For those who have used BBSes prior to the WORLD WIDE WEB back in the early 90s, will know what is meant by BAUD RATE. I think current IT techies would think it's a JURASSIC term.
During my early infancy days of internet in Malaysia, I had the chance of using equipment from a lowly 9600 baud modem, then slowly inching up with 14.4K, then to 28.8, 33.6 and finally 56k modems. Even my Nokia Communicator 9000 managed only a 9.6k connection (at least I received faxes on it, which the current one cannot, however I digress!)
After that, the 128k ISDN era dawned upon us, but resulted as a sunset technology.
Streamyx then entered the market, and from the modem heydays, we finally managed to meet Mr ADSL in the late 90s.
Fast forward till today, our VISION 2020 and HSBB initatives are "trying" their very best to get out of the 1 Megabit threshold, which is quite a norm now. (I still use a 384 to 512 K Streamyx connection at home, just to update my iPod touch RSS feeds, only when my Wiggy fails me!)
Some places get a FASTER 2 Mb and for those who have excess cash can dole out RM 268 for a 4 Megabit line! Boy am I glad I'm getting my 10 Megabit Wiggy for under RM 100 / month!
Then when you travel abroad, you open your eyes. I for one, have friends in neighbouring countries who tell me their fabled stories of their connection. Fabled because it remains as a "fairy tale" to most of us over here in the peninsular.
Just next door, our southern neighbour as whizzed past the maximum threshold of ADSL2+.
What is that, some may ask?
For those technically challenged, you can massage your cranial activity by checking this out, or just to know that current ADSL maxes out at about 8 Mb. ADSL2+ pushes the envelope to 24 Mb!
Now that's fast. But it can get faster!
Our internal office wired networking was just 230Kb (with Appletalk / Localtalk days in the 80s and early 90s). Then Ethernet surfaced with 10-Base-2 with BNC coaxial connectors and then 10-Base-T using twisted pair connections. My NeXT Workstation still uses both of them.
This has then ballooned to 100 Mb, and then 1000 Mb (otherwise known as 1 Gigabit).
Some advanced servers today are having 10 Gbits connectivity already.
Coming back to broadband, would you believe that our neighbours already have a staggering 100 Mb?
To believe it, look at the promotion here from STARHUB Singapore! They have been enjoying this for the past 2 months, albeit, currently from local sites only! At least the local content can really pump out HD movies as highlighted here!
For that amount of money, you are getting the subscription PLUS cable modem and MORE thrown in.
Even with our depreciating ringgit, that translates to RM 213 per month at today's rate of RM 2.45 to the dollar. Pro-rate that. We will be paying just over RM 2 PER Megabit.
And what do we have here? Just jog your memory here.
Incidentally, I also Skyped my buddy in Kowloon, Hong Kong, who informs me that nobody uses Satellite dishes anymore. That's for REMOTE areas (like Kampung) where CABLE technology is difficult. Now you know why Singapore has no use of these unsightly dishes anymore.
There, he was also enjoying 100 Mbits also. To prove that he was not pulling my leg, I requested for a SPEEDTEST.NET screenshot, and here is the EVIDENCE!
FLABBERGASTED? UNBELIEVABLE BUT TRUE!
Even with that performance, they just get a 2.6/5 rating! Should ours be like 0.026/5 since it's 100x slower?
Update: 20090103
2 weeks later, an Oxonian report puts us # 48 out of 66 in a 24 million record poll.
Thankfully I still have the little Wiggy to get jiggy with. Got an all time high of over 8 Mb download yesterday!
Alas, the Mac OS X driver installer dmg is still not out yet after 6 months of its deployment!
