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[snowdog]

Perfectly true.

I hate people complaining about the quality of the broadband they pay £20 a month for. You want quality then pay for it fools.

That said, I work for an ISP, designed our broadband platform personally and have unlimited broadband (no caps, no throttling, no shaping) for free. So I just get to laugh at everyone...

You're blind, for 25€ you can get unlimited non throttling locked speed 20 megabit (or the max that your phone cable allows, 12 mb in my case) down 1 up here. Even provide a free newsgroup service.
You're being ripped off in the UK.
Costs are much lower.

Only the basic 5-10 € internet here have a data limit or FUP, from 20 € much are unlimited usage.
( Orange to name one, 19 € for first 12 months, 25 € for 2nd 12 months, unlimited usage, no FUP, no throttling, fine with p2p, 20 mb)

 

[bigredshark]

You're blind, for 25€ you can get unlimited non throttling locked speed 20 megabit (or the max that your phone cable allows, 12 mb in my case) down 1 up here. Even provide a free newsgroup service.
You're being ripped off in the UK.
Costs are much lower.

Only the basic 5-10 € internet here have a data limit or FUP, from 20 € much are unlimited usage.
( Orange to name one, 19 € for first 12 months, 25 € for 2nd 12 months, unlimited usage, no FUP, no throttling, fine with p2p, 20 mb)

OK, I'm an infrastructure architect for an ISP, I do this for a living and I'm exceptionally good at it. Now try telling me that again.

Costs are not lower in the UK, they're exceptionally high. I know exactly what BT charge for central pipes and it's a huge amount of money. People are not being ripped off, they just think they are because they can't download hundreds of gigabyte of rubbish for £20 a month.

 

[Muffin`]

OK, I'm an infrastructure architect for an ISP, I do this for a living and I'm exceptionally good at it. Now try telling me that again.

Costs are not lower in the UK, they're exceptionally high. I know exactly what BT charge for central pipes and it's a huge amount of money. People are not being ripped off, they just think they are because they can't download hundreds of gigabyte of rubbish for £20 a month.

Can we blame Thatcher?

 

[bigredshark]

Can we blame Thatcher?

Perhaps, the mistake was privatising BT and keep it intact so it could dominate the market in consumer internet. Costs are partially kept high by BTs legacy network which they can't be replaced cheaply (21CN doesn't impress me much but it should help)

So, yeah, blame thatcher for not privatising BT properly and breaking it into little chunks

 

[eddiemcgarrigle]

BT is seriously getting on my nerves. My connection speed jumps from it's peak of 7mb to a low of 900kb at any given time. Consider the fact that the minimum speed on my line is supposed to be 2.5mb, it really is getting beyond a joke

 

[snowdog]

OK, I'm an infrastructure architect for an ISP, I do this for a living and I'm exceptionally good at it. Now try telling me that again.

Costs are not lower in the UK, they're exceptionally high. I know exactly what BT charge for central pipes and it's a huge amount of money. People are not being ripped off, they just think they are because they can't download hundreds of gigabyte of rubbish for £20 a month.

Riiiiiight, so what explanation do you have for the price compared to here ?
Sure the density is bigger here of the population, as is the broadband penatration, but you also have deeply urbanised area's, I highly doubt upgrading the lines is that expensive.

The neighberhood next to mine ( 1 mile away) got upgraded to fiberglass a few months ago. Mine still isnt . But still, I think BT is a rip off then. Better cheaper lines can easely be doable and profitable, even high speed lines like fiber are profitable.

 

[Kemik]

BT has been a great ISP for me. We pay for the highest option and some months have downloaded 70GB without them emailing, limiting speed or anything.

I'm only thinking of switching to Be There for the higher speeds but due to my contract with BT I cannot switch till June. Maybe they'll have ADSL2 by then.

They've have 4 or 5 vans around an estate next to mine for the past week doing work in those man hole things. Not sure what they're doing but hopefully it's something to increase our line speed

 

[bigredshark]

Riiiiiight, so what explanation do you have for the price compared to here ?
Sure the density is bigger here of the population, as is the broadband penatration, but you also have deeply urbanised area's, I highly doubt upgrading the lines is that expensive.

