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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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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
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.
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
The reason there is WiFi in the UK is that it is illegal sell access to 802.11b networks here. This law however is up for review and BT have just announced that they want to roll out 400 hotspots in the next 6 months.
Also i've just installed the Wires only ADSL at my new flat and it works fine. No problems from BT whatsoever. This is in sharp contrast to my last ADSL install a year ago which _was_ a nightmare.
[Please type your sig here.]
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.
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
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.
AFAIR, it's illegal to onsell, not illegal to access. You can set it up for your employees, maybe even as a bonus for customers, but you can't sell wireless access as a service (probably due to spectrum licensing laws).
deus does not exist but if he does
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