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According to Ofcom, speeds of 24Mbps are currently available to 94 per cent of premises. Yet only 45 per cent have signed up, sticking with their poxy standard ADSL packages of around 11-12Mbps.
A survey of 3,000 customers by Which? suggests that the most common reason for not bothering to upgrade was because people felt happy with their current speeds.
So if people can't be arsed to upgrade from creaking ADSL services to the much-derided "superfast" fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) speeds, why on earth are they going to bother with the far more expensive full-fibre speeds?
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Do Brits Really Even Want Full Fibre?
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Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.
-- Spock, "The Enterprise Incident", stardate 5027.4
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Friday August 09 2019, @10:37AM (25 children)
That's because 24Mbps is a joke. If they offered 100Mbps that would be worth the upgrade, and people would be like, "hey, that extra speed is massive, might be worth significantly reducing download times". And since most people have shitty slow speed, the web sites and streaming sites are optimising for slow users, so everything still works.
Now offer much faster speeds and people will start to upgrade, then sites will start to bloat again, and more people will feel like "my internet is slowing down, time to upgrade". "Again."
ADSL is good enough for basic audio and most current video streaming, and web surfacing. That's a huge percentage of people right there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Friday August 09 2019, @11:40AM (20 children)
I was surprised by that as well, 24Mbps is slower than the cheapest throttled fibre we have here, the crappy near-unusable base rate that they use to persuade customers to go for better plans. Heck, it's one-third the speed of my VDSL connection. If I was offered 24Mbps fibre I wouldn't go for it either.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 09 2019, @02:03PM (19 children)
Why?
I mean, I understand that gaming can require high speeds. I'm not a gamer, nor is anyone in my household. (The few resource intensive games I do play, I only play locally.)
I recently went through a switch with a cable company, and I had to choose a speed. My choices were either to pay for 25 Mbps or pay $15/month more for 250 Mbps. (And there were a couple higher tiers.) At first I was tempted by the latter, but then I wondered what the heck I'd do with it. Even on my largest TV, I find the quality difference between HD and SD to be barely noticeable most of the time. (If I rent a movie, and it's $1 or $2 cheaper for SD, I take the discount.) I'll grant that some people want to be able to see the nosehairs and pores on actor's faces, so let's say we want HD. (And recent movies seem to be more filmed with large screens in mind, so I can understand in those cases.)
Netflix recommends at least 5 Mbps [netflix.com] for HD streaming, as do many other tech sites (not those trying to sell you on high speed internet). That seems pretty accurate. Just to ensure I was getting what I needed, after I got my new 25 Mbps internet connection, I set four different devices streaming at the same time -- at least two of them definitely in HD. No hiccups at all. The last one might have buffered a bit longer to get started for a few seconds. I've clocked my internet connection repeatedly, and it's always been 23-26 Mbps.
Maybe the issue is that people aren't getting that full speed? Otherwise, I struggle to imagine what I'd need more speed for. On the rare occasion I download very large files, they are usually operating system updates or something, and I don't mind just setting the download going and coming back 10 or 20 minutes later. I suppose I might be able to avoid the 5-10 second buffering/blurry bit at the beginning of video streaming, but unless we're streaming a bunch of videos at once (a pretty rare event), I usually don't even notice that. (And with Netflix autoplay and such these days, even those 5 seconds of blur are rare as it's continuously buffering something to get ready for the next stream, it seems.)
I'm not saying people might not have applications (like gaming, or super high def video, or they have five kids who all like to simultaneously stream on multiple devices at the same time) that require higher speeds. But I imagine the majority of people can survive perfectly fine with something like 25 Mbps. It's hardly a "crappy near-unusable base rate," though if you listen to the internet company propaganda, they'll probably try to convince you as such. I believe my internet provider said the 25 Mbps level was only adequate for "basic email and web browsing" or something. If I wanted to stream "HQ video," I'd need the 250 Mbps. I call serious BS on such claims, if the numbers they are quoting you are accurate at all. I had to argue with the customer service person when I called up to get the cable internet, who wanted to take me through a list to see what speed I needed to "meet my needs," but I right out refused. I asked for a number because I knew their propaganda was BS.
