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The summary seems to suggest that there isn't much take up of this, with the comment, "Only four of the UKs ISPs have agreed to the 'Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme' so far". I think its worth pointing out that those 4 ISPs cover nearly 94% of the market... http://www.thinkbroadband.com/...

Once the government has finished fucking up our Internet access completely.

I count 50 providers in the UK: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html

Many of them do DSL, resold using BT's equipment. A few have their own equipment in BT's exchanges, and only use BT's phone lines.

One or two are cable or fibre, and have nothing to do with BT.

Some do more than one of these.

(Not included: mobile broadband. There are probably about 6 nationwide providers.)

The really interesting thing about this new line is the amount of money they're pumping into it compared to the amount of money they're pumping into getting decent broadband into the country: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4962-why-the-vision-for-hs2-and-not-for-broadband.html

Essentially, the estimate for 100% FTTH coverage of the UK was about £29billion - a lot of money for sure. This project is going to cost £33Billion just for phase one (Birmingham -> London). This project will get funded about £2.2billion per year, while broadband rollout is only getting 162million per year.

The argument is simple - if everyone has access to fast internet, then the need to travel to london is greatly reduced. Sure, people will still need to travel, but all those meetings and such could easily be done via teleconferencing.

There are about 50 British ISPs on this list: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html (there might be more, I don't know).

The DSL network has real competition, the cable network (owned by Virgin) doesn't, but obviously competes with DSL. Other options (fibre etc) don't cover many places yet.

I remembered seeing a few stories about the BT HomeHub being weak.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3258-bt-to-close-remote-assistance-hole-on-home-hub.html
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/09/bt_home_hub_vuln/
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/201312/bt-home-hub-spits-out-password-to-hackers

You're not the only one, apparently all the other ISPs in the area brought up the same issue with the ASA and were all told that Virgin is allowed.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3391-asa-rules-on-virgin-fibre-optic-broadband-claims.html

I guess this means I can get a 3cm wire of fibre, selotape it to an ethernet cable and have a "hybrid-fibre network" in my own home.

I'm pretty sure Virgin isn't rolling out Fibre-to-the-home, just using their existing cable network, it really irks me that they get to advertise 'Fibre Optic Network' when it's set up pretty much the same as BT Openreach's, just with newer cables to the home.

If I'm not mistaken, BT Openreach is beating Virgin laying out fibre-to-the-home by presumably a long .. long time:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4068-openreach-fibre-to-the-home-coverage-to-double.html

That was tried in the UK with ADSL providers advertising "unlimited" broadband. They got around it by reclassifying exactly what is unlimited - it is now "unlimited access" so at any time 24/7/365.25 you can have access, but it isn't unlimited bandwidth.

Not so - the ASA don't care as long as you can demonstrate that the vast majority of your subscribers aren't impacted by the cap and that you mention clearly that a fair use policy applies. See here, here, here, and especially here. Extract from ASA ruling:

The ASA noted all the ads made clear that a fair-use policy applied to the service and the level at which the allowance was set. We noted the information provided by Vodafone demonstrated that only a very small proportion of their customers had exceeded the fair-use policy limited and that action was likely to be a request to moderate their usage in the first instance. We acknowledged that the vast majority of customers used only a small amount of the available allowance and concluded that the existence of a fair-use policy did not contradict the claim "unlimited mobile internet".

Sue all you like - they'll find a loop-hole somewhere and the only people to really gain will be the lawyers.

Agreed - they're all bastards

If it were possible to send more data over telephone

It was, and is, possible to send more data over physical copper telephone lines to a nearby exchange, by changing the technology used to broadcast and receive. That's what DSL does, at least here in the UK. The telephone line has remained exactly the same all the way to the exchange:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3660-what-broadband-speeds-could-the-uk-copper-loop-manage.html

As I'm sure you're aware, the DSL uses the frequencies unused by the audio telephone signal, which as you note is capped at 4000Hz. Perhaps the setup is different where you live, and DSL required rewiring in street-side cabinets too?

If you redefine telephone line to mean 'copper twisted pair line limited to 4000Hz and extending for at least several miles', then you are correct. I don't accept that definition of telephone line - neither does most of the rest of the world, because that is not the sort of line their telephone plugs in to.

They can't because the universe places restrictions, just as surely as you can not exceed 186,000 miles per second. Good God people! Have you never taken Physics 101???

Forcing yourself to actually address the issues raised by people you're arguing with (see question in my last post, or the definition of telephone line, which I acknowledged you see differently), might mean arguments feel less frustrating for you. It might also have the fortunate side-effect of reminding you that you are not always more intelligent than your interlocutors, and misunderstandings are not always due to their ignorance.

See here for costs on the current generation network:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html

At absolute best (which no ISP ever manages to achieve), it costs them 52p per gigabyte of data, so around £1.56 to allow you to download Windows 7. Realistically, if you check somewhere like PlusNet their out of allowance charges are £1.74 per 2gb of data, so around £2.61 to download Windows 7 for an end user at retail.

