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Perhaps thats why they aren't offering it free. The free services (certainly Skys, and probably Oranges as well) are capped down to what I thought were ridiculous levels, but now seem to be roughly half the standard in the paid market. Meanwhile, Telewest say up front that there are no limits of any sort on what you transfer.

I wouldn't be suprised to see the return of the old scheme from NTL where you get a not-so-broadband connection for a trivial amount (probably now free with phone or TV) which is limited to 128k in both directions. They are however trying to catch people with the 3 (basic DTV/Phone+free weekend calls/2Mbit BB) for £30 offer at the moment, which may be the reason why they're not going down the free route yet.

I got the usage limit info from http://www.telewest.co.uk/websales/service.do?id=2 which is fairly clear on the subject.

Like this?

I get my broadband, TV, phone and movies on demand from these guys through one cable going into my house. That's 4Mb (soon to be 10Mb) broadband, 2 phonelines and 70+ TV channels. Ok, so I don't get music through it, but I can receive radio channels (not digital, I have a DABS radio for that) too.

They've recently started a service called Teleport that essentially gives you TV on demand - not just recent TV shows, but whole series across multiple channels, just in case you missed an episode. Absolutely awesome and I get the whole lot through one bill each month.

Like this?

I get my broadband, TV, phone and movies on demand from these guys through one cable going into my house. That's 4Mb (soon to be 10Mb) broadband, 2 phonelines and 70+ TV channels. Ok, so I don't get music through it, but I can receive radio channels (not digital, I have a DABS radio for that) too.

They've recently started a service called Teleport that essentially gives you TV on demand - not just recent TV shows, but whole series across multiple channels, just in case you missed an episode. Absolutely awesome and I get the whole lot through one bill each month.

The BBC is not doing it for free. UK TV viewers have to already pay a monthy fee for the content per each TV they own.

The license is not per TV it's per residence.

This is on contrast to the US where we pay for the medium over which it is delivered (cable, sat., etc.) but the content (in general) is free.

I pay for telewest cable in the UK, and I can rewatch many programs and time shift them after they are shown via teleport replay which is free if you are not on the basic package. Seems similar but better than this CBS NBC crap.

Hopefully this will become a trend of radically increasing consumer internet speeds.

Well yes. The UK broadband industry is quite competitive, most of the main players have very similar packages with regard to price and performance - as soon as one ups the ante, the others follow suit. My current provider (Telewest) have just announced that they are rolling out the upgrading the 2Mb package that I have to 10Mb, I guess in order to catch up with niche players like Bulldog and Be.

Blueyonder are rolling out a 10Mbit service, and they are one of the biggest uk broadband isps.

http://www.telewest.co.uk/websales/service.do?id=2

It's weird how the US used to lead the world. I remember in 98 being stuck on a 56k dialup while the americans all had cable modems. Now i'm in the US on a 3mbit microwave link and wishing i could get uk style connectivity :(

Forgot a couple of links:

Screengrab from the cable box user interface : http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds22574.html

Telewest info on Teleport : http://www.telewest.co.uk/html/television/teleport /whatis.htm

BT are lying theiving scum that have exploited the British public with their monopoly for years. This is an obvious gimmick (that will fail) to attempt to steal customers from other broadband providers.

Their ADSL service is fine up until layer 3, at which point it becomes crap. Their web service will only let you download two simultaneous files, and given half a chance they will cap your downloads. Service is unreliable. I have several remote sites using VPN's - one uses BT at the moment, and VPN is up and down like a yoyo.

If you want broadband in the UK and you live in an area where you can get cable, use Telewest (I have a 3Mb line which is 1Mb faster than the fastest BT offering) or if you can't get cable and can only have ADSL, use Demon.

Oh and don't use BT for regular telephone lines - they are overpriced.

In fact, don't use them for anything.

Is BT the only ISP in the UK? if not then you still have the choice to go with one that is not blocking.

BT isn't the only ISP here, but it controls the network used by nearly all ADSL providers, and they are talking about applying the filter to other ADSL sellers "on a non-commercial basis." There are a few ISPs around that don't use BT, including cable companies NTL and Telewest, and companies that take over the phone lines from BT such as Bulldog.

I don't like the fact that blocked pages are replaced with a "Website not found" message rather than a message explaining why the page was blocked.

ADSL where available either direct from BT or several resellers (there are loads more). 512 down / 128 up costs about GBP 30.00 / month give or take.