I'm surprised not to see more informed opinions here. Do I have "premium" internet? Absolutely not. I do need to wait for large downloads, and I might experience a few seconds of blur when beginning streaming. That's about the only thing I can think of to criticize in my "crappy near-unusable base rate" internet.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 09 2019, @02:16PM
Just to show my opinion is not unusual, look at what Tom's Guide [tomsguide.com] says, only a couple months ago:
Again, there are plenty of situations where you might want more speed, as that article discusses. But most families probably don't even use the 24 Mbps, so it's understandable why many customers in the UK would be happy with half of that.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Friday August 09 2019, @03:05PM (15 children)
Gaming doesn't require super high speeds. Yes, it does require a certain amount of bandwidth, but the key is low latency. I moved and had to switch Fixed Wireless providers. Now, I'm at 25Mbps down and 5Mbps and my previous issues with online games have melted away. Of course my ping went from 100-200ms to 12ms.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @03:40PM (8 children)
Instant gratification when download new games. When you buy a new game that is 10-20GB you want to play it, not wait 2 hours.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 09 2019, @04:12PM (5 children)
Don't forget the typical day one 50 GB patches. That's over 4 hours if saturating the entire 25 Mbps connection.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:30AM (4 children)
I'm not saying it doesn't happen - but which OS is sending out patches of that size?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:11PM (3 children)
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/10/physical_copies_of_black_ops_4_require_50gb_day_one_update_on_ps4 [pushsquare.com]
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/444534/50gb-update-wtf [elderscrollsonline.com]
https://www.dualshockers.com/fallout-76-patch-50gb/ [dualshockers.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/5nwv7v/50gb_updates_are_ridiculous/ [reddit.com]
I think you can find patches of this size for online distributed PC games but they seem to be more common on consoles.
50 GB is the capacity of a dual-layer Blu-ray disc. So what is probably going on here is that people buy a physical copy, then have to download the update, which is the size of an entire game, directly to the hard drive of their console.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:17PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:47PM (1 child)
If your home connection is capped at 25 Mbps, torrenting (which could be done behind the scenes in some updaters, although I don't know which ones) won't allow it to go above that. You're still spending at least ~4.5 hours to grab 50 GB.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:58PM
I know.
But if you only need such a large bandwidth for rare occasions, it would make sense to torrent and thereby allow others to make better use of the available bandwidth at the same time. As others have pointed out, very few people actually need 100MB to meet a family's needs. What is a 4 hour wait?
It seems to me to be a very inefficient (and selfish) way to share what, at the end of the day, is still a limited resource - even if that resource is becoming more plentiful every day.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 09 2019, @11:01PM (1 child)
I mean, I guess I understand that. But it's a pretty expensive premium to pay just to avoid waiting a couple hours. How often do you download new games? With my internet provider, paying for the next step up in speed would have cost me $15/month plus taxes, so likely over $200/year. I get why some people pay for Amazon Prime to get stuff within a couple days rather than a couple weeks (sometimes you need emergency supplies or whatever) -- plus they get a bunch of movie and video content and other perks, but that's a lot less money then we're talking about here.
Everyone had his own life priorities, so I'm not judging anyone. I just wonder when we transitioned to a culture where we can't wait an hour or two to be entertained by a new purchase. I noticed it about 7 years ago when Netflix stopped buffering videos and instead would simply start playing them immediately at a lower quality rather than give you a 5-10 second delay (maybe longer on slower connections). I found that incredibly annoying, as I'd prefer to have an option to watch the first few seconds in high quality when it actually matters (and isn't just credits), but we just moved to a situation where apparently people aren't willing to even wait 10 seconds to watch a film.
I get that people don't want to waste time. But I'm not sure I've ever felt this compulsive need to get a piece of entertainment RIGHT NOW so much so that I'm willing to pay a large premium rather than just do something else for a couple hours until said item arrives.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 12 2019, @02:02PM
Fast food places survive, because people can't be bothered to make their own food. Don't be surprised, when people's addiction to instant gratification leads to what you might call dumb things.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @05:04PM (1 child)
i agree.
i am "stuck" on 30/10 VDSL2 'cause i am to lazy to dig a trench, drill concrete etc. etc. for the phiberoptics (one-loooong-continues-cable).
however, i did it for neighbors.
the technology is GPON, so it's like wifi but inside a tiny glass pipe: shared (broadcast) download, time-slotted upload.
the download speed is massive. bursty, it goes all the way to 500/500.
but i still prefer my VDSL2 just because of the lag.
once the GPON starts, it downloads massively but so far it doesn't beat the response time of VDSL2(*).
i am a bit of a "surfer" not a "streamer" so your mileage will vary.