Oh and er, a 1st class stamp in the UK costs only 36p, envelopes cost next to nothing in bulk, so around 40p so far, call it 50p once you've printed the labels and posted and that's ignoring Royal Mail's bulk discounts and such.

21cn costs are here, but this isn't rolled out to most of the UK:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html

However, it's still well over the 36p price.

The reason you don't know the first thing about bandwidth costs is because you probably use consumer ADSL or similar and don't actually use that much bandwidth. If you do then you're likely being subsidised as that's how many ISPs work, low end users don't use anywhere near their bandwidth limits so are paying to subsidise other users.

Still, at the end of the day my point stands, it's much cheaper to just post the discs first class than it is to setup an infrastructure (which costs on top of the bandwidth costs) for downloading. The above of course is just the costs for the consumer also, chances are you'll have your own bandwidth charges on top at the server side. If you provide a download then, the consumer may be paying 3 to 5 times as much as if you post it and charge them for the stamp and envelope etc.

See here for costs on the current generation network:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html

At absolute best (which no ISP ever manages to achieve), it costs them 52p per gigabyte of data, so around £1.56 to allow you to download Windows 7. Realistically, if you check somewhere like PlusNet their out of allowance charges are £1.74 per 2gb of data, so around £2.61 to download Windows 7 for an end user at retail.

Oh and er, a 1st class stamp in the UK costs only 36p, envelopes cost next to nothing in bulk, so around 40p so far, call it 50p once you've printed the labels and posted and that's ignoring Royal Mail's bulk discounts and such.

21cn costs are here, but this isn't rolled out to most of the UK:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2111-cbc-pricing-by-bt-wholesale-holding-back-uk-broadband.html

However, it's still well over the 36p price.

The reason you don't know the first thing about bandwidth costs is because you probably use consumer ADSL or similar and don't actually use that much bandwidth. If you do then you're likely being subsidised as that's how many ISPs work, low end users don't use anywhere near their bandwidth limits so are paying to subsidise other users.

Still, at the end of the day my point stands, it's much cheaper to just post the discs first class than it is to setup an infrastructure (which costs on top of the bandwidth costs) for downloading. The above of course is just the costs for the consumer also, chances are you'll have your own bandwidth charges on top at the server side. If you provide a download then, the consumer may be paying 3 to 5 times as much as if you post it and charge them for the stamp and envelope etc.

There are a lot of ISPs available in the UK, so there's plenty of choice for fleeing customers.

Demon, once upon a time at least, was a VERY good ISP (ex-customer and I don't recall leaving them due to dis-satisfaction, I think it was the move to ADSL which prompted the switch).

Anyways, http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/ is a good place to get real user feedback on ISPs. Somewhat strangely there are 666 new posts for Demon (I kid you not). I personally am unable to recommend any ISP though. Clara.net shafted me for £100 years ago when their channel bonded ISDN service just wouldn't work for me so I'd recommend you avoid them like the plague; Nildram used to be GREAT but apparently have been taken over by talktalk and users don't look happy; and personally I'm currently stuck with Virgin who routinely cause my blood pressure to rise but because they offer the best speeds blah blah blah.

On the business side I'll say that NewNet and Spitfire have done what they say on the packet overall.......

Anyways, yes, if someone finds a decent ISP let us know please.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4002-talktalk-follow-suit-on-phorm.html

I hope nobody owns Phorm shares...

A quick glance at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3994-the-digital-britain-report-is-finally-out.html will show what some think of this and http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ gives a wider view of ISP related moans with links to other ISPs information.

A quick glance at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3994-the-digital-britain-report-is-finally-out.html will show what some think of this and http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ gives a wider view of ISP related moans with links to other ISPs information.

Some companies do. You'll find them here

Zen are about the highest rated ISP on thinkbroadband.com but they're not particularly cheap. You get what you pay for though, and the service and support are the best I've ever seen from an ISP. Beware though, of fairly low download allowances unless you spend a lot of money. I was with them for a few years and only switched away to get better value through a local unbundled ISP.

Ahh yes "Unlimited* broadband", where everything** is Unlimited* except the small print which detail just how limited*** the limitations are.

* - limited
** - except our ability to contradict
*** - very limited

However, there are exceptions; find the smaller ISPs who clearly state (and truly uphold) their much larger caps. 3GB/month is tiny, especially considering Virgin are promoting their BBC iPlayer abilities too.

I went with a reseller of Entanet (Adsl24), whose plans are based around the data used. And unlike Virgin Media, the smaller ISPs generally have 1 month contracts too.

Checkout the comparisons, the big companies performances tend to be unlimited* too.

troll? eh?

I live in the UK, British Telecom laid the phone lines to everywhere ages ago and then started broadband ADSL down them. At that point we had deregulated telecom market where anyone could setup shop and offer phone services using BT's wires, and they happily moved to offering ADSL too.

