News UK trails in broadband speed study

"Up to" is not the same thing as "you will definitely get"...

If your only getting that speed, then its worth looking elsewhere for a cheaper deal, as it seems 3 is the maximum your going to get

 

Sad to say the Conservatives said the 50p TAX was a ridiculous idea and would abolish it.

The only decent thing Labour has done in the past year is introduce that 50p per month TAX on every telephone line in the UK to help pay for the roll out of faster broadband.

Knowledge is power. Getting knowledge and delivering knowledge fast is imperative. We should be up there as world leaders in technologies, not begging for extra MB/s in our broadband.

 

I have no problems with my O2 connection, I actively get 13.7 Mb down speed.

Many many years ago when Mrs Thatcher was in charge, BT asked to be allowed to put fibre optics to every house in the country free of charge.

The government of the time declared it would give them too much of a monopoly and refused them permission.

BT are now skint and cannot afford it. Good planning Government people!

(point of interest, did you know the NHS tried to start a national lottery but were banned by the same Gov as it would be a morally terrible thing to do.....)

 

You guys really shouldn't complain. I'm from South Africa. 'Nuff said...

 

I improved it

Am i the only one that LOL'd on reading this part? Doesn't sound much like Britain at all.

 

In Denmark here (but I am English) and I am running on a stabil 20/2 broadband connex. The rest of the town has had fiber put in but as one of the above posters said I was unlucky in the post code lottery and they literally stopped at the end of my road!

This kind of infrastructure should just be mandatory. This is future proofing that needs to be done. The benefit will be felt by businesses and the smallest customer alike. You may say the small customers don't care, but if their service is never interrupted then it's done it's job anyway.

 

where can i see the full list?

thnx

 

+1

Neither on this site nor on the BBC-link is the complete list...

Heh, If I sold a car which can run upto 120 Mph and then you notice it's stuck in first gear that would be considered not-quite-telling-the-truth thank you.

 

[off topic rant]Well... that's the traditional way of Portugal implements things. [/off topic rant]

 

theres lots of two and fro-ing in this, I used to be on 50Bb cable, when i moved house I went into a non cable area and dropped down to 14Mb though i had to rewire the flat and get a better than stock router (up to 24mbps BeUnlimited) and have now moved again literally within a few miles of where i was and am now on standard adsl getting 7meg (8mb advertised but the theoretical maximum is 7098 or something) and im in an area that is supposed to have good coverage.

Going down the scale hasn't improved my internet experience, and also on the slower speed network i'm now on a capped service whereas the faster speeds were unlimited.

So I find my service is not up to my requirements, but in my area i'm already on the best i can get. I'm kind of the exception to the rule though. Most users in the uk don't notice any speed gains when you get over around 4Mb and the reason for crappy speeds accross the uk is the old copper network which BT say they are currently upgrading (bt's 21cn network upgrades are meant to roll out in the next 3 years)

BT also lease lines to other companys which is why you get others offering broadband down the same line so long as you have a bt phone line. BT maintain the network for these parties too and sure do take their sweet time fixing 3rd party problems.

we don't need the new network per-se the one we have works and is fine for the majority of people but the network needs overall improvement to a reasonable standard before worrying about high end speeds. There are people in the uk who can just barely get 256Kb which i wouldnt even class as broadband, i get faster speeds on my phone.

As for the tax? that will just become a standard tax that they will conveniently forget to remove once the network has been improved. There is enough cash in the system to do this already and the only hinderance to these improvements is profiteering.

 

Not surprising when you look how cheap BT, Virgin & orange etc are when it comes to maintenance or customer service! All these "traffic management" policies are just an excuse for the ISP because their servers can't handle their customer base! Idiots all of them. For another thing "have you tried restarting your modem" is not a valid diagnostic method when I have restarted the modem over 50 times already and the problem is still recurring. And having it as the answer to ALL of your troubleshooting problem is not valid either! If your customers have that many problems with the modem maybe you should consider designing better ones?! Isn't that what we're paying you for?

On the positive side Be & ADSL24 are awesome companies who seem to care about their customers! You pay for what you get I would say, virgin, bt and orange etc may be cheaper but their service is terrible too!

 

I upgraded to bt's 21cn (ADSL2+) two weeks ago and speed, 14Mb right now, is at the lower end of my expectations. Distance to the exchange by postcode about 550m, estimated distance by road about 650m both of these would put me at 20+Mb. The problem is, I guess, the old cabling to the exchange as my measured attenuation indicates 1.5km and my actual speed would put me nearer 2.5km from the exchange. I cannot see bt re-cabling the exchange runs for every ADSL user so it looks like a long wait for fiber to the cabinet.

As for the statements from our UK government/politicians, every comment I've ever heard regarding internet and broadband convinces me further that they just don't 'get' it. There was a time when authority equalled veracity, when finding facts and figures to challenge their statements was all but impossible and they appear stuck in that long gone age of ********. Today, facts and figures are a click away: 'The UK are world leaders in internet connectivity' <click> oh no we're not. Is it really so dificult to understand this age of information or is it more convienient play lip service while trying to ignore it in the hope it will go away and their credibility will remain unchallenged ?

 

I think the laws need to be stronger. They should impose low contention ratios,make average speed a legal necessity on broadband ads, and increase the minimum limit, for a connection to be called broadband, to atleast 2mbps. Finally, if possible make broadband a fundamental right like Finland has done. The UK , I think, is in dire need for faster broadband.

 

eh dont complain at least its not nearly as bad as it is in US, granted all of the UK can fit inside the US many times over but Im tired of that excuse being used all the time for the crappy internet we have over here ><

 

Don't want to brag or anything; but here in sweden we get 50mbit mobile broadband with our new 4G network which will soon evolve to 80mbit, 24mbit cable is available to everyone and 100mbit to the majority (on the 24mbit I get 14 mbit download and 1 mbit upload) *Ducks*

 

oh and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD0JHl4UzBc
Now thats something to dream about!

 

im getting 17mbit from sky and i live a good 1/4 mile from the exchange and love my 2.0mb/s, not bad upload of something like 1mbit so 150kb/s, for me the internet is fine here if i had faster internet then i would only fill my hdd's faster so im fine with that

 

Having just looked at their data (available here), I would take it with a pinch of salt. They are only working on average advertised speed rather than real-world speeds. This means they are only using theoretical maximums. Thus, strangely enough, Australia is 6th in the world, despite having worse real speeds than the vast majority of the world. Speedtest.net gives a much better picture, with Australia averaging 2mbit down and 0.7up... Definitely not the 15mbit that the OECD report suggests.

 

US speeds are stretchy at best, a small village (1000 people) gets 5mbps while I'm about 2 miles from the center of my town (15,000 people) and the max plan we can get is 1.5mbps.


We pay $30 and they pay around the same, it's ridiculous

 

One of the big problems in the US is the top internet companies have no real competition it is onl dsl or cable in most places and there is a huge difference between the two. As a result prices are high and expansion is slow because it is impossible for anyone to compete against the monopoly unless the state decides to allow multiple companies.