[2011-May-20] A comic worthy of our scrutiny.

[Oldrac the Chitinous]

It's expensive to lay cable through permafrost.

[Gangler]

I heard somewhere Canadians on average pay more for Internet than anyone else. And by a fair margin.

I've heard that too. No idea if it's true or not.

http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal ... ER_HISPEED

There's rogers' pricing charts. Anybody know the name of a big american isp that we could compare too?

[Kaharz]

Comcast (Xfinity) cable and Verizon Fios are the two big ones that I know of. They range from around $40 to $80 depending on what service you get and whether you bundle TV and phone. They also vary a bit by market I believe.

I get max 15 up 3 down and no hard monthly usage limit for around $62 after service fees, or at least I will pay that much after the six month introductory rate expires. I don't have TV or phone, so that is for straight internet. The plan I have is one of the mid-range ones. Comcast does have a 250GB per month excessive use policy. If you exceed that, they call you and if you exceed it again in the next six months they may cancel your service and refuse you service for one year.

[voodooKobra]

Money won't make you happy, but not having money will make you unhappy .

Yes, exactly.

This is the handy cause-and-effect chain that illustrates this principle:
No money when you need it = stress. Stress -> frustration. Frustration -> some really weird types of porn. Furries -> depression. Depression != happiness.

[Gangler]

True, but I think people overestimate exactly how much money is required to sustain capacity for happiness. For example, I can testify that all one truly needs to avoid hunger is about $3 a day. Spam and rice. Damned if that hasn't sustained me through all the hard times. All that flavor and none of the buyers remorse.

[Astrogirl]

Typical provider in Germany: http://www.arcor.de/dsl/
Typical package is in the middle: 30 € for 16k downstream (unlimited GB) and unlimited phone calls to German land line numbers.

[GUTCHUCKER]

I don't think you have to be frustrated to look up weird porn, nor does it cause depression.
From experience, that is.