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BT Gets Exclusive Rights To OnLive In the UK

Posted by timothy on from the stick-with-myst-in-the-sticks dept.

arcticstoat writes "UK telecoms firm BT has signed a deal with cloud-gaming firm OnLive, which gives BT exclusive UK rights to bundle the OnLive Game Service with its broadband packages. Although OnLive will also offer its service directly in the UK, BT (and PlusNet, which is also owned by BT) will be the only ISP allowed to offer the service. UK gamers will need a connection that can cope with the bandwidth demands too, which is a concern when so many UK homes don't have access to fast broadband. Speaking to Thinq, BT's Les King said that we're looking at 1.5Mb/sec for standard definition gaming, and 5Mb/sec for full 1080p HD resolution gaming. This will effectively rule out the use of the HD service in areas of the country that can only get a 2Mb/sec connection. BT plans to start trials of the system in the UK later this year, and plans to launch the service in 2011 or 2012."

5 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's ADSL though by Alphathon · · Score: 3, Informative

    What do you mean? Isn't ADSL a subset of DSL? I'm fairly sure DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a description while ADSL (or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is an actual implementation/technology. There are many other forms of DSL as well: DSL technologies. As for being sat on top of the exchange, pretty much. I live maybe 2 miles away from mine, but I only get ~1mbps. Virgin certainly isn't available in my area, and even with ADSL 2+ when it becomes properly viable I'd only get ~4mbps, so no HD OnLive for me (heck, no SD Onlive at the moment :( ).

  2. Re:5Mb/sec? by sgt101 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Make sure that there is no phone plugged in without a filter.

    Change/swap your filters round to see if one of them is faulty

    Try with your daughters router/hub and see if that helps.

    Try connecting with a lan cable (not wireless)

    Try turning off noisy devices like fridges and freezers and washing machines and see if that helps

    Try turning off circuits on your fuse boxes and see if that helps.

    --
    --------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
  3. "UK telecoms firm..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    To describe BT as a "UK telecoms firm..." hardly does BT justice. BT, previously known as British Telecom has a near monopoly over telephone exchanges in the UK. BT was originally a technical arm of the General Post Office until it was split into a separate company in 1981 and privatised in 1982. Despite claims by various governments over the years, that the BT monopoly was being broken down to encourage competition, they still have a near monopoly on cable network infrastructure.

    There are many ISPs in the UK, but what the public do not generally know or understand, is that the vast majority of them have to pay wholesale to use BT cabling. Choose any ISP you like, some of your money is still likely to go to BT.

  4. Re:cue the skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    66% of c is not a "fuckton" slower than the speed of light. However, electrons through a wire will move at a speed of millimetres per second which is a "fuckton" slower than the speed of light. In any case, the energy transfer is not through the electrons, but through the E field which propagates at a fair chuck of the speed of light.

    As for optical fibres. Well, they're made of glass through which light certainly does not propagate at the speed of light in a vacuum. If you assume that n=1.5, then the signal moves at 2/3 of the vacuum speed of light. Nobody claims that optical fibres are superior because of increased propagation speed (because it's simply not true). The real advantage is that the available bandwidth is much larger than for a copper wire, with less signal degradation. If your 200ms ping time was solely down to signal propagation, you'd be 25000 miles away from your ISP.

  5. Re:WTFBT by DrogMan · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's a lof of mis-conceptions about the way BT works and it's looks like you've been misled by the BT propoganda...

    BT are many companies - BT retail - the ISP in this case is just one of over 100 ISPs who use the BT Wholesale network.

    The BT wholesale network is actually relatively good - it's when BTW hand the data over to the retail ISP that things go wrong. BT retail in this case are a very large ISP, therefore have a lot of clout. They also have a grossly overloaded network.

    So just pick another ISP that uses the BT wholesale network and you'll get an almost instantly better service.