News Fibre guru blasts UK broadband

its Not Fibre Optic internet (even the Virgin reps in the Shop call it that, still didn't ofcom Fine them for doing that when every home gets Coxa to the house)

They can offer right now 150mb if they removed the caps off the 50mb modems (they are all ready setup for 3x bond links @ 50mb each just its rate limited to 51mb)
The modem may be able to do 200mb but not sure if the currant modem has 4 bonding support
Do note you Need an N 300 router that has Gigabit WAN and LAN ports (bit lame but the WNR2000 is only 100mb ports that they suppyed but the Dlink DIR-6xx routers i think are 1000 based and n 300)

 

Average speeds at the moment for British internet is just an embarrasement. For those that live in rural areas, we're buggared. At best I get 1.6mb/s which is just plainly awful. Those in towns and cities need it least yet have the fastest speed - only the British government could have looked at that and thought that was logical.

 

Agree its the best option for download speeds in the uk and the no throttling is nice (hope that wont change), they should seriously improve the upload speeds though.

 

UPC here in Ireland call their 10mb/s internet Hyperspeed internet. They are Ignorant to the fact that my ISP is the fastest in Ireland. UPC is advertising their internet as the fastest in Ireland.

 

I read that contryside will be recomended Moble broadband when speed increase in that area and come better value for money

 

Mobile broadband is great in theory, I've got a Three MBB dongle but I get no signal in my house so thats out of the question for me.

All the MBB providers have a tiny download cap because the mobile phone networks can't really cope with the high network traffic.

 

Labour goverments have put us in this situation, now that there gone the new goverment is looking very promising for a fibre network to replace the existing network.

What is need is a combined investment by BT and the goverment to fund the role out of a next gen network, while it will cost into the billions it will repay its value back into the economy with growth and jobs, investing in new infrastuctre is key.

If ofcom would have just let bt to role out a fibre network and let them charge isp's to use it so they could make a good return we would all be on fast connections by now.

Virgin media, while there cable service is good in what areas its avaliable they could do more to open there network up to other company's and expand to rural areas.

A new national network with multiple resellers would benefit the public and buisness greatly as price and service would be competive and the final third would not be ignored.

 

Without wishing to get political on here, it was the Tories that sold British Telecom to a bunch of greedy shareholders who won't fund major improvements because it takes money out of their pockets. If it had stayed public sector, we wouldn't be on our knees begging for fibre, it would have been a manifesto committment.

Now we've got the Activision of the telecoms world sat on their billions and only willing to do "enough" to balance demand and supply. Why push things forward when you can just push out yet another Guitar Hero, keep the shareholders happy and rake the money in. They'll keep pushing 2mb ADSL and there is very little Ofcom or the government can do about it.

 

Completely agree.

 

So let's get this straight.

You want to be taxed, so that the government can put in telecoms hardware, which will then be given away free to commercial operators? Ah, no, I think not.

There are arguments to nationalise almost anything; you can apply the argument that you aren't then paying for someone else's profits to pretty much any business you want. This argument is often strong when it comes to anything where there's a wide need for something and everyone needs more or less the same thing (water, electricity, &c) . Either way, though, we should not end up in the worst of both worlds, which is what a broadband tax would give us.

 

Yes but that's not how it works, is it.

The ISPs know full well that it's a zero-sum game; few people are willing to pay more than (arguably) £20-25 a month for their internet service. The ISP is not going to be able to charge significantly, if anything, more for a faster service. There is no incentive to upgrade.

If that was how it worked, they'd be upgrading themselves.

 

you all complain it the government that should do something

1) Where is the money gonna come from?
2) Why don't the companies that provide the service upgrade their network? Hell they make big enough profits year on year. Its not as if they are a failing industry needing handouts!! This whole thing happened with AT&T and iphone. Their network couldn't support the traffic, so instead of upgrading the top brass lined their pockets. Its not as if the iphone exclusitivity wasn't a huge cash cow. Same with BT, they serve how many people and instead of upgrading they sat back until the government was ashamed enough to fund it themselves. Bt has tons of companies paying into them to use their lines, a big user base themselves from phone, TV and broadband. maybe instead of blaming the government for not investing, blame the company for not investing themselves and forcing you to pay for it instead from your Taxes.

 

You don't get throttled at all on the premium 50Mb connection. With the other speeds once you download a certain amount they throttle it to aout 1/4 speed for a few hours.

You can see the exact details here: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

 

Well considering how much labour goverments have wasted could have easily paid for a next gen network and labours best offer to improve broadband is a commitment to 2mb nationaly.

Whats needed is the red tape removed and investment between the public sector to schools/hospitals etc and the private sector to fund a role out of fibre, with the goverment providing money to isp's providing they expand there services to rural areas, as towns and cities are covered by a strong market in the whole.

 

Aside from political posturing ( I'm sick to my stomach of hearing tories blame everything from the weather to the banks to the volcano on Labour ), wasn't the whole point of privatising BT to reduce the cost (to the government) of installing and maintaining infrastructure?

As you said, providing internet to densely populated areas is profitable, therefore it is a good revenue stream to the government, whereas providing it to less densely populated areas is less profitable, but seeing as the government is having to foot the bill for it anyway, they might as well take over the whole thing.

I simply don't see any benefit to the taxpayer and, by extension, to the government in privatising the profitable part of a business but still having to subsidise the unprofitable part.

In short, what use is BT to us?

 

The biggest issue I can see right now is that download limits are typically too small. I see a lot of 10GB cap packages but if a 30 min iPlayer programme needs ~400MB, how long will that 10GB last?...

I see no point rolling out fibre optic if the download caps continue to remain so small.