This morning's news headline, "Valley Chosen to Test Fast Wireless Network" was an attention-getter. Check it out here. Compare prices, services, etc. with a link to SpeedTest. The numbers are interesting. Anyone trying out Google Chrome to see if it's faster and better? Slow is out, and fast is in. Keep us posted.
Now we hear from David Passell, "The aritcle does not appear to apply for up here. However, Commspeed says they have ordered towers, etc. for WiMax (3 - 6 mbs.) No idea if they will charge more. For more details go to commspeed.net.
"Cableone at present says that 10Mbps can be had for $53.00 a month, and that is not an 'introductory offer.'
"Qwest is somewhat difficult to pin down (DSL) because of their weasel-worded advertisements. On closer inquiry I found that no matter what I could spend, I would be limited to around 1.5 Mbps because fiber optic service is not yet available where I live. They always like to present best case in the ads 'your results may differ.'
" I installed Chrome, and I couldn't see any difference. I also found it so much different from the other three browsers I use (Firefox, Opera, and Safari (which also claims to be a much faster browser than the other two) that I didn't want to mess with another learning curve. Perhaps that speed advantage would only show up if my ISP were in the higher Mb range. Commspeed wireless currently pokes along at around 1 - 1.5Mbps. I principally use Opera or Firefox because of their multi-line bookmark and tab lines.
David's conclusion, "I personally wish that the concept of 'information belongs to the people' would be applied in this country as it is in Finland. There the government has the concept that every citizen has a right to high speed internet access, and is taking the steps to make it so. That is something like the former communications philosophy 'the airwaves belong to the people' where anyone could listen to a broadcast. We didn't have active but unseen agencies (and the government) trying to manipulate systems so everyone would have to pay somebody something for the 'privilege' of receiving content; and no fair skipping commercials:(."