- the prices are very low even for businesses
- there's no data cap an any cable/fiber Internet connection since 2004
Personally I had a "business" internet connection (shared it in our neghbourhood network) way back in 2003-2004, when speeds were at 512Kbps for business and 256kbps for home users. The price of the subscription was around 100 USD, even though the speed was only double of the home user connection, which had a 30 USD price. The difference in the Internet experience however was very noticeable, as the business connection had an amazing response time and supported multiple simultaneous downloads without locking up browsing for others. I had it for only a couple of months, because there were some issues with the neighbourhood association and had to cut our network in half. We ended up with a 2MBPS DSL connection for half the price ... 2 years after that everybody signed individual contracts with a local ISP called RCS-RDS, which now is rebranded to DIGI. We each got 10Mbps for about 10USD, and -get this- it was installed via FTTB (fiber to the building) in 2005. Since then the prices remained the same, the optic fiber remained the same, but the equipment was upgraded to allow (down/up) 100/100 for 7USD, 500/200 for 10USD and 1000/200 for 11USD.
Unfortunately I'm stuck now with a Comcast-like provider, called UPC Romania, for two more years. While RCS-RDS always upgraded the connection speed automatically whenever they upgraded the infrastructure (even if you still had 1 year left on the previous contract), with UPC you always have to fight (sometimes dirty) to get the best deal. If you don't actively check their special offers and complain about it periodically, then you wake up one day with a 20Mbps connection on a 4 year old contract, even though you could have gotten 500Mbps for the same price 2 years ago.
My current service package is as follows:
- Fiber Power 500/25 Internet - no data cap
- UPC CONNECT BOX Wi-fi router with 4 Gigabit ports (capable of 500Mbps through the AC standard)
- 110 digital channels
- Panonia package = 18 Hungarian channels
- SD DVR receiver
- Phone line with unlimited (free) land line minutes in the EU, USA, Canada and Israel (unlimited mobile minutes too in the USA, Canada and Israel)
- additional SD receiver
For this package I pay 70Lei, about 18USD, which is around 4% of the national average (net) income 1900Lei, or 475USD.
About the Fiber Power ...
As you can see, I have nothing to complain about, except for the fact that my PC is not fast enough to download torrents at the max speed. My Celeron G1820
with 4GB DDR3 and 60GB Kingston SSD
can only download torrents at 22MB/s max., even though the real maximum download limit is around 55MB/s.In the video above you can see that the speed test goes up to 500Mbps, and FTP/HTTP downloads also work at max speed, so the only problem is with torrents, which require processing power in order to assamble the files from millions of parts downloaded from many different sources.
Almost forgot, I do have something else to complain about: the crappy CONNECT BOX router modem! When you first start it up, it works great, wi-fi and everything, almost any website loads in 2 seconds max, but after a couple of days the reaction speed goes to crap, as some local (Romanian) websites load in 10 seconds or don't load at all.
My solution for this was to disable the router part of the modem. I don't know for how long I will be able to use it like this, because now every PC, phone and tablet in my house gets a real IP address and the reaction speed is incredibly fast. Even though IP adresses are allocated dynamically, I don't think they are going let me use 5 addresses on average, instead of just one (in standard router mode).
I'm hoping to switch to DIGI soon, as they have FTTH infrastructure at my address, so I'll be able to get 300/100Mbps for just 28Lei (7 USD). Until then I'll have to put together a computer to act as router, because I don't trust these small crappy boxes, supplied by the ISPs.
The other change I'll have to make is to get a 4G smartphone, because DIGI recently modified the data caps from 3GB (3G + 4G traffic) to 3GB on 3G and 30GB on 4G, even on the cheapest contract (2EURO = ~2.25 USD), which I currently use with a 3G phone.