In reply to a post by camieabz:

The mention of ten years got me thinking.

Same here. I've posted this previously on the Be forums:

"I moved into my house in mid '99.

*My first connection was a modem using CompuServe Classic as my ISP. I think that would have been k56 connecting at 44kb but might only have been 33kb.

*Sometime the next year I got Home Highway and connected at either 64kb or if I felt that I could justify the cost 128kb.

*2002 ADSL arrived in Brackley so I got a 2Mb connection. I remember paying for an engineer install because it was the only way to get a free downgrade back to HH if my line couldn't support ADSL. In hindsight that was daft paranoia but at least it left me with a filtered faceplate

*2006 ADSL max arrived and I got the full 8Mb that IPStream could provide.

*2007 Be chucked some kit into my exchange and now I have 13.5Mb during the summer and 12.5Mb during the winter.

Not a bad progression really. Ten years to go from 33k to 13.5Mb. I suppose the next leap will be FTTC and by my estimates that ought to get me at least 30Mb/s maybe closer to 40Mb/s. As to when..hmmm. Probably sometime in the next three years. I hope that since we're a market 3 exchange we will be on the list. On the other hand I remember that we were on the third ADSL rollout list which got canned and became a general roll out."

That was posted December 2009. Shortly afterward I found that my line would support their standard profile so now my speeds are 13.5 winter, 14.2 summer. Brackley has been announced as getting FTTC in December 2011.

So there we have it. 44kb/s to 30Mb/s in 12 years. Not bad for a small rural town

Edited by Andrue (Thu 14-Apr-11 15:12:07)

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Rubbish, DSL is used by many businesses, its used as tail ends of MPLS networks in the UK and across the globe

Indeed. We have a pair of slightly shaky ADSL lines that together give us around 4Mb/s of throughput. That serves four software developers and one hardware engineer. Because almost everyone is on vacation this week I've been working from home. I am part of a trans-Atlantic development team. I'm currently in the process of getting a new release sent out. I've been downloading test data (MS Exchange and SharePoint so not small files) IMing people. Sending emails (far too many damn' emails). I am currently controlling 15 (yeah, I mean 15) machines using Remote Desktop. Four of them are in the US.

Now my home connection is 14Mb/s but that's only being used (as per IT policy) to remote into the other machines so isn't really a factor.

4Mb/s and I'm doing fine. 100Mb/s would be nice..but I'm doing my job quite nicely thank you.

4Mb/s and I'm doing fine. 100Mb/s would be nice..but I'm doing my job quite nicely thank you.

Wouldn't do here at work, we finished an experiment yesterday in which data was streamed at 1Gbps for 24 hours. We were sending to a site in the Netherlands (along with the other participants). Comes to around 11TB for the 24 hours.

We have 3x 1Gbps fibres .

In reply to a post by TheHorseman:

4Mb/s and I'm doing fine. 100Mb/s would be nice..but I'm doing my job quite nicely thank you.

Wouldn't do here at work, we finished an experiment yesterday in which data was streamed at 1Gbps for 24 hours. We were sending to a site in the Netherlands (along with the other participants). Comes to around 11TB for the 24 hours.

We have 3x 1Gbps fibres .

Heh - I think our guys in Brighton probably have something like that. I'm sure the guys in Minneapolis do. They operate one of the biggest computer forensics and electronic disclosure services in the US. The server room is pretty awesome - I think it's a third of their entire campus with a couple of trailers outside containing standby generators.

All a bit of a far cry from a converted barn in the Oxfordshire countryside but we're happy enough

Hmm, sounds like it's the Bob I thought it was.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Rubbish, DSL is used by many businesses, its used as tail ends of MPLS networks in the UK and across the globe

Indeed. We have a pair of slightly shaky ADSL lines that together give us around 4Mb/s of throughput. That serves four software developers and one hardware engineer. Because almost everyone is on vacation this week I've been working from home. I am part of a trans-Atlantic development team. I'm currently in the process of getting a new release sent out. I've been downloading test data (MS Exchange and SharePoint so not small files) IMing people. Sending emails (far too many damn' emails). I am currently controlling 15 (yeah, I mean 15) machines using Remote Desktop. Four of them are in the US.

Now my home connection is 14Mb/s but that's only being used (as per IT policy) to remote into the other machines so isn't really a factor.

4Mb/s and I'm doing fine. 100Mb/s would be nice..but I'm doing my job quite nicely thank you.

my progression for inner city area.

199x - dialup approx 40k
2000 - 512kbit adsl, performed 100% 24/7 however reliability was dodgy with some sync issues lasting hours.
2003 - cable 2 to 10mbit, performed very badly, speeds well below advertised.
2006 - adsl max, speed around 5-6mbit lower than what cable had been offering but I was at least getting speeds in line with my sync speed. during the period of time before I joined ukonline I had a general slow decline in stable sync speed and various faults, and general sync stability issues. Ukonline with SRA gave a boost to stability and allowed me to push the line harder but still barely broke 6mbit. No progression up until I left for VM, Area no prospect for local loop upgrade from BT.
2010 - back to cable, 20mbit unfortenatly walked into congestion hell again with varying performance, however in feb 2011 this finally seems resolved at least for now and have stable 30mbit speeds but on a protocol shaped service.

