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It really depends on tax policies. In the UK, every business is taxed on how many strands of fibre-optic cable they have in use and how many kilometers long they are. That's pushed companies to implement faster bit-rates and multiple-wavelength technologies to get as much capacity out of a single strand as possible while there is still lots of dark fibre out there.

http://app.voa.gov.uk/corporat...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/in...

> If it were really that cheap and easy to do I would expect that some company would have already done so and charged everyone a few Euro...

They have, it's called cellular data services (LTE). In Europe it would be Vodafone, Telekom, Orange, etc. Sure, the frequency and protocol is slightly different than 802.11 WiFi, but it is wireless, it is already everywhere, it already works, you can surf web pages on your phone or tablet wirelessly TODAY, and the data rates are a usable 50 Mbits/sec now and they are rolling out upgrades to 100 Mbits/sec and higher. LTE has some European deployments at 450 Mbits/sec today: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/ind...

I wonder what the tradeoff of 802.11 WiFi vs LTE is. While cell phone data plans are a little bit expensive the cellular providers seem to be making steady progress with faster and faster services.

It does not silently default to on for new contracts. People taking out new contracts are required to explicitly choose whether to have it on or off.

Its a bit ambiguous. According to this article:

At present only new customers will be given an “enforced” option to keep or disable the service, which will come pre-selected (enabled) unless you specifically choose otherwise during the sign-up process.

The BBC's iPlayer in the UK has threatened any ISP who tries this with being put on a name and shame list.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/11/18/bbc-system-to-name-and-shame-uk-isps-that-throttle-iplayer-broadband-traffic.html

How long before this happens in the USA forcing the ISPs to back pedal and pretend nothing happened?

You won't need a gigabit connection. Netflix says 4k is around 15 megabits per second.

The problem for any modern telco is the cooling, power use, limited optical to node to optical home upgrade options while passing on the very expensive copper up keep costs.
Once this tech is installed its limited to the copper quality, length, cross talk and only a few people can request limited optical back to the node upgrades.
For all the talk of a wonderful future network over existing copper, thats the service level thats a broadband min? 20? 25Mbps?
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/03/why-fibre-based-broadband-is-not-always-superfast.html welcome to the world of copper and a "promised download speeds of at least 2Mbps (Universal Service Commitment)"

1,2 and3) fat chance of getting that with a consumer grade ISP. Which national ISPs do IPv6 anyway?
4) Anecdote I know, but I was pretty pleased when I got a billing issue fixed in a couple of minutes on the online chat. And other statistics seem to disagree with you http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/12/sky-broadband-tops-ofcom-study-of-uk-isp-customer-satisfaction.html

Sorry, I made an error. According to deutsche telecom the ISPs nowadays are only getting 100gbps per chanel which would equate to 6 terrabits per cable.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/03/deutsche-telekom-break-record-with-512gbps-data-speed-via-fibre-optic-cable.html

Which cuts my example bandwidth in 1/4th and only give 1.5mbps per line to 4 million people. You can see why the costs of laying cable to Australia's cities with their low population and farflung cities would be challenging.

It only apples to ISP's with over 400000 customers of which there are 5 at the moment http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/08/bt-talktalk-challenge-digital-economy-act

Just change to one of the many other ISP's out there http://www.ispreview.co.uk/list.shtml

For those in the UK who suffer from throttled connections, there are some alternatives. I am a very happy customer of Be (part of the Telefonica group) who provide an uncapped unthrottled service with a static IP for less than £20/month. I get 18Mb/s down. On the same line with BT I got 12Mb/s, capped and throttled for the same price.

This is a good resource if you've not found it already.

I'm currently on Virgin fibreoptic, and while the figures look great when you go to a broadband test website, for some reason the real-world usage is nothing like this. Streaming (especially youtube and bbc iplayer) is pretty bad, and seems to hang on a regular basis. It is much worse at peak times. And I know it can be done better having previously used superjanet 6 on university campus several years ago.

That might be due to an (alleged) problem with the routers they supply, see http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/02/22/virgin-media-uk-admits-to-broadband-speed-problems-with-new-superhub-routers.html, and there's an El Reg story about it too- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/20/virgin_media_apology_over_media_superhub_snafu/

I'll probably look to moving to talktalk next - they seem well-priced and are apparently pretty quick too.

