{"id":120,"date":"2006-11-04T12:45:27","date_gmt":"2006-11-04T10:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.veni.com\/2006\/11\/02\/internet-access-and-usage-in-bulgaria\/"},"modified":"2006-11-04T12:45:27","modified_gmt":"2006-11-04T10:45:27","slug":"internet-access-and-usage-in-bulgaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Internet Access and Usage in Bulgaria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is part of a presentation I made in Johannesburg, South Africa, earlier this year, at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ispa.org.za\/iweek\/2006\/program.shtml\">iWeek<\/a>. I&#8217;ve added some recent data after that.<\/p>\n<p>What is interesting, is the way Bulgaria has developed its Internet access. Yesterday I saw some interesting information, which is good to use comparing it to the access in the USA. You may be shocked reading it.<br \/>\n<!--more-->&#8220;High speed Internet access&#8221; and &#8220;Net neutrality&#8221; are two of the most common used terms in the USA, but also all over the world. My presentation is about the access.<\/p>\n<p>Amazingly, the high-speed Internet access is not high-speed in the USA. The country where the Internet was created, believes that high speed is as follows:<\/p>\n<ul \/>\n<ul>\n<li>Time Warner Cable&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.timewarnercable.com\/nynj\/products\/internet\/roadrunner\/default.html\">Road Runner or Earthlink&#8217;s<\/a>: up to 5-8 Mbps downstream and up to 384 Kbps upstream ($ 60 \/ month)<\/li>\n<li>Verizon&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www22.verizon.com\/ForHomeDSL\/channels\/dsl\/packages\/default.asp\">Internet<\/a>: DSL download speeds up to 3 Mbps ($ 30 \/ month)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When they say &#8220;up to&#8221;, that means you may not be able to get this speed often&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time in Bulgaria speed and prices are like this:<\/p>\n<ul \/>\n<ul>\n<li>15 USD plan: 10 Mbps to Bulgaria, 1.5 Mbps abroad<\/li>\n<li>30 USD plan: 20 Mbps \/ 3 Mbps<\/li>\n<li>40 USD plan: 25 Mbps \/ 3.5 Mbps<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All plans include 100 Mbps access to a huge network of thousands of users. This you can not get in the US, and certainly not at this price. People who still use dial-up, can do it for free.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how the Bulgarians use Internet:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>ADSL &#8211; 11 %<br \/>\nLAN &#8211; 55 %<br \/>\ncable tv &#8211; 24 %<br \/>\ndial-up &#8211; 10 %<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Today in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, there are <em><strong>hundreds of Internet Service Providers<\/strong><\/em>. In New York there are basically two &#8211; Time Warner Cable (which offers two services), and Verizon. Instead of monopoly, we have bi-poly. And no wonder their prices are more or less similar. And the customer has no choice!<br \/>\nYou may see also another older article by me, on the same topic, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/?p=61\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s the presentation itself &#8211; in <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/internet-access-in-bulgaria.odp\">ODP<\/a> (18 Kb. You will need the free <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openoffice.org\">OpenOffice.org<\/a>, recommended) and in <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/internet-access-in-bulgaria.ppt\">PPT<\/a> (98 Kb, you will need MS Office, costs a lot) format.<\/p>\n<p>_____<br \/>\nP.S. For a couple of days the permalinks were not working &#8211; I changed their structure, but then I travelled and didn&#8217;t have time to fix it. That&#8217;s why I published all the articles, without the need to click on &#8220;read more&#8221;. As of today, all is working fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is part of a presentation I made in Johannesburg, South Africa, earlier this year, at the iWeek. I&#8217;ve added some recent data after that. What is interesting, is the way Bulgaria has developed its Internet access. Yesterday I saw &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/?p=120\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-in-bulgaria"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.veni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}