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!"

Comments

Great news! er, um, right.

[Qube]

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.

Re:Great news! er, um, right.

[perky]

Same position. Live in Kent slap bang in the commuter belt 35 minutes train from Charing Cross. Exchange went digital in the early 90's, and there are no plans to DSLify the exchange in the foreseeable future according to the telephone bunnies. This is despite the fact that this is one of the wealthiest areas in Britain. As for modem connections, our line is so bad that I'm lucky to get 14.4.

At the end of the day the government won't put its money where it's mouth is and actually fund the roll out of DLS. BT is so markedroid driven that they are too busy spending money on new logos and names to actually get anything useful done. They are still at heart an old school monopoly and they are intent on maintaining that position rather than actually competing through offering better products at lower prices. Last, their investment model is very western: they require quick returns to make a project viable. Telco projects simply don't generate quick returns which is why they are sitting on a mountain of debt.