I am just wondering what people use for broadband, their speeds, and their reliability/ease of use of their service is (like the carrier)
I use Cox Communications in the MidWest United States in a fairly small town (compared to others) and get speeds of 700KB/s Down and 70KB/s Up. Service has pretty much been bad, especially since I don't get to pick my carrier (the closest DSL Link up is about a mile away from me 
They seem to cut out the service from 9pm to 7am about every 4 days, making it impossible for my to do latenight work. Sometimes, they will cut the 'net for days, so I am pretty much unhappy about my service. Also, they have a monopoly on the cable network and have pretty much pushed Satellite out of the city (through having laws passed in my corrupt city)
So, i am wondering what people get with their service, if they like it, and how fast it is (especially if people have Cox)
I also want to note that my Cox Bill is ~$70 month for broadband (I have told a lot of people that EVERYTHING is expensive in my city, cox seems to take advantage of it)
I have time warner in my apartment(roadrunner) and Optimum online at home. Time Warner has been decent, no real complaints but nothing particularly good to say about them. Have the 35$ a month for 1 year sort of deal and free tv from the apartment complex. I get around 5,000-9,000 Kbs download and around 200-400 Kbs upload, but sometimes the download drops considerably and will be around 800-1000 Kbs. The cable wiring is pretty old though and not very well done, so that could be an issue. With optimum online I have had nothing but good things and was getting a consistent 8,000 Kbs download and around 800 Kbs up. Only using time warner because we get cable free. At home the cable internet price for optimum keeps going up( it started at 25$ a month for the first year then went up to 30, and now its up to around 45$) My girlfriend on the other hand has Verizon FiOS TV and internet, and both are amazing. Great quality and speed, also the line is run directly to the house, not sure on the exact speed or price, but they switched to it from comcast whom they were extremely unhappy with (service would go out regularly and the support people had no idea what they were talking about)
me, ive got bright house (also road runner) and its a 7mb connection. I absolutely love it! they havent changed my ip address, so its really easy to run my web server. (bobsplace.mine.nu)
I have Cox in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, and it's generally good. It's $42/month for 5mbps down and 2mbps up, and they are mostly reliable. There were long periods of time where the internet would slow to a crawl, but they're alright at fixing problems.
I have Cox Communications in Rhode Island and it is ok. It is about $55 for 5Mb/2Mb (which I can only get during the off peak hours). I think the local public school near me uses Cox too, because during school hours the speed absolutely crawls (over a minute to load a simple page). I'll probably be switching to Fios soon.
Cox definately takes advantage of having a monopoly in areas, before Fios was an option my bill was up around $70 too.
How do you find out your speeds?
I must not be paying enough. I'm on Roadrunner in the Raleigh, NC area- and get about 4mb down and 384kb up. Filesharing is a little tough because the whole house has to share that 384- and it disappears quick. I'm paying around $40/month. The connection is pretty solid, particularly after I got a new (non-flaky) router. It drops out once a month maybe. I may yet switch back to DSL, depending on who is cheaper. My DSL service was dependable (albeit slow at the time).
To answer Hawaii Cruiser, I use Speakeasy.net's speed test:
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ I sure other folks have better ways, but it works for me.
mike
I love my DSL, $27.95 a month (AT&T was SBC) Download speed 2.570megabyte upload speed 428kbps and this shared over a network. Not many problems with it and the service is really excellent. Tech support is kinda middle ways depending if you get a tech who knows what their doing or if you get one of the Huh?? that can't happen tech people.
Over all a good DSL service
Using Speakeasy: 4849 down, 299 up
Time Warner Road Runner, $45 a month, I've no big complaints, except the virtual monopoly on cable. I was impressed the day the tech came out and rewired the whole house. I had wired it all up with RG59 and he replaced it all. Took him most of the day, no extra charge.
I wish I had gigabit ethernet on all my connections, though. Is there an inexpensive router and switchbox that does gigabit? I need to plan for the future.