[GEM Development] Test: Ok, I'll Be the First to Try a Letter

[Liam Proven]

Gene Buckle wrote:

> 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.

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.

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.

Maybe you guys in the US have some weird systems and standards! From the 
PoV of the rest of the developed world, your multiple competing telcos 
look pretty silly :¬) I was hugely amused to read press releases from 
some US telcos late last year to proudly proclaim that subscribers from 
different cellphone networks could text one another. We've had that in 
Europe for about a decade and I can text anyone on any GSM network 
anywhere in the world. I expect nothing less. I hadn't dreamed that 
anywhere was so backwards that they /couldn't/ do that.

But 64Kb/s ADSL in the mid- to late-1990s? Really? 8¬o

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. :¬)

-- 
Liam Proven · http://livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=lproven
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