'Third of UK postcodes' have slow broadband speeds

[Platypus]

And I bet most of those with below average speeds live outside in rural areas. I they want better speed then why not move to an urban area?

I live in a rural area and get 8Mb (actual **) download speed. Why not move to an urban area? Urrgghh no. I might meet people like you, or worse, Sas.


** Although since my "upgrade" to 24Mb today, I now get 7Mbs !!!! Good old BT

EDIT. On reflection, I guess to you city dwellers, even 8M is a bit tulip.

[doodab]

The thing is, ADSL was good because it made use of the existing phone lines that have been lying in the dirt for donkeys' years, and that makes it cheap. If they'd had to dig up the entire country to install proper cabling, everybody would have better / faster / more reliable connections, but we'd all be paying a whole lot more for broadband than we do.

So it's crap for some because it's cheap, but also it's cheap because it's crap for some.

This is something people tend to forget. Before ADSL came along if you were a small business and you wanted better than dial up speeds you were going to pay £100s a month for even 256k frame relay or ATM connection. 2MB was £1000s and you'd have to pay to have the road dug up etc.

[doodab]

** Although since my "upgrade" to 24Mb today, I now get 7Mbs !!!! Good old BT

That's really more to do with the technology than with BT per se. Good old alcaltel, nokia siemens, fujitsu, huawei and friends. You will probably find that it recovers a bit after training but you're unlikely to see 24mbps outside of a laboratory.

[Platypus]

That's really more to do with the technology than with BT per se. Good old alcaltel, nokia siemens, fujitsu, huawei and friends. You will probably find that it recovers a bit after training but you're unlikely to see 24mbps outside of a laboratory.

I#ll keep a look out. I know that 24 is too much to hope for, but a bit more than 8 would have been nice!

[doodab]

I#ll keep a look out. I know that 24 is too much to hope for, but a bit more than 8 would have been nice!

What will really upset you is when it climbs up quite a bit and gets your hopes up before dropping down again.

[d000hg]

I live in a rural area and get 8Mb (actual **) download speed. Why not move to an urban area? Urrgghh no. I might meet people like you, or worse, Sas.


** Although since my "upgrade" to 24Mb today, I now get 7Mbs !!!! Good old BT

EDIT. On reflection, I guess to you city dwellers, even 8M is a bit tulip.

8 is nothing to complain about.

[VectraMan]

This is something people tend to forget. Before ADSL came along if you were a small business and you wanted better than dial up speeds you were going to pay £100s a month for even 256k frame relay or ATM connection. 2MB was £1000s and you'd have to pay to have the road dug up etc.

When BT first launched the service in 2001 I was able to get 512K for £57 p.m., which was amazing enough, considering the small company I worked for were paying >£10K p.a. for a 512K leased line. I can now get nearly 20Mb over a cable meant only for voice calls stuck in the ground sometime in the 80s (I think). That's a bit like getting i7 performance out of an old Commodore 64.

Can anyone think of a legitimate reason to have more than 8Mb? 8Mb is about the bandwidth of HD TV; the likes of iPlayer is only using something like 1.5Mb on the high quality setting.

I think it's often the people on the outskirts of urban areas that suffer the worst. If you live in a village with its own telephone exchange you probably have it quite good.

[Platypus]

When BT first launched the service in 2001 I was able to get 512K for £57 p.m., which was amazing enough, considering the small company I worked for were paying >£10K p.a. for a 512K leased line. I can now get nearly 20Mb over a cable meant only for voice calls stuck in the ground sometime in the 80s (I think). That's a bit like getting i7 performance out of an old Commodore 64.

Good point and well remembered.

Ah, the old days, eh? Crap, weren't they?

[doodab]

When BT first launched the service in 2001 I was able to get 512K for £57 p.m., which was amazing enough, considering the small company I worked for were paying >£10K p.a. for a 512K leased line. I can now get nearly 20Mb over a cable meant only for voice calls stuck in the ground sometime in the 80s (I think). That's a bit like getting i7 performance out of an old Commodore 64.

Can anyone think of a legitimate reason to have more than 8Mb? 8Mb is about the bandwidth of HD TV; the likes of iPlayer is only using something like 1.5Mb on the high quality setting.

I think it's often the people on the outskirts of urban areas that suffer the worst. If you live in a village with its own telephone exchange you probably have it quite good.

Large downloads like linux distros etc go quicker over a faster connection. For me the main benefit of adsl2 was the faster upload speeds though, and reduced latency so stuff like remote desktop over vpn is actually usable.

I should have my fttc in a few weeks. 10mbit upstream, close to 40 down and no usage capping for £25. Not a bad deal imo.

[VectraMan]

Large downloads like linux distros etc go quicker over a faster connection.

It's strange how all these headline grabbing "state of British broadband" news stories fail to mention users' ability to quickly download Linux distros.