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British Broadband (Finally) Jumps
seldo writes: "The BBC is reporting that BT's previously-announced cuts in broadband prices are having a rapid effect, and demand for broadband in the UK is suddenly taking off. Finally!"
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Microsoft gambles a lot on winning the console-war with the online-capabilities of the Xbox. Clearly this is a case where Microsoft is using its cash to sponsor BT ... ;)
it's in my head
WOW! I'm so glad. This means I can go get broadband from BT.
Of course, it would mean getting rid of this Telewest Cable Modem which I've had for a year and a half, and only pay £25 a month for. Still, if BT says it, it must be so!
Broadband in belgium also experienced heavy price cuts, with increasing subscribers as result, but decreasing bandwidth and increasing problems also.
I have 2 DSL connections from different providers, and both of them are worsening rapidly as theyr user base is growing : I used to have Q3 ping times around 40 to most uk and nl servers, but this has dropped to 130 in the past few months. After some HW upgrades, things are back to 75, which is still a shame for a 38EUR/month subscription.
Cable modem is a whole other story, with some clusters experiencing insane drops ( ping times over 300, ftp speeds below 25KB/sec) for months and months. Depending on the block and city one lives in, speeds range from the above mentioned 25KB/sec to a whopping 750KB/sec (KB yes indeeed !!) but with outages varying from monthly to daily and peaks of hourly !
The customers are ready for it now that the price is dropping, but are the telcos ? Belgacom (the belgian telco) is definitely not : their servers are cracking every day (last month the user webserver, the month before the SMTP server...) and telenet (biggest cable provider) has administration issues (my neigbour didn't pay the first 6 months because they forgot him. Then he received an invoice for 2 years)
Both have customer tech support that I wouldn't even let my dog piss at.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
... is a little less optimistic (and a lot more realistic :)
BT to launch cheaper 'no frills' ADSL service followed by BT goes for broadband broke
Being handled by huge monopolies doesn't help...
-- No sig today
And BT is to release a 'no-frills' service as well: BT to release basic serices
Now all I have to worry about is DSL being rolled out in Ireland - I live 300m from an exchange on a fiber backbone, but the telco will not be rolling dsl out for another 2 years :-/
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
As you can see by the hundreds of people rushing to post on this topic (not), we're not excited or really interested in this story.
Why? Because BT, Cable & Wireless, NTL, and all of the other British telcos have spewed bullsh*t like this in the past without actually delivering.
It's nice that BT is dropping the wholesale price of DSL, but that doesn't actually mean their installations will get any quicker, that the DSL will remain reliable, or even that large swathes of the country will ever get DSL.
In the mid 90's, we were told that cable modems were a 'year away'. Funnily, we were told this in 96, 97, 98, and 99, when the trials started to roll out. A similar thing occured with DSL.
But let's face it, BT is a lumbering giant, and not particularly interested in 'broadband for all'. Unlike Canada, our government won't fork in some $$ to help them out, so we're stuck with their patethetic inefficiency. The UK is a tiny country, but even places like Finland, Sweden, and Canada have better coverage than us.
Wi-Fi = Non Existant
To compound these problems, WiFi is not taking off in the UK at all. I know of a few trials around London, and they want to hook some stuff up in Wales, but as a whole, it's not available. Unlike in the US, we don't have any small local WiFi providers.. why not? Because in remote areas that would benefit from WiFi.. the ISP can't get the affordable bandwidth to hook all of the customers onto the Internet anyway!!
So, Broadband Britain is a sham, and I fear it will remain that way for some time. Move on from this story. Nothing to see here.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Even compared to European prices from other ex-state owned Telcos the price is up to 40% more.
http://www.broadband4britain.com and the ever useful 'reg give the full story.
For a real usable service (I have 2Mb with static IP) you are looking at over $300 per month..
My own experience is that you are encouraged to move to the most appropriate access method - I was urged that a move to a full leased line (at $30k per year!) was ideal for me...
Looks like the BBC is re-posting the BT press releases.. :)
Evil ZEN Scientist
Please note that BT Ignite (wholesale broadband), which has made price cuts is not the same as BT Openworld (Retail DSL/Dialup ISP)...
You can get your DSL from any number of UK ISPs, letting you choose who provides your upstream.
this can't be as bad as when AOL came online.
-pyrrho
-I can only program my video,ahh, I am not a gook, but a joook -The World is a theatre of the absurd
Blimey - it appears that now the moron Bonfield has been forced to resign, his successor MIGHT have actually grasped the concept that people want lower broadband prices and not pathetic 'extras' like classical music services.
