News BT is exclusive Onlive supplier in UK

Turns out that this is in fact true. Any ISP will work with OnLive in the UK. Check out the Joystiq article, in which Perlman states:

"UK gamers will also be able to order the OnLive Game Service directly from OnLive to run over any UK ISP".

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/13/onlive-headed-to-the-uk-through-bt-partnership/

 

Given that BT moan constantly to us about monthly usage despite the fact we are on 'option 3 - unlimited' I don't see this working too well.

On top of this you have the poor link speeds in certain areas of the country (e.g. Street gives us ~8mb whereas Yeovil only manages ~4mb on the same package).

Oh and then we have the issue of whether onlive actually works or not outside of optimum conditions.

 

I have the same issue, paying for their 'unlimited' package, which is apparently 'ideal' for heavy use and I got myself peak time limited to 1Mb/s even though my usage was early morning! Essentially their Fair Use of roughly 3.3Gb a day is nowhere close to near sufficient for streaming videos and online gaming like they claim.

Recently I found out BT Vision customers can use all the bandwidth they please, if I watch too much iPlayer in a week I get punished! Now they want to stream games too!? Will Onlive get truely unlimited bandwidth that Broadband customers will have to lose out for to support.

Disgusted.

 

If you can't get cable then the best ISP in the UK is Zen Internet. It can be expensive if you are a very heavy user but it's worth it.

- 1 month rolling contract
- no traffic shaping
- no fair use policy

http://www.zen.co.uk

 

Yes. PS3 and 360 have both been around longer than that. Also, my pc is now coming up to being 7 years old (with the exception of the 7950GT) and with some overclocking it can still play Crysis with acceptable frame rates

 

Call to BT customer service.... circa 2013

Customer: "I'm trying to play COD12 and am getting slide-show frame rates and huge lag in the evenings"

BT Chimp: "Please unplug your BT vision box for 10 minutes and then plug it back in. Thank you for calling BT"

Customer: "I've tried that. I'm paying £20 a month for your unlimited 2 games a month (1 hour per day peak time) service. It's not ****ing working!"

BT Chimp: "Well you need to upgrade to our £30 '3 games, full unlimited, 2 hour peak time" service to receive 25+fps. You can also get our bolt-on "QOS" 100ms lag 'pro-gamer' sub-package for additional £4.99 per month"

Customer: "Nah screw that I want to cancel"

BT Chimp "Okay that'll mean a £120 early termination fee"

Customer: "Gahhhh, okay whatever, but I won't lose my full game purchases will I? I'll still be able to access those on my PC?"

BT Chimp: "Your profile data will be suspended and your purchases stored until such time as you recommence your monthly subscription, in accordance with the BT/Onlive early termination agreement you entered. This profile retention is limited to 180 days after cancellation for privacy reasons. Thank you for using BT/Onlive, we thank you for your custom and hope to welcome you back shortly.


.......... welcome to the future.

 

BT still uses the telephone wires which I thought only can handle 8Mbps in pure form and 20Mbps with software. My Virgin Media cable is 50Mbps and will go up to 100Mbps soon. Now a deal with Virgin would be great news instead of using old technology.

 

The bit-tech news post didn't mention it, but in the press release with the Onlive exclusivity announcement, BT also said they had profits last year (£1.5 billion.. the year before was -£250 million) so they are using £1 billion of those profits to increase investment in their Fibre service. They expect 40% coverage by 2012 (100Mbit down and 30Mbit up for Home Fibre, 40Mbit down for cabinet Fibre) and 60% coverage by 2015. They are evenly distributing the upgrades over the country.

It will probably be the case that Onlive is only available to the Fibre customers.

Also at some point, since Virgin have a monopoly as a Cable provider, things are going to get finalised and they are going to get the same treatment that BT did a decade ago. They are going to have to offer other companies access to their customer wholesale. So that means you will be able to switch cable ISP providers much like you can currently switch ADSL ISP's on BT's phone network. It's pointless for BT to provide a second Fibre line if you already have Cable.

So in theory you would be able to switch to BT Cable from Virgin Cable in the not too distant future.... but only if you are a moron.

 

Why would Virgin be forced to share their Cable network? Unlike BT, they've built their network privately with private capital. There was a compelling case for BT to share their network, because most of it was built during the time of public ownership. I don't think Ofcom has the right to demand that Virgin share their network.

 

Wait, what? Network heavy service in a country where you pay for 20Mb/s that works as 4Mb/s and gets throttled to 50kb/s after you download 1 kilobyte (because using bandwith you pay for is somehow unfair to other users!), not to mention that your every connection is checked by police and if you dare to encrypt anything you land in jail for alleged crimes (that actually almost happened to me)? I wouldn't like to be an early adopter of that.

 

They don't own the ground which the cables run through. When cable started in the 80's, cable cabinets could only be installed in the country's streets under government licence. There were hundred of Cable companies in the 80's and 90's and they just happened to be brought up by Virgin Media. It's not right for customers to be locked into a service with a particular company, and it would be a huge cost to the public, in terms of traffic disruption, if other providers had to install redundant equipment and cabinets on our public footpaths.

Virgin have considered offering it themselves and Ofcom have left them alone for the time being because they are upgrading, increasing speeds and gradually offering customers more for the money. But they'll do it eventually.

 

I figured people would roll out their anti-OnLive cyber-luddite doubts.

OnLive is a tidal wave that will change Gaming forever.

 

I think i'll remain firmly in the "... when i see it" camp but since its now BT only that may be a long time.

 

Are you serious? www.dictionary.com

 

I read it as Bit Tech is exclusive online supplier in UK.

Then my brain did an about turn.

 

Hmm.

As far as I'm concerned, the visual quality of the games will be shite. I'd rather be able to have all the bells and whistles engaged - at a decent resolution

 

Tidal waves destroy things. Ubis DRM is bad enough...I don't even want to think about this.

 

Seems Onlive isn't too hard. Was lisening to an old presentation they gave last year and they recon 5mbps is needed for high def (worse case senario in reality they say 4mbps is plenty). For standard def they want 1mbps (again worse case senario). Pressing buttons doesn't creat alot of upstream traffic so that isn't a problem. Under questioning at the end they claimed that distance is still the biggest killer and stated about 3 servers to cover america (optimistic IMO) before dropping down to 1. They design their own hardware and the servers in house and outsource them for some company to house them. Onlive should still run with any high speed connection other than BT (again according to the presentation). If thats from the initial beta remains to be seen but going exclusive will only hurt uptake in the long run.

 

What a sham. They had such a monopoly but did nothing with the infrastructure when they had the chance. With Virgin I have downloaded 10-12GBs on any given day without any issues. The only restriction is during peak times, then once you've reached 3-4 GB they will slow down your speed for a few hours. That's all.

I can't believe that people still use the telephone lines for their broadband in this day and age. It's a joke.

I know that Gordon Brown wanted to encourage high speed fibre for the next ten years to keep Britain high-tech. Who knows what will happen now we are promised cuts by the new Govt. due to economic reasons.

 

+45635 on all the Uk internet can't handle streaming of games to start with comments.

Anyway, i don't expect Onlive to be a success for anything beyond casual games.