Bruce's Blog

It seems the next round of bandwidth cap increases for both downstream and upstream will come in the form of more expensive plans and tweaking at existing rates:

ArsTechnica: Cox turns up the speed, slashes prices

$39.95/mo for (4Mbps/512Kbps), $54.95/mo (5Mbps/768Kbps), Non-cable TV customers have to suck down an additional $10 (Cable companies just can't resist that lameass tie-in!)

DSL Reports: Cable Speeds Up (Again)

Time Warner offers 6Mbps/512Kbps for $64.95-$84.95 (based on how much they screw you over on Cable TV), Article discusses how Canadian cable companies are far ahead of US divisions when it comes to bandwidth

TelephonyOnline: Upstream without a paddle

It is really lame how providers are just finally now approaching 768Kbps upstream. 384Kbps is bad enough...

Speculation about Verizon's 3.0Mbps/768Kbps upgrade continues...

Apparently the sales people are about as knowledgeable about availability and pricing of the new option as their customers are... As in... Not very knowledgeable at all.

In other news my Verizon DSL service seems to be working well at 1.5Mbps/384Kbps. The modem claims to be syncing at the over provisioned rate. Unfortunately Verizon forces you to install crap under Windows to create an account and it hijacks Internet Explorer's branding and installs some spyware like crud. Took me a good half hour to clean out all of the junk that was installed and I still have not figured out where to disable the "Internet Explorer provided by Verizon Online" junk. It may be a time for a reinstall... Sigh.