Stratcat wrote:

"~misfit~" <misfit61nz@yahoo-mung.co.nz> wrote in message
news:cOOEc.5942$LT3.234184@news.xtra.co.nz...

Colin Jones wrote:

Hiya ~misfit~.

In <news:zQHEc.5812$LT3.230612@news.xtra.co.nz> you wrote:

  I haven't stopped yet. I won't either until it starts working...
on all machines!

Same here. However, with three machines requesting work every few
minutes I'm generating a lot of requests. I'm on dial-up and
haven't unplugged my modem for a week!! We don't need no steenking
phone-calls!

  Dial-up? Oh yeah, I remember that ;o)

Bast%#@&!!

I'm in New Zealand and high-speed internet is still expensive here.
Also, I'm on an invalid's benefit so it would have to be damn cheap
for me to be able to justify the lower food-intake. <g>.

Hope it hits critical mass for you soon, and the prices drop.

Here in Chi-town, basic residential DSL is only about a 30% surcharge
over dial-up. Plus DSL is always on, incurs no time or usage charges,
and you can use the phone + computer at the same time. DSL is also
completely dedicated. There no b/w sharing like cable, so there's
never slow peak times of heavy usage.

There are some national cut-rate dial-up providers claiming 10 - 12
U$D/mo, but generally speaking, the standard dial-up svc w/ISP svs's
included,
is 20 U$D. But, you have to pay the additional connecting local call
charges, AND your regular phone svc.

For residential (DHCP) DSL:

1.5M DSL is 26.95 U$D/mo.
3.0M DSL is 39.95 U$D/mo.

This includes the ISP's svc's, a free 10M Enet SpeedStream modem,
and all the line filters I want. There's no additional usage charges,
BUT, you still need to pay for your regular (voice) phone svc.

I use the 1.5M. It's actually ADSL - 256k up/1.5M down. I speed test
mine using Broadband Reports, and get a consistent 235k/1,380k.

Here's a link to the XE.com site if you want to convert to NZD:

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

So what are you paying for dial-up, ISP, and call charges in NZ?

(All figures NZ$)

I'm on an unlimited 56K dial-up. It's $27.95/mo plus line rental of $42/mo.
Call charges are high, (except for calls to land-lines within the "local"
area, usually a 20 mile radius or so, which are free) we don't use the phone
much to call out unless it's important.

I believe (DSL or ADSL) is around $85/mo with line rental of $42 but that
only gets you 256K and maybe 5GB international traffic/mo. Anything over the
cap is 20c/MB. Costs about $150 or more to set up. I'm not *right* up with
the play price-wise but it's around there. The problem we have here is the
phone-lines are all owned by a monopoly company Telecom, who bought the
whole infrastructure from the govt. about 20 years ago.

So DSL is about a 250% surcharge above dial-up and then it's crippled.

So the ISPs have to pay Telecom for the service. If I had a 256K plan with
say, company x, I would pay Telecom $42 for the line rental, then pay them
$39.95 for the use of the DSLAM or whatever they're calling them now and
only the other $45 would go to the actual ISP. Telecom have their own ISP,
Xtra, who make up about 50% of the market. Most people (including myself, to
my everlasting shame, I resent the monopolistic practices of "Telescum") use
Xtra because it's easier to have just one bill each month. I struggle enough
with balancing the bills without having to pay two entities.

Anything over 256K gets quite a bit more expensive. There are a few
companies setting up 'wireless broadband' to get past the monopoly on the
copper lines. However, it's still fairly expensive and suffers from high
latency. (So the gamers tell me) Telecom/Xtra used to market a 128K plan,
they may still, but were attacked in the media for advertising it as
'broadband'.

Although our dollar isn't worth as much as yours I think you actually earn
more on average so these prices may really be higher in real terms (compared
to the cost-of-living) than they sound to you. I mean to say wages are
significantly higher in the USA than they are here, although the
cost-of-living when it comes to home rental and food etc. is cheaper here.

There's a company that started in the town I live in who are doing good
things with wireless. A while back I could have had a 1M up-down wireless
connection for $89/mo with a $100 set-up fee and a 10GB cap. However it was
a limited time offer and I really can't afford the extra on-going cost
easilly.

Other than the line-monopoly we have the problem of being a few thousand
miles away from the largest part of the internet (USA) and several billion
dollars was invested in the "Southern Cross" cable (actually fibre) link to
the west coast (USA) and Australia a year or two back. It is way
under-utilised because the company who paid for it charge a fair whack for
data throughput. ISPs have to buy a quota. Hence the data-caps on most
high-speed plans. ISPs also use 'traffic-shaping' where they limit P2P
bandwidth to basically dial-up speeds to discourage 'excess data
through-put'.

We live in a beautiful country but, as far as internet access goes, it might
as well be the third world. Also, due to government incompetance, we have
insufficient power-generation capabilities in this country at certain times.
A significant percentage of our electricity is generated by hydro shemes
and, in certain weather conditions, it doesn't meet the demand. Six months
ago we had a nationwide push to reduce consumption by 10% with savings for
each region being reported on the nightly news. Instead of investing in more
power production the powers-that-be (pun intended) have decided to increase
the price of electricity. In the last three years it's gone up around 30% to
my reckoning and it's going up again on the 19th of this month another 15%
for me. I pay approximately 50% of what I spend on food a week on power.
(And we don't use AC or electric heating in my home, we simply can't afford
it)

Of course there are people with a lot more money than I have. I'm on an
invalid's benefit due to a compression fracture of the spine I got whilst
self-employed nine years ago and the govt. gives me just barely enough to
live on. And I mean *just barely*. My girlfriend, who is studying and
dependant on my income, gets lots of niggley health problems which I put
down to us not being able to afford to eat properly. Malnutrition basically.
We eat cheap, ready-prepared, nutrient-free meals (packet noodles/pasta,
cheap sausages, hardly any fresh fruit/vegetables) as it's all we can
afford.

Sorry, got a bit off-track, that'll teach you to ask me a question like
that. :-)
--
~misfit~