A self employed person can work from home, but Adrian is comparing a person using their home connection for home use things.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

That was before Openreach became an entity, but the 0.5 Mbps was a BT restriction, there was 0.5 Mbps, 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps services, the higher two were insanely fast. Then we had "rate adaptive" ADSL up to a theoretical 8Mbps. Some of these delays is why the government created LLU and companies such as C&W and TalkTalk rented space in a local exchange, and offered ADSL2+ years before what became Openreach.

Most of that is why this site was founded, I remember getting 0.5 Mbps with Pipex and it was revolutionary, as it was half the price of BT's Openworld service that came with the frog/stingray USB thing that was unreliable. Of course this site started as ADSLguide.org.uk and switched to thinkbroadband.com later.

I remember the day we had ADSL installed and seeing the speed of a photo appear on the screeen of the installer laptop.
I remember this site being ADSLguide.

I've used more modems... 2400 bps dialling up bulletin boards, and the microsoft BBS was very useful for patches even in the Windows 3.0/3.1 days. Then moved upto 9600, then 14400 then 28800 and eventually a "56k" which most of the time ran at 33600bps.

I was on the internet just about when i changed to a PC from the Amiga, I was using Demon if i remember correctly.

We had 6 BBC micros when I got to the upper 6th, the school was given a single Archimedes, and then had to buy a room full of Windows 3.0 computers from RM to teach the National Curriculum computing to the coming year. Completely confused all the teachers. The upper 6th taught the teachers how to use a mouse!

The first coimputer I used was a torch at college, if i remember correctly they had something to do with the BBC micro producing peripherals.

The chip in the Mac might use similar instructions from ARM (first = Acorn RISC machines, then and now Advanced RISC machines) but the instructions have moved on a long way. Apple's internal design house have done some incredible things with their design licence.

No doubt, but still crazy to think that it was originally a British company it all came from.

One of your sweeping statements. Do you know what I need, or what I do? No, you don't. I work with people that move hundreds of gigabyte files around, and they want to work from home. Some have moved house to get to an Alt Net with faster upload than Openreach will offer.

That might seem obscure, but in 70 million people in the UK there is a lot of room for the obscure!

That is why i said most and not all.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

"
I think Adrian was referring to home users not work users from home.

Yes, the majority of people i know would not notice the difference between 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s, in fact some could go to 70Mb/s and they would not notice.
I do know some people who makes use of faster speed, even I find it useful now and yet I was never bothered about it . I doubt I would ever need to go above 500Mb/s

What I am bothered about is people being sold speeds for high prices they don't need and then they keep paying for these speeds they are not using. Like the days when people got sold super-fast computers and yet all they needed one for was to do a bit of browsing and maybe some office type work. so they ended up with a machine that cost a bomb with high spec video cars, lots of memory and superfast CPU that they would never take advantage off.

You could say it was future proof, but technology used to move fast, so even their super duper fast machine would be out of date pretty quick,


One of my brothers got himself a cheap machine a couple of years ago with a N100 CPU in, only need it for word, a bit of browsing and that is it. Does the job.
Got a second machine for producing music, which is a bit more powerful

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

What I am bothered about is people being sold speeds for high prices they don't need and then they keep paying for these speeds they are not using. Like the days when people got sold super-fast computers and yet all they needed one for was to do a bit of browsing and maybe some office type work. so they ended up with a machine that cost a bomb with high spec video cars, lots of memory and superfast CPU that they would never take

Yes, there is something wrong in our society, but this isn't a broadband only problem.

Most people need a "good enough" connection, which both coax cable or fibre optics provide. Some people need high speed for various reasons (my friends are PC based gamers).

The ISPs just upsell all the time, no different to shops.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Yes, there is something wrong in our society, but this isn't a broadband only problem.

Most people need a "good enough" connection, which both coax cable or fibre optics provide. Some people need high speed for various reasons (my friends are PC based gamers).

The ISPs just upsell all the time, no different to shops.

For gamers it is ping more than speed, but speed will download games quicker. I had to redo my PC a few weeks ago and reinstalled the games I have, I should have backed them up to be honest. On my 500Mb/s, it took a few hours, with my FTTC 36Mb/s, I think it would have taken a few days

Take one of my brothers, he doesn't really stream, but i keep trying to get him to. He browse the web, maybe listen to some online music and that is about it. His old FTTC was fine, he has now got 200Mb/s FTTP via Zzoomm, never ever, going to get anywhere near using that. But it was cheaper than Talk Talk at £24 a month for 24 months.
The one thing I know about Zzoomm is that they leave you alone, they don't try to up sell, well they have not to me anyway.
A mate is with Sky, broadband only and the amount of emails he get trying to get him to get Sky TV or go faster with his broadband. They phone him as well and yet he has put on his communications preferences, not to contact him. He is moving to zzoomm when his contract is over.

You are right, up selling is a thing everywhere.

I would also move to another ISP if they kept marketing at me, agreed. I don't have that issue with Virgin Media thankfully as I don't have any other choice for a high speed ISP.

My friends kids play PC games which are hundreds of gigabytes and get patches all the time of hundreds of gigabytes, this is one of the use cases driving high speed download.