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01 / 05
Broadband Service Time Prices Fall 85.9 Percent Since 2015

Blog Post | Cost of Technology

Broadband Service Time Prices Fall 85.9 Percent Since 2015

Abundance doubles every 30 months.

This article was published at Gale Winds on 1/18/2024.

From 2015 to 2023, the average monthly bill for the most popular residential broadband service in the United States fell 37 percent from $65.62 to $41.43. During this same period, unskilled labor wages increased 42.3 percent from $11.35 to $16.15 per hour. Dividing these monthly prices by hourly wages gives us the time price of 5.8 hours in 2015 and 2.6 hours in 2023, indicating a 55.8 percent decrease over this eight-year period.

In addition, download speeds have increased by 141.9 percent from 43 megabits per second (Mbps) to 104 Mbps. Upload speeds increased 284.6 percent from 13 Mbps to 50 Mbps. The average speed increased by 213.4 percent.

Adjusting for the increase in speed puts the 2023 time price at around 0.8 hours, or 85.9 percent lower than 2015. For the time required to earn the money to buy one month of broadband services in 2015, you could get over seven months (608 percent more) in 2023. Broadband service abundance is increasing around 27.8 percent a year compounded annually, doubling in abundance every 30 months or so. At this rate, by 2030 your broadband speed should be over three times faster and your monthly bill less than half the cost of 2023’s monthly bill.

Table presenting percentage changes in broadband metrics from March 2015 to March 2023, including cost, upload speed, download speed, average speed, time price in hours, speed-adjusted time price, and abundance factor

CNN | Space

Nokia and NASA Are Taking 4G into Space

“Texting on the Moon? Streaming on Mars? It may not be as far away as you think.

That’s the shared vision of NASA and Nokia, who have partnered to set up a cellular network on the Moon to help lay the building blocks for long-term human presence on other planets.

A SpaceX rocket is due to launch this year — the exact date has yet to be confirmed — carrying a simple 4G network to the Moon. The lander will install the system at the Moon’s south pole and then it will be remotely controlled from Earth.”

From CNN.

Live Science | Communications

6G Speeds 500 Times Faster than Average 5G Cellphones in Test

“A consortium of companies in Japan has built the world’s first high-speed 6G wireless device, capable of transmitting data at blistering speeds of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) at more than 300 feet (90 meters) — up to 20 times faster than 5G. 

These data transfer speeds are equivalent to transferring five HD movies wirelessly per second, and, according to Statista, up to 500 times faster than average 5G T-Mobile speeds in the U.S.”

From Live Science.

Ars Technica | Communications

Microsoft’s VASA-1 Can Deepfake a Person with Photo and Audio

“Microsoft Research Asia unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don’t require video feeds—or allow anyone with similar tools to take a photo of a person found online and make them appear to say whatever they want.”

From Ars Technica.

ABC News | Space

NASA Hears from Voyager 1 after Months of Quiet

“NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.

The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.”

From ABC News.