In this area local loop competition has done nothing in regards to BT improving the local loop, clearly VM existing isnt enough to motivate them. LLU competition has helped prices but thats not what we need now. This is not an area in the middle of nowhere, it has a high population and properties close together. BT clearly happy enough to only serve speeds of a few mbit or so for years to come.

As it stands I think its good we have VM here, 30mbit is satisfactory for current gen and VM capable of 100mbit has a few years of future proofing. BT's service is nothing sort of a joke tho and will be obselete fast.

We don't in reality have local loop competion. All we really have is various companies reselling the BT product with in some case a competitor having some of his own kit in the exchange but it is still pretty much the BT product so there is an illusion of competition but I would not really call that competition

If this Open Network gets off the ground and I see no reason why it should not it will really shake up the market. BT will face very serious competition from a network that will be far more advance then what BT are offering.

The BT FTTC is pretty much out of date now, by the time they complete the roll out it will be well out of date

This open network has some of the best companies in the world on board. They know why the kit can do and they no how to sell and market it.
They can use it to create a proper scools network & local authority networks & banking network. These networks can be made very secure using the latest cryptogrhic systems

The cable network was built for TV services, something which BT's network couldn't offer and thanks to the lack of investment over the years, cannot compete with - this is going to be one of the blocks in getting people to migrate away from VM cable to BT's FTTC service - slower top speeds for those who want them, and a complete lack of a comparable TV service. The only area in which BT have the edge at the moment that I can see is upload speeds and not by any huge margin which forms a key selling point.

WRONG

back in the 80's BT went to Maggie T and said here Maggie we have this great idea we can send tv signals down a telephone line can we roll it out ?

Mrs T who had just sold off all of the cable liscences went oooh hold on a second ahh ok then trial it. So BT did in a place called washington tyne and wear the trial was an absolute success but because Mrs T had sold said cable areas off and the rights to sky and the other now defund operatoe she said no. This tech was using similar if not the same texh that is what we now know as fttp.

so the moral of the story is dont blame BT blame Mrs T.

Well, Virgin sure know how to add their name to a campaign to wipe any incumbant's nose in the ground. At the moment, I wouldn't say their participation is for anything other than PR purposes.

Talk-Talk, eh? I haven't seen much desire for them to go after the *quality* end of the market.

Cisco? Well, they're just an equipment supplier behind the scenes. The other network & service providers have equipment supplied by companies of good pedigree.

That leaves Fujitsu. They may be good, but it isn't enough for me, all alone.

Don't get me wrong - I think competition is needed, to get fibre out to everyone. It is what got fibre going in Sweden, for instance - competition from companies, housing associations (lots more flats over there, though) and from councils. But in this country, Virgin is the end result of *our* attempts at competition - and it doesn't have a good track record of expansion, of wanting to lead the tech, or of wanting to get quality congestion-free service.

Why doesn't competition work here properly? The reason is that everyone wants broadband too cheaply. We may be able to give people massive headline speeds, but the money in the pot doesn't buy the *real* infrastructure behind the scenes. So we get contention, traffic management, and slow speeds.

In this country, you can get a basic broadband package, 24Mbps, at £6.50pm, without being forced into bundles. A fibre package, at 40Mbps, at roughly £22pm.

In Sweden, Telia charge:
- 230kr/m for 0.25Mbps on copper
- 230kr/m for 0.25Mbps on fibre
- 250kr/m for 2Mbps on copper
- 300kr/m for 8 - 10Mbps on fibre
- 310kr/m for 6 - 8Mbps on copper
- 330kr/m for 50/8 - 100/10Mbps async on fibre
- 360kr/m for 24Mbps on copper
- 600kr/m for 50/50 - 100/100Mbps on fibre
- 1000kr/m for 1Gbps on fibre

Telia are the Swedish incumbant, the equivalent of BT. They won't be the cheapest, nor the most expensive. Current exchange rate is 10 Krona to the Pound.

Those numbers tell you why Sweden has access to fibre. They're an incentive to bother installing it.

In this country, we (the people buying), ISPs (doing the selling) and Ofcom have let our form of competition take us down a path where "broadband" is sold at a single price-point no matter the headline speed. And a very low price-point at that. Our price structures are not an incentive to either install a decent core network, nor to try to overlay with fibre.

And that is why this "open network" (which actually relies on BT to provide the underground infrastructure!) will struggle to get off the ground and be viable.

The blame probably lies back at the end of the Nineties. In Sweden, you could get dial-up ISPs at about the equivalent of £15 per month (higher than the model Demon started in the UK). In the UK, the market had shifted to "free" internet access. The companies were working on having large lists of subscribers for marketing purposes, not on having decent infrastructure.

Perhaps she realised the cost of the infrastructure required and knew the voters wouldn't wear it in the short to medium-term anyway. Back then, few had a good idea of what the potential for it all was. Asking a middle-aged woman of the eighties in the eighties to spend millions so lots of kids can surf for pron twenty years later...."No" seems a fair answer from that perspective.


Edit: Removed superfluous 'e's. No raving allowed.

Edited by camieabz (Thu 14-Apr-11 22:21:36)