They lower the price and more people take it up - genius.
It's just a shame they don't offer more upstream bandwidth at a higher price, as I (and quite a few other people I know) would be willing to pay an extra £10-15/month for 512kbps upstream.
This basically happened because of simple competition. Here in australia, We basically have one option: Telstra, every single provider except optus goes through them on the wholesale level, so they basically control the marketplace, (there plans btw are a stupidly expensive 89 dollars a month for 3 gig of traffic per MONTH, why even bother having broadband?)
With stuff like this in england, hopefully our goverment will open its eyes and realise how stiffling a monopoly for a telco can really be, its about damn time we started to open up this vital service structure a little more, let some competition in.
Nerv
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
You mean to say that it wasn't the lack of legally downloadable movies and songs that was holding up broadband access and was instead some bizarre and esoteric reason like "It cost too much"? Now who would ever have imagined that?
Dyolf Knip
Don't think this is BT being generous though they're just trying extend their mononoply position over the local loop into the broadband area.
BT's competitors buy access to the network through BT, so when BT cuts their prices they price their charges so that the minnows can only compete on wafer thin margins.
BT has competition from the cable co's for sure, Telewest and NTL mainly but they are both heavily in debt and have not spent the resources upgrading their networks for broadband access.
For example, I've got a cable phone line and for I live in Parkstone on the Poole/Bournmeouth border and for over 5 years NTL have been promising broadband is coming soon.
I could go to BT but that would mean changing my phone line, and paying BT's higher prices, as for cheap broadband NTL offer a basic 128k service for £15 a month, which would be good if they actually provided across the country (yeah I know 1 meg would be better, but try getting the wife to agree !)
NTL took over the old C&W franchise and have dragged their feet over introducing broadband to all us C&W customers.
The only competition in the sector is really from the small indepedents biting at BT's ankles.
Better stop before I go into rant mode!
Except that most of the UK (in terms of land area) is not covered yet - and the rollout has basically stopped. BT have converted exchanges in the areas where it thinks it can make the most money (mainly in large towns and cities) and now the rest of the country will be done on a "business case basis"; ie. unless we're likely to get enough subscribers we won't convert your exchange.
This may be understandable in the most far-flung rural areas, but I live in the south-east of England. I live less than 40 miles from central London, just outside of a large town. And we have no cable (thus no cablemodem) and there are no plans to upgrade the exchange to ADSL. It was only about 12 years ago the exchange was upgraded to digital (tone) dialling; before it was the click-and-bang pulse sort.
Even modems don't work properly on many lines in Britain - as BT started running out of capacity in exchanges (new housing development and people ordering more lines for fax/internet) they started splitting lines with DACS. One copper line, add a couple of cheap DACS boxes and you've got two lines, saving BT the expense of running more cable. It completely fucks up 56k modems - you might get 28k on a good day, and even then there's no stability.
My "broadband" choices are limited to:
- ISDN at around 27ukp/month, plus 20+ for a flat-rate ISP (which is what I do). That's at 64k too, no flat-rate ISP offers 128k.
- leased lines. No way at that sort of cost. 1500+ukp to install, then around 500ukp a month just for 256k.
"Broadband Britain"? What a fucking joke.
Little friend Happy HAPPY... troll tuesday to you everyones
I have a similar problem when trying to dig behind the true cost of prescription glasses. Despite a so-called opening of the market place to competition average prices are triple what they were ten years ago. This is typically hidden behind a guise of "designer glasses" or "exotic materials" such as tungsten being used in their manufacture.
Even though the new management at BT have taken the right steps by raising the importance of customer service and value for money, I won't believe it until I see long and sustained delivery.
In an age of deregulation and opening of markets the amount of quality information a customer has to make a purchasing decision, and effect change within existing suppliers, is lower and lower. Companies seem to be getting their business models and customer service policies from the same select set of business gurus. The two factors in combination act as an effective means of controlling the customer and company revenue streams.
Is consumerism the new big brother?
Why doesn't it get cheaper faster?
BT's ADSL service gives you 256kbps upstream, which is twice that offered by Telewest and NTL, and at only £5/month more
From tomorrow (coincidentally enough) 256kbps upstream will be available. I think it's 50 GBP per month though.
I've been using BT's DSL since last October, when I first got it was VERY lousy with huge ping spikes in online games, and very variable download bandwidth...
