News UK ISPs quizzed over advertised broadband speeds

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/10...dband_speeds/1

Ofcom has stepped into the ring to clear up the state of UK broadband Internet. Let's hope it gets better for us all...

[will.]

Originally Posted by the article

Ofcom's letter also requested that ISPs allow customers to test connection speeds for a longer period without having to sign a contract, along with giving customers the option of terminating a contract if speeds are well below what is advertised.

Damn right!

Virgin have succeeded in supplying us with 'up to 8 meg broadband' that goes at a blistering 100kb/s.

[DougEdey]

It's BT's fault, not the ISP, even under LLU.

[cjoyce1980]

i want the virgin 50M/b broadband, currently you can get the virgin 20M/b service for the same price as BT's 8M/b

GET WITH THE PROGRAM BT!!!! I wanna be a rocketman!!!

[Marci]

It's BT's fault, not the ISP, even under LLU.

Er... nope! Not the case for ex-cable customers who are now Virgin customers but still operate via Cable-Broadband. The fault there clearly lies with Virgin, and in all honesty, since they took over the reliability of cable connections has seriously come under fire. Been reduced from 98% uptime in Telewest's hands down to 65% uptime in Virgin's hands, yet in theory it was all just a change in administration, not a change in the physical network.

[Darv]

I've used ntl for years now. Got it back when the highest you could get was 512kb and it's had really good speed the whole time. There was a time when it would disconnect all the time. Turned out the modem was faulty.

Anyway for most people it is that BT's network can't handle the speeds people want. If BT sorted out there network then there wouldn't be a problem.

I don't think the ISP could give you an average figure because the nature of broadband means the speed will always be different. I do however like the idea of an extended period to allow you to cancel your contract if it's not up to scratch!

[mclean007]

Why oh why is BT not rolling out fibre to the home yet? The UK is one of the richest nations in the World and has a relatively high population density, so it should be economical at least in urban areas, yet BT persists in patching and re-patching a communications system that relies fundamentally on a network that started to be laid down more than a century ago. We're in serious danger of being left behind - generally the UK is regarded as an entrepreneurial place with a long and illustrious history of innovation, but without the bandwidth to develop new and exciting applications for broadband, that innovation (and the associated investment) will pass us by. If BT won't do it (presumably because they can't justify it commercially), then the government should underwrite the installation cost of this infrastructure and then float it to recoup the investment.

[xrob]

bt wont do ftth for years and years, but its what they should be doing, they must have made billions and billions from adsl

[Marci]

Why oh why is BT not rolling out fibre to the home yet?

So-called fibre to the kerb would offer speeds of up to 50Mbps and cost up to £10bn to roll out nationwide, experts predict.

Fibre to the home is more expensive - with an estimated £15bn price tag - but offers speeds of up to 100Mbps.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ifs_new...3022.stm?ifs=1

If BT still held the monopoly on UK Telecomms, then yep, I guess they'd have it rolled out by now... As far as I was aware, BT leased their use of the fibre backbone from Fibrenet (???)

[mclean007]

Coincidentally, BBC online ran a piece on FTTH FIVE YEARS ago to the day, stating that the UK risked being left behind, and still no progress has been made.

Link - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2313239.stm

[[USRF]Obiwan]

Over here in the Netherlands:
20mbit dl / 100kbit up adsl2 for 22 euro p.m. (unlim. data transfers.)
I even can get 100mbit/100mbit up via fiberoptic wire (although costly: around 99 euro p.m)

The most (internet) consumer unfriendly country is Belgium, where there is not only a very monoplic provider agreements (but thats officialy not true). but.... the other problem is; you may only download 1gb p.m. or else pay 30 eurocent per megabyte extra! Or pay a lot more for exta gigabyte fup (fair user policy) upgrades for lots of cash.

[Buzzons]

BT are doing the 21CN upgrade at the moment ( http://www.btplc.com/21CN/ ) Due for completion 2012. After this has been finished, new builds will get Fiber to the home (FTTH) and old builds will get ADSL2+ (upto 24Mbit)

Also, you can never actually get 8MBit, the highest you can get is 7.25MBit iirc (with overheads etc)

see here for a good explanation :: http://aaisp.net.uk/aa/aaisp/maxatm.html

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by Marci

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ifs_new...3022.stm?ifs=1

Sounds like a bargain to me. If I were in government I'd push the button on that £15bn investment in a heartbeat. That is, what, £250 per UK resident or about £1,000 per connected household (based on 15m households - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=8) for a state of the art network that will last decades. After it is built, the maintenance cost of fibre is pretty low and the capital cost is definitely a worthwhile investment IMHO, and could be recouped either over a long term by ongoing operational revenues or, more likely, in the short term by a stock market flotation.

