wow. cogeco is worse than rogers. i did not think it was possible to be worse than rogers.

one bad thing about windsor is that the internet is expensive. there may be some rumours about bad infrastructure, but i am not really buying it. it just seems to be that cogeco is charging independent isps more than rogers is for the use of their lines. of course, i insist upon an independent isp due to usage limits. i may rarely go over 35 gb, but i just resent being rationed.

some evidence: consider vmedia, which offers services in areas where both rogers and cogeco own the lines. for some reason, the cogeco areas are both substantially more expensive and substantially slower. because windsor is more affluent than toronto, i suppose. right. it just appears to be simple price gouging by cogeco for the purposes of dissuading competition. somebody send the anti-competition board after the fuckers...

it appears like i am going to have to resort to a dsl line at under 10 mbps. of course, reality is that 98% of web pages only let you download at a fraction of that, anyways. nowadays, download speed is determined more by the server you are downloading from than it is by your connection speed. you are rarely going to get even close to 500 K, let alone 750, from much of anywhere except google and netflix. torrent speed only comes close to that when downloading top 40 shit. so, 8 or even 6 mbps is more than sufficient for most people. unless you happen to be connecting to game servers, or you want to watch tv online, or are renting out the service to everybody on your block, there is little reason to pay for more than that, anyways. the entire pricing scheme they have set up is really just a scam to take advantage of people. i mean, they have a plan at 300 mbps. lol. come on. who do you think you are downloading from at that speed....

still, the obvious gouging is obvious and i am sort of irked.

the real reason they push these absurd speeds that nobody can really ever use is to sucker people into their lower speeds, which are really no less ridiculous. if you tell somebody that they have the option between 10, 20, 25, and 50 then people will tend to go with 20 or 25 because it is the goldilocks option. they may not need the fastest, but they do not want to settle for the lowest. if you add 100, 150, 200 and 300, people will go with 50 or 100. of course, most of these people will not need more than 10 - 20 would be overpaying in most cases. but by adding more expensive items in and providing more options you can bill them twice as much at no higher of a business cost.

the root problem here is that people just do not understand what it is that they are paying for.

 it would be nice if that drove the lower speeds down in price, but there goes market theory not working once again. instead, they will slowly creep up - you can get 50 instead of 25 for *only* an extra $4 per month! well, until those options disappear altogether and the price just shifts up.

conclusion: fuck pointless advances in technology. higher costs at no real advantage. i would rather we stagnate a bit, thanks.