If you have slower broadband than 6.25 Mbps, let me know

Misery likes company, as the saying goes. So if you have a "broadband" Internet download connection that's slower than my crappy 6.25 Mbps, leave a comment on this post. 

My wife and I live five miles from the city limits of Salem, the freaking capital city of Oregon.

But I have little doubt that people living in Outer Mongolia have a faster Internet connection than we do, since our DSL comes courtesy of the same copper wire that probably was used by the first telephones.

I'm especially irritated at the moment because I made the mistake of joking with some Tai Chi classmates this evening. I'd just made a nine minute video of our instructor doing a new form that we're learning.

I said, "I'll share this with everybody after I fire up our steam-powered Internet connection, which will only take a few hours or so to upload the file to You Tube." That led someone to ask how slow our connection was.

About 7 Mbps, I replied. Laughter ensued.

And not just from the people who live in Salem proper. Also from my instructor who, like us, lives in a rural area of small acreages. But he has Molalla Broadband, since he has the good fortune to live close to Silverton, Oregon. 

Here's a depressing screenshot of one of the Molalla Broadband fiber optic options. Geez, I'd pay a million dollars a month, or thereabouts, for 250 Mbps.

We have CenturyLink DSL. Frustratingly, our neighborhood of several hundred homes is just a few miles from Bunker Hill Road, where CenturyLink repairpeople have told me fiber optic ends and DSL begins.

Yet somehow CenturyLink seems prepared to let us languish in Slow Speed Internet Hell for eternity. Or at least until the beancounters at CenturyLink decide that they can make sufficient profits from our neighborhood to justify moving us into the 21st century of broadband.

I'm thinking of revisiting what worked for me back in 2007, when I managed to talk Qwest, the predecessor of CenturyLink, into offering DSL in our area. Before that we made do with satellite Internet, which had the annoying habit of cutting out whenever it rained hard, snowed, or a flock of birds passed overhead. 

OK, I made that last thing up.

But satellite Internet sucked even worse than our DSL does now. So I was hugely proud after I wrote a letter to the CEO of Qwest about our lack of broadband, which led to me being called by a local Qwest employee who notified me that, finally, DSL would be coming our way. 

My blog post, "I'm the DSL King of the World!," described my joy. 

That was 12 years ago, though. There's no joy now in 7 Mbps, on a good day. So if you're reading this and have even slower Internet than me, let me know via a comment.

I won't feel any better, but I'll get a mild bit of satisfaction from knowing that someone else is suffering with an even worse Internet speed than us and our neighbors have to put up with.

Comments

[Elise]

If you think your speeds are bad...as they say....”hold my beer” and let me share my blazing fast speed on a satellite connection....since I can not upload a screen shot....

PING 787
Download 0.12 MBPS
Upload .12 MBPS
All this speed for $75.90 per month...

[Skyline]

Download 5.97
Upload .72

[David]

Do you get 4g out there? Wouldn’t teathering to an unlimited cell connection be faster?

[Rain Trueax]

1.2 in Oregon.... 7 in Tucson. we could pay for 12 but have nothing that imperative to send and are not gamers....

[Brian Hines]

David, we have pretty bad Verizon cell service also. My iPhone 8 plus shows a 6.04 Mbps download rate, which is a bit slower than our DSL