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British Broadband (Finally) Jumps

Posted by timothy on from the net-meters-replace-gas-meters dept.

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!"

14 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Belgian version by selderrr · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 ?
    1. Re:Belgian version by selderrr · · Score: 3, Informative

      err... it's been like this for 4 years now...(ecept for the price that is : we're at approx 40EUro /month, which used to be 80 2 year ago)

      Belgian national Telco is one of the biggest fuckups in the country. I really really hope they go pucky-up like sabena, the national airline.
      We were all hoping that, with the liberalisation of the european telco market, other companies would invest in belgium and create some competition, but that happened only on the level of big corporations: those can get pretty good deals by playing the telcos against each other. For jan modaal (joe average as u dudes call him wrongly :-) nothing changed much, except more snailmail spam and tons of gruesome commercials (I really wonder if they have some of secret competition for the most moronic commercial. In anycase, they get more and more braindead over time, which is a good thing since I was scared they would one day firgure out how to check our bandwidth quota. That's right folks : the belgian national telco isn't capable of checking bandwidth quota.. *lol*... no, make that *weep*...)

      --
      When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
  2. The Register article... by carm$y$ · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... 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
  3. 'Broadband Britain' is somewhat a sham. by wackybrit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:'Broadband Britain' is somewhat a sham. by seldolivaw · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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'...

      I'm posting this from a computer sitting behind a BT ADSL connection. My friends across town have one too, and my friends in the next town over have a cable modem from NTL instead (much better than BT, and only £25 a month, but not available here).

      I wholeheartedly agree that Britain lags behind in broadband, and I also agree that the fault lies mainly with BT for maintaining an effective monopoly on the last mile, amongst other things. But the same was true of dial-up access in the first place, and it is now almost ubiquitous. Britain will get its act together -- a few years after the rest of the world, as usual.

    2. Re:'Broadband Britain' is somewhat a sham. by barnaclebarnes · · Score: 3, Informative
      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?

      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.]
  4. Still late, Still expensive, Still poor coverage.. by ezs · · Score: 5, Informative
    For personal use the BT DSL is adequate - but still slow and expensive compared to what those reading in the US are used to.

    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
  5. BT != BTOpenworld by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. Availability is another thing by cheekymonkey_68 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  7. The state of things by Yomlogs · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. Checkout the UK ADSL Guide by bradsjm · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

  9. Broadband in the UK is somewhat sucky yes. by Second_Derivative · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:WiFi is illegal? by kubrick · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  11. the real map of broadband by johnjones · · Score: 3, Informative

    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