[Cialug] DSL speeds

[bofh at visi.com]

Reading through this and the fiber thread, reminds me of 
how disappointed I am of how far behind the 8-ball Qwest 
is. Although most of it is expected from experience and 
some of it is understandable due to circumstances. For 
instance, when I spoke to a Qwest person about higher 
speeds this spring, they  said a lot of the delay was due 
to the capital budget of Qwest Iowa getting wiped out from 
rebuilding eastern Iowa after the floods of 2008 (remember 
Waterloo/CF, Waverly, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City?).

But still my parents have IowaTelecom/Wind-whatever and 
even though I've only got them at 1.5Mbps, they can get up 
to 12.  And a guy in my hometown has the full 15 Mb/s down 
and something like 5 Mb/s up from them for his business.  
Of course, he's paying for it, but it's not an outrageous 
price ($125-150 or so IIRC).

Add to this, a colleague out in the boonies of a western 
state (and I mean the boonies) has a 6 Mb/s down, 3 Mb/s 
up wireless link. He would have DSL, but he's about .5 
miles out of range. And he's paying less than I am with 
1.5 Mb/s Qwest DSL.

And when we consider all the mom and pops around Iowa, 
many of whom (like HuxTel) have FTTH...well, 1.5/3/7/12/20 
Mb/s down might compare, but 768 Kb/s up is simply an 
intentional insult.