The neighberhood next to mine ( 1 mile away) got upgraded to fiberglass a few months ago. Mine still isnt . But still, I think BT is a rip off then. Better cheaper lines can easely be doable and profitable, even high speed lines like fiber are profitable.

OK, it's just not profitable, it's not. It's simple economics, I could give you the figures but to be honest you're arguing with zero knowledge of the market.

 

[snowdog]

Why are they placing it around here then?
Or in other countries too ?
They wouldn't do it if it's not profitable.

 

[shauncr91]

Some ISP's that are poor:

Tiscali
Pipex
AOL

Skybb are the best i've had currently.

Talktalk is by far the worst ISP in Britain in my opinion.

Over the course of about 4 months I got about 3 days of online gaming, the rest of the time it kept disconnecting. Moved to BT and no problems since

 

[marc2003]

my isp offers a true uncapped 8mb service with no fair use policy. yours for a bargain £168 a month.

 

[bigredshark]

Why are they placing it around here then?
Or in other countries too ?

Because it's a different country, different market, different demographics, different regulatory requirements...in fact its hard to find similarities.

Politically BT can't deploy fibre to london and ignore the rest of the country. The infrastructure is completely legacy, most countries with advanced networks built them from scratch. There's no appetite for that in the UK where there is a working system already. Most also had plenty of government funding to put the infrastructure in place.

Consumer broadband is incredibly thin margins, take out BT costs from ADSL and IP transit and you're making less than £10 a month at the very most, thats nothing at all.

 

[WotDa]

Talktalk is by far the worst ISP in Britain in my opinion.

Owned by CPW who now own AOL.

So, yup. CPW operate 3 of the worst Broadband services in the UK.

Guy on the first page that quoted me. No, it won't help. This was bought up before and as long as they mention the FUP and "up to" in their ads they're in the clear. As shocking as that is.

My rule: If you've seen an ad for the company: Do research first.

 

[riddler]

My virgin media had recently started cocking up again, we also have Skybb in the household and thats crap too.

 

[digipeep]

One of the sad things for me is a truely great broadband provider a few years ago Eclipse is now a just awful. I don't know if it had anything to do with Eclipse being taken over by Kingston Communications but a star in the broadband industry is now dieing a death. Poor speeds, obvious throttling etc, dreadful customer support.

 

[marc2003]

One of the sad things for me is a truely great broadband provider a few years ago Eclipse is now a just awful. I don't know if it had anything to do with Eclipse being taken over by Kingston Communications but a star in the broadband industry is now dieing a death. Poor speeds, obvious throttling etc, dreadful customer support.

it's only sad if you're stuck in a contract. there's no room for sentimentality. just leave for somewhere better.

 

[SpeedFreak]

I have both a BT Business line and a bethere 8meg line. Both are pretty good, but bethere's customer service is excellent and at £14 a month for uncapped service i'm laughing.BT.... well, considering I have paid them £500 since Novemeber for their services, phone and broadband, customer support is a complete runnaround and i'm not very impressed.

So, considering BT invest the minimum in maintaining the network without upgrades I'm guessing their main bill is electricity and salaries? £5 per month margin for bt on 8m connections is more than acceptable in my eyes so £10 is a joke.

 

[stude1983]

I agree with Tiscali being poor at times but a quick call to their customer service and simply ask.

how many times must you ring them get the service you need. tbh ive tried and still got nowhere.

 

[Cowuuube]

Am I the only person who is having problems with sky broadband? We purchased it in November and throughout the Christmas holiday i ad to suffer with near constant connection problems.

If I were to use the net all day by night time I would be suffering from constant unusable internet. My connection would start to lag seriously (speedtests were showing up and down speeds of like 1kbps) and eventually nothing would respond. If I restarted the router it would generally fix it for between <1 min to 30 mins but it always happened, everyday. £10 package.

Just glad I'm back at uni, although I'm getting 30kbps when I'm supposed to be getting 2meg at least i can use it at any time :|

 

[Mr Joshua]

No complaints about Sky here, infact it doesn't disconnect half as much as Nildram used to. Considering I pay less now and I get Sky TV I think it's a bargain.