(*) same internet provider for both technologies, same package price, same DNServer configured, same config: isp-router/modem in bridgemode (yes, a GPON modem can be put in bridge mode) with a ubiquiti Edgerouter X.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:00AM
Yeah, GPON. It's great when you're the first customer on the OLT because you've got a dedicated optical link to the core network.
Then a few more people join up and things are at about 50% capacity and you start to get performance about what's advertised.
Then more people join up and things are at 100% capacity and you're noticing lag and dropouts at peak times.
Then even more people join up and things are at 200% capacity and you get nothing but "buffering..." messages mid-evening when you want to watch a movie.
Then more people join up and things are at 400% capacity and even web surfing is starting to lag.
And they're still signing up more users, because there's no limit to how may times you can oversell your network.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 09 2019, @06:22PM (1 child)
That's right. For online gaming, latency is far more important than bandwidth-- as long as your bandwidth is at least 56k. I had a problem with my router in which every 15 seconds or so, packets were delayed for 1 to 1.5 seconds. The longer the router went between reboots, the worse the delay got. Couldn't even play slither.io.
Sure, you don't want to wait hours for a slow connection to deliver patches. But there are ways around that. It can be worth taking a laptop to some place with a fast connection, updating the game on it, then copying the updated files to your desktop machine at home. Patchers don't care how a file was updated. I don't go that far. I'll let one computer update online, then have my other computers copy the updates from it. My 100M Ethernet LAN is quite a bit faster than my WAN. I suppose I should upgrade to 1G Ethernet some day.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 12 2019, @02:08PM
56kbps up is probably too little to host your own server. I like playing games like Space Engineers where I host my own world and my friend joins me. Still, 5mbps is likely way overkill for that. I probably wouldn't notice, if they throttled me back to 1Mbps upload, since I normally wouldn't be using that much bandwidth for uploading.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 09 2019, @10:45PM (1 child)
Thanks for the clarification. I thought it was mostly low latency that gamers were after, but I've seen a lot of discussion online where gamers have chimed in and said they really need their ultra high bandwidth connections, too, so I assumed they were using them for something.
But that just makes me even more mystified at the vitriol displayed in the post I was replying to (as well as the summary and some other posts here) where 24-25 Mbps is apparently so ungodly slow that no one on the planet could find it usable anymore.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 12 2019, @01:56PM
Well, it is kind of hard to play COD:Black Ops 4, stream to all your Twitch followers, download torrents, and stream Netflix all at the same time. So, 25Mbps might get a bit dicey in that situation . . . Though, there's also the Multiple GB patches that some games put out. They want to play when they want to play, so waiting 30 minutes or more to play would be the end of the world.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:54AM
I wasn't really saying that I needed more speed, but that paying more for (snort) 24Mbps fibre was a joke because I can get cheaper A/VDSL that offers the same or better service. In my case I'm getting > 60Mbps on VDSL compared to the throttled/crippled 30Mbps cheapest-price fibre, and because it's GPON you're lucky to get anywhere near even that throttled rate mid-evening when everyone's streaming video. So even if you're OK with an advertised rate of 24Mbps, it depends what rate you're actually getting. From a quick google it looks like the UK uses PON as well, and if they're underprovisioning their infrastructure to save costs like they do here you'll be lucky to stream video at peak demand times.
Another problem is web page bloat, if you're browsing $random_ecommerce_site and open a dozen tabs for comparison-shopping, where each tab is 5-10MB of images and JS and animations and bloat, you're going to notice the difference between 24Mbps and 100Mbps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:56PM
Ah, here we have the usual moron with a "low bandwidth is fine for me, so it's fine for everyone else!!!!!!" rant.
High bandwidth such as gigabit or more allows for faster backups of our home machines, it allows for faster transfer of photos or videos to relatives, multiple 4k streams, software updates. It allows for much smoother full desktop remote work, such that my partner can basically just use the Tinker Board I've setup for her as a remote terminal, but still have a smooth desktop, with all the software her job requires, including teleconferencing, for those days she doesn't need to go to the office.
My parents also wouldn't settle for anything below 100Mbit/s symmetrical, especially given that my father's also seriously into photography, and at that point, you basically throw high-res RAW images around, debating exposure settings, cropping etc, experimenting with each other's photos etc.
