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Free Internet!

Would you get Internet for Free?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 35.3%

  • No

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Only if it's fast enough

    Votes: 10 58.8%

  • Don't Care

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    17
Tothian said:
Only if it's fast enough.
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How fast is that? Cephus wants 70mb+, when most people can stream a video at 1mb. If you're downloading Gb sized files, running a server or playing online games but I can't see the need for more than 20mb? Most likely they'll offer something like 10-15mb download, 1-2mb upload.
 
PeteEU said:
Via satellite?
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No. I had satellite Internet a long, long time ago though and I hated it. It was slow, it had a huge latency and it was great when I finally got rid of it. It's nothing but downsides with absolutely no upsides.
 
grip said:
How fast is that? Cephus wants 70mb+, when most people can stream a video at 1mb. If you're downloading Gb sized files, running a server or playing online games but I can't see the need for more than 20mb? Most likely they'll offer something like 10-15mb download, 1-2mb upload.
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I want faster than I have now. Heck, if you look at places like Tokyo, Internet speeds are 2Gbps down and 1Gbps up. That's what I want.
 
grip said:
New York company says it can beam free OUTERNET Wi-fi to every person on Earth | Mail Online

This article claims, there's a company (Outernet), trying to put up enough small, low orbit satellites to beam free internet to the whole world.

I assume with built in Wifi or a wireless router you could get "Free Internet" and at decent speeds?

Though, I don't see the ISP's taking kindly to this, like Comcast or Time Warner Cable. Personally, I'd love to see free internet and possibly TV channels. Saving $100 a month would definitely help my bills.
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It's all fun and games until people start torrenting.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
It's all fun and games until people start torrenting.
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Or streaming. There are times when Netflix takes up a huge portion of the Internet. Can these satellites handle a majority of their users streaming movies and TV in HD at the same time? In another year or two, what happens when they're streaming in 4x?
 
Cephus said:
I want faster than I have now. Heck, if you look at places like Tokyo, Internet speeds are 2Gbps down and 1Gbps up. That's what I want.
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LOL,,, yeah, I know they have faster speeds there ($50 monthly fee) and Seoul is $30. It's because of fiber-based internet services. Google is just starting in the US but a long ways to go.
 
grip said:
New York company says it can beam free OUTERNET Wi-fi to every person on Earth | Mail Online

This article claims, there's a company (Outernet), trying to put up enough small, low orbit satellites to beam free Internet to the whole world.

I assume with built in Wifi or a wireless router you could get "Free Internet" and at decent speeds?

Though, I don't see the ISP's taking kindly to this, like Comcast or Time Warner Cable. Personally, I'd love to see free INTERNET and possibly TV channels. Saving $100 a month would definitely help my bills.
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"""Free ???"""
Free towers, free satellites, free service ?
Ludicrous and ridiculous....and impossible, of course...
And NO, advertising will pay for this ?
We have enough annoying and obnoxious ads on TV as it is...
 
RabidAlpaca said:
It's all fun and games until people start torrenting.
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If our mega rich, telecorps weren't so cheap, they could upgrade their infrastructure and offer those 1-3GB speeds, at little extra cost.
 
earthworm said:
"""Free ???"""
Free towers, free satellites, free service ?
Ludicrous and ridiculous....and impossible, of course...
And NO, advertising will pay for this ?
We have enough annoying and obnoxious ads on TV as it is...
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TV was free for 40 years with on air Ads, paying for the service. It's possible, though not likely in today's greed riddled society.
 
Carjosse said:
I imagine you would have to buy their hardware for it to work, and you could could the Finnish way and make high-speed internet access a right.
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Highly debatable
"Reasonable speed" Internet a right , in Finland ????
Not as long as the "tea-party" exists......
 
