 a month). I think they have 5 mbit connections now too.
Just think:
4.0 mbps / 386k
2 email addresses, 6 email aliases
40mb web space
$40 a month
And they have great support.
i have a 56K modem but my phoneline max speed is 28K. DSL is not avalible in my area
I’d be surprised if you found anything in the US for under $40. Some DSL providers will tell you that it’s under that, but then you have to deal with the phone companies end of it. Here in Portland, OR, your broadband choices are expensive. Either you go with Comcast cable for $52.95/m, Qwest DSL for around $45/m, Earthlink DSL for about the same, or satellite (which is much slower). Comcast, which I use, is quite the service though. I’m getting 3000kb/s down, 238kb/s up (both stable and both unlimited data transfer), 7 e-mail accounts with 250MB a piece, 7 personal web-space accounts with 25MB a piece. It’s a lot of money, but it’s also a lot of service.
HAHA PWNED.
I downloaded a 2gb file in a few hours today just for you guys.
yeah i have seen that movie too.
your mum is a really good actress.
Alltaken
[quote=“Alltaken”]
yeah i have seen that movie too.
your mum is a really good actress.
Alltaken[/quote]
Yeah and she really shouldn’t be doing that to those poor donkeys.
I can’t believe in the US and AU you can’t get stuff cheaper than that. I get an unlimited 256Kbps for £18 a month. I can download about 1 gig overnight. Yay, I’ve found one reason to like living in the UK.
I have unlimited 300kps for around $ 25 dollars from the local phone company
Valarking: a couple hours ? I got all the Mandrake CD’s in just over 2 the other day…
I only need an 80 megabyte ISO to get the install of my distro going. That, arseload of ram, a good fast CPU and some spare bandwidth (I’ve done it on 26.4k dialup and 1.5meg dsl).
Gentoo baby! 8)
[quote=“Alltaken”]
yeah i have seen that movie too.
your mum is a really good actress.
Alltaken[/quote]
You may have seen that movie but I’ll bet you that movie took you 2 DAYS TO DOWNLOAD. MWAHAHA.
dittohead, i didn’t say i was downloading it for me … heh
I’ve been experimenting with dyne:bolic, although for some reason it doesn’t like my keyboard or my usb key…
I found a site that tests throughput:
http://www.toast.net/performance/
According to their tests, I’m averaging about 38 Kbps for an image, 68 Kbps for text and about 48 Kbps for text/image. That’s -alot- different from the “52 - 54 Kbps” that the XP connection window shows me…
Paul