Canadian Bandwidth

Really bizarre as so many services move to the cloud or streaming that all of a sudden bandwidth is at a premium.   not bad enough that they sell you up to speeds that you'll never be able to sustain... without power boost and if your file is over the power boost limit it is unlikely you'll get more than 10-12.5% of your up to speed.  On the top package my bandwidth recently dropped 30%; cost drop: 0%.  Should ISP be involved in cable TV delivery, or even worse TV content delivery - conflict of interest... seems it's all about owning competing products and wanting customers to pay for them all.  What are the odds of getting a solid OTA signial from a company that owns the broadcaster and a cable company that can deliver the signal.  And then the cable box compresses your HD signal so it's not as good as OTA anyway.

Bandwith is not water... it is not finite.  Hope Leo doesn't mind, here is Americam Tom Merritt's take on the whole deal:



Check the whole episode here:

TWiT 287: Finckenstein's Monster

Is Virgin turning into a Bell

It's already known that Bell owns Virgin; unfortunate for us Virgin user.

Bell Canada Inc bought Virgin Mobile along with an exclusive long-term licensing agreement that allows it to continue using Sir Richard Branson's Virgin brand.

Sir Richard sold out and now you get the same wait on hold as all the other carriers.

40 minutes I waited before hanging up, called later, on hold for 5 minutes and gave up.

Also had some connection issues recently that ran rampant on my battery.  63% of power used for "cell standby".  An interesting choice of words, "cell standby", because from watching my phone I could tell it was not standing by but rather repeatedly connecting and disconnecting.

There was a bad storm that night so it could be weather?  Next day same connection issues.

Now I'm hoping the worst happened and one of there towers got damaged; and hoping they fix it.

So Canada is back to Bell, Rogers, Telus and now Solo (pay as you go).  All those other company's you see around are just arms and legs of the major three.

For anyone looking for the complete breakdown of battery use:

63% Cell Standby

18% Display

9% WiFi

6% Voice Calls

4% Phone Idle

Usually my display uses 50% or more of my power!

Maybe I'll give JuiceDefender or something a try; but the provider should have good enough service strength without it; we pay for it in Canada!   I have my brightness down and turn off what I'm not using, I just want to sync regularly without having to enable and disable mobile when out.