Max speeds...not guaranteed!

[DantGwyrdd]

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@IOBA wrote:

Ok - new question.  I went to the phone company's website again to double check my notes.  The phone company has now added 5 M's to each category.  They have not installed any new wires or equipment.  How can they go from the smallest package being 5 M's now to 10 M's without any wire/equipment changes?  Is this just a marketing ploy?

 

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It depends exactly on what kind of service we're talking about (DSL, coaxial cable, fiber...) but for any one of those 25-30 Mbps is nowhere near the maximum they could be offering to the end user. The max speeds they're offering are, in fact, more likely a result of their cost/profit margins than the technology they're using to get it to your home (they also have to pay for bandwidth).

[tacpoly]

The speeds people get are not the top speeds. The provider can prioritize some users over others and they do:  so tv broadcast, on-demand movies/events, basically extra revenue generators get priority ovet your internet usage. But this means they can increase your (average) speeds when they want. 

As for your original question of what speed you'll get, they can't say exactly what speed to cover their @ss legally. Say they promised to deliver 50Mbps to you in their contract, well if they drop down to 49.9Mbps for 1 hour, they've essentially violated this.  So they can only promise max speeds or average speed to give them leeway. It's likely you'll get near the speed you buy, specially if there aren't a lot of heavy users in your vicinity.  

For you, seeing as you're used to dial-up speed, I would sign up for the minimum package as 10 Mbps would seem like a significant upgrade (provided your computer can handle it and is not ancient).  

I don't understand the need for all those boxes to be installed though. Are they making you a hub or something?