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Here in Oz we seem to have been between the US and the UK in terms of
introduction of ADSL, but it has been expensive until just recently and
very unevenly distributed around the country. Near major cities, it has
been fairly available for about six or seven years, in the bush it is
still often unavailable because of distance from the exchanges. If you
remember the episode of The Simpsons where Bart runs up a major
international phone bill by calling a kid in the Australian bush, you
will get a picture of what life is like around Hay or Broken Hill. Our
copper phone networks are owned by Telstra (the national carrier),
which also sells bandwidth to other resellers.<br>
<br>
However, in the cities, we also have the option of cable (which I have
had for about 2-1/2 years) which is a very different proposition.
Sometimes I feel I am robbing myself by feeding that into an 802.11g
wireless network. Both Telstra and Optus (a division of Singtel these
days) have cable networks, and there are also resellers who provide
access systems on the Telstra and Optus infrastructures. My service,
which has unlimited downloads (extra charges after 10GB) and
uncapped/128kbs access, costs $AU64-odd per month (incl 10% GST)<br>
<br>
It's a big improvement over the old dial-up!<br>
<br>
We also have the same kind of mobile phone interoperability which one
finds in Europe, which is good for communication between us and our son
and his family in sunny, downtown Sidcup (UK).<br>
<br>
Peter<br>
<br>
Gene Buckle wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midPine.BSF.4.44.0602091954080.19884-100000@grumble.deltasoft.com"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I'm still in a state of shock. For the last 10 years, I've been working
on a DSL line that gave me 64k download and 25k upload speeds. I thought
it was fast. *cough* Boy, was I wrong.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">ADSL for 10y? The first public tests of ADSL connections over the public
telephone network in the UK were only about 5y ago (circa 2000-2001). I
didn't think ADSL existed outside the telco labs a decade ago.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->Technically I didn't have ADSL for 10 years. I started off in 1996 with a
pair of B channels on an ISDN circuit. The ADSL came a little while
later.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Secondly, the *slowest* ADSL lines I've ever heard of were around
512Kb/s downstream; speeds of 128Kb/s or so upstream are typical. 64Kb/s
is ISDN speed and by aggregating 2 channels (ISDN channels typically
come in pairs) you'd be able to get 128Kb/s, and that would be
symmetrical, with 64Kb/s upstream too.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->I was referring to 64kbytes/sec, not 64kbits/sec. :) The circuit is
640/256.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I have read that America was ahead in broadband uptake. 64K hasn't been
a fast connection since last century, man! My cheapo home connection
here, just outside London, is an 8Mb/s ADSL1 one! Now 24MB/s ADSL2 is
rolling out across large British cities. I'm not going for that because
my home LAN is only 10Mb/s 10base-2. :�)
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
My boss lives in San Diego,CA and the rotten bastard has a 50Mb/sec fiber
circuit to his house. I try not to miss any opportunity to tell him he
sucks. :) At least I'm trying to catch up.
g.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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