8Mbit Broadband to Become Available in the UK

UK Online is offering 8Mbit broadband service to the UK. The upstream is 400K, and there's a monthly download cap of 500GB, but at 40 pounds per month, plus 50 installation and a free wireless router in the package, that has to be among the best deals on offer from anyone.

Comments

Not really a great deal...

[scifience]

I pay $105.95 a month for Speakeasy DSL. That is for a connection with 6000kbps down, and 768kbps down. That connection has no bandwidth limits. Not a bad deal, if I do say so myself, considering I can run any servers I want on the connection.

Now let's look at the offer that was described in this article. If we convert 40 UK pounds to US dollars, we see that this connection costs around $75 a month, depending on the exchange rate.

My connection through Speakeasy is roughly $25 a month more, has no bandwidth limits (and 500GB is very easy to reach on a fast connection) and a faster upload speed to boot. There is also no mention as to whether this connection allows servers or not. However, I am guessing it doesn't, considering that Speakeasy is an exception on this policy rather than the rule.

When you consider all of these factors, this "best deal around" doesn't really seem to be quite so great anymore.

holy expensive!

[Blymie]

Actually, it seems quite expensive. I pay $60 per month CDN (at 26 pounds, it's just over 1/2 the price of this "deal"), and receive 6.5Mbps down, 900kbps up, with no limits.

There's no installation charge, and the cable modem is included.

I prefer to have more upstream.. and a little less downstream. That upstream is far more useful. So is the lack of limits.

Oh. By the way, this isn't make believe speed either. Videotron actually delivers. I get downloads at > 700kbytes/sec all the time.

Is that really a news?

[sam0737]

Here in Hong Kong, I am getting 10Mbps Up and Down, with no upload/download limit (Of course they said you can't setup any kind of server in your home in the fine prints but who knows :P)

How much? Not more than USD 20 per month! The service was there for some years already. And there are now serval ISP providing the same service so the price is getting even lower~

Re:Is that really a news?

[sam0737]

No sorry. Hong Kong's traffic is not filtered by the great firewall~

Under one country two systems, we are really quite independent ...Check out the wikipedia if you want to know more :P

500GB = 4000Gbit (Round Numbers)

[datastalker]

500GB = 4,000,000,000,000 bit
8Mbit = 8,000,000 bit

4,000,000,000,000/8,000,000 = 500,000

8Mbit/s gives you 500,000 seconds

There are 2,592,000 seconds in a month (30 days).

That means that if you let it download constantly at maximum speed, you only get to use it for a week.

Of course, if you can find 500GB to download (constantly), then you've probably already figured that out.

Ironically, here in the US, with cable, I routinely get 1.5Mb/s down, with no cap.

Expensive!

[silverz]

That is very expensive. In Japan, for example ADSL connection from Yahoo Japan costs you about 4000 yen per month (less than 40 US dollar) for 50 Mbps ADSL.

And also fibre optic connection has become very common and cheaper. For example Usen Networks (one of the provider in Japan) provides 100 Mbps fibre optic connection for only 2950 per month.

I use the fibre optic that comes with 5 static IPs. And it costs me about 5000 yen per month.

Download cap is totally never heard in here. As far as I know, all packages come with unlimited bandwidth.

Re:Expensive!

[pcgabe]

I live in the middle of nowhere in Japan (it's not all like Tokyo - From my house I'm surrounded by rice fields, stereotypical but true), and the only thing available to me is the ~$40/month 54Mbit ADSL. Of course, I'm so far from the center that my actual download speed is closer to only 8Mbit (I know, I know, you feel my pain).

What's really worth mentioning is the Yahoo-BBphone. VoIP comes free with my internet access, and I can make phone calls to the U.S. for around 2.5 cents a minute, or free calls to other BBphone users.

Re:Expensive!

[mattgorle]

My post may seem a bit terse.

This offering is *not* expensive for this country (the UK)! Pretty much all suppliers offer capped access with limits in the region of 100-150GB/mth (ignoring the "exceptional" ISPs like BT who offer lower caps). Furthermore, this is going to be considered to be a very high speed connection in this country. Just to give you some perspective, I'm on a 1Mbit connection, which is more than most people in this country have.

If someone could come over here and offer high speed, reliable, uncapped broadband internet access to the home for a reasonable price, they would absolutely conquer the market.

I suspect that precisely the same would occur in Australia and New Zealand, where I understand the internet connectivity possibilities are even less impressive.

In Canada

[CastrTroy]

In Canada, You can get 5.0/800 for $45 and there's no cap on how much traffic you can generate. Come to think about it, I've never seen a cap on cable internet. BTW, most people in canada have cable available, as there is usually only 3 channels (1 of which is french) if you just use rabbit ears. So cable covers most of the country. Cue the "But I Don't Have Cable" whiners.