Of all my techy/non-techy friends, not one of them has had anything good to say about TalkTalk. Anecdotal evidence, and you don't know me, but take it for what it's worth.

Yes, it's implemented that badly by the vast majority of ISPs in the UK - everything through a proxy and not even a transparent one. This means that any site which makes significant use of the client IP is likely to break, most obviously filesharing sites where one dolt uploading CP means every single request ends up coming from a single proxy IP and per-IP bandwidth limits are hit within minutes.

Some ISPs are contemplating moving to deep packet inspection but that still won't do anything about HTTPS or non-HTTP.

The real purpose, as everyone's always known, was to reach a stage where it becomes possible to use the system's technology to censor any information the lobbyists please.

At what stage do you think media hysteria bombarded you sufficiently - as it has done with so many people - to think an image of child abuse is a special case, so much worse than any other sequence of bits which acts as evidence that some abuse has taken place? What about a picture/film of adult sexual abuse? If the adult is developmentally retarded? Animal abuse? A snuff film? An image of a dead baby? A woman executed for being raped? A war crime? Evidence of genocide?

Ask yourself whether your concern is with the image or with the discomfort you feel that someone enjoys the image. Then realise that people may enjoy any or all of the above. Then realise that almost all sexual abuse occurs within families or by other people in trusted caring roles - if you want to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, you would stop far more child sexual abuse by outlawing the family unit.

The noncommercial distribution of CP seems reasonably to be a privacy issue for the child, as any photo/video taken without consent. Beyond that, all the resources should go toward identifying and stopping the abusers and helping the victims. To inform the abused that money which you are claiming to be using in their interest is going to be invested in pushing images of his/her abuse underground (and as the thin end of the wedge for general censorship) is not only illogical, but cruel.

Also, let's be clear here: the IWF, one of the oldest Internet censorship frameworks in the Western world, doesn't even claim that its aim in blocking is to stop CP (it does help stop CP by acting as a clearinghouse for CP reports and sending evidence to authorities at home and abroad - but that's where its helpfulness ends). It claims that its blocking list is provided to stop people "accidentally" viewing CP. This shows how absurd the situation is: surely the correct response to accidentally doing something which isn't dangerous is to learn from your mistakes so you know how to minimise your chances of doing it again? But no, we're at the "punished for being raped" stage of hysteria, where I must worry about the legal implications of accidentally stumbling into CP. It's not that a single such incident is likely to lead to conviction, but that - in the UK at least - a single such incident may lead to arrest, and my arrest record can be studied by pretty much any potential employer.

Any good government knows how to make anyone a criminal or quasi-criminal at its whim. This is just another method. It has nothing whatever to do with stopping child abuse, and I say that as someone who has fundraised for kids' charities and supported certain groups for abuse survivors for as long as I can recall.

The problem with this path is that it could easily lead to abuses, unfair profiling and be used for more than just "a terrible, evil crime". Still, if the people must be exposed to "true transparency" then perhaps it is only fair that governments and corporations be subjected to exactly the same thing. That's about as likely to happen as humans landing on the sun. http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/08/11/google-ceo-predicts-and-embraces-end-to-online-internet-anonymity.html

OR, you need to brush up [thegateway.org] on the very basics of corporate saving face [wikimedia.org] methods. Oh yeah, A letter. They really fought this tooth and nail,

OR, you need to brush up on the meaning of "for example", and follow GP's advice about 2 seconds googling before digging yourself in even further. He didn't say, or even imply, that the letter was the full extent of their efforts, so your cutting sarcasm about how much signing the letter taxed their PR team doesn't do much except make you look even more stupid.

Oh look, first two links from the 2 seconds googling, they went to the High Court for a judicial review.

O2 offer an "Unlimited" DSL package but by unlimited they mean you should try and use less than 10GB/month and if you use more than 40GB they cut you off:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/05/26/o2-uk-clarifies-unlimited-broadband-limits-after-heavy-user-cut-off-threats.html

I'm staying well away from any O2 services.

DPI of your internet connection at twice the maximum speed currently available on their network!

I'll stick with my favoured LLU ADSL ISP (Andrews and Arnold - No filtering, no shaping, almost constantly get max connection speed in my area (8Mb/s), first line support is an engineer, not a child with a script).

