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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.
Internode have offered this in Australia for some time. Wish it was available where I am, but i'm stuck on 12000/1000 with iinet (no, i don't work for either of them, but i've been a happy customer of both)
#1 56 mbits would be heaven ? nah, i dont really think so :) at first, if 3 users with 56Mbit lines would start to download from a server that sits in a rack behind a 100Mbit ethernet ... they would want to pull 56*3=168 Mbits out from the 100Mbit ethernet ... so they will just not be able to really use their bandwidth and the server will be jammed .... and for most of users, even 8Mbit is a huge overkill, cause people that dont download movies/cd-images/adult-movies/music each day, mostly have latency issues (they click and the browser doesnt react within a second, waaah) and the larger the bandwidth distributed over several users, the larger the latency (routers & co have their limits). ofcourse a big maximal downloadspeed is great but i dont think that the rest of the network isnt quite ready for it, it might not be such a good idea (most of our country's server hosting providers have 100Mbit ethernet/internet lines for the servers, so 4 british haxors can now jamm my server)
... the last time i checked the broadband companys themselves have to pay for each mbit they transit, so if they have a nice schoolful of haxxors who download stuff 24/7 then their downloaded/uploaded mbits will cost more than the 24 pounds that are charged ... ofcourse some users use less than that ... but still, it's still curious
#2 i wonder how they can afford it
#3 while they're at it, i'd even be lucky to get a 8mbit connection for 24 pounds over here
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
I'm living in a residential zone in Japan in Niigata, pretty near to the edge of the countryside really... Anyhow, I've got a 100Mbps fiber that only costs me 17pounds per month. Account with the company 'Nifty'. Can watch TV channels on it regularly while VoIP and video phoning back to UK.
For my 1Mbps line back in the UK, its more expensive.
Its a pity the UK is so far behind.
Japan and Korea know where the future is, and the goverment has organised a very competitive system, there are so many companies trying to offer the service.
BTW, the fiber comes in through the rough on telegraph-like lines, the same way as the power in Japan. So no expensive costs digging holes!