Speed, speed, speed

After a chat with a friend (and former colleague of mine) I decided to trust my telco (A1 Telekom) to upgrade to a higher speed, though I only got 12 Mpbs down on my 16Mbps ADSL line because of the age-old copper lines.

I called them, they checked the line and told me that they could guarantee 92Mbps if I go for the 100Mbps option (VDSL).

So I did. Got a new modem (TG 588v), plugged it in and interestingly already for 14Mbps though I only had 12 with the old modem (same line, still ADSL). Then a couple of days later (as announced) they changed my line on the switch/exchange and now I'm running almost 100 down (and 20 up).

With two kids in the house, netflix, two tablets and four smart phones... it was overdue to say the least.

So finally I can work while everyone else is watching Netflix (or the other way round).

DSL flat rate - finally

Finally in Austria broadband providers are moving to true flat-rates, i.e. without any fair use clause.

Mine, too.

So from 15GB fair use a month, I'm now on a true flat-rate.

Love it.

Of course, this renders my Google-Desktop-Gadget that shows my current DSL usage totally useless, not only because without limit I don't care about the usage, but also because the use statistics of my provider no longer shows any volume.

As a side note to flat-rates:
There is currently a lot of stir in the mobile arena in Austria, because what some mobile operators advertised as a free flat-rate - of course - turned out to have a fair use clause, and they started to threat the users who were above the limit. Lawyers and courts are already employed, and operators have changed the small print to some larger font in the mean time.
The main problem was that they advertised free off-net calls including mobile to fixed-line, which in turn are not free to the operator, because they have to pay interconnection and of course they have limited intentions to pay for that endlessly...

Well, there is no free lunch, how often do we have to repeat that...