I'm prepared to pay £3 for every Meg of throughput if everyone else is.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Woe is me, my £10 a month is not buying me cutting edge broadband - what a surprise.
Harsh words, but perhaps a grain of truth.

Not harsh words at all. We completely agree. However it's not £10 a month; take here for instance. Zen Internet = setup fee £133, monthly about £30 for 10GB/mo. Yes, I am lumping the line rental, setup and the broadband together. I have no desire for a telephone service. Ironically, with a 1750kbps profile, there's little point paying for a quality ISP which is a factor worth considering.

Where is my option to pay, say, £150 a month? Well, there isn't one, since there is only one infrastructure provider. Ah, but this is a rural area, you might thnk, so that's fair enough. Except the identical situation is true in parts of WGC which is what makes me raise it as just one example.

I seem to rcecall a thread about a couple being quoted £16k to install a line because they foolishly put a business in the middle of nowhere without checking the basics. Now, surely, in our, cough, competitive market place, they can reject that quote and shop around, can't they? Well, no.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

So we have Welwyn Garden City and Milton Keynes as two terrible broadband not-spots, strange when parts of MK are getting FTTP so someone is doing something about it, WGC has VM cable in place, and WiMAX was/is coming to parts of MK at one time.

That FTTP trial seems to have been gong on since before I was born. The commercial issues in Milton Keynes are like a little microcosm of the wider UK. BT don't need to hurry, since people have no alternative, and they have nothing to lose. In fact, given that FTTC makes little more money than ADSL, BT would be mad to rush. it's not in their interests to do so. Repeat for the whole of the UK. The only dynamic that's changing is that people are dumping landlines and 4G/LTE is on the way.

I've often thought that there's a fair amount of denial about true ADSL speeds. I'd believed it was BT's contention that something like 93% of lines can do 2meg. Leaving aside how pathetic 2meg is, I cannot imagine that figure is anywhere near accurate. I'll bet our line wasn't included in the list of "can't get 2 meg" since it's 3.6km long.

You have "lab figures" for attenuation at various line lengths, but that presumes a specific gauge of copper. Then you have the BT network.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

ADSL when it started at 0.5 and 2Meg in the UK, back in 2000 was limited to 42dB attenuation lines at just 400 exchanges at launch time. Fully rate adaptive was not for some years, and the record line length is some 10km for ADSL working over it.

ADSL availability isn't the issue. Broadband availability is the issue.

Is it fair to chastise BT for that? No, not really. BT is doing what any monopoly would do. I no more expect to be able to get a broadband service from British Gas, EDF Energy or Arriva buses than I do from BT. If BT wants to remain stuck in "telephone company" land, that's fine. But the current setup is doing nobody any good except some shareholders.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The claim that people will not pay more then £10 a month is plainly daft and demonstratably so.

Go on, then, demonstrate it

Personally I don't think a specific figure can be proved either way but what is obvious is that price is the most common factor in most discussions when people are choosing ISP. Performance is often mentioned but usually it's just a generic moan about ISPs. It's uncommon to see anyone except experienced and knowledgeable users linking the two.

Pretty much all the best performing ISPs are the expensive ones and most of them have a small market share. Be/O2 can give people on their exchanges (75% of the population I think) what acts like an uncontended connection. 85% of sync speed 24/7. They can do that for less than £20pcm. Yet Be/O2 are a minority ISP.

Personally I'd say most people won't go above £20pcm and a lot think that £10pcm is too much. Very few home users would be prepared to go above £20pcm.

I think that's probably true. Unfortunately, business users who *would* pay more get left with no options. We cannot seriously accept that it's reasonable for a startup or SME to have to pay thousands of pounds for installation and hundreds of pounds a month for broadband (leased line).

This article does suggest that people might pay more, but then, it's a survey on a broadband website which is not necessarily representative of the wider public you're describing in your post.

I think there's a difference between people being willing to pay a tiny additional tax to fund a pot than simply see increased line rental vanish into the ether, like the road tax funds which are not ringfenced.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/04/11/uk-inter...

I do think that the public's lack of knowledge comes into this, and indeed this is what advertising plays on. You and I know that "up to 24Mbps" is going to probably mean somewhere between 1.5Mbps and maybe 7Mbps. Practically nobody will get above 21Mbps.

I suspect the public think that ADSL2+ "Up to 24Mbps" means they'll get something up to 24Mbps depending on some unknown factor like contention, but that service is faster than VM's "Up to 20Mbps" whereas the latter will almost always outperform the former from a max speed perspective.

It's all in the marketing, designed to obfuscate and to keep people uneducated.

I think you are overplaying local wiring issues.

eg. if I look at the tbb map feature which shows coloured dots based on speedtests and estimated speeds. My entire area is mainly red dots with the odd yellow or green dot, which is more likely?
(a) 99% of people have bad wiring and the 1% green setup properly.
(b) the area simply is a victim of a long poor local loop and the odd green dot somehow have better routed lines.

There is also certianly many city/town areas that have long/poor lines. I agree with the previous poster the rural thing has been overhyped somewhat, they do have poor lines but so do city areas.

not sure where this thoery comes from there is a lack of interest, iplayer and 4od have certianly had interest and they are both VOD platforms. People have also welcomed sky's new on demand service even to the point people have joined skybb just to use it. Yes its not 10s of millions of people but its taking off. It wil of course accelerate should infrastructure improve as currently its hard to supply a decent VOD service with the current state of broadband affairs.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Woe is me, my £10 a month is not buying me cutting edge broadband - what a surprise.
Harsh words, but perhaps a grain of truth.