:)
sometime around the middle of January, it stopped sucked, lets hope it doesn't slip back to it's previous state
...little old (young) me living in the leafy suburbs doesn't have an enabled exchange. No plans for cabling my road for "the next 10 years" and really don't have the £2000 setup cost plus £60 a month for satellite. Dammit
-- ribbit
What a lot of the Yankees don't understand is that what with the per-minute charges for local calls, you really get screwed over by analog modem service. This is going to be huge in the circles I frequent. Finally, a cheap way to connect to bnetd servers overseas, without feeling guilty or using an egg timer to watch your costs!
Jouster
Broadband access in the UK is pretty much limited to these options:
1. ADSL. The "last mile" is monopolised by BT, but there are several ISPs which repackage BT's service. This is the most widely-available option, but I believe only about 50% of the country can get it. BT's exchange upgrades have been very slow in many areas.
BT's wholesale price drop by £10/month (which this article is really about) has only really had a significant effect on the bog standard 512/256Kbps ADSL service, which people have been signing up to in droves. Anything faster is still ludicrously expensive.
2. NTL/Telewest cable. Priced fairly reasonably, but very limited availability. NTL only offer broadband in some of their cabled areas, and in most of these areas they force you to take their awful phone and digital TV package as well.
3. ISDN, which is hugely overpriced and slow compared with other options.
4. Leased lines, which are far outside the price range of most home users.
5. Tele2 wireless. Also quite limited coverage, but they aim to cover areas without other broadband options. Good service, and can offer asymmetric connections (which cable/ADSL can't) up to 2Mbps. But, like all the options, a rip-off compared with what's available in other countries.
I can only hope that the increased uptake will make all the providers drop their prices further. At the moment the UK is a laughing stock in the broadband world.
Damn, :-)
My Yearly Contract with Pipex is inplace until October!!! Admitedly I get 2MB downloads, But also have to PAY for it!
Must remember to renegotiate that contract...
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
Probably The worst thing about uk internet access is the three tiers it operates on... For businesses who need the reliability of a leased line it's extremely pricey.. £50k for a 4mbit link.. almost double that for a 10mbit link. Compared to US prices it's extortionate. For The lucky home users, we can get half meg links for £20-30 a month. But sometimes they're unreliable and the quality of service is poor. The unlucky home users are stuck with 56k, and ISDN, which are expensive comparatively, and they are also awkward and at times unreliable.. The uk government needs to look at these issues before they kill our tech economy.
Now the Brits can enjoy our love of heroinware and Evercrack too!
____________________________
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
My home network is 100mbs, too bad i only have 512kbs cable, whos upstream is limited to 128kbs. I'll be moving soon though and getting 2meg down, 256k up (both are blueyonder cable). At least Britain has the idea that charging for transfer is bad :)
Um... If access to 802.11b is illegal here, how come so many places in the City do it? Then again, given the pathetic levels of security they seem to have in place, perhaps it should be illegal there, if only so the big banks don't wind up losing all our money to crackers...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I've had NTL broadband (600 up,128 down) for nearly a year now. I've enthused repeatedly to friends how great it is but they didnt take the plunge. The big change is as the article points out the wires only install, no longer do you have to pay BT anywhere in the region of £150 to come and plug in a DSL modem and the monthly rental is significantly cheaper (previously it included the DSL modem rental). So now you can buy a POS £50 DSL modem and for £25/month you have a 512k download. Compare this to over a year ago when I was desperately trying to get broadband and signed up to a contract that was £250 Installation and something like £79/month for the same thing!
The numbers speak for themselves, two of my mates signed up to Pipex within a couple of weeks.
no sig.
Here in Australia I had to pay for the cost of the install including a cable modem (which I needed) and a network card (which I didn't need). The Optus tech was very good but it was nothing I couldn't have done myself (and I have done since with system reinstalls).
/. readers are mostly technology smart but I'm sure that there would be enough tech savy people in most markets to make DIY installs a viable business option.
What really peeved me though was that I had to really work hard to get the Optus guy to not install their custom browser and other software. He had to call head office and argue with them for several minutes before he finally got permission. Even then I had to sign off that I agreed that I didn't want their software and that I would take responsiblity for the results.
I know that
Hey, now that I have broadband, it means my connection is fast enough to get FIRST POST!
Best place to check out what is happening in the UK for ADSL and to talk about the different providers is at www.adslguide.org.uk
it's funny how the rest of the world insists on calling this 'belgian' waffles. There's nothing typically belgian about it : the rest of the world makes them exactly the same way for ages...
