Joe Abley
I have (finally! gods be praised!) a cable modem here for which I pay CAD 45/month (a shade under NZD 70) for unlimited traffic. I've clocked it at 4Mbit/s towards me, and 256kbit/s up. This in a country with a lower population density than New Zealand (although clearly much, much closer to the US).
Um, I don't think the population density of the whole of Canada is entirely relevant when referring to southern Ontario. As the crow flies, London is within 60km of the centres of Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, each major cities. The region represents a pretty significant chunk of Canada's population. From Detroit to Toronto (London being about smack in between) is about as far as from Hamilton to Auckland. London itself might not be very big, but it's within spitting distance of a hell of a lot of infrastructure.
So regardless of the cost of things, there is definitely more choice in little old London, Ontario, than there is in the much larger centre of Auckland, NZ. That's what I think I would be upset about, if I was still living in Auckland. There are some benefits to having a choice.
Perhaps a more interesting comparison is closer to home -- little ol' Wellington has more choice than Auckland, despite having a third of the population, at least in terms of domestic IP connectivity. Re Internet2, I'm finding myself disturbingly in agreement of both you and cw, which bothers me somewhat. 8-) -- don - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog