I just received notice from our cable Internet provider that they’ve boosted our office connection speed, from 5Mbps to 7Mbps. This is the second such notice that we’ve gotten since we moved in here; a few years ago they bumped it up from 3Mbps. There will probably be a slight rate increase soon, to go along with the speed increase, but the last rate increase was only about 1.5% if I remember correctly… since they’d probably bump up the price a little anyway, I’m at least glad that we’re getting something for the additional cost.

When we moved here, at the end of 2000, there was only one cable Internet connection plan. Now there are four: an “ultra-lite” service that’s about 1/30th of the speed (and half the cost) of the package we’ve got; a “lite” service that’s about 1/7th the speed and three-quarters of the cost; an “express” service (which is what we have); and an “extreme” service that’s about 15% faster (and 15% more expensive). The “extreme” version also bumps up the monthly cap, from the 60GB allowed to all the others to 100GB.

Of course, they don’t mention actual speeds on their website… in fact, they have a chart that suggests that the speed increase from each level to the next is the same (it shows the “ultra-lite” level as 1/4 of the speed of the “extreme” level). And the notice that I just got doesn’t mention the prices for each package, just how long it would take to download different kinds of files at each level, and that our “express” package went from 5Mbps to 7Mbps. That makes it rather hard to figure out what the actual best level is for a particular customer, but after examining what we’re getting for our money, I think we’ve got exactly what we need. Probably more than we usually need, but there are times when downloading something takes far too long already, and not only due to my impatience.

Of course, this doesn’t hold a candle to the Internet connection of 75-year-old Swedish woman Sibritt Löthberg, presently enjoying a somewhat faster speed of 40Gbps — that’s not a typo, it actually is about 5,850 times my paltry little 7Mbps, and currently the world’s fastest private Internet connection. But hey, you can’t have everything. 😉