Sunflower Broadband Offers 50 Mbps For $70Albeit with 120 GB cap and 1 Mbps upstream 03:22PM Friday Oct 09 2009 by iansltxtags: business · capsLawrence, Kansas based Sunflower Broadband (see our user reviews) has announced that it will be upgrading its infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.0 in the near future. The company, often criticized for being among the earliest US cable operators to employ rather low caps, will be launching 50 Mbps service soon for $59.95 per month (up from their high-end tier's current price of $49.95), plus $10 per month if you don't get their cable service. Their $5 modem rental covers the new DOCSIS 3.0 modem required, or customers can trade up or buy their own for a price that's slightly below retail for the Motorola SB6120, the most widely available consumer DOCSIS 3 model. The catch? Upload speeds top out at one megabit, and a transfer cap of 120GB applies. Sunflower won't have some of its markets upgraded until early 2010, but those markets are probably getting the best deal of anyone in Sunflower Broadband's footprint: their monthly fee stays at $49.95 (or $59.95 without cable) and their internet speed stays at 21 Mbps down/768 kbps up. However, their cap will be upped to 120GB, just like DOCSIS 3.0 areas are getting. This is up from the company's current 50GB cap (or 70GB, depending on where you look). Sunflower Broadband does offer a tier, Palladium, that's unmetered/uncapped, however the company doesn't guarantee speeds on that tier, merely calling it "optimized for video" and saying that users will get between 2 and 21 Mbps depending on network conditions at the time. The service, which according to the company's site requires a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, is $49.95, the same price as the currently-21Mbps Gold tier is now.
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 joslop500
join:2008-12-13
Los Angeles, CA | So... They offer a tier with no speed specifications and no caps? What's to stop them from just giving you 2Mb all the time? | |
|  | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO | Re: So... Nothing, though they say they give more, and 2 Mbps all the time is better than being charged $100 for overages, right? | |
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hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium
join:2005-06-29
clubs: | who cares with speed. If caps are in play what difference does it make.
Sure get to your caps fast and screw you blind when you go over it. | |
| | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO | Re: who cares with speed. Before anyone else brings up this argument...
Comcast has 250GB caps across their residential tiers (soft caps). However I'm on their second-to-highest tier (22/5) because the upload speed lets me do stuff faster. I still stay within my cap. | |
| | PapaMidnight
join:2009-01-13
Baltimore, MD | Screw the cap, you might not even make it to 50MBPS with an asynchronous upload like that. | |
| | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO | Re: who cares with speed. You can, unlesss you're doing something stupid like using 512 byte packets. The overhead for asynchronous transfer isn't that great. Otherwise dialup-uplink satellite would be screwed, and it isn't...quite. | |
| amungus
Premium
join:2004-11-26
America
clubs:
| classic example Perfectly classic example of why ISPs should stop it with the speed increases until they can handle more capacity.
Why even bother unless you can use the crap out of it if/when you feel like it? Guess it isn't insanely low, but they could at least have gone with something more like double that and probably be seen as less stingy.
Anyway, good for L-Town. Would be nice to have faster internet... Though with such a cap, I'm not that jealous (esp. after Cox just announced their caps, which are more reasonable) | |
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jmn1207
Premium
join:2000-07-19
Reston, VA | Optimized? Sure, it's optimized for video alright, just not your videos. You'd be better off taking your videos on a DVD to the public library and using their computers to upload them. | |
| DJ_Kismuth
join:2001-11-25
Chicago, IL | So impressive! Wow, a 120GB cap? That's incredibly generous. Damn, I think I'm going to stop what I'm doing right now and move to Kansas to take advantage of this amazing service offering! | |
| | tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
1 edit | Re: So impressive! said by DJ_Kismuth  :Wow, a 120GB cap? That's incredibly generous. Damn, I think I'm going to stop what I'm doing right now and move to Kansas to take advantage of this amazing service offering! I would be impressed if there were no caps. 50mbit for $50 would kick the crap out of Verizon's offering, and then some. That would mean 25/15 for about $30-35, woot! For the moment, we can theorize that the lower price is due to the cap as compared with comcasts/timewarner (supposedly uncapped 50mbit service) Actually, it's 21mbit for $50 not 50mbit.. so that's on par with what an AT&T wants to offer in uverse.
