Anthony Bouttell <bou### [at] rogerswaveca> wrote in article
<34ec3128.126960860@news.povray.org>...
> This may not be the most appropriate place to ask this question but:
> 
> I notice that quite a few of the users are from Europe and I was
> wondering how you tele-comm charges compare to mine, ( Canada ).
> 
> I use a cable modem ( up to 500 Kbs ) and it smokes!!
> I get charged $55 per. month for 1Gbyte of traffic and 24hr/day
> connect time, ( this is cool because I can connect to my home machine
> from work) + 3-Email addresses and 5mbytes of storage on the providers
> server.
> 
> I've heard most that most of the users in Europe are basically screwed
> blue by their telecomms. Is this true ? How do my charges compare to
> yours ? What about the US, how do your charges compare ?

	In the UK it varies quite a bit. When it comes to choosing telecomms
providers you've basically got, if your lucky, four options :

	1. British Telecom, has had a bit of monopoly up untill recently,
overpriced, but available just about anywhere.
	2. Mercury - really don't know much about them, never lived in an area
where it's been an option.
	3. Local Cable provider - usually far cheaper than BT, virtually always
offer cheap cable to cable calls. Availability varies - depends whether
there's a cable provider for your local area. A few cable operators have
tried limited free local calls, but the networks simply couldn't cope with
thousands of users being permanently connected to there ISPs, so that
quickly stopped.
	4. Ionica - uses microwave(?) communications, similar pricing to cable,
again availabilty depends on location.

	Now, neither Ionica or BT provide internet services (though both say
'we're considering it'), some cable operators do, but they're in the
minority and again I don't know about Mercury on this point.
	The other consideration is that, though some cable operators do provide an
internet service, you'll very rarely find support for cable modems amongst
them, so if your looking for speed, you've got to go the ISDN route -
hideously expensive over here.
	Right, so you manage to find yourself a local cable provider that also
acts as an ISP, but as you still have to pay for every second of the call,
making 24hr a day connect times totaly out of the questions.

	So, yep, in short, at least in the UK, we are screwed blue by the
telecomms companies.

:(

-- 
Scott Hill
Sco### [at] DDLinkscouk
Software Engineer (and all round nice guy)

"The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't
exist..."
								- Verbal Kent.

"the Internet is here so we can waste time talking about nothing in 
 particular when we should be working" - Marcus Hill.

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