There are two major cable operators in the uk, ntl: and Telewest. Both offer cable modem in almost all areas of their networks for about GBP 25.00 / month for 512 and 40.00 / month for 1M.

ntl couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.

Shame for them that Britain's only cable company can't provide it.

Britain's ONLY cable company? I think Telewest might have something to say about that.

He/she's half right

Cable modems
A modem that takes advantage of the bandwidth available from a combination of coaxial and fibre-optic cables. Cable modems provide up to 40Mbps connections

http://www.telewest.co.uk/ourcompany/glossary.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/696138.stm#cab le

so have a wash , cos that smell is you

All my cable company (Telewest) did to my internet connection (after drilling, setting up the cables etc) did was plug the cable modem in to the ethernet port, ran ipconfig in a c:\ prompt and ran ping a few times to check it was working, nothing else. I even seen him do it.

Unfortunatley BT refuses to upgrade rural exchanges for ADSL, and people are very angry at this. The town of todmorden recently made the headlines for being the first town to reach the threshhold of being upgraded. I live in an 'unupgraded' town, but I dont really care about BT, because Im happy with my cable modem from telewest. The cable companies are more determined than BT to supply broadband, but they can only cover where their cable network goes.

Satilite broadband is becoming popular too, but its expensive, one way and low latency.

Im a subscriber to Telewest digital and I get my digital signals sent to an analog TV with a decoding set top box. I think if someone made smaller and better top boxes or even a little convertion box it would be better than for every one to buy an expensive new digital tv while maintaining backward compatibillity with analog TV and analog devices.

1. BT monopoly. There are tales of people 'phoning BT to get broadband and being signed up for unmetered dialup (56k) instead due to BT customer service idiocy. The BT/ BT OPenworld/ BT whatever split makes Railtrack's look sensible.
2. UK Cableco current funding. This does *not* indicate any future network upgrades will be forthcoming soon. I am with Telewest Blue Yonder - my service is excellent for what it is (>60 days same IP, between 100-250k down, 40-80k up) but does not come close to US definitions of broadband. I pay 25 UKP/ month for this. NTL are bringing in 1mps for 50 UKP/ month (!) in selected areas, but have many pockets of analogue only TV / dialup subs.
3. 3) The UK government's terrible record on encouraging broadband - hell, even dial up - access. Last year the Guardian reported reported that the UK has committed

   £30m to extend broadband technology outside metropolitan areas. Sweden is committing £1.19bn.

   This despite the UK 'e-zar' loudly boasting about how good things are.
4. Basically, the UK gets whipped at non-LANned betwork gaming evry time :(

Ah, yes, but there's a whole world of difference psychologically between paying the television licence fee (approx 120UKP/170USD p.a., IIRC) and a 'top up' fee to recieve extra channels (i.e., the 5 free-to-air analogue, and about 15 extra free-to-air digital terrestrial broadcasts). About 40% (according to The Economist) of the UK's population gets pay-for (digital) TV, through satellite (Sky), cable (NTL and Telewest) or terrestrial (ITV/OnDigital); the government is going to auction the analogue TV bandwidth in 2006, so is hoping everyone will move off analogue reception quickly, or it will have to pay for everyone to get a digital set-top-box or television.

Oh, and the licence fee money isn't collected by the government, but by people contracted out by the BBC (currently Consignia/the Post Office/what-ever-name-change-they've-had-this-week ).

As an FYI, here's how this compares to the UK, where we traditionally get assraped on prices compared to the USA:

For Telewest cable

• £24 = All basic channels
• £25 = cable modem
• £16 = all voice calls, local and national
• £22 = all premium sports and most movie channels
• £6 = "Film Four" film channel
• £8 = "Playboy TV" and "Adult" porn channels
• £8 = "Television-X" porn channel
• £10 = "Private Girls" porn channel

Grand total, £93/~$140 without porn, or £119/~$178 with all the porn you can eat. Hey, pretty good compared to the AOL-Time Warner Collective. Although if I've got a cable modem, what am I doing wasting my time (and wrist action) on TV edited soft core garbage?

No, that's unpatriotic. I have to keep the economy bouyant. Of course, after paying $178 a month for every conceivable channel including "premium" content and all the free stuff I can get through the modem, I'd still want to pay another $50 for pay-per-view "premium-premium" content, right? Right?

