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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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It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
(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.