Let me help you choose a competitor

I use Zen.co.uk. Smaller UK ISPs Shun Phorm's Advertising System http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkpukAFAAuDLKaSUsR.html

I'm with O2 or BE (one and the same really) on 16mbit/1.5mbit and over wireless manage to hit 14mbit on torrents / http downloads regularly.
I wish people would do some research and http://www.ispreview.co.uk/ you know, look for a good ISP first? Though that said I do know a few people who went with virgin just because the line was already there and it would be set up next day..
O2 seem to be the best in the UK that actually offer an unlimited supply, I know that if everyone decided to use all their speed it would soon be capped but I'm happy with nobody actually maxing the line at all. It's cheap too at only 15GBP/month (10 if you have an O2 contract phone) and the one time I had to call them they were actually helpful and sounded like they knew what I was talking about when I asked what to put into the router's settings, etc.

Read here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkEVVpuFlApoyDjYJv.html

New law proposal - 3 strikes and you're out... nice.

Fuck off from our national laws!

I ask because this is the second time in as many days I've heard someone say this so I'm intrigued to know why and where people are hearing this from?

If you look at sites like this:

or this:

They're fairly consistently rated as almost worst ISP there is.

I'm wondering if Virgin have run some kind of successful whisper campaign to hide the truth about their service?

I recently read this article stating how the UK government was considering implimenting a GPS (or Galileo) tracking system for road vehicles, in order to track their movement and tax the car according to the distance driven and where the location.

I know that my phone is monitored for keywords and randomly tapped (You think you have it bad in America) and I know my ISP is required to keep all my internet logs.
 
But this isn't just worrying, this is scary.

My movements are tracked by the government, in real time, with a spatial resolution of a few feet. Wherever I drive.

This is ridiculous. Given that there are few objections to the current UK taxing model, what is the motive for implementing this system?
In fact, recen

237paDfF%^&*HJN [NO CARRIER]

In the end, I contacted the UK registrar, who charged me £15 to transfer the domain - which I was able to get back from the charity, who are fairly cool given I designed the site for free. Sods law, two days I actually heard from Joshua Internet saying they were going to transfer it but by then I'd already done it. The host I went to was one I found by browsing ISP Review a site that reviews and contains user reviews and discussions of various hosting sites and ISPs. And I've been okay since then - the new company actually responds to support requests, and both my personal and the charity's domain are now with them. I guess I put off transferring earlier since I didn't want the hassle of setting up the site again but it was only about a couple of hours work to get it working okay and that was mainly transferring the bulletin board.

Most people I have spoken to agree that BT are a bit , well, bad at customer, or even ISP relations. I haven't heard that much about NTL, so I can't say anything about their level of service

Having said that, my experience with two different ISPs has been mostly good.

Zen Internet managed to get ADSL for one place setup in just a week. The advertised lead time was 12 days. A year later, an upgrade from 512kbit/s to 1Mbit/s. They informed us we would lose our connection for a short while, and told us when it would happen. It happened, but the new connection did not appear to have come online. A couple of technical support calls to some friendly and helpful operators who said the problem was (apparently) BT had been a bit slow changing the line, and they would take the matter up with BT immediately. The next day, we have a 1Mbit/s connection. There have been no real problems with the service, except for fires in some cable tunnels taking out half of the telephone lines in the area.

I have not had first hand experience dealing with Bulldog Broadband setup, but the existing service I get from them has been exemplary.

Both Bulldog and Zen provide service alerts on their respective sites, informing of any problems or upgrades, as well as emails to the account holder.

For those looking for a provider for broadband, I highly recommend these ISPs. If you feel like looking around a bit more, try ADSLguide and ISP Review to get the low-down on UK providers.

Not at all true for the UK. SSE is going ahead with commercial trials in Stonehaven and Winchester, after earlier technology trials in Crieff and Cambeltown.

See the SSE site for more info and an interview on ISPReview (2 articles) here and here

Not at all true for the UK. SSE is going ahead with commercial trials in Stonehaven and Winchester, after earlier technology trials in Crieff and Cambeltown.

See the SSE site for more info and an interview on ISPReview (2 articles) here and here

If you need a round up, ISP Review is a good place to look.