Think you're getting a decent speed for a
decent price on your broadband? Well
think again. Kuala Lumpur-based Velchip has just announced plans to create a vast broadband-over-powerline network which will deliver 224Mbps to users in Indonesia for about RM5 (or $1.57) per month. The goal is to connect Mosques across the country, linking together 400,000 houses of worship over existing wiring and delivering service to about 60 million users. The $14 billion project will be rolled out over the next three years, with participation from US satellite company STM Networks. It all makes that
$149.95 DOCSIS 3.0 introduction look pretty weak, now doesn't it?
Update: There was a bit of a mixup over whether this service was coming to Malaysia or Indonesia -- we've corrected the problem.
[Via
Slashdot]
posted April 6th 2008 3:44PM
It's all good unless you are in Asia and oversubscription is 1000:1. Pretty common for people to get below dial-up speeds during peak hours as the broadband plants are completely oversold. $3/month for DSL in Vietnam and I would rather have 9600 bps narrowband in the US. That, along with the fact that most content is outside of your respective country, means a painfully slow "broadband" experience.
Vietnam? You must be some party official if you have internet there surely (and can afford 3 dollars.)
Click on the date/time under the name, then click reply, seems that fix still works.
p.s. I'm talking bout the commentsystem screw-up of course.
A TRULY ignorant person would assume I'm christian and would judge the world based on religions.
As it happens I'm atheist so attempts to counter any critical remark I personally make about any specific religion with comparing it to other religions would be futile.
Not that such an argument isn't failing on its own merit from the get-go of course.
I don't quite see the point of a statement as "yeah we are assholes but hey so are the christians", as if that's some sort of an excuse, and saying "yeah we are assholes like group X was 200-300 years ago" is even less effective of an argument.
I should add there are close to two million Muslims in the U.S. and over 1.7 BILLION total in the world.
Does that make you poop your pants, kiddo?
lol
Dude, just shut up. Nobody wants to see you call other people bigots when I very much doubt that, given the intelligence prerequisite for enjoying Engadget, anyone here actually is.
You know about 30% to 60% of the so called 1.7 billion muslims are really atheist (or other), they would just get murdered if they said so.
i pay $30 for a 15/2 connection..
Let me try to decipher this:
"You racist fuckdick (?)!!! Go die in a large deep hole"
Wow, that is a powerful and moving comment...
The Tamil Tigers have no affiliation with Islam - check your "facts"
I might consider getting broadband if I had to pay $1.58/month. There is no way that I would pay $40-$50/month, so I borrow my neighbors. $0 and more anonymous than using an ISP.
Yeah, BPL is a scam. This will not work.
Also, it is 223mbps for the entire service, not per user.
I'll keep my DOCSIS, thanks.
Hmmmm, let me see, 224Mb/sec THEORETICAL, per segment (You do realise that BPL is shared media network with a common collision domain?)
Let's see 400,000 mosques, we'll assume each serves one collision domain, 60,000,000 users, that's 150/mosque = 224Mb/150 = ~1.5Mb/sec, it won't be symmetrical so you can assume 256kB maybe up and nasty latency based on the high likelihood of collisions, super fast... yeah...
All this of course ignores the quality of the power distribution network there and the fact that there are a large number of people in Indonesia who don't even have power to their homes...
Granted though $USD1.57 is pretty cheap for 1.5Mb/256kb even with nasty latency.
I'm an American who has been living in Jakarta, Indonesia since 2002.
I find it disappointing that an article about tech has to take a turn towards racism, terrorism, and falsely held beliefs stemming from a lack of education. It's embarrassing, as an American overseas, to see Westerners run their mouths in this manner. Would you speak your mind in such a way if you were face to face with these people? This is why we, as a global community, cannot move forward.
Travel more, live in another country for a while and then see if you still maintain those type of racist perspectives.
And for you who bitch about your internet costs, until two months ago, I've been paying $60 / month for 128kbps, here in Jakarta.
Yeah...internet in Jakarta is a pain. The govt doesn't want to spend the money to put in the necessary infrastructure for faster internet. You could always go 3G. Indosat is quite cheap and u can get above 100 kb/s download speed on their 3.6 mbps HSDPA.