So, I'd say that it's even more likely that people avoid doing a lot of things with their computers, because their connections are so slow that it becomes too disruptive, with too much waiting.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday August 09 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
I had AT&T 24mb (I forgot the up speed, but I think it was 6mb) Uverse for years. It cost me $70/month. Then another $45 for the landline phone service. When Mediacom offered free installation for their 100mb/40(?) package at $50 a month, I jumped on it. While I was getting by on 24mb, the ability to give AT&T the middle finger was irresistible. Plus getting four times the speed for 30% less was a no-brainer. I replaced the $45/month landline service with a $45/month family cell plan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @01:36PM
Do they try to force you to pay extra to have a 'phone line' on a fiber connection?
(Score: 2) by shipofgold on Friday August 09 2019, @01:39PM (1 child)
I still haven't figured out what I need 100Mbs for .... 95% of the time there are just two people in the house, and we are watching the same streaming video. Netflix, AmazonPrime, Youtube all stream well at 24Mbs. Even when we are watching 2-3 streams simultaneously (Netflix + 2x Youtube), I never have problems.
My kids play online games without problem (to my knowledge) when they are home at 24Mbs.
So what do I need the other 75Mbs for?
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday August 09 2019, @01:55PM
4 Adults and 2 teenagers in my house. The 56Mbps is no way near enough. We could eat 100mb easily.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Only_Mortal on Friday August 09 2019, @10:39AM (2 children)
A post from El Reg... the SlashDot of the UK.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PiMuNu on Friday August 09 2019, @01:15PM (1 child)
> the SlashDot of the UK.
But with better humour. And original articles (not just summaries).
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Friday August 09 2019, @03:55PM
But with retro Brit slang. 'Poxy'?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @11:03AM (4 children)
I have FTTC, but I don't really need it. Who's downloading such large stuff that it matters if it takes a few more minutes? As long as we've got enough bandwidth to stream 2 youtube videos and 1 netflix, that's pretty much the absolute peak, anything above that is pointless.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday August 09 2019, @11:12AM (1 child)
Back when I had a 14.4k modem, I also couldn't imagine that you would need a megabit connection just to display a few websites …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Chocolate on Friday August 09 2019, @12:41PM
That was before websites became multi megabyte monsters needing DSL bandwidth to be usable. Who could foretell how congested the net would become way back then. It was all about speed and optimisation in the beginning. Now it's a game of who can scrape your data the best.
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday August 09 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
You don't have a fickle teenage son with a large steam library and limited hard disk space.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @03:14PM
I do, I just like to punish him by making him experience the same delay I used to get loading games off cassette. :D
(Score: 2) by aim on Friday August 09 2019, @11:25AM
I'm not sure how it's marketed in the UK, but in my home country fibre (or VDSL, where fibre is not physically present yet) lines feature much higher upstreams than plain old ADSL - typically at half the downstream.
I'll grant I may not be the normal user, in that I run my own server from home, but I felt this said upstream to be a huge boon. As soon as fibre became available, I went for it, and never looked back. I'm still at those 100Mbit/s downstream (with 50Mbit/s upstream), where I don't feel a need to upgrade so far. 1Gbit/s would be available, but I don't see any reason to pay the premium.
AFAIK, plain old ADSL is not even available any more, it's only the old connections being kept alive - much as the even older ISDN lines. POTS is mostly gone here, as VOIP is rolled into the fibre offers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Friday August 09 2019, @11:32AM (5 children)
Really? 12 Mbps is no longer enough for more them "simple browsing". I'll call bullshit on that one. It's probably convenience, price and quite frankly that they might not need more speed. They can do all that they want to do and there for there is no need for more. They are not part of the all-streaming-247365-4k-netflix-whatever-crowd.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday August 09 2019, @12:34PM (1 child)
Our house was coping with 2.8Mbps until last month (yes, 2 point 8). Three or four devices, youtube, lots of overnight torrenting.
Now, 40Mbps, as the cost of the 40Mbps oer 25Mbps was small enough (100Mbps was a massive jump)
netflix needs more than 10Mbps to be useable. 12 would work, for "standard definition" (really, watching on most tablets and laptops only requires sd)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @01:34PM
I was paying $60 / month for ADSL2 which ran at 18/1 unreliably. It dropped over 20 times a day which just made using a VPN horrible.
Not too long ago the NBN forced everyone in my area to switch. Failure to do so would result in loss of internet as the lines were disabled.
My ISP rang me several times to try to get me to switch. I asked them why I should pay $10 more per month for the same thing going from a 18/1 ADSL2 connection to a 12/1 fiber connection. More speed! they said. Wrong. More *potential* speed. Same price for nearly half the speed. That, or pay more for the 50 plan, which is really 40Mbps. That sucked.