As a result we have massive competition, all of them competing on price (as they all sell the same thing - BT's ADSL, often they're just BT resellers). Now we have the exchanges opened up to them too, so some are putting their own networking kit there in place of BTs DSLAMs and offering fastre speeds (usually 24mbps), but these are only going in at city locations. You can see already that the exchanges are upgraded only where these companies think it makes financial sense to do so.

BT isn't doing much to bring fibre to the home, they've migrated fibre between exchanges, but if they spent the £10bn+ to put fibre in all the streets too, the reseller companies could resell it just as well as B and they'd get al the profit (or basically, BT couldn't charge as much as they'd need to). As a result, we're a bit stuck - no-one can put fast networks in because someone else will make money off it.

That's roughly the way it is in the UK, I'm sure that BT would lay fible, if they could sell it separately, but the government says otherwise. Alternative ISPs are putting faster kit in, but this is generally a half-way house - they're not digging up the street to lay fibre, just replacing DSLAMs with faster ones, and then only in some cities.

Here's a link for a bit more information and more links

troll? eh?

I live in the UK, British Telecom laid the phone lines to everywhere ages ago and then started broadband ADSL down them. At that point we had deregulated telecom market where anyone could setup shop and offer phone services using BT's wires, and they happily moved to offering ADSL too.

As a result we have massive competition, all of them competing on price (as they all sell the same thing - BT's ADSL, often they're just BT resellers). Now we have the exchanges opened up to them too, so some are putting their own networking kit there in place of BTs DSLAMs and offering fastre speeds (usually 24mbps), but these are only going in at city locations. You can see already that the exchanges are upgraded only where these companies think it makes financial sense to do so.

BT isn't doing much to bring fibre to the home, they've migrated fibre between exchanges, but if they spent the £10bn+ to put fibre in all the streets too, the reseller companies could resell it just as well as B and they'd get al the profit (or basically, BT couldn't charge as much as they'd need to). As a result, we're a bit stuck - no-one can put fast networks in because someone else will make money off it.

That's roughly the way it is in the UK, I'm sure that BT would lay fible, if they could sell it separately, but the government says otherwise. Alternative ISPs are putting faster kit in, but this is generally a half-way house - they're not digging up the street to lay fibre, just replacing DSLAMs with faster ones, and then only in some cities.

Here's a link for a bit more information and more links

To put it into perspective we have over 200,000 broadband customers, which, although doesn't put us up in the tier 1 marketplace with the big names like BT, Talk Talk, Orange, Sky, Virgin, etc. does make us the biggest in the tier 2 market. Including cable and based around the latest available data http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3361-ofcom-publishes-market-data-for-second-quarter-of-2007.html that gives us roughly 1.5% of the UK market.

I think we're some way past 2mm subscribers now. That report is dated 2003! This one says that there were over 13mm subscribers at the end of 2006, and presumably more by now.

So that means that broadband should only be made half illegal. The question becomes: should we only be allowed to receive the even or the odd bits?

It is the same Atmail software, although I hear that Plusnet made custom modifications to the software. Difficult to say, perhaps a programmer made changes and he is no longer working there, perhaps its an older version of the software they won't/can't upgrade. I did see Atmail has an update out on the 17th...

This has a little bit about the situation:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/3088.html

I've never used Eclipse.... but I've read quite a lot of bad things!

Their ratings aren't exactly top either:
thinkbroadband.com - Service Provider Comparison

I don't know about the US, but you want an ISP that is intelligent about bandwidth. It is finite, and providing everyone with unlimited bandwidth would bankrupt the ISP. So... you need one that ignores your usage on non-peak times, that gives you a fair chunk of allowable bandwidth, and one that is upfront about its policies.

I use plusnet (in the UK), I have really unlimited usage between midnight and 4pm, 30Gb the rest of the time. They are open about their policies and have 'been in contact' with users that have used the network at full capacity 24/7. Apparently less than 1% of users use a noticeable amount of bandwidth, for these, Plusnet say: Of course, for the vast majority of people who don't use up to the usage allowance every month, a shared design like this doesn't pose any problems at all. However, the nature of any product designed in this way is that there will always be a number of customers who end up with an unsustainable long term usage pattern. This may be deliberate in some cases, but more often than not it is because after choosing a product, a customer's usage habits subsequently change. For these customers there are effectively three choices:

      1. Upgrade to a different PlusNet product that is more suited to the new usage requirements.
      2. Moderate peak time usage, either by reducing the amount of large downloads, or by scheduling more downloads to overnight periods when demand for interactive traffic is lower.
      3. Find another ISP which is more suited to the specific usage requirements of that customer.


Plusnet did send out warning letters to a few users (adslguide has a report on it here.
It should be noted that this was 2 years ago when everyone was on 0.5Mbps lines.

So anyway, for you - if you have a shortlist, ask them about traffic shaping and capacity management.