World ISP's

mine is:

sky broadband max 16meg down 768 kb up

unlimited downloads @

bell is lame but this bandwidth cap where did you hear this, i have no bandwidth
cap i can download as much as a like i have done at least 200gb in one month.
but the speeds are lame my connection runs at 1500/500 it should be 3000/1000
but they claim the wiring is to old

isp: bell
speed: 1500/500
price: 40-50/month
country: canada

mine
telewest broadband (uk)

at the moment
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home:

8/1mbit adsl sonera @ finland, no download limits (crazy to see that you guys
have limits, in finland there's no such thing as limit in broadband
connections). costs about 40 euros per month.

next month i'll upgrade to 100/10mbit sonera ethernetconnection (only available
in finland's biggest cities and only if you live in (what the word is
housecompany? - big building, lot's of aparments)) costs 49 euros per month, no
limits and not shared 🙂

work:

100/100mbit tdc song fiberoptic connection. price is secret. 🙂 obiviously no
limits.

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in finland you can get connections as fast as 100mbit if you live at new fancy
aparment and building has fiberconnection on the basement. still, if you don't
live such a apartment, you can always get at least 2mbit/512kbit connection.
usually at least 8/1mbit. better location and you can always get 24/3mbit adsl2+
for 70-80 euros per month. in about couple of weeks one of the finland's biggest
isp's will launch their vdsl2 pilot which can go up to 250 mbit/s at 'source' to
100 mbit/s at 0.5 km and 50 mbit/s at 1 km. poor distance, but still pretty darn
fast isn't it? 😉

a quick aside for those in the uk claiming `unlimited` or `uncapped`
service ...

you might want to check your terms & conditions. 95% of consumer level
providers will have a "fair use policy" or similar in the contract.

the wording of these is intentionally vague.

it boils down to "unlimited ... until transit peering to other isps costs us
too much/we saturate our cheap backhauls/our margins get squeezed again/we
have a pms day/etc. "

i.e. they reserve the right to rate limit/filter/block/cancel your line
whenever they feel like it with no published, quantatative usage threshold.

some isps are more sensitive than others, depending on their infrastructure,
finances & customer mix, but the legal getout is there for whenever they want
it.

the main exception to this bt dependant tier are the llu providers. they,
however, just move the throttling up the network chain a few hops, by
squeezing their backhaul & transit capacity more or less transparently to the
user.

it's just one of the oldest commercial principles on earth in action:-

"there's no such thing as a free lunch" 🙂

zen used to be unlimited, i could download 250gig a month, but they decided to
cap it. they used to be one of the best i found, the contention ratio was low
and i could always get the maximum speed. i have heard with ntl and possibly
telewest that at peak times its no better than dial up and if you download too
much during peak times or more than a few dosen gig they get pissy and give
you a warning, do it a couple of times and they cut you off.

with sky as well there is quite a constricted fair use policy, i dont know how
that translates to limits though

i am blessed with arrownet. (denmark)
4 mbit/s down
4 mbit/s up
about 25 usd

i am living at a dormitory that has upgraded to fiberoptics not long ago
the connection speed is guaranteed - for real
and there are no limits at all.
only problem, i am sitting behind a nat and i have not been able to find a way
around.
maximum available is an 8/8 connection for 42 usd

norway, narvik (a little town in nothern norway)

ventelo/bluecom
adsl2+ max
on a good day 20+mb down and 1mb+ up.
price 299 nok (aprox 35

indeed.

one of the reasons i never bothered to upgrade from 1mbit when all the cheap
adsl+/adls2 services started arriving was that zen still kept saying they were
committed to *true* unlimited usage, so the price premium was worth it.
no sneaky packet/protocol/port filtering, no dumping of high use customers
onto congested switch ports, no scrimping on contention ratios etc.

then they announced that all new consumer services would be capped, and old
unlimited packages would no longer be available to new customers. the writing
was on the wall.

i've yet to find an isp that will give me over 100gb per month without hassles
for a similar price and similar service, but maybe i'll look harder if i start
bumping into the cap as the year progresses 🙂

you guys are lucky canadian isps are conartists where i live its prob the worst
and im next to the biggest city in canada the fastest available is rogers at
6mbit. and they over charge like no tommorow i should start my own isp... only if.

lidl dsl
$30/25e per month
real flat
6meg down 1/2meg up
germany

afaik the fastest you can get here now as a normal private user is 16down/1up,
obviously there are other offers for companys or if you personally can spend a
lot...

france
"free" ip/adsl max
8m/1m
no limits
ip phone line on modem with free calls to most of europe +usa & china
30 euros/month

these guys are the second biggest isp in france after france telecom and are up
at the top as far as technology goes. i am in the country so i am not unbundled
from the local loop. subscribers in larges towns/cities get 18mb/s plus internet
tv. the modem is a set-top box that also doubles as a media centre using vlc on
your pc to stream files to the tv.

they have just launched a mobile phone service which uses gsm like everybody
else, except if you're in range of one of their modems in which case it uses
ip/wifi.
the ip phone on the modem can also be used via sip from anywhere in the world.

the big downside is that for us country folk there is severe bandwidth shaping
during most of the day. i use relakks (5 euro/month) to get round this.