Cephus said:
No. I had satellite Internet a long, long time ago though and I hated it. It was slow, it had a huge latency and it was great when I finally got rid of it. It's nothing but downsides with absolutely no upsides.
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Ya but that was what I was talking about hehe.. 20 mb satellite. Our wired internet is much much faster, especially in the northern European countries. Hell got a friend living in rural Denmark who was offered 200mb fibernet not long ago.. he lives miles from the nearest town on a farm.
 
grip said:
LOL,,, yeah, I know they have faster speeds there ($50 monthly fee) and Seoul is $30. It's because of fiber-based internet services. Google is just starting in the US but a long ways to go.
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I've got FiOS but the top speed currently available where I am is about 100mbps. That's 1/20th the speed available in Japan. We're not getting there fast enough.
 
PeteEU said:
Ya but that was what I was talking about hehe.. 20 mb satellite. Our wired internet is much much faster, especially in the northern European countries. Hell got a friend living in rural Denmark who was offered 200mb fibernet not long ago.. he lives miles from the nearest town on a farm.
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But that's the problem, the issues with satellite-based Internet can never be fixed and it can never offer a comparable experience to a wired connection. That's why, if given the choice between satellite and wired connection, I'll always take wired, even if it's more expensive.
 
If it's fast enough I'd consider it, but I doubt it will be. It might make the cable companies lower their rates some though.
 
Interesting.
 
grip said:
New York company says it can beam free OUTERNET Wi-fi to every person on Earth | Mail Online

This article claims, there's a company (Outernet), trying to put up enough small, low orbit satellites to beam free internet to the whole world.

I assume with built in Wifi or a wireless router you could get "Free Internet" and at decent speeds?

Though, I don't see the ISP's taking kindly to this, like Comcast or Time Warner Cable. Personally, I'd love to see free internet and possibly TV channels. Saving $100 a month would definitely help my bills.
Click to expand...

Only if it is fast enough. However, I don't see it happening. While it may be "free" to end users, someone, somewhere is paying the cost for the R&D, materials, construction, launch and then maintenance of the system. Until there if full disclosure on how they intend to pay for it, I might try it and use it, but would still keep another service, just in case.
 
Cephus said:
But that's the problem, the issues with satellite-based Internet can never be fixed and it can never offer a comparable experience to a wired connection. That's why, if given the choice between satellite and wired connection, I'll always take wired, even if it's more expensive.
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Wired connection will always be cheaper than satellite relative to speed and quality. The fact that many American's are paying a ton of money for their internet is a market issue that can be addressed with more competition. Of course that requires that politicians go up against their paymasters, so that aint gonna happen.
 
I'd love it. I'd still probably pay for wired based internet for my home. But I'd LOVE the notion of a nation or world wide wifi connection that provides a "baseline" of internet access to everyone. If you want a faster, dedicated connection for more seroius computing needs then you can pay for it. But if you're just answering emails or checking Weather.com, it'd work great.

Honestly, I'd love to see the cost of this. Compared to many of the things our government wastes money on, having a dedicated baseline of Internet connection for the country similar to a baseline level of cable broadcasting would be wonderful. Depending on the cost I think it'd be a useful endevour if for nothing more than a means of communicating emergency information to people if/when needed. Granted, it'd depend a bit on cost...but somehow I imagine comparitive to some of what we've spent money on the cost/benefit mockup would be favorable. Right now we're too bad off in terms of a financial situation that I'd not exactly be in favor of it, but if we could right out house a bit and find somewhere within the budget of the time to cut from to free up the money, I think it could be an interesting option to persue.

That is if the private sector doesn't do it, but I'm a bit leery of the legitimacy of this source.
 
I don't know, this whole thing about it being FREE seems like a pipedream. Giving Internet access away for free just doesn't seem to add up. Who'll maintain this system, keep it upgraded and monitor it? Who controls the data that goes through it?
 
