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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 09 2019, @10:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the betteridge-says-no dept.

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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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday August 09 2019, @12:34PM (1 child)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Friday August 09 2019, @12:34PM (#877867) Journal

    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)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @01:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @01:34PM (#877885)

    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.

    20% of respondents also said they don’t think it will make much difference to the quality of their service

    Well, I certainly didn't here. The only difference is in stability for VPN.

    they weren’t sure it was available where they live.

    We have a website for this? All ISPs have a street lookup available.

    Customers typically move from a cheaper introductory deal on to a pricier standard tariff once their contract period ends.

    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.

    In July, standard tariffs for ADSL broadband ranged from £14.50 to £33. On the other hand, introductory offers for superfast services started at £17.50

    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.