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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.
40 pounds? Now that's a heavy modem.
Letter
a free wireless router
And how am I supposed to plug in the network cable? I knew there was a catch!
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.
I pay half as much for the exact same speed here in the States, and I don't have a download cap... and the US is supposed to be lagging behind the rest of the world in broadband. You limies are really getting screwed!
/dev/random
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.
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~
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.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
What about the new DSLAMs that are being rolled out? Have you investigated any of the new plans?
/mo /mo
http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc-isp.cfm?id=10&s=2
2048 / 384 kbps
400 MB $29.95
12 GB $49.95
Primus DSLAMs will also support ADSL2/2+ when the technology is approved for use in Australia.
Does it go on forever?
At least they tell you the cap. I have Comcast and don't know what is it, but it is purportedly around 2.5 gigs a day. This service sounds like a really good deal to me.
Considering that the UK is currently stuck with deals like 512/128 for £20 a month, or NTLs most generous 1500/128 service for £35 a month, £40 a month for 8000/400 is a bargain.
I wonder if they'll offer a 2000/200 for £20 a month?
I expect this is why NTL are rumoured (well, I recall them sending a letter anyway) to be upping speeds from 300,750,1500 to 1000,2000,3000 in the near future, for the same price.
... UK downloads of major BitTorrent clients have increased by a factor of eleventy billion.
http://www.free.fr/
20 Meg Down, 1 Meg up, 100+ channels TV,
Free fixed calls to all of France, Free
installation!
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.
iiNet will be announcing 2Mb+ plans within the next week or so as well. GB allowances will be better than they have been, but for Australia, 500GB is preposterous. The biggest plans I have seen have been in the region of 72GB total for 1.5MB plans, with a hefty price tag attached.
The reason prices are so high is above my head but I understand it has to do with the USA charging us for both incoming and outgoing traffic, whilst expecting our traffic to them to be free. Perhaps the FTA will help (not likely!). Someone please comment on this and provide some more info.
For foreign readers, telecommunications in Australia are monopolised by "Telstra", a formerly government owned body with a legal monopoly over the copper wiring throughout the country. Telstra, who see broadband (and hence, VoIP) as a threat to the vast revenue they obtain from local telephone calls, are deliberating holding back broadband within Australia, by preventing speeds over 1.5Mbit and by onselling DSL to third party providers at a port-only cost greater than Telstras retail plans. This of course makes it impossible for anyone to offer DSL at the same price as Telstra without making a loss. Great business model for Telstra, though.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
thanks for playing. You read it well: 20Mbits/sec DOWN and 1Mbit/sec UP. No cap. and that's for 30 Euros per month.
The service comes with free telephony to any french landline (calls to mobile phones cost something), and very cheap international rate, like 3 eurocents to europe.
Once you've got all that, you can pay an extra monthly fee to get hundreds of TV channels. With 20Mbits/sec ... that should do it.
All of this is given to you thru Free.fr triple-play box, the FreeBox. My Mom's been with them for a couple of years and has the original, more clunky incarnation of today's sleek freebox. Here's a picture of it.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
If you can just download it again why would you bother to store it at all?
More and more I expect our HD's to become caches for content on the internet.
Imagine for a moment a filesystem driver that uses a local disk to cache files, expiring the old unused content and replacing it with a torrent file (or whatever the latest p2p is) that can be used to transparently download the file again the next time it is requested.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.