In other words (to our american friends and others arround the globe) there is a monopoly and its called British Telecom. Originally owned by the post office and then by the people and now owned by the share-holders
Yes and no... yes for ADSL, it's BT's fault - but not for cable broadband, as that never touches a BT phone line
but tbh not many people in the UK have cable broadband, most people have ADSL. What about the future, a year ago people were on 256K - 512K, this year people are on >1Mbps, next year we'll be on 2Mbps, in a few years we'll reach 8Mbps, that is the maximum our phone lines can handle, so everyone is gonna have to convert to something else to get higher speeds than 8Mbps, and then British Telecommunications (I like saying that word ) will go bust cos the internet is the only thing funding them. So what do you think everyone will convert to?
ADSL can reach a maximum on 8Mpbs yes...but thats where ADSL2 or ADSL+ comes into play. Its just a matter of finding and using that extra spectrum in the copper (they once said that 10Mbps was the max for ethernet remember). BT wants to convert to FOPS eventually but that means digging up the street like cable companys (aka. expencive) so that wont happen for a while.
We have the same kind of parent-owned lines around here. For instance, Time Warner Communications (aka RoadRunner) owns all the cable around where I live. However, some antitrust regulation lets EarthLink (my ISP) use the TW lines for next to nothing, so it passes the savings (and the bandwidth) on to me! The only difference is on the bill, TBH. I pay a few bucks less than those with RoadRunner. I hope they bring Fiber around soon, though. Still, I feel for you guys with the BT-owned lines and such. Is there a reason that Cable isn't as prevalent in the UK? Do you mostly have OTA (Over the air) or Satellite TV?
If you think the internet side of things is expensive wait till you hear how much a U.K T.V licence is,........... A whopping £106 or there abouts for only 5 channels and all you get generally is repeats/reruns...........SHOCKING don't you think.
But there are no adverts on the bbc ones, that you pay for (it would not exist if it did not charge or did not have adverts). edit:: go for the petrol one £0.83 per litre
5 channels - terrestrial or (over the air), and TV license, yes a friggin rip off cos I barely watch TV, and even more rarely watch the BBC. And I think in terms of communication, this country is gonna be a bit - that word - in a few years cos we cant seem to upgrade things as everything is based on old technology, to replace everything would cost too much, take too much time and be too much hassle....
My brother was visiting some girl in new york (USA) who he met on a chat room, and she could not belive that we actually paid for a tv licence and further more how few channels we got, Unfortunately if you are a britt you are going to get shaffted. Which leads me to another thing, why all these people who leave their own counties for what ever reason, want to come here (uk) is a little bit of a mystery to me, because as far as i am concerned it is just one big TOILET, If i won the lottery tomorow i would be out of this country before the cheque had cleared.
Same here, it'll be oz for me, one of the furthest places from Britain you can get (within the planet of course!) Don't get me wrong, I love Britain, but its just the top people I'm getting real fed up of - Tony Blair, the people at BT, the DVLA etc
let me see, i suppose scuzz is ok and.... nope, just scuzz and its amazing how you start off with a simple: woo hoo we get 1mb free, and end up with moaning bout britain as a whole. funny eh neway \o/ \oo/
when cable put there lines down what did they use, did they use fiber optics?? maybe BT will start having to pay to rent Telewest lines.... We should go take a look at the sweedish, they have the best telecomunications in the world afaik. 10mb for less than what we pay for 512
Cable companies generally put down coax but some of the newest holes in the ground are filled with FOPS. Just depends on when the cables was layed
Yes but to be fair if you ever actually turned on the telly you'd realise just what an absolute load of complete crap American TV is. Well the TV is ok as such but the number of adverts they manage to cram into a 1 hour show is unbelievable. Not only that but the quality of the adverts just want to make you slit your throat. So yes we have to pay for tv but at least we get two channels with no adverts and it's actually possible to watch for more than a day. By the way this is speaking from experience of the cable TV we had in a hotel once. The actual proper TV channels may be better.
