The impact of upgraded broadband technology is set to be measured to determine whether customers really see the improvements advertised by BT, Virgin Media and the rest. Ofcom has decided to use the network of monitoring equipment it deployed in hundreds of homes last year in partnership with Samknows to study how ADSL2+, …

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Thursday 25th February 2010 16:25 GMT Anonymous Coward

Great!

"BT's local loop upgrade programme will reach the more than 163 exchanges so far announced. Fibre to the premises deployments will offer close to 100Mbit/s downstream, while the more widespread fibre to the cabinet rollout will be sold as "up to" 40Mbit/s. Both should offer better reliability than current technology."

It really is about time ISPs were forced to charge you for the speed you get. In effect the current system means that the people with slower connections are subsidising the people with faster connections. Don't agree? Think of it like those companies who charge the same P&P however large your order. You order something small and light and pay £3.99 for your P&P when the item should have cost about 75p to post, they're making £3.25 on the deal. That £3.25 goes to pay for the postage on somebody else's order that cost £10 to post.

Likewise if you're on the end of 3 miles of existing copper and getting an unreliable 256Kb/s downstream then it isn't costing BT more to deploy broadband to you since the copper was pre-existing, but will be paying for the rollout of fibre to cabinet and fibre to premises. So you are, in effect, subsidising somebody else's upgrade to 40Mb/s or 100Mb/s.

Ooh! I've just heard that BT do offer you a teeny tiny discount if you have a really slow line (allegedly anything below 512Kb/s) so that's alright then. Or maybe not.

If they were forced to charge per Mb/s then not only would they get less complaints about low speed I suspect there would be less problems over contention since most people won't want super fast connections if they have to pay for the bandwidth.

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Thursday 25th February 2010 23:03 GMT Stuart 22

I am a happy 21CN/ADS2+ bunny

I live near the exchange. On ADSLMax I got around a 6Mbps connection. On ADSL2+ I have a 14Mbps connections. On both downloads and uploads I am at lest twice as fast as before.

There were problems, first my modem/router did not negotiate increased speeds by default. Then I found problems from noise on adjoining lines. I hear a lot of disappointing stories about ADSL2+ but I wonder how many of them are due to BT and how many to unsuspected problems in the user's setup.

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Thursday 25th February 2010 23:53 GMT Anonymous Coward

can't wait...

My exchange is supposed to be on the FTTC/P upgrade program, but no notification yet as to when... it's the only viable alternative for me as my upto 8Mbps service syncs at 4.5-5Mbps and delivers around 3.5-4Mbps of downstream throughput.

The BT line 'speedchecker' tells me to expect 5Mbps on upto 8Mbps services and on the 'upto' 20Mbps product.... wait for it...... 5.5Mbps whoop whoop!

I too think it's about time there was more granularity in the pricing and products, afterall even Sky offer 2, 8 and 20 Mbps products and many ISPs inmplement fair use policies to reduce throughput after you hit a ceiling, so why don't we get the option to pay for 2,3,4,5 etc Mbps at a time???

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Friday 26th February 2010 10:37 GMT John Smith 19

Do the ISP's know which homes are testing them?

Because if they do this is epic fail waiting to happen.

But let's be honest. What most users want is for any company to deliver a *minimum* speed *not* a promise that is "up to" a headline figure.

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Friday 26th February 2010 13:02 GMT Anonymous Coward

what about the upload rates though!, whos looking at and publishing them for all to see and compare.

chris, its good that your keeping an eye in these things as usual, but can you please a;sp make sure to always state the actual reached official UPLOAD speed rates for these companies too, that is were the real need is today in the uk marketplace.

a virgin media 35+ to 1 ratio download to upload speed is pritty much useless for more than one PC uploading a large file as many have already found.

please make sure these companies PR do not get away with omitting the upload rates in all things broadband speeds.

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Friday 26th February 2010 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward

Test the waters

I'm interested to see how the FTTH works out for Fibrecity who are currently rolling out networks in Bournemouth and Dundee. If they can make a success, it will definitely place BT on the back foot, although part of me still thinks there is a chance they could suffer the same problems as Cable & Wireless did with infrastructure roll out and financing.

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Monday 1st March 2010 11:28 GMT John Smith 19

AC@14:40

Wot, a *new* supplier in town?

Are they doing it for themselves or on behalf of someone?

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1. Monday 1st March 2010 12:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Infrastructure
  
  Fibrecity are rolling out the infrastructure and they are getting some local ISP's on board to offer the connection, in the same way that they'd probably like Sky or Virgin to come on board and use their cabling to carry their TV services, it would then be down to the customer to pick and choose which service provider they would like to use. Sounds good on paper if you read their website.
  
  I met somebody who's had their house wired to the fibre and they said it's still very much in it's infancy as it's rolled out but the prospects look good, I must admit I was envious of the 100M/bit connection, on the test they showed me they averaged between 75-82M/bit download rate.
  
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