As of August 7, Giganews claims to be the first usenet provider to reach 2 years of binary retention, providing access to over 10 billion newsgroup articles and over 4,000 TB of usenet data.
Within the highly competitive industry of usenet providers, the premium usenet service Giganews tries to distinguish itself by providing more retention than the competition. According to Giganews "Our members are the only usenet readers with access to every complete article, dating back 2 years." More binary retention means more binary newsgroup articles are complete, which in turn means that you have access to more downloadable content. And because Giganews claims to have high quality binary retention, you should be able to download all binary articles up to two years of age with 100% completeness.
Of course not everyone makes use of usenet providers to download files, the main alternative being P2P/bittorrent. Each methods has its pros and cons: usually the main argument of BitTorrent is the fact that it's free, opposed to usenet - but Usenet has the advantage of offering higher speeds and more available content. It's clear that usenet providers are working hard to keep this advantage - and increasing retention to two years is something that will help this cause.
Something that really works against the usenet downloading method however, is the ease of use - of the two methods BitTorrent is usually easier to get started with. Even so, with the increased concerns about online privacy you might consider switching to usenet: usenet providers are working hard to protect your privacy while downloading. Still, nothing is for free and both Giganews' SSL as well as VyprVPN ("for Browsing Security and Privacy - protects your online identity") come at a premium on top of the usenet downloading costs, with VyprVPN being available only at the Diamond Giganews plan.
More information about Giganews and usenet FAQ here .
