How Slow Is MetroFi’s Ad-Supported Option? Damn Slow
“In addition to accepting on-screen ads,” reports Theo today, “users of MetroFi’s free service will have to tolerate access speeds 80 percent slower than those offered by cable or DSL connections.”
April 14th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Let’s not go overboard here. The way it’s phrased, it’s not clear whether the 80% figure refers to cable or DSL, since cable typically downloads at as much as 3mbps. Using the upper figure ad-readers could expect top speeds of 600kpbs, and using the lower, 300kbps. Furthermore, what little experience I have with wi-fi indicates that even the paid users aren’t going to be seeing DSL rates of download, so the gap between the paying and freebie hotspotters may be lower still.
There’s always a tradeoff. You want to pay 10 bucks a month for 56K, or visit the library for nothing? Go ahead. 300K downloads gratis, even with the annoyance of ads, is still a major upgrade for people currently shut out of the high-speed market IMO.
April 14th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I am a little confused. Is the one megabit referred to in the Theo article the speed that subscribers would get, or the speed of the free service. If it is the speed of the free service than what would the speed of the paid service be? Also, if one megabit is the speed of the subscriber service, then can we safely assume that the speed of the free service is 200 kilobits?