A lot of the time the ISP calls people in the suburb which has NBN enabled to get them to sign up for $10 more for a jump in speed, from 4M to 40M which is a good deal.
Exetel had a $60 / month for a 50 plan where most ISPs wanted $70 or more so I went with that. It has been most excellent. Not for the speed. I can't see any difference from the 18 DSL provided. For the stability. Far less dropouts. Much better. Netflix works the same.
Well, I certainly didn't here. The only difference is in stability for VPN.
We have a website for this? All ISPs have a street lookup available.
They tried this here too. Dangle a cheaper rate with a 6 month or 12 month limit then jump to a higher rate. It has gotten so bad in the last decade with energy pricing that it's the first trap people tend to look for.
Yes, "introductory"
Let's have a look at https://broadband.which.co.uk/#/?location=&productType=broadband%2Cphone [which.co.uk] linked in TFA.
Ooookay. Showing a bunch of specials doesn't help. I want to know how much this is actually going to cost.
Oh, look, they are trying to charge extra to have a phone line. Even though it doesn't cost them anything extra as it is a soft phone.
There is a sweetheart deal for £27.00 / month / 54 Mb. Ha. What's it really cost?
I see. 37 a month. There you go. Sucking people in for a cheap rate then bumping it up after 12 months.
27 pounds is around 50 AUD.
ADSL broadband ranged from £14.50 to £33.
So, once again, they put fiber in and then want to charge more and wonder why people won't switch.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 09 2019, @12:39PM
For me, its modern games. DCS World, depending on how many modules you own, is about 50 gigs. ARMA III is about 30 gigs. Squad is about 30 gigs also. Elite:Dangerous is 21 gigs.
This impacts updates more than would be expected. If you're used to linux from 1990 to now, when "/bin/ls" gets a patch even if a full install is the size of a DVD, the patched binary is only a couple dozen K. However every time DCS World gets patched, heres another half dozen gig download you have to wait for before the game will start.
It can be modeled as executable software jitter. Sometimes when I want to fly my UH-1H helicopter in DCS World startup (with SSDs) takes about two minutes, sometimes if there's a patch it will take an hour.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 09 2019, @01:50PM
Like other comments here, I only get 2 point 4 Mb ADSL. I have no problem surfing the web although I do not stream video. My television is fed by satellite - which is Freeview i.e. nothing to pay after the initial outlay for the satellite decoder. I find that 120 channels or more sufficient.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday August 09 2019, @07:57PM
My connection is 6mbps, and it's fine not only for web browsing, but streaming HD video and audiobooks. Most sources I download files from (Linux repository, Google Play, BitTorrent, etc.) are much slower than my connection is anyway, so getting a faster connection wouldn't help much there, either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @11:57AM
"far more expensive" to whom exactly? I get a 250mbit up/down fibre for cheaper than the ADSL2+ I had before. And that's in the suburbs not the city center.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 09 2019, @12:42PM
My guess is its easier for streaming services to raise prices, so they do, than semi competitive inet access, so they don't. So inflation marches on, its just people are sending an extra $10 to Netflix not because Netflix asked politely for an upgrade but because they demanded it. If not netflix, then whatever Brits use as a streaming service. Probably tapped out of money from paying BBC licenses, gotta get that propaganda from the govt, LOL.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Oakenshield on Friday August 09 2019, @12:51PM (1 child)
More fiber is good for you whether you want it or not.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 09 2019, @02:32PM
Damn.... beat me to it. :)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday August 09 2019, @01:01PM (4 children)
I don't know what kind of packages they offer in the UK, but in Greece the next step up from 8 Mbps is "up to 24 Mbps", which is usually the only option being offered, with lower speeds only being available to people who haven't bothered to upgrade (and are probably being charged ridiculously high legacy prices). "Up to" may mean anything from 0 to 24; I get about 11 Mbps on my "up to 24 Mbps" line, which is plenty for a home connection, so I wouldn't pay more for an upgrade. Thus, to me, "11-12 Mbps" and "24 Mbs" sound like the same thing: actual speed vs. theoretical maximum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @03:07PM
That's exactly what it is, the ADSL2+ standard maximum.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Friday August 09 2019, @04:20PM (2 children)
I live in the UK, and I assure you we have very little idea what the packages actually deliver. Sure they promote faster, shiner and with added zing, but they are ISPs so we know they are even less honest than our treasonous politicians.
The "boy who cried wolf" applies equally to advertising:
If you keep telling people its cheaper and twice as fast, and they keep discovering there are hidden charges, and its slower, then you will have trouble getting anyone to pay actual money for "bolt-ons".