[cyrilthefish]

Personally i think the issue isn't the exact broadband speeds. As dial-up was advertised for years as 'up to 56k speeds' despite it being physically impossible to go that fast outside of short distance test lab conditions, this is no different to the 'up to 8meg speed' services, except for the fact the speeds seem to drop off a lot quicker with distance than dial-up used to.

In my mind the crippling bandwidth limits / bandwidth throttling is the real issue, especially as the web is going more content heavy (think youtube and so on)

my 4meg cable broadband service used to be brilliant, with Virgin taking over instead of the 4096/384 i used to get, i now get crippled to 2048/192 almost every single day unless we only use the connection for light web-browsing.
I think i'm going to have to upgrade just to get a workable connection

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by Buzzons

BT are doing the 21CN upgrade at the moment ( http://www.btplc.com/21CN/ ) Due for completion 2012. After this has been finished, new builds will get Fiber to the home (FTTH) and old builds will get ADSL2+ (upto 24Mbit)

It's a step in the right direction, but 2012 is five years from now and ten years from the article I linked, and even then only new builds will get it. We should have a working FTTH network NOW, with all streets having fibre to the kerb and all new builds having fibre to the home piped in alongside (or instead of) the copper connection and the option for existing homes to have it installed for a reasonable fee.

[samkiller42]

While i was in France in July, in the middle of nowear to be honest, i was held up in traffic as they were laying fibre optic lines in the road, which was for the broadband. I think it is about time that the government and BT installed a new internet system accross the country, but we all know what that would mean, higher tax as its us that would have to pay for it.

Sam

[LeMaltor]

Originally Posted by will.

Damn right!

Virgin have succeeded in supplying us with 'up to 8 meg broadband' that goes at a blistering 100kb/s.

I manage a rocking 112 sometimes It is always on though, so no complaints about that

[Blademrk]

We already have 21C network here (BT upgraded us in July), haven't noticed any benefits yet...
As far as I can make out, all it's done is move the voice telecommunications from a PSTN connection to an IP based one.

[ellism]

Originally Posted by LeMaltor

I manage a rocking 112 sometimes It is always on though, so no complaints about that

I recently joined virgin and their shaping is awful. In the evenings I am getting 40kbs downloads over http. I do use my net quite a bit, but thats what i am paying for an uncapped connection for, but i wouldn't call myself a heavy user, I don't have torrent running 12 hours a day or anything. Its not like they can blame it on my connection, started a download this morning and was getting 400kbs.

[chrisb2e9]

To be honest I have never had a problem getting the advertised speeds anywhere that I have lived in Canada. My only complaint is that the broadband just isn't that fast. but at least they are honest about it.
With one small exception, I used to work for the phone company back in Nova Scotia, and we provided highspeed through dsl. In Halifax there are a few apartment buildings (newer ones) that are supposed to be prewired to have 10mbit Internet. The way it works is that in the apartment there is a router which has cables running through the walls leading to each room and you just plug your pc straight into the jack in the wall. So the customer did not need to have a dsl modem plugged in, in their apartment.
So one day I was at my friends place who happened to live in one of these buildings and I asked him why he had a modem. Turned out he was only getting 3mbit not the 10 that he was paying for. So I went to work and fired off an e-mail to one of the support girls and asked her if she could look into it for me.
She agreed that he was supposed to get the 10mbit (it was documented company information that was easy to look up(if you worked for the company(and had access))).
Nothing happened for a while so I sent another e-mail. Got an answer back that they had been busy but would get on it right away.
To make a very long story short, some manager ended up telling me that we have never offered 10mbit Internet anywhere and we have no plans to do so for a long time. She also went so far as to say that the buildings are not pre-wired for the 10mbit and there were never any plans to do so.
which is odd because we opened up the electrical panel in his apartment and found the router and the plugs are present in each room. Not to mention the documentation that clearly states that if a customer lives in one of these buildings that they do not need a modem to access the internet. Also not to mention that the landlords tell the tenants that the buildings are pre-wired for the 10mbit.
Even better are the employees who I knew back then who admitted that they do have 10mbit internet (without living in a pre-wired building) because their Internet is connected to a central office which has been upgraded to support higher speeds.

I'm so glad I don't work there anymore, I have been responsible for so many of their customers leaving and going to the competition, where they do advertise 10mbit (through cable) and you do actually get that speed (even during busy times)

There, that's my rant for the day.