So we have Welwyn Garden City and Milton Keynes as two terrible broadband not-spots, strange when parts of MK are getting FTTP so someone is doing something about it, WGC has VM cable in place, and WiMAX was/is coming to parts of MK at one time.

ADSL when it started at 0.5 and 2Meg in the UK, back in 2000 was limited to 42dB attenuation lines at just 400 exchanges at launch time. Fully rate adaptive was not for some years, and the record line length is some 10km for ADSL working over it.

Where have other countries rolling out FTTC/Docsis/FTTP networks started roll-outs - densely populated areas.

blame ofcom for that and even sites like this at various points of time pushing for lower prices. consumers will naturally go for cheaper deals, but make no mistake, if the cheap deals ceased to exist tommorow they would 'not' cancel, they would moan and groan but they would pay the bigger price, proven with gas/electric/petrol/sky amongst other things. No one is pointing a gun to BT infinity saying you must charge adsl prices for your fttc service even tho your competitors charge significantly more, no one is telling plusnet to sell non LLU adsl for under £10 a month, these are decisions they make themselves.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

TalkTalk is moving on it seems, fibre boost, am sure others will follow once take-up of FTTC means they see customers choosing the faster services.

When LLU can do the average speeds for just a tenner month though, who is going to almost double the cost of their broadband, to save a few minutes on downloads.

Only people I can see doing this are:

1. Geeks
2. Homes with multiple people using broadband
3. Those using video rental services e.g. PS3/Xbox - 8GB movies take a while at 5Mbps
4. People working from home, but don't want to buy a decent business service.

On number 4, fuel costs are getting to the point, that metro ethernet might be cheaper than commuting for some people, and give the ultra high speeds and reliability needed.

The problem is so easily fixed tho.

stop selling high speed broadband for low prices. Whats so hard about it?

sell a 0.5mbit service for £10 (not less), 8mbit should be no less than £20-25 and double digit speeds keep above the £30 mark. Isp's need to stop been scared of churn, if someone threatens to leave let them, remove retentions departments.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 12-Apr-11 03:16:30)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Complete rubbish. I guess you work for BT or sub contract for them. Most people pay far more then £10 for a poor service the average is over £20 a month

Plenty of people will pay a reasonable amount for fast Broadband the problem is not that they will not pay but that it is not available.

BT have never been able to sell or market their services.

People will happilly spend a small fortune on mobile phones and on apps & Broadband for mobiles because these people no how to market & sell & upsell.

very true points actually, I even commented myself that BT have 'undersold' infinity.

As I said before also, people spend lots on sky tv, lots on mobiles, lots on booze etc. The money is there but the market is broken by an obsession to get high takeup.

How mrsaffron can argue people refuse to pay when its not proven, BT have simply not offered such a service, eg. I could pay aaisp £35 a month for a dodgy 5mbit adsl service, or I could pay plusnet £10 a month for a dodgy 5mbit adsl service, however I cant pay say £50 a month for a good adsl service because the option simply isnt there.

Consumers take whats been offered, simply stop offering it.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

TalkTalk is moving on it seems, fibre boost, am sure others will follow once take-up of FTTC means they see customers choosing the faster services.

When LLU can do the average speeds for just a tenner month though, who is going to almost double the cost of their broadband, to save a few minutes on downloads.

Only people I can see doing this are:

1. Geeks
2. Homes with multiple people using broadband
3. Those using video rental services e.g. PS3/Xbox - 8GB movies take a while at 5Mbps
4. People working from home, but don't want to buy a decent business service.

On number 4, fuel costs are getting to the point, that metro ethernet might be cheaper than commuting for some people, and give the ultra high speeds and reliability needed.

The problem is so easily fixed tho.

stop selling high speed broadband for low prices. Whats so hard about it?

sell a 0.5mbit sevrice for £10 (not less), 8mbit should be no less than £20-25 and double digit speeds keep above the £30 mark. Isp's need to stop been scared of churn, if someone threatens to leave let them, remove retentions departments.

Here's one idea: define what broadband and super-fast broadband is.

For hopefully the last time, lets use that WGC example. That area is a large sprawling 80s build development of maybe 400 homes.

Perhaps 300 of them can get ADSL. None of them can get broadband.

If we had a definition of what constitutes broadband - which I'd suggest is 4Mbps rising by 1Mbps per year - then you would have a "people power" aspect with perhaps a quarter of this country beginning to question why they have no access to broadband.

This avoids price controls which might encourage ISPs to refuse to supply, and focuses attention.

If super-fast broadband takes this to something like 30Mbps down and 3Mbps up then BT's FTTC rollout can be referred to as BT's FTTC rollout, not the rollout of superfast broadband, and Virgin Media have an incentive to get their upstream speeds improved.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

3. This I can relate to having run a number of online clubs in the past - the audience is probably towards the younger age range which leads to "disciples" of various ISPs "bitching" and a general level of rudeness on here which you wouldn't get in public nor do you get on other forums.

Reading through this thread in its entirety, I felt I should qualify the above since it doesn't read all that positively, does it.

It is *not* a "fault" of this forum. Personally, I think the moderators do an excellent job considering the role doesn't come with a salary. In fact that statement would be true even if it did which makes it the more remarkable.

Anyway, back to the topic.