24 Mb Consumer Broadband Launched

twilight30 writes to tell us The Guardian is reporting that broadband provider "Be" is providing customers with the option of a 24 megabits per second download speed connection. These speeds are roughly three times the closest local competitor and also allow 1.3 megabits per second upstream, roughly five times quicker than any other service provider. The service is being offered at £24 (US $42.84) per month. Hopefully this will become a trend of radically increasing consumer internet speeds.

Comments

they forgot the "Up to" 24M(b)

[riprjak]

This is ADSL2+, so the speeds are UP TO 24Mb. I notice the koolaid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H article doesnt make mention of the "Up to" part, and am amused that a slashdot editor drank said koolaid in the first place.

So, unless you were wise enough to purchase the house next to the exchange (and the cables run directly), you arent going to get even near this speed. In fact, the falloff in speed is quite rapid.

I have ADSL2+ at home (here in Adelaide, Australia) and said home is 3.2 km from the exchange as the crow flies (plus or minus GPS error), probably longer by cable; and Im getting 7.5Mb down and 1.0 Mbit up (1.0 is the upstream limit locally). In my particular situation, the difference between ADSL 2 and ADSL 2+ would be pretty negligible.

On a separate note, I wonder if they realise that their "Be Boxes" (from TFA which wasnt even liked in the beginning) might be mistaken for old school computers :)

Just my $0.02 AUD.
err!
jak.

Re:And probably not even that

[Proc6]

I hate comments like that.

That is the worst reasoning in the world to use against broadband. So what if there's no application for it now? The idea would be to get 24Mb to be commonplace then see how the internet changes. We all might be surprised to find out what's possible when that is the norm. Let's not sit at 512k and assume it's as good as it will ever need to be.