SlipStream News

IT's official, Australian internet service providers are taking advantage of consumers by charging too much for excess data. In a recent report by the OECD, Australia was listed as having the highest average excess data rates in the OECD, at US10 cents per megabyte (MB), followed by Ireland at US1.8 cents per MB.

Although not included in the OECD report, other countries in our region such as New Zealand, Indonesia and Cambodia also have excessive data charges. In New Zealand, on some plans, consumers can expect to pay anywhere up to NZ$1 per MB for their mobile broadband, or NZ$1000 per gigabyte.

Australian company NitroGlobal has a solution to excess data charges. Since 2004, the company has been providing internet acceleration services for dial-up, and low speed broadband users.

"We have recently restructured to cater for higher speed networks such as Next-G, 3G and ADSL networks, and now also offer Nitro as a solution to high excess data charges as well," says NitroGlobal managing director Paul Knibbs. "So Australians fed up with paying a high price for being over their data limits now have a viable alternative. With our compression technology, you can expect to surf up to 4 times as many web sites, before you reach your data limit. Or alternatively, reduce your included data plan and save that way."

About NitroGlobal

NitroGlobal is the Asia Pacific distributor for SlipStream, a subsidiary of Research In Motion (RIM). NitroGlobal delivers the fastest, most reliable acceleration, compression and network optimization technology for dial, fixed and wireless broadband networks. SlipStream's technology is the most widely deployed web, email and multimedia content acceleration solution in the world.

For more information go to www.nitroglobal.com
or contact Paul Knibbs paulk@nitroglobal.com

A new broadband survey out from Strategy Analytics shows the US in 20th position when it comes to household broadband use, well behind countries like South Korea, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

The report focuses on broadband penetration by household rather than by person. Many other reports use a per-capita broadband measurement, but Strategy Analytics says that those reports are simply using the wrong data.

A new study of British mobile broadband has revealed that the average download speed is less than 1Mbit/sec.

Despite mobile broadband companies advertising connections as fast as 7.2Mbits/sec, actual speeds struggle to get anywhere near the headline figures, the Epitiro study reveals.

The company performed 1.4 million speed tests on the connections of 1,300 volunteers, and found that UK mobile broadband users receive on average only 24% of the advertised download speed.

When price and speed are combined, Canada sinks toward the very bottom of the OECD rankings. As measured by price per megabyte - effectively the price for speed - Canada ranks 28th out of 30 countries, ahead of only Mexico and Poland. This may be the most telling metric, since it confirms that Canadians pay more for less.

Canadian consumers also face far less choice with respect to broadband options. Canada was one of only four countries (Australia, New Zealand, and Belgium were the others) where all broadband options included "bit caps" that limit consumer use each month.

In today's world of social networking, online videos and music downloads, going from high-speed to dial-up is like switching from a Maserati to a horse and buggy. But some say the hundreds they would save might make them go back, especially for those who have high-speed Internet at work.

A new study of 2008 broadband adoption reveals that subscriber growth continued its declining trend. Between factors like excessive premiums, comparatively slow speeds, and a segment of the population that has yet to be wooed away from dial-up, the US' broadband market is more saturated than ever.

... if every broadband household in America were to switch to NetZero for just $9.95 a month, the 56 million American households on broadband would save $16 billion dollars per year after taxes.