Videotron Offers Even Faster Broadband
You know those guys who operate carnival rides and ask "do you to go faster?". Well, that's what it is like in the broadband business these days as Videotron Ltee is getting ready to offer 16Mbps service, which is 10x faster than basic DSL and more than five times faster than Rogers's ultra service. The question is who needs 16Mbps broadband? Someone recently suggested that 12Mbps was enough to do everything you ever want to do online. Then again, there were many people who suggested a PC with a 386 processor would do the job as well. If you're a speed freak, then by all means go ahead and sign up. From a bigger picture perspective, Videotron's new service is part of the tiered service approach many broadband service providers are taking to drive subscriber and revenue growth. This lets service providers pursue different customer segments with plans that meet their needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. A really good exampel of this strategy is BT, which has plans based on bandwidth and consumption.
February 20th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
You need all the speed you can get. Eventually HD video will be available over the net and you need > 5Mbps for that.
The other thing you need is fast upload speeds. I was travelling in the US last week and wanted to watch CBC Olympic scoverage from my home PC via Orb. My upload speed with Rogers is only about 650 kbps so that was the limiting factor and the video was blocky and pixellated.
If I had upload speed of > 1.5Mbps then it should have looked almost as good as if I had been at home.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:06 am
I'll probably stick with the regular Extreme. It's advertised as 10mb, but the most I've ever attained was 8.7; though I'm of course happy.
The Extreme Plus is probably going to be $110 plus tax, for unlimited use. I'll upgrade my computer, or at least RAM rather than fall for this latest service.
I'm happy another option exist, but I'm content with only streaming audio. I understand that those who enjoy streaming video and/or playing games may be a bit happier in March.