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Virgin Media UK Pilots 200Mbps Broadband Speeds

MJackson writes "UK cable operator Virgin Media has announced the first real-world customer pilots of up to 200Mbps broadband services using DOCSIS3 technology from Cisco, which could make it one of the fastest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the world. Following successful lab trials, the 6 month long pilot started last week in Ashford, Kent (England), and will ultimately employ 100 customers in the testing process. The pilot will, among other things, test future online consumer applications, including High Definition Internet TV (HD IPTV) and the ability to deliver applications and support for home IT needs through its network. By comparison J:Com in Japan supplies broadband at up to 160Mbps and Cablevision in the US supplies broadband at up to 101Mbps. Like Virgin Media, both companies use DOCSIS3 technology for broadband over cable networks."

16 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Stop it! by FredFredrickson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just shut up, ok? Last month, my provider finally converted me from 1.5 mbps to 7 mbps. (Fairpoint, just bought Northeastern USA from Verizon) Do you understand that only now can we start using things like Netflix Watchnow and the like? Oh, but Youtube, for whatever reason, still buffers for 5 minutes.

    Anyway, my point is this. Stop bragging, you're seriously making me want to stab my eyes with grapefruit spoons.

    --
    Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
    1. Re:Stop it! by smallfries · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't worry, if it's anything like any other Virgin product then the throttle to 1Mb/s will kick in after 5 minutes. And as for BitTorrent, yeah right...

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    2. Re:Stop it! by formattedFury · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh, but Youtube, for whatever reason, still buffers for 5 minutes.

      I'll make an insightful comment once the rest of this page finishes loading on my connection...

    3. Re:Stop it! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative
      It's okay, it's Virgin Media. For those of you outside the UK, this means:
      • Upstream just about fast enough for the TCP ACKs generated by saturating the downstream, but only just.
      • Soft caps, so if you download more than a GB or so, or upload a few hundred MBs, you get throttled back to ISDN speeds for a few hours.
      • Painful technical support that's been outsourced, off-shored, and dramatically reduced in size in spite of being understaffed to start with.
      • Subscription to the same government-approved (but not government-controlled or publicly-accountable) censor as the other major UK ISPs (the IWF).
      • Phorm.

      Virgin Media are so bad they almost make BT look good. Almost.

      Stop bragging, you're seriously making me want to stab my eyes with grapefruit spoons.

      At least you still have grapefruit spoons. They are no longer sold in the UK, due to health and safety concerns over people cutting their mouths (I honestly wish I was making this one up - you can still find them in second-hand shops, but good luck finding new ones).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:Stop it! by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 4, Funny

      So, wait.. how do you eat grapefruits?

      You out-source the cutting to a country which doesn't treat you as a 2 year old kid and then simply import the remaining juice ;)

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    5. Re:Stop it! by eleuthero · · Score: 4, Funny

      So, wait.. how do you eat grapefruits?

      You don't. Sale of those potent carriers of citric acid was restricted due to too many emergency room cases caused by people who shot themselves in the eye with the juice when trying to eat grapefruits without grapefruit spoons.

    6. Re:Stop it! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Do they have a transparent proxy? Virgin Media, the helpful people in TFA, run one but it used to frequently get overloaded. If you manually configure a proxy then you bypass the transparent one. If your ISP advertises proxy settings, try using them. If this doesn't speed things up, call them and complain.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. In other news.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ....the US overall reaches new broadband speeds of nearly 20mbps for half its citizens in the year 2025!!!

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  3. Shenanagins by IP_Troll · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cablevision in the US supplies broadband at up to 101Mbps

    Cablevision has announced that they are going to offer 101 Mbps service. Hold off on giving them credit until they actually do it.

  4. 101 Mbps from cable vision?? by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, maybe in house, when no one else is connected.. and the sun is at the perfect angle and theres a fish hopping through the air in the middle of the atlantic. But not just any fish, you see this is a special fish, the fish of broadband. And he only shows up but once every fortnight and if you look carefully, you will hear him laughing at us all in the distance

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  5. "Real" Broadband by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The U.S. will not catch up with other countries on the race to national broadband until:

    1. The definitions of what a "broadband" connection actually is are cleared up
    2. REAL competition is introduced to drive down competitors costs (the cost for cable internet access is still outrageous!)
    3. The content of the internet mandates broadband connection speeds to experience.

    We're probably closest to #3... but we are bogged down in legalese for #1 and #2 is frighteningly far away. Until the government forces competition for the cable companies into existence... prices will remain through the roof. Money mongers are everywhere...

  6. Yes, but is it capped? by Itninja · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I just got Comcast's 'Ultra' package that gives me 50Mbps. But since it's capped at 250GB monthly, I can't exactly use it as much as I want. What good is crazy fat bandwidth if one gets shut off after three days?

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  7. A pittance... by aztektum · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pf, 250 Million-bits...!? I demand 1 Billion-bits! *pinky to mouth*

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    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!
  8. Re:3. 2. 1. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right, I live in central New York. Mind telling me who I should call to get 100 Mbit like other similar cities in the world? Or is New York not crowded enough for you?

  9. Re:DOCSIS 3 is a bitch for the US of A. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That only explains why broadband penetration is so low. That does not explain why the quality of service is universally poor. There are plenty of regions in the US that are as dense and populous as these countries with 3.14159 petabit/sec connections, yet in the US we get crap no matter where you live.

  10. Re:3. 2. 1. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The USA is a vast land with lots of empty space where as England has around 80 million people shoved into a tiny space

    The UK as a whole has around 60 million people. England has less than that. Britain has a similar population density to most of the costal states in the USA - lower than some - and has some of the worst broadband in Europe. The UK has the 48th highest population density in the world, with 246/km^2. New Jersey has 438/km^2, so presumably it has much better Internet access?

    It's also worth noting that the population density numbers for the UK are massively skewed by London, which has an insane population density of 4,761km^2. The London metropolitan area contains around 14m people; around 25% of the UK population. Outside this area, the population density is well in line with the most densely populated 10-15 states, which accounts for a significant proportion of the total US population.

    Even in the less-populated US states, the density isn't as bad as it would at first appear. Take Utah, for example, the 40th most populous state with only 10 people per square km. Of these, 2.7m people, almost half live in Salt Lake City, with a population density up at 643.3/km^2. I suspect you will find that more than half of the people in the USA live in regions with a greater population density than the UK average so, by your argument, I'd expect all of these urban and suburbanites to have 100+Mb/s connections.