Just for the record and because the word gets thrown around a lot, specifically by muslims: a religion is NOT a race, and any statement no matter how unreasonable against a religion is never racism.
Did they change the picture?
To tell you the truth guys, our connection in Indonesia is extremely expensive. Remember this apply to mosque. The rest of us are getting ADSL 256kbps with 2GB limit @ USD 25. That is with download speed @ blazing fast of 20kb/s (this apply to local sites, international is even worse @ 4kb/s).
FYI when i got back to Indonesia, i never apply for internet cause its totaly worthless due to the snail speed and obscene prices... can you believe it, unlimited ADSL 512 cost USD 110 and that does not guarantee lag free WoW experience...
In Singapore where i used to study, i can get Unlimited bandwidth for around SGD 40 but hey who can complain with Cable 1mbps?
Sorry, my post was a reply to JLTate not Seraphan. Issues again with the replies.
This is OT and I shouldn't post but I had to reply to your less-than-eloquent post. Wow, I must have hit a nerve. Btw, my original post was meant as a reply to Jake E.
I am a proud Conservative but evidently you seem to think there's a fine line between conservatives and right-wing nut jobs. Rush L. is squarely in the latter group. And I'm assuming, from your post, that he's very highly regarded by you, which sadly explains your mouthing off like that.
And I wonder who out there is giving us Conservatives a bad rep.
A nut job? Give me one view that he has expressed that you as a "proud Conservative" thinks qualifies him as "nut job".
Other than that, I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest.
you guys almost had me there...malaysia...haha, good one!
If I may quote the source (slashdot) directly, it said "at a cost of only around RM5 ($1.58) per user per month," so I am assuming that each user at the mosque will have a different login and password and each has to pay $1.58. There are thousands of users at any single mosque. So the provider can get $1,580 per mosque per month.
But again, Indonesia is a land where government likes to make development news headline that never materialize. In late 1990s, the Indonesian government said it was building nuclear reactors to power electricity for the country which was never built. The government also said it was building a mass transit that also never materialize.
And you have to know that Indonesia is unique. Very unique in a sense that in major parts of the country (everywhere except Java and Bali islands) there are scheduled blackouts of electricity (for at least 4 hours) occurring every two or three days. So when this blackout happens, no internet for the mosque whatsoever.
And I believe even at the mere addition 224Mb/sec total available connections (which will be shared amongst the mosques), the country total International Internet backbone cannot handle it. It is evident because there are no evidence of planned additions to international backbone capacity. And at current conditions, international internet bandwidth is only at half its stated capability during peak hours.
And in case you are interested to know, in most places outside Java and Bali, during the fasting month, there are no restaurants open in daytime (there are hefty fines and jail time to restaurant owners who open theirs during daytime). Also, if you are caught eating, drinking, or smoking in public during these fasting month, you will be fined for hundreds of US$, or jailed, or both. In quite a number of places, like Tangerang, they also imposes the Sharia laws. Where females has a night time curfew to be home or else face prosecution and possibly jail time.
Cheap broadband or not, Indonesia is not a very friendly place to live. Nowadays, I would call it a less tolerant (than it once was) place.
No Engadget, you haven't corrected the problem!
The subject still says 'Indonesian mosques' and in the post 'Kuala Lumpur-based Velchip'.
FYI, Kuala Lumpur is capital of Malaysia, and Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia.
And yet we don't really know where this service will be provided, i guess most of the people doesn't really care!
@hassan
I know exactly what you're talking about. I used to live in Indonesia and we got electricity blackouts at least twice a day.
Velchip is a company based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia providing the services to Indonesian client, clear?
RM5? shouldn't that be in Rupiah's (Rp)?
Hmm, ya know, I just watched Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" tonight. Maybe he's onto something.
I guess the system is even more screwed up as I thought, now it happily moved my reply to my own post rather than the one I commented on, oh well, who cares really anyway.
I guess I will be going to L'istiqlal to surf the net when I'm in Indonesia. (It's be biggest mosque, at least in south asia) Maybe they have free wifi there? lol