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News Culture secretary calls for quicker rollout of cable broadband

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by arcticstoat, 15 Sep 2011.

  1. rogerrabbits

    rogerrabbits What's a Dremel?

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    There's not enough competition imo. BT own the infrastructure and don't want anyone else getting in. And Virgin have the fibre optic network. Neither of them care about providing a good service or good speed, because they are the only choice for most people.


    p.s. And yeah I pay for 20 mbit cable with Virgin and youtube is basically un-usable for me.
     
  2. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    What are you playing?!? I have 10Mbps on Virgin and I can play back up to 720p resolution quite well. And it's YouTube. It's not exactly as if you need HD theatre quality playback.

    OK. The government wants more broadband. We are also in the midst of an economic recession. What better way to boost the economy then to put some government investment into this area. It will benefit business infrastructure, and we are in the middle of expanding the national grid anyway, so why not lay some fibreoptic down alongside those electrical cables while you're at it?
     
    Last edited: 15 Sep 2011
  3. rogerrabbits

    rogerrabbits What's a Dremel?

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    Even crappy 320xWhatever pauses for me and often just fails to load. It's totally worthless. And you don't NEED anything but if we didn't strive to have better stuff we would still pissing about in lycos on our 33.6.

    The damage was all done years ago by giving BT total domination of the UK. We have been struggling to recover ever since.
     
  4. t.y.wan

    t.y.wan What's a Dremel?

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    Personally, I think the government is just talking out of their a*s, they cannot and will not be able to do "this" in such little amount of time.
    First, efficiency, second, BT is a douch, third, COST, at this time, how dare they BS...
     
  5. Black Tiger

    Black Tiger Chineapple Punks

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    roblems with youtube, im on a 8 meg connection and always play videos in 1080 or the highest setting where possible and never have any problems, you lot must have some crazy throttling going on
     
  6. ccxo

    ccxo On top of a hill

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    As for the roll out of a broadband network- its going to be slow going, as there are only a handful of providers out there that can deliver.

    The biggest and most suited is BT, with their FTTC/FTTP rollout which looks to be the best choice for the market for the next 10 years, is going forward at a strong pace but limited man power and working with electricity companys has slown the pace down.
    Come 2015 things should look pretty good for alot of the country, we are still in 2011 another 4 years to go yet till the end of the targeted deadline. Coverage will increase in areas where BT can win the tender for public funds, competing against other companies.

    Virgin, expansion is very small for them as there last major expansion, debts are still with them, a clear lack of drive to infill areas shows that Virgin are more interested in upping the speed in their network and charging customers more. Wholesale access to VM network would increase the rollout of faster services across the country as BT etc could then compete with Virgin and not need to build their network there to compete.

    Fijitsu, aim of a rural fibre to the home network, will not take off as they need the entire BDUK pot of money for them to make it worth their investment. There looking for a large goverment handout with little work on the ground.

    FTTH is the future, though with the current economic situation we are in, things are going to take time, if say most of the BDUK funds went to BT then come 2015, the goverment could achieve its aim prehaps, though they will need to revise it.

    The biggest question that needs to be asked with the target goal is what are the measured requirements to achieve it.

    Most of the BDUK funds are going to white area's where there will be no market intervention, this leaves the rest of areas either in black or grey, black already being served by a fibre service and grey due to recieve it in the future, though dates wont be given until the company is ready.
     
  7. rogerrabbits

    rogerrabbits What's a Dremel?

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    They really are. I was so happy when cable finally came around to my area and I could finally give BT the middle finger! Virgin aren't perfect though, but not too bad.

    I don't think it's youtube because it's fast as can be for me when I'm in work (on Be Internet). I read that Virgin just have a special rule for youtube. I can download a game demo and it comes down at the full 20mbits (about 2.4MB/s!). But on youtube, most of the time if I want to watch a music video or a game review or something on there, I have to just open it and then pause it and go and do something else while it buffers.

    Basically Virgin are just gits :p
     
  8. bradders2125

    bradders2125 What's a Dremel?

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    Surely Its more important to get everyone to a usable speed instead of a few places getting a speed most people won't need.

    Also, whats the point having decent speed broadband if you get a terrible ping. I was on a 6-8Mb Virgin service through the phone line. If i was lucky I could play COD online on my PC, without an atrocious ping during off peak hours. A mate of mine gets 2-3Mb with BT, if hes lucky, yet always had a ping around the 50ms mark

    I have moved and now get 13-15Mb from Sky, no problems with a high ping, seemingly no throttling either.

    Another friend of mine was locked into a virgin contract when he moved and due to lack of fibre network on our road, the cable goes past the end, had to have a new contract through the phone line or pay an excessive amount to leave. He lives a couple of doors away from me and gets around 7Mb.

    If everyone could have 8Mb low latency broadband it would be a better solution than giving a few places super-fast broadband for Facebook, e-mails and IM. There are people who will benefit from a super-fast service, but probably more who want a fast usable service.

    Brads
     
  9. keir

    keir S p i t F i r e

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    why all the hate
    I'm on 30Mbit hd youtube flys and downloads are pretty much always 3.8Mbps ping on TF2 is between 5 and 20
    Call for help if you need it.
     
  10. rogerrabbits

    rogerrabbits What's a Dremel?

