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

Belgian version

[selderrr]

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.

The Register article...

[carm$y$]

... 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...

'Broadband Britain' is somewhat a sham.

[wackybrit]

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.

Still late, Still expensive, Still poor coverage..

[ezs]

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.. :)

The state of things

[Yomlogs]

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.