Caps will not work in the broadband industry except for lite tiers & packages as an incentive. The purpose being to have access to web browsing, and small download updates. That's when companies can charge 1/2 price, then be more rigid about caps. NOT an incentive to raise the uncapped prices (they way Verizon feels justified in doing) | |
| | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
 ·Comcast
 ·Qwest.net
 ·magicjack.com
 ·BeeCreek Communica..
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| Re: So impressive! Sounds like you're looking for »lusfiber.com. Not SFBB. The standard asking price of 50 Mbps DOCSIS 3 service without onerous usage caps is $90-$140 (Cox on both ends of the spectrum depending on competition, Comcast, TWC and Cablevision in between). SFBB is $70, so $20-$70 below the usual asking price for D3 service.
That said, upload speeds positively suck across the board on Sunflower. Their current 21 Mbps tier tops out at 768k, and 50 Mbps when launched will have a megabit. Plus, it's capped!
Also, Comcast's residential 50 Mbps service is capped. It's about $72 extra per month (not too bad) for a 50/10 business cable connection that isn't.
AT&T did try to cap DSL and even U-Verse, but at this point they're still unlimited. So I'd take 18/1.5 service from them, uncapped, any day over SFBB's plan. | |
| 
jchambers28
join:2007-05-12
Alma, AR | they suck these people suck really bad. | |
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r81984
Fair and Balanced
Premium
join:2001-11-14
St John'S, NL | 50 Mbps is misleading with a 150GB cap per month Really they are offering 0.45 mpbs if you use your connection 24/7.
--
Democrats are not Socialists any more than Republicans are. | |
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r81984
Fair and Balanced
Premium
join:2001-11-14
St John'S, NL
·magicjack.com
·Cox HSI
·Insight Communicat..
·AT&T Midwest
| Re: 50 Mbps is misleading with a 150GB cap per month Residential connnections most certainly can be used 24/7.
If you have roomates or a large family it can be used alot for online games, multiplayer games, xbox, ps3, wii, itunes, torrents, youtube, hulu, streaming movies like with netflix, video chatting, voip, uploading pictures, online backups, etc.
--
Democrats are not Socialists any more than Republicans are. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
| said by iansltx :They can be *used* 24/7 but not maxed out 24/7. If you maxed out a connection 24/7 then you could only fit ten 12 Mbps cable customers on a three-channel cable node. In real life, the number is 250+ for everyone but Cablevision, which is closer to 50. If people on standard-fare providers (not VZ or CV) did actually use their connections at capacity 24/7 they would: 1. Have a lousy internet experience for browsing because when you fill up a pipe QoS goes down. 2. Be kicked off the provider for overusage (see ToS) or politely asked to move to either a high-end business tier or to a dedicated fiber connection, with costs that reflect he fact that the person in question is using their connection at capacity 24/7. Those costs tend to be $100 per Mbit at this point. Competition isn't the only reason why companies offer service the way they do. Infrastructure is NOT as deployed (fiber) outside the northeast or west coast. Once you leave that area things are a little different. The infrastructure does have comparable bottlenecks due to lack of investment & deployment on a similar scale. Therefore what you can get in NY won't be available to Arizona, New Mexico, or even Texas (hotbed of capped internet testing). Once consumers begin demanding higher speed in the geographically diverse cities & towns (and they STOP taking NO for an answer) there will be an arms race between telco & cableco to order more backbone service or build it themselves-- whichever serves their interests best. Right now Comcast is going out of their way to "get it wrong" so that they can move towards bill by the byte service. Even though there has been major milestones set for new fiber deployments of backbone links.. for UNLIMITED BROADBAND service @ 15-20mbits relatively guaranteed per subscriber would take a monumental increase in deployed fiber outside the current hotzones (where fiber already is). | |
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Darrin
@sunflower.com | 1 Megabit upload, thats crazy slow! What good is 50 mbit down with only 1 mbit up? I am actually on Sunflower and and frustrated the slow speeds are no good for online backup or uploading to flickr or youtube.
Gotta see if U-Verse is available yet here! | |
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