Cephus said:
I've got FiOS but the top speed currently available where I am is about 100mbps. That's 1/20th the speed available in Japan. We're not getting there fast enough.
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I'm not an internet guru but I think the speed is limited by content providers, more than ISP's. These are the download speeds of streaming video to respective ISP's from Netflix. It doesn't matter if you've got 3Gb download speed and the content coming from the other internet servers is only at a limited amount. If all content on the internet averaged 500Mb-3Gb, then it would be worth having. Content provider's control the internet speed with server load and bandwidth.

Torrent is popular because they attempt to split up the content into multiple data streams from a number of sites (or seeds). Offering the file from more than one site speeds up the downloading, if your ISP doesn't filter it out.


12month_us_speeds.jpg


Click on ctrl-alt-delete and bring up the task manager. Click on Networking, then start a streaming video and see how much percentage of your connection speed you're using.
 
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DVSentinel said:
Only if it is fast enough. However, I don't see it happening. While it may be "free" to end users, someone, somewhere is paying the cost for the R&D, materials, construction, launch and then maintenance of the system. Until there if full disclosure on how they intend to pay for it, I might try it and use it, but would still keep another service, just in case.
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I keep telling everybody what the article says, "they expect to get $millions in donations". I also imagine they can pepper their log in pages and certain content with Ads.

If Comcast/Time Warner get their merger they'll control nearly one-third of all broadband subscribers in the U.S. and an inordinate amount of the fiber that the Internet runs on. Both want to control (and get paid handsomely) for all the data that runs on their tubes.

Comcast and Time Warner will have a ton of leverage over content companies both on the Web and TV. It will be a monopoly power with wide-ranging effects over consumers, Wi-Fi and hotspot operators, Internet speeds, content companies like CBS and AMC, and over the top content providers like Netflix and YouTube.

For instance, Time Warner does not put a cap on broadband data. Comcast does (at about 250 GB per month). Expect Time Warner customers to get that cap as soon as the deal is finalized.


With Time Warner, Comcast Wants Total Control Of The Internet Pipes – ReadWrite
 
grip said:
Click on ctrl-alt-delete and bring up the task manager. Click on Networking, then start a streaming video and see how much percentage of your connection speed you're using.
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Of course, you can't download any faster than the site that you're downloading from is uploading, but as speeds increase across the board, you'll be able to funnel a lot more data down that increasingly fat pipe. Given an unlimited amount of data, I can download an absurd amount at present and I'd like to be able to do it even faster. Ultimately, I'd rather virtual instantaneous delivery of any amount of data anywhere on the planet, no more streaming, you want to see movie X, your computer downloads the entire thing in whatever resolution you want in a second or two and you watch it. No buffering. No lag. No hang-time. Just there all the time. We're not there yet but we're getting closer.
 
grip said:
I'm not an internet guru but I think the speed is limited by content providers, more than ISP's. These are the download speeds of streaming video to respective ISP's from Netflix. It doesn't matter if you've got 3Gb download speed and the content coming from the other internet servers is only at a limited amount. If all content on the internet averaged 500Mb-3Gb, then it would be worth having. Content provider's control the internet speed with server load and bandwidth.

Torrent is popular because they attempt to split up the content into multiple data streams from a number of sites (or seeds). Offering the file from more than one site speeds up the downloading, if your ISP doesn't filter it out.


View attachment 67162262


Click on ctrl-alt-delete and bring up the task manager. Click on Networking, then start a streaming video and see how much percentage of your connection speed you're using.
Click to expand...

That is only one factor. The bandwith available to the ISP is split among the number of users and the amount of data at a given time. Too many users on your ISP watching netflix at the same time will also slow it down. ISPs buy bandwith based upon average usage, not by the total possible if every user was using max bandwith at the same time. You may have purchased 3 Gb bandwith, but I guarantee you the ISP does not have the bandwith for all subscribers to use that 3Gb at the same time.

Pathing also plays a role as well as the bandwith capabilities of the nodes that are passed through.

You seem concerned about Comcast/Time Warner merging. Seems you already know some of the competitors to look at if the price goes up too much.
 
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