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You’re overpaying for slow internet.

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You’re overpaying for slow internet.

from JoeUser Forums

 

Long suspected as much. Not only do you pay more, you get slower speeds, as well.

The New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, compared Internet service in the US: Kansas City, Missouri (pop. 467,000), San Francisco and Bristol, Virginia (pop. 17,835) -- with large European and Asian metropolises, including London, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, and Copenhagen. You can view the report here: http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/OTI_The_Cost_of_Connectivity_2014.pdf

While the city size might not be exactly comparable, some glaring facts did emerge:

  • 25 mb/sec London-$24/mo,
  • Kansas City-$41/mo,
  • Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Prague<$40/mo.
  • Lafayette, LA- $50/mo.
  • Washington, D.C. $52/mo.

This report also implied that about 75% of American homes have only a single source for an ISP. That means that there’s no competition for that essential infrastructure. In Europe? Quite different: Governments try to encourage rivalries between ISPs by requiring them to share infrastructures. That doesn’t happen here.

Also, broadband in the foreign cities listed above is about 10x faster than equally priced U.S. plans. At least we aren’t in Mexico City. What I can’t believe is that such a critical necessity for education, science, technology and commerce isn’t incentivized nor encouraged.

I believe things should change.

There are plenty of Graphs on the report which is quite thorough. A small sample:

Source:

http://www.infopackets.com/news/9402/americans-pay-too-much-slow-internet-report

116,059 views 41 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

jafo, wintercross, starkers you are far TOO MILD on those total failures called politicians, they should be shipped over to the middle east as LIVE SHEEP

harpo, the NON-subscriber

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top

Fact is all the politicians suck. The best we can do is try to pick the least suckiest at the time.
Which as Labor showed us with the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd 'switcheroo', can't even be guaranteed anyway.

 

edit: I mean, do you really think that slime ball Bill Shorten will be any better?

 

Pity we can't fire ALL the politicians and start fresh.

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Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Pity we can't fire ALL the politicians and start fresh.
End of quote

Or bring back/revive the careers of politicians past.

Dunno 'bout many of 'em, but I say we bring back Gough!!!!!

Now there was a gentleman... a true statesman... and there hasn't been one since.

Met Bill Hayden years ago... nice bloke from Ipswich, Qld... he too was a gentleman and statesman.

Anyhow, let's not turn this into a politician bashing exercise... plenty of deserving media/telecommunication moguls out there with parasitic desires on your/our back pockets.

And in the famous words of Ted Bullpit: "Somebody ought to blow Telstra; Optus; Vodaphone, etc up." :grin:

While on the subject of Aussie internet speeds, I was getting up to 94 - 95mbs on the NBN [fibre from the node] until my feching mother feched it up for me and I had to move... and the bill keeps growing... despite arranging with Telstra to temporarily suspend my service until I find suitable accommodation. Went into my account earlier and they reckon I owe nearly $700 for the months of September, October and November.  All my services were disconnected on August 30, so somebody's getting a right royal blasting later on, with the ombudsman being brought in should I not receive a satisfactory result.

Again, I put this behaviour down to greed, as many people wouldn't question it and would pay the bill to avoid making a fuss... well not me!  I will demand the bill be wiped, and if they don't do it willingly I'll kick 'em in the corporate gonads [metaphorically speaking], and I have a few ways to skin the proverbial cat, so it will be interesting should the fechers decide to be awkward.

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

starkers, if we did manage to bring back gough, then it would REALLY be the DEAD leading us, as even a non news/idiot box person like myself heard of his death.

harpo, the NON-subscriber

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

You know, I've worked for Telstra in the past and you would not believe the crazy regulations forced upon them.

For one, all the prices are regulated to stay above a certain amount which is why Telstra tends to be more pricey.

Here is one of the dumbest restrictions though; if I had a customer call me regarding their account, be it phone or internet or whatever...

I'd punch the number into our system, and it would bring up their details of their connection (exchange, connection address etc.) and show me if they were a Telstra customer or not. Now if they were not a Telstra customer, the regulations state I was not 'allowed' to tell them they are with another carrier and had to tell them 'I can't find your account'  This obviously leads to people getting irate and it was such an idiotic restriction. 

I also had to deal with a lot of abuse from people who had odd ideas in their head. Like one guy who was yelling at me because a call he made to a number in a different exchange should have been a local call because he could see the other house from his roof.

So I guess I have a little sympathy for at least the people working in Telco companies.

 

 

despite arranging with Telstra to temporarily suspend my service until I find suitable accommodation. Went into my account earlier and they reckon I owe nearly $700 for the months of September, October and November.  All my services were disconnected on August 30, so somebody's getting a right royal blasting later on, with the ombudsman being brought in should I not receive a satisfactory result.

