3 Megabit Cable Modems, Anyone?

joelav22 writes: "I've got to move to San Francisco! RCN has upgraded current customers to 3 megabits of bandwith for no extra charge. In the days of all the bandwith chopping and caps, this is definitely a welcome trend. I hope ATT and Comcast can take a hint."

This situation seems a bit familiar

[Sheetrock]

Kind of like Prisoners' Dilemma [brynmawr.edu], except that in the end you know no matter what happens the cable company is going to jack up the rates. So yeah, just wget the Internet now and check it out from your hard drives later when the rates go up.

Re:Common Misconception?

[funwithstuff]

Yes, you're right. The fun part of this one is that it's the company's mistake in a PR release. They've just promised bandwidth of eight times what they can deliver. Sign up, then sue.

Glad someone's fallen foul of that bits/bytes marketingspeak that's been allowing bad companies to quote large impressive numbers for years.

What you meant to say

[NiftyNews]

"I hope ATT and Comcast can take a hint."

I think you meant "I hope ATT and Comcast can take a check," because you aren't getting anything for free from those two price-gouging bastards...

Re:BBB in Sweden

[osgeek]

Yeah, but then you have to put up with all of those beautiful Swedish women... who needs that? :)

Re:Common Misconception?

[pbrammer]

Actually, the conversion for data storage is 1024 bits per kilobit, but generally speaking [webopedia.com] 1000 bits per kilobit is used for data transmission.

So, a refinement is in order... 3 Megabits = 3000 kilobits

3000 kilobits / (8 bits/1 byte) = 375 kiloBytes

So, you are getting an additional 375 kiloBytes per second extra. NOT, 3000 kiloBytes per second extra...

Now, diverting a bit...

According to IEEE [ieee.org] (38.5K .doc), (if you really want your mind blown) our term for a kilobyte on a disk, should really be kibibyte (kih-bee). We have megabytes (10^6) and then there are mebibytes(2^20)... Wierd, considering I've never heard those terms... And of course there are more...

Phil