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Edited on Fri Feb-10-06 11:10 PM by RoyGBiv
I got curious and dug a little. As I suspected, speed with this service leaves something to be desired. If you're planning on using this for both at-home and away use, you may be quite disappointed.
A bit about speed: Download windows in web browsers and FTP clients typically show download speed in terms of KB/s or kilobytes per second. This can be quite confusing because service providers tend to advertise their service in terms of kilobits or megabits per second, Kb/s or Mb/s respectively. There are 8 bits in a byte, so you have to do some calculating to determine what KB/s translates to in terms of kilobits or megabits per second.
Verizon advertises this service as capable of speeds up to 1 Mb/s, which is the equivalent of 128 KB/s. (If I recall correctly, this is the speed of the now outdated ISDN-B connection.) By comparison, the maximum speed on a typical dial-up is 56KB/s, so what you're talking about here is double the speed of dial-up for at least triple the cost. (The advertisement I found said 59.99/mo with qualifying calling plan, so depending on what dial-up service you're talking about and what services you already have, its more like 4 times the cost.) But this is what it is capable of, not what it typically gets. During standard use, you tend to get somewhere between 400 and 700 Kb/s with occasional bursts "up to" 1 Mb/s. This translates to 51.2 - 89.6 KB/s, which is right at or slightly above the speed of a dialup.
BTW, service providers are notorious for not capitalizing the abbreviations KB, Kb, MB, Mb correctly.
If you're on the road a lot visiting major metro areas or spend a lot of time in major airports, this might be a good deal, assuming you also want and need the "qualifying calling plan" and assuming the technology, and thus speed, do not improve in the next two years. If you're wanting this for home use as well, I believe I can safely say this is a bad deal when compared to cable or DSL service.
Oh, and the early termination fee is $175, so I will reiterate not to try this unless you are given a grace period during which you can try the service and see if it will work for you.
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