Slow speed is usually due to a routing problem between you and the server. Astraweb and many other providers can re-route your connection if needed. For most people, speed is really not a major issue, as most any usenet provider will normally max out your internet pipe. Even using an overseas server should nearly max you out, but it just takes more connections the longer the distance.
For me, retention has always been more important than completion. It's rare that pars can't take care of any incompletes, and in case pars are not enough, I keep an extra block account as a 2nd fill-server. The last major downloading project I did was a TV series that went right to the very edge of server retention (and the missing/incomplete episodes of the first few weeks I had to get on BitTorrent).
Astraweb and Usenetserver(Highwinds) have improved a lot in the last few years, while it seems Giganews has got comparatively worse, so there's not nearly as much difference between them as there used to be. If any. Except that the price gap remains.
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