Or... it's just possible that cableco's are all smoking crack, and we're not as dumb as toast. If so, I expect a lot of marketing droids will have their toes roasted over open fires in the next couple of years.

If NTL has the same pricing structure as BlueYonder/Telewest, which I think it does, you're looking at:

35 pounds per month for Internet+telephone+basic TV (the standard five channels or whatever)

An extra 25 per month gets you free local and national calls; in fact, an extra 40 quid per month gets you free calls and everything possible on the TV channels front. So for 75 pounds a month you have just about every service they offer, minus I suppose the pay-per-view porn services.

That's just a bit over 100 dollars or so.

Conclusion: AOL/TW can dream on.

Actually there's 15 free-to-air Digital Widescreen channels.

The $150 (such a huge amount) pays for the BBC, which has no commercials, think of it as a subscription if you will.

You can get hundreds of channels through SkyDigital (satellite), ITV-Digital (digital terrestrial), ActiveDigital (digital cable), or BT Digital (through your phone line).

So there's actually lots of channels and competition, 1/3 of UK households have DigitalTV, which is the highest in the world.

To put the situation in crass 'BT Speak', I say "fuck em". I get 512k Cable Modem for £25 a month, BT isn't even worth looking at, even Broadband Wireless deserves more consideration than BT in its current state.

I get my Telephones and Broadband from my CableCo, I haven't had any dealings with BT for at least the last five years or so, my life has been much more pleasant.

For years I wondered how they could continue with such incompetence, it seems my question has been answered over the last year with their share price continually tanking, their debt burden is actually higher than their market cap! Quite an achievement, can't say I'm surprised, I wonder why it took them so long?

BT is the epitome of incompetence, ineptitude, inefficiency and excess, all the wonderful hallmarks from the nationalised era.

I find this quite amazing, I got an email from my Cable Provider last week indicating the price of my cable modem (512k/128k, no limits) was dropping $10, it used to be $45 (£33) and has now dropped to $35 (£25).

Considering it was $70 this time last year and now $35, it's not too bad, and actually cheaper than some of the cable services in the US because of the price increases over there.

It seems the DSL services in the states are now the same price as BT's ADSL service, which takes the piss. My American friends used laugh at BT's (former) monopoly power, however it seems they've equally being shafted these days. What's the point of a competitive market place when all the providers are carteled?

I get my TV, phones, broadband from Cable these days, BT can kiss my arse, their recent descent into chaos garners no sympathy, and it seems they're finally working out that electing another "Sir Idiot" to the board doesn't actually achieve anything. Fuck `em.

The Cable companies in the UK (ntl, Telewest, C&W) have been carrying both anologue and digital channels since 1999, I'm not sure if it's a capacity issue since the average widescreen digital channel (mpeg encoded) uses about 6Mbps in bandwidth whilst an anologue channel uses the equivalent of 27Mbps of bandwidth, the digital bandwidth is variable though. If the cable system is carrying well over 100 anologue channels then bandwidth might become tight.

This is probably an excuse for the cable companies to drop anologue services as quickly as possible because it would free up huge amounts of bandwidth.

Given the sort of control these organisational linkups can have, it seems to me that providing a "slow lane" for other people's traffic is pretty minor.

Given the sort of control these organisational linkups can have, it seems to me that providing a "slow lane" for other people's traffic is pretty minor.

The entertainingly cynical UK tech website the register has been running an entertaining campaign over the last few days appealing for any real user of the service to come forwards. This has been building up in the media, until finally AV admit the service is totally phantom, as are the happy satisfied users that they have been referring to in previous press releases.

It was all an out and out lie. And now they are trying to pin the blame on BT ( the now privatised, previously state-owned telco that has a near monopoly ovet the UK tel infrastructure). This despite the fact that there are other (admittedly smaller) ISP's who are successfully offering a similar service right now.

I wonder what Alta Vista are going to do with all of the user data they collected for pre registration ? Donate it to charity perhaps ? [hollow sarcastic laugh]

The state of the UK ISP is a real mess. I have just moved house ( I live in Bristol ) and I can't decide what the best company / route is for connectivity - DSL and cable modems are both real soon now vapourware in this part of the country, BT changes tack every two minutes , and smoke and mirrors tactics like this AV stuff make it even more confusing.

Alta Vista got a hell of a lot of PR for this in the UK, government commendations, newspaper front pages etc. I feel that their behaviour over this is criminal, and I would like to see them punished