switching to cable modem
I’ve been a Speakeasy customer for about seven years now, and a Service Electric TV customer for about as long. Come next week, though, I will no longer be either. I am switching to RCN cable TV and cable modem.
I had hoped I could switch to Service Electric’s cable modem package, provided by PenTeleData, but their AUP is insane. First of all, it’s only available as a Word document. What!?
Secondly, doesn’t allow running any sort of “information service” of any kind. I can cope with not allowing me to run a mail server or web server on port 80. I think it’s stupid, but I could cope. It bans, though any “kind of software that runs a service operating on the [customer’s] computer which offers access to their computer for individuals on the Internet.” I will pretend that this doesn’t include ping responses. It means that I’m not allowed to run sshd, and that they can terminate me at any time if I do.
Meanwhile, they want to tempt me with “1 residential homepage with 15MB storage” and “5 email address with 50MB storage” and “Free pop up blocker and spam blocking.” Their whole service seems like it’s living in 2001, except for their speeds, which are modern.
Speakeasy, on the other hand, has modern service, but is still charging something like $70 monthly for 1.5/384.
I look forward to RCN. My father has it, and he seems to have no significant problems. It’ll cost less than half what my DSL did, and I’m hoping to pay for that myself and get work to pay for my EVDO instead of my landline broadband. Everybody wins!