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    Call who? India? :/
     
  11. ccxo

    ccxo On top of a hill

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    Welcome to cheap broadband, TT is the latest isp to shut its call centre and move to India, prehaps a higher standard price and you would get UK support first line and a better service instead of being capped by restive fup and overcrowded areas.
     
  12. Roskoken

    Roskoken What's a Dremel?

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    Every new house built should come with a 24TB server as standard and its broadband speed should be reflected in its price.
     
  13. leexgx

    leexgx CPC hang out zone (i Fix pcs i do )

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    guess i never submitted my post

    my ping has always been low (25-50ms in COD4) MW2 depends on the pc and the connection

    high ping or packet loss your UBR mite be overloaded, annoyingly VM never seem to upgrade the bandwidth to fix it and VM network seem to lack QOS for packet latency Priority something that BT seems to have, as i seen on overloaded BT exchange Ping is fine but speed sucks, example 6mb ADSL Locked but only getting 1-2mb speeds but ping is ok

    or your power levels are to high or low (should be around 0 but norm around -4 for most)

    or you got the super hub or the hub that not very good under some loads (disable Firewall, IP flood norm helps)
     
  14. Blackshark

    Blackshark What's a Dremel?

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    I moved (from the UK) to the the north of Sweden, where my wifes parents who live 30 mins outside of town in a tiny village of 15 homes have 100Mb fibre broadband. In town we have the choice of 24, 50, 100, 200 or 1GBps. The price of this is lower than the UK even though prices for most things here are more expensive (yes I couldnt believe it either!) Oh and of course, being fibre, the up rates are similar to the down rates. Mobile broadband, we have 40Mb up here now and down south I think it is 70 or 80 Mbit now.

    The UK has fallen so far behind. If ever there was a need for the UK government to step up and do its job, impose requirements on private industries, it is now. But they wont, too many hands in the pockets, too many brown paper envelopes being slipped under the desks.

    Roskoken - Housing in the UK is already incredibly overpriced. I am not sure what most people would do with a 24TB server in their home, especially as cloud computing will make storage at home a thing of the past... of course so long as the UK can get decent internet connections to peoples home... OK OK you are right, everyone in the UK needs a 24TB server and a jobsworth to pop round every day and fill it up for them! (as the broadband cant cope)
     
  15. SexyHyde

    SexyHyde Minimodder

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    The thing that gets me is why didn't BT have the foresight to lay fibre down 10+ years ago whenever it was repairing or replacing lines? as it would have had loads of fibre down for not much cost now. While the whole world put broadband into place BT moved a load of jobs to India, continuing poor and overpriced service and not looking to the future and preparing for it. Some people would have expected a company like BT might have led the way in broadband.
     
  16. Phil Rhodes

    Phil Rhodes Hypernobber

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    The way YouTube fail usually works is that you load up a video page, it plays five seconds and stops. Then you refresh the page two or three times and eventually it works fine. The actual data rate of the content seems to have no bearing on what works and what doesn't; this happens with 320x240 postage-stamp video as often as with 1920x1080. It's not an absolute bandwidth issue; if I had to guess, it's a quirk of the way YT does loadsharing where their servers are physically located, and how they're connected to the wider internet.

    Actually, correction: it's quite a lot less common on 1920x1080 material, which often means movie trailers or other commercial content. I wonder if someone's paying for better service. Net neutrality my fragrant backside.

    The problem with all this is that... well... it's nobody's problem. YouTube will blame your ISP, your ISP will blame YouTube. It may actually be a hard problem to fix, because it presumably depends on exactly what links everyone has to everyone else, the overall coordination of which is the responsibility of Mister Nobody. With my dedicated cynicism hat on, I could say that this is exactly how everyone likes it. Neither the ISP nor YouTube is really interested in providing a working service; they don't get paid any more. They don't need it to work.All they need is to be able to avoid responsibility for it not working, which in today's grief-filled world, apparently means the same thing.

    In this case I'd say the problem is YouTube's, because I don't see this issue on Vimeo or other video-sharing sites. But jeez. My ISP won't even look into it until I've run a number of extremely time-consuming speed tests, despite the fact that it is already well proven that the speed of my link to the exchange is the last thing that's possibly cauing the problem. Obviously, this is just another responsibility-deflection technique... gah. I fear for the world!
     
  17. rogerrabbits

    rogerrabbits What's a Dremel?

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    You think it's our fault for not paying enough?! :jawdrop:
     
  18. SexyHyde

    SexyHyde Minimodder

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    Either way, laying fibre is going to cost and ultimately who is going to pay the bill.
     
  19. ccxo

    ccxo On top of a hill

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    OFCOM wouldnt let BT lay down fibre, otherwise it would already have been put down, would have killed of the compeition.

    Its part of the reason, of the situation we are in at current its complex and more needs to be done to fix it.

    The tax payer, as it always has, though the current idea is for the goverment to combine public funding with private to stimualte a rollout. Though to catch up to say Sweeden the goverment would need to provide the funds for a entire fibre roll out to the country.
     
  20. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    And the Isps where clever enough to wait until the problem is so big they can go cry to the Government for money...
    Sucks for the Consumers, but if you look at it from the pov of the Isps Bank Accounts waiting until 5 past 12 was the best option.
     
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