FINALLY - REAL BANDWIDTH up here - Internet Provider News

I've got CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) DSL. It was upgraded in December and now runs at 6.2 Mbps download and .73 Mbps upload (no price increase!). The service has been pretty reliable.

Now I can stream hi def movies with no problem. There probably would be problems if multiple people tried to stream in hi def, though. The upload speed isn't the best, but fits my needs for now. I'd need faster if I ever for some reason wanted to source a hi def stream. I do have a Sling Box and the internet video quality isn't that great (it's fine in the house, though).

I've seen people post elsewhere that they are getting even faster download speeds in the range of 12-30 Mpbs from CenturyLink. If so, I guess they must live close to 285.

It is not just the movies, my husband has to download huge files for his work. He got all excited when he saw your post but when we called and they told us about the data restrictions he got sad again.

oh well we will keep dreaming for high speed internet

pineinthegrass, yeah, it would have been nice if they ran that line up "our" side of 285, but there are no foreseeable plans to do so. I have been talking with Century Link/Qwest during this last 8 month research window and they no, nada, not in the plans.

Happy Camper, you could monitor your usage for a few months and see what exactly you use. I have used Net Meter http://www.hootech.com/NetMeter/ for the past 8 months or so to watch our usage, so I knew what package to order.
Also, you can jump back and forth between them packages without a "setup" cost from month to month, so if you know a month is going to be heavy with downloads, then bump up the package. You can also bump up the package if you see you are getting to the limit on your current package.
our usage:
We surf the web, email, manage a couple of websites, and stream a lot of radio via internet, including Pandora and our usage will easily stay under the 7.5 GB limit.

I will ask hubby but if it has to be downloaded to the computer in use his work will not allow it to be on the work computer.

Thanks

All of the movie downloads go through the TV and Blockbuster so I do not know how that would work either.

UPDATE AFTER ONE MONTH OF EXEDE SERVICE

We have problems
1. I cannot log into our web host providers control panel (seems to be an issue with login script needing a response faster than satellite is able to deliver so it redirects me back to login). Has been escalated with Exede and our web host provider without results

2. We are unable to stream some audio on sites where we could before. Our only option now is to download and listen.

3. We are unable to listen to some sites that do not offer downloading audio only streaming so we are now unable to listen to them.


We listen to a lot of radio via podcasts and streaming on line and the new service is not allowing us to use the internet as we did with other connections.

Downloading is super fast, but we have found that feature does not outweigh the cons.

Result: we are attempting to cancel the service after 3 weeks of troubleshooting. We'll see if they are good guys about it or try to make us pay the termination fee which we will not pay.

So this is our experience. You can take what you want from it, but I wanted to share this.