Same thing with brussels sprouts
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Do they offer service in the States? My local Bell sucks eggs...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
When you set price high on a product, fewer consumers will buy it. There is a good way to solve the problem. To solve this, you want to sell boardband products to consumers at lower price. It will result in a surge of sales of the product. Now, I will talk about a similiar problem with Xbox below here.
Microsoft have similiar problem with X-box's pricing. People does not want to spend a lot money on Xbox and games. Its price is too high. The Xbox's game library are also not big too. If Microsoft cut Xbox's price down to 200 dollars, we may see a surge in sale of Xbox. I don't know if that will happen in the future. We will see
Or did anyone else laugh when they saw the Network Neighbourhood icon with the caption underneath: "home networks are becoming popular"
Yup. 1Mb down, 256kbps up (Double the current bandwidth) for £50 a month. I know a few people who are getting this service. I'm happy with 512kpbs down though, and I know I don't need 256kbps up!
From reading many of the replies, I can only offer sympathy to these people. Our provision's been getting better every year though; in 99 I just had a 56K modem to myself with unmetered access after 6pm or on weekends (which was the only time I could ever use it, horrible to imagine now isn't it?). Sept 2000 saw us getting ISDN on surftime via Demon; this set us back 80gbp a month or so but it was fantastic - a real permanent internet connection! with a static IP as well! ISDN is just a digital phone service but if it's unmetered and Demon has no qualms about you being connected 24/7 then why bother hanging up. I even ran a webserver off this system. Now, whilst on holiday in August I idly checked the BT rollout page and it told me that I finally could get DSL. One month later we had a 512/256kbit link, 5 static ip's and this was for 100gbp/mo. Now they've lowered the cost too. I agree this is probably peanuts bandwidthwise compared to what the yanks are getting, but come on how many of you have more bandwidth than that AND still have unlimited use w/static IP and a green card for running servers? probably quite a few but a priviledged few nonetheless.
Hmm, just got some ideas of some polls for Slashdot like:
How much does a 2mbit DSL connection cost where you live
1 Free
2 less than 50$
3 less than 100$
4 Less than 200$
5 over 200$
6 Can't get it
or
That speeds of DSL are available in your area(country?)
1) less than 256kbit
2) 512kbit
3) 1Mbit
4) 2mbit
6) None.
Or just maybe one that asks about the speed of which people are connected to the internet in their home. Even if one such poll has been made before the difference between a earlier could be interesting.
I rememeber we had one poll Bandwidth to Home Via...
my sig
While Europe is quickly getting reliable and cheap broadband, US-Americans are about to be relegated to second-class internet citizens as our broadband providers roll out their "per megabyte" pricing plans. For shame!
Coverage is lousy, despite what BT proclaim.
I live 5 miles (8km) due south of Cambridge city centre, supposedly the area with the highest number of geeks per square meter in all the UK.
My exchange is still not DSL-enabled and BT flatly refuse to suggest when it might be upgraded.
Stories of price cuts don't do much for those who can't get the service at any price.
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
http://milkshake.dexy.org
heres a map of the U.K. now really do you think that broadband can reach most of us ?
http://www.btopenworld.com/broadband/ava61/
really BT need to sort their exchanges out before they offer video on demand via ADSL
(which is their plan after all)
regards
john jones
For a 2Mb service with static IP (13 usable)
:)
you should only pay 100 ukp +vat per month.
That also includes a router, btw.
I know - that's what I sell it at......
Anonymously forgotten password.
I'm using this post to beg those in the know, and educate those who aren't, to use the above terms correctly.
eg. A 56K modem is 56Kb (Kilobits), not 56KB (KiloBytes), etc... quite a difference!
It freaks me out how few people are aware of this!
The reasonable priced one is GBP23-GBP29 per month (depending on ISP), with a once-off charge of GBP50 (or an installation cost of GBP250, IIRC, if you want an engineer to plug stuff in) and it's 500K/250K with contention ratio 50:1.
So yes, it's better than a modem, but you're still not going to be watching films over it.
Cable seems to be fairly similar (a bit cheaper, perhaps), and has, of course, been available quite a bit longer.
When i first read this, i thought it said British Boyband finally jumps.
Hear, hear.
I have ADSL from BoStream, and I get >2Mbps (actual measured throughput) and a single static IP, for about $30 a month. Though I expect the throughput do drop as this ISP becomes more popular.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
I'm now living in Edinburgh in the UK rather than my home city of Dublin, largely because of the inavailability of broadband in Ireland. I wanted set up my own Internet-related business from home and using a dial-up connection literally wasn't an option.