 

That is pretty bad and probably falls into incompetence or lack of caring from the person who should have suspended the account.
If you had gotten hold of me I would have refunded everything back on your account (it's pretty easy to confirm an account hasn't been used) and apologised for the inconvenience.

As long as customers didn't abuse me and give me a chance I'd try to help them best I could. 

Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top

starkers, if we did manage to bring back gough, then it would REALLY be the DEAD leading us
End of quote

Hehe, being led by the dead has to be a better option than what we have now.  Abbott's lot would have to be the most incompetent bunch ever to inhabit the halls of parliament house.  Pretty much every one of them is an imbecile or worse... and Abbott himself struggles to string a few sentences together unless he has somebody to write them for him and he has a teleprompter with big, easy to read letters he can sound out as he goes along.

Yup, give me Gough any day.

That is pretty bad and probably falls into incompetence or lack of caring from the person who should have suspended the account.
If you had gotten hold of me I would have refunded everything back on your account (it's pretty easy to confirm an account hasn't been used) and apologised for the inconvenience.
End of quote

Incompetence doesn't even cut it for me... downright thievery is what I call it.  When I moved in with my mother they charged me for both my previous and new phone/internet bundles on the first 2 bills... and that still hasn't been properly corrected 4 months later.  So yeah, I'm thinking a call to the ombudsman might be necessary to get it all sorted out.

 

Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top

might be a good idea if your not getting anywhere talking to them. It shouldn't happen but it does. Even when I worked there I spent probably 50% of my time fixing other peoples screw ups.

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top

poor wintercross, it sounds like you were one of the few customer service people that actually earned the SERVICE part of the title, in my many conversations with the telstra 'support' desk (on behalf of my customers), I would on average get approx 15% that gave me the impression that they WANTED to help solve the problems, the rest seemed to be so thick that they had difficulty even following the support scripts and speaking ENGLISH (most had so thick a indian/pakistani accent that I had great difficulty even guessing what they were trying to say, and if I had not had my decades of experience with the telstra support scripts, I would have had to ask then to connect me with a person that was in australia)

Harpo, the NON-subscriber

Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top

@winter Even though i like people that talk the truth, i hope you will not be one employee charged for revealing company secrets in the near future.

Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top

@harpo99999: Back when I worked there we didn't have any overseas call centres, however there were a lot of Australian citizen indians/pakastanis working in the call centres.

Since I left they have outsourced call centres to the Philippines I think. I always said when I was there that it would be a bad move to outsource our call centres.

 

 

@benmanns: Nah its all good. When I worked for them I never signed an NDA. The only thing I wasn't allowed to do is make 'deals' with competitors or abuse my access to the systems. Nothing about our operational procedures were really secret, apart from things you were not allowed to say while on a call. 

Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top

wintercross, I did not think that the philipino's sounded like indians/pakistani's with both the accent AND the very fast speach.

harpo. the NON-subscriber

Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting harpo99999, reply 36

wintercross, I did not think that the philipino's sounded like indians/pakistani's with both the accent AND the very fast speach.

harpo. the NON-subscriber
End of harpo99999's quote

 

Dunno, maybe they set up a couple in Pakistan or India? I have been out of the loop for a few years =P

Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top

wintercross, it has been over the last few years that the difficulty in understanding the call centre has happened and have found that the philipino call centres are better than the indian/pakistani, but the best is when the call is escalated to the level 3 (apparently aussie)

Harpo, the NON-subscriber

Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Nowhere does this take into account a rather large group of rural customers that, at least here in farm country, have NO access to cable OR broadband internet. My brother lives less than 5 miles from me and is cursed with dial up. It is all that is available unless he ponies up for satellite.

About 20 bucks a month for the slowest connection I have ever had the misfortune to have to use. It's faster for me to bring his tower and laptop to my house for updates/service.

Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting harpo99999, reply 38

wintercross, it has been over the last few years that the difficulty in understanding the call centre has happened and have found that the philipino call centres are better than the indian/pakistani, but the best is when the call is escalated to the level 3 (apparently aussie)
End of harpo99999's quote

That's why I only ever ring Telstra during regular office hours - 8.30am to 5.30pm - it doesn't always happen, but you do have a better chance of getting an Aussie answer your call that way.  And yes, the Philipino call centres are better for understanding, and the operators always seem to have a courteous and pleasant manner to go with it as well.

Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top

and most (if not all) of the calls on behalf of my customers started during business hours, and yet I had the missfortune to get the bloody indian/pakis better than 60% of the time, the philipinos  about 30% and the tiny remaining percentage is actual aussies in other states (sometimes maddness, sometimes political insanity, and ONCE even in silly knee (after that call I assumed that ALL my good luck had run out and used MAXIMUM paranioa on the journey home after doing everything I could to solve the customer's problems, but nothing happened so must not have been all of my good luck)

harpo the NON-subscriber