"Up to" means "absolutely miles away from". I have "BT Professional Broadband" in central London and it is slower than wifi access over GSM in Nigeria (as tested with a Samsung Note 3 on Airtel).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday August 09 2019, @06:01PM (1 child)
So what are these "standard ADSL packages of around 11-12Mbps" to which UK subscribers are sticking? 24 Mbps connections with artificial limits? (According to my ISP, this is exactly what I have; I used to get 17 Mbps, but another ISP, who owns the lines to the DSLAM, started limiting bit rates, to support more customers, without expanding their infrastructure. The funny thing is that, although they did expand their infrastructure eventually, the limits remain.)
As for knowing the actual speed with which you are connected, it's as simple as logging in to your router with a browser. (Which may not be that simple for many people, if they are not given instructions by their ISP. It's usually at 192.168.1.1 though, with the login credentials written at the bottom of the router.)
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Saturday August 10 2019, @09:53AM
Before you can login to the router, you have to sign the contract - and by then you are stuffed.
You can also use an app on your mobile - I used the same one, on the same phone, here in the UK and in Nigeria. Sure "3" in the UK is fastest, but Airtel in Nigeria is faster OTA that
hard wired, landline, FTTC using BT. And using OpenWRT on a BT router (or a Draytek) is at least twice as fast an ten times more reliable than BT's routers with their own firmware.
Also, "they are all in it together" - all the ISPs use the same hardware to the exchange anyway (except Virgin) so you may have a choice of who you pay, but what you get - not so much.
With Virgin (which I am not), the problem is understanding what you will get, and what you have to pay for. The few people I know on Virgin pay a lot for things I don't want,
so I am not going to go with them.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 09 2019, @03:02PM (1 child)
The argument should be over whether we really need 10 Gbps up/down, or can just stick with 1 Gbps up/down.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @05:28PM
also AWESOME peering agreements of the ISP providing fiber would be great.
mostly all the promised speeds are just to local datawhorehouses of the big players like google (incl. youtube), facebook, akamai stuff and M$.
as soon as you hit a "small" website (which might even have a fat connection but isn't housed in a datawhorehouse and is really half a globe away) the peering and routing falls off a cliff and you're back in 56k molasses world.
the technician keeps reminding me that the promised speeds is for the ISP managed network, that is they're hosting a "speedtest.net" server and the speed checks out ... until you manually select a "speedtest.net" server 180 deg. around the globe, probably also hosted by a speed guaranteeing ISP and then ... voila ... your REAL internet speed you're paying for is revealed ^_^
"but who cares! BBbbzzz!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @05:50PM (1 child)
If you're getting reasonably reliable performance and your ISP offers "up to" a much faster throughput rate for a corresponding surcharge, will you take it? What if you've been caught by that lie before? Multiple times.
"Sure, you can get by with x Mbps for $/month, but for $$$/month you can get up to 6x Mbps."
Ooh, that sounds good, sign me up.
Result: now you're paying $$$/month and seeing occasional peak speeds of maybe 1.2x Mbps. When you bitch about it, your ISP points out that 1.2x definitely falls within the "up to 6x" you were promised, so they don't see a valid complaint, thank you, buh-bye.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @10:15PM
For me it is "I am willing to spend X per month on internet". Then I see what speed tiers I can get at that price. If you offer double the speed at double the cost I am not really in the market for that anymore. Want it? Oh sure. Afford it, not so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @08:36PM
That's a marginal increase. What is the Price?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:08AM
Have British homes now become so small that they're referred to as "cabinets"?
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:44PM
The company I work at is moving offices. The new location only had ADSL2+ and no pre-existing fibre option in the area, so we're putting in a Mid-Band Ethernet / Ethernet over copper connection that will give us up to 24Mbps. This is for an office of ~30 people, with another 5 or so people remotely connected via VPN. Oh yeah, and we're an Internet company!
Sure we'll take a quicker connection when it becomes available, but if a business of 30 people simultaneously using a 24Mbit connection can get by, I'm sure a household of 5 or 6 people on a 11Mbps or 12Mbps connection will be just fine. That is, except for the few people doing heavy uploads - high-def video conferencing, streamers, YouTubers, etc. since ADSL isn't symmetrical.
BTW, my home ADSL2+ connection is just over 17Mbps. I would imagine a lot of people (those that live closer to the exchange) have quicker speeds than 12Mbps, unless the ISPs are capping them.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!