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Caged

Caged

Caged

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I'm going slightly crazy trying to sort out some decent(ish) connectivity for a site with nothing particularly useful in the way of options, and I just wanted to check that there aren't some services that I've forgotten about or if the prices I've had back are taking the mick.

First up we have Fusion who have quoted me £280/month for 10Mbps EFM with no install costs on a 3 year agreement (otherwise it's £1850) which is a 4 pair copper service.

Anrews & Arnold's quick quote offered me a 20Mbps Etherflow on a 100Mb/s Etherway for £868/month with a £3k install.

None of Fluidata's cheaper products (VOX) are available at this location and they are coming back to me with EFM pricing but I can't see them beating £280.

The end client has absolutely no need for anything special regarding SLAs, but they tend to come with these sorts of services. I even looked at fixed 4G but it's not particularly mature yet and the bandwidth limitations and lack of static address space make it a non-starter.

I've been quoted £14k for a fibre cabinet which is honestly looking like the best option at the moment as long as the up-front costs can be met.

Anyone else got any ideas?
 
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Yeah they'd need at least 10 up, on a 12/1.5 ADSL2+ connection at the moment and it's painful especially since a large part of the day could be sending 300MB media content files to clients.

I've tried explaining how doing media work should mean you can afford £400+ easily for your connection as long as you're charging a decent rate for the work but they'd rather spend time trying to acquire a moon attached to a stick for broadband prices. I just need to be able to confidently say we exhausted all options that we could find.

Thanks for reminding me about Gradwell, used them in the past and they've been very helpful. I'll get them to throw their quote into the ring.
 
Just a note on the mention of SDSL, BTW are pulling SDSL out of exchanges which have been upgraded to 21CN this year. I've got a Excel file somewhere which lists the end of service dates for many exchanges.

Any LLU providers on their Exchange which might work out cheaper with their own backhaul?
 
More somebody like EasyNet - I've had assorted quotes from them in the past eg EtherStream. I think sure their SureStream is bonded SDSL (not BTW based IIRC), so goes up to 8Mbps (so close to 10).

What area is the site?
 
Oh, right. I've looked at the various bonding options and they come close to one of the prices I've been quoted for a 20/20 on a 100Mbps fibre circuit but with worse SLAs and half the speed, which I think is the best I'm going to get. Site is connected to EMLGHBO.
 
Aye, 20 on 100 looks like a good option. You can usually get free install on a 3 or 5 year contract (excludes any ECCs though)
 
Look at satellite. If you are only sending big files and not planning on gaming on the line then latency is no issue.
 
Satellite tops out at 20/6 with a data cap for the same price as a 10Mbps EFM product - it's really the last resort option which we aren't quite at yet.

I think 20 on 100 fibre is going to be the way to go for this, over 3 years it's cheaper than gap funding the FTTC cabinet and comes with a better service.
 
Virgin Media available in the area? It's a last ditch but there's starting to be a movement towards EoC/BSoD (that's Ethernet over Coax or Business Service over DOCSIS respectively) among the cable operators.

We don't do cable in the UK but we're rolling EoC out in some of out North American markets currently and pricing is reasonable. For us at least, it's not just consumer broadband relabelled, it's handled differently in the network and has better support etc..

http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.u...and-and-Internet-Services/Business-Broadband/

Suggests there is something available in the UK, I can't speak for how good it is though.

* Disclaimer, I am one of Virgin Media's greatest critics, I think the consumer product is pure junk and as a company they're useless (including, perhaps particularly, the VM business arm), so I'd exhaust other options before you even look at this.
 
There is available in the area but not at that address. It seems to live in a small pocket of terrible connectivity.
 
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