DSL goes out 25 miles from the center of town locally. However the technology only allows it within 2 miles of a switching station whereas a POTS connection can be about 100 miles from the switching station. One of the liabilities of building digital communications on technology that is 130 years old. As copper is replaced with fiber optics this will change though. The issue in the United States is that there are several different companies that own interconnecting networks. There isn't a single large entity that owns it. It would cost 100s of billions of dollars to upgrade it. We could ask the taxpayers to foot the bill but it should be the rate subscribers to do so. I already pay for my access through Time Warner, I don't want to pay to improve service for Verizon customers locally.

You can probably get wireless internet if there is line of sight from the transceiver tower. This has a 50-75 mile range and can get decent speeds. Not comparable to cable, which is generally faster than copper line DSL, but comparable to DSL. This is what my ex-wife has. Since we live in a valley and the antennas are on the mountains, they have been able to get about a 90 mile range on this locally with speeds up to 5 megabyte downloads. There was a plan in the city that I live in to install these in every park and offer all residents 5 MB connections for $20.00/month. Then Time Warner bought out Adelphia and true internet was given to the community. Doesn't even compare to DSL locally that had about 60% uptime and most of the time wasn't faster than a standard modem.

Tell the phone company to pound it and start your own DSL company :D Its already been fought and won in courts that you can make use of the telephone lines just like the phone company does.

That picture would be a squat toilet, not a urinal.

Whatever the case looks kind of risky to use it! lol.

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They have latrines in Mauritius :(

I live 30 miles or more from this server... In a rural area. Not bad for me I guess. LOL

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Oooh yeah, RR has this new burstable upload thing....

hahah I guess I'm 50 miles from the server. :eek: WTH? 143 MS??

Err... It's not about population density, it's about hub density.

Think of the density at starbucks for example. The speed test goes great when you're the only one there, but more people does not equal faster internet, it just has to do with location to server and how many other people are watching youtube that night.

It's not as simple as apples and oranges. And comparing Japan to Canada? WTH? It's not like it's too hard to find variance in those two countries to make a point. Kudos to that guy.

"Really fast hookups" are available in most major cities in NA.

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Yorkshire, UK - cable internet access.

Rapscallion

Yes it's true not sure about the 100mbit though, but they are definately faster than the U.S. They the japanese, have the worlds fastest networks. I believe it's because they just launched this super advance satellite just last year. I remember reading it on digg.com

I seriously doubt it. I live 3 miles outside of town, which has a population of about 8,000 people. DSL only services a small fraction of the population. Instead of running fiber out to the neighborhoods, SBC is more focused on the commercial and business service.

Just 1/4 mile from my neighborhood is a nice middle class area with maybe a hundred homes. And guess what, no DSL.

The only provider of high speed internet is the cable company. They are about 10 years behind the technology curve. The only fiber they have is to their head end. My house is about 7 miles about 30 amps from the cable companies head end. an amp is used to boost the signal. Everytime the signal is boosted, noise is inserted into the carrier signal.

8 - 10 years ago when other cable companies were running fiber, the provider in my area was ignoring that trend.

Some parts of southeast texas, such as bridge city, orange and beaumont just got DSL in the past couple of years. And I mean just that - in the past 2 or 3 years. Between the years 2000 - 2002 Time Warner rebuilt their entire system with fiber fed nods to the neighborhoods. In the mean time, SBC sat on their hands and let TW grab 75%+ of the high speed market in south east texas.

Its as if these companies do not care about providing a service. They are making money, why do they need to do anything else? In a way, the management of SBC is hurting the technology development of the USA.