For all the bullshit about the Celtic Tiger, greed and idiocy on the part of the Irish Government messed things up for an entire generation of would-be Irish entrepaneurs. The bungled privatisation of the national phone company, Eircom, followed by it's filleting, ensured that even the prospect of broadband was delayed for years.
Now the remnants of Eircom, in a battle of wills with the telecoms ombudsman, are refusing to launch any service until the government allows them to set ridiculous service fees including a per MB charge. It's 2002 and the Irish, both potential online business professionals and the public in general, have yet to start developing the online sensibility that only an exposure to high-speed Internet can offer.
I'm using Telewest's service. You can get their cable internet on it's own but their TV and phone packages are pretty good too. I pay £49 (80 Euros) a month for broadband 'net, a phone line and 70+ channels (no premium channels). The national phone charges are pretty good and if I made more calls I'd probably pay the extra £15 a month for unlimited calls within the UK. Their international charges are, like BT's, extortionate so I use OneTel for that (good online billing, monthly direct debit).
I forget the math at this stage but I remember, before I signed up, working out that an equivalent Sky TV / BT DSL combo would only have worked out better per month if I was going for the premium film channels too. Also, the installation charges just to get a phone line installed were outrageous.
Maybe these new reductions change that but, to be honest, I don't trust BT, not after they were caught deliberately restricting bandwidth to certain customers. To Hell with them!
I also gather that Telewest will soon (?) be introducing a premium 1Gig service; the guy who installed my broadband 'net connection a couple of months ago told me that he actually has a test version of that service installed at home. Lucky bastard.
You can't be serious. You really can't be serious.
Don't forget the upload cap, it is important if you use P2P apps.
Now all those Brits can go online and file for their unemployment checks!
Honestly, I think they have some other problems to deal with before broadband internet is the top story, really...
If you charge too much, people will not buy. If you have insane or innane intrest rates people will not buy. Look at the stuff with the intrest rates, freebee's, ect on cars? I mean sales took off, people will buy when they think they are getting a good deal, or if they NEED it. Otherwise, it's a luxtury item and they don't need it.
Om, nomnomnom...
Great, see Mr Hollings, you don't need to create draconian laws designed by hollywood to make people get broadband. I want to get broadband anyway so i can finally download all those warez, mp3s, pr0n and moviez with out having to wait!!
But why would anyone want to use BT? they are greedy pigs (and my lines are crappy quality) i think consume.net is a better option (when i get those wireless cards...)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Lol
Have fun while it lasts. The situation everywhere is the same. The following two articles bespeak the US market, but BT is no different. In two years you will be paying four times as much for a tenth of the bandwidth.
h tm l. htm l
http://radsoft.net/resources/rants/20020402,00.
http://radsoft.net/resources/rants/20020410,00
The little town of Launceston (gateway to Cornwall, right on the main road etc.) has finally been offered broadband by BT... In the form of a stupidly expensive satellite link-up. £900 installation and £60 per month after that. BT can now say "oooh, we've enabled 99.999% of the country with broadband", but they'll neglect to mention that it's unfeasible for a lot of those customers.
Of course, this means that they no longer have to install ADSL here.
Broadband for businesses? Fine. Broadband access from home? Never going to happen while BT are still a monopoly. Bastards.
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
And NTHell are going down the toilet, big-style. See this BBC news announcement here.
;-)
You can hear the sound of the flush, it's only bcos NTHell are such a big turd that they're putting up resistance.
Grab.
I keyed in my post code on BT's availability checker page, and it replied with this helpful message:
BT has no plans to upgrade your exchange in the near term.
BT is working on partnerships with local and national government bodies to evaluate the possibilities of bringing broadband to your area in a cost effective way.
We are also investigating alternative technologies, such as, Satellite Services. We will be providing you with more information on this site at the end of June.
Alternatively you may be receiving service from another telecomms supplier.
It's clear to me that they have no plans to offer DSL in the small town where I live. Ever. They will just cherry-pick the big cities. Small surprise really, as they are in pretty bad shape financially. Good thing that national highways and railroads weren't built like this...
There might be an excuse for this sort of dribbling geographic coverage in the US or Canada, where the distance between cities is enormous. There is little excuse for it here in the UK.
That will nicely co-incide with the company's new corporate strategy.
Presumably satellite connections (download only or upload & download) would have poor latency. Worse than a dial-up modem possibly? Maybe even worse than a winmodem!
Also, how susceptible are they to weather conditions?