Comment Cry me a river (Score 1) 800
Try living in a place like South Africa, which is known to have possibly the highest bandwidth cost in the world. Why? Because there is no competition here. There is *one* telecommunications company, and they deem it fit to charge an arm, a leg and a snip of your ear for a connection to the internet.
Americans are so quick to wail about how bad it is over there. Shame. You poor little buggers. If I could get a DSL link for $45 a month, I would take it like a shot. And be damn grateful. The cheapest internet connection I can get over here is about R400pm (about $60 pm) -- and that's for a service that is capped at 1 gB traffic: when my traffic reaches 1 gB, I get moved into a high-contention, low-bandwidth pool of naughty users. And that service only exists for me if I am lucky enough to be covered by a wireless network that doesn't belong to our friendly Telkom -- the cheapest line-based DSL connection I can get is about R750pm (about $110pm), where I have a 3 gB cap which essentially puts me in such a bad connection pool that I can't even contact google. Let alone read /.
Before you go wailing about how bad it is to live in a country where broadband is the norm, and most people can afford it without having to make some other sacrifices (and not going to McDonald's once or twice a month is no sacrifice...), think about the rest of the emerging world, where people struggle to even get a connection, let alone get a broadband connection. I mean, Telkom's trying to get everyone all excited about their Brand New Fantastic Service: a 1 meg pipe. Old hat anywhere else. Cutting edge here. Not because we can't do the tech, but because the monopoly really doesn't give 2 hoots about its client base.
Americans are so quick to wail about how bad it is over there. Shame. You poor little buggers. If I could get a DSL link for $45 a month, I would take it like a shot. And be damn grateful. The cheapest internet connection I can get over here is about R400pm (about $60 pm) -- and that's for a service that is capped at 1 gB traffic: when my traffic reaches 1 gB, I get moved into a high-contention, low-bandwidth pool of naughty users. And that service only exists for me if I am lucky enough to be covered by a wireless network that doesn't belong to our friendly Telkom -- the cheapest line-based DSL connection I can get is about R750pm (about $110pm), where I have a 3 gB cap which essentially puts me in such a bad connection pool that I can't even contact google. Let alone read
Before you go wailing about how bad it is to live in a country where broadband is the norm, and most people can afford it without having to make some other sacrifices (and not going to McDonald's once or twice a month is no sacrifice...), think about the rest of the emerging world, where people struggle to even get a connection, let alone get a broadband connection. I mean, Telkom's trying to get everyone all excited about their Brand New Fantastic Service: a 1 meg pipe. Old hat anywhere else. Cutting edge here. Not because we can't do the tech, but because the monopoly really doesn't give 2 hoots about its client base.
