I watched something on Netflix early. It wasn't streaming at all, it was filling buffer periodically with bursts.

http://grab.by/uTxG - if you're looking at a network activity monitor then it would appear as bursts. But the video bitrate is the same regardless. Noone would ever use a *transport* stream as VBR. You can use VBR within the stream, but on IPTV you set it to the same value throughout. How on earth would smooth streaming work if it went from 1mbit/sec to 32mbit/sec to 2mbit/sec... etc?

From an incredibly low base. Weren't companies going bust from overspending on network construction in the case of transit and peering and underestimating demand for dial up in the case of the free call ISPs?

From a low base? You could argue the 1970s was a low base. You could argue that the 1980s were a low base. On a logarithmic level, bandwidth growth has *declined* in acceleration. It's a total fact. Bandwidth use has grown. The pace of bandwidth usage increase has slowed - totally different. This is one example of it: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/Talks/2013/01-11-fut...

LINX appears to disagree, their graphs suggest bandwidth usage growth has accelerated in the past year. We're probably seeing some of the same effect we did from the migration between dial up and xDSL / cable alongside increased prevalence of streaming.

You've already said that LINX was bad for predicting this. LINX is not a proxy for home bandwidth use. LINX themselves say PI traffic is more important, and that is not shown - which you agreed with.

I appreciate that not everyone will need high bandwidth, however it would've been rather nice for the option to be there.

Noone is debating that. All my point is that FTTP for good reason isn't what people need right now.

What Openreach have done is, for the most part, the bare minimum in terms of quality, we'll see how sustainable it is in the medium term. The financials imply they expect that kit to be delivering our services for a decade or more.

But the point is that fibre is closer to people. FTTPoD, while horribly expensive now, is going to be available to >80% of the UK population within a few months.

I can remember being on these forums in 2008 and everyone saying that BT would 'never' roll out fibre and they'd leave everyone on ADSL forever.

The fact is that the UK has the best, and in my opinion more importantly, cheapest rollout of >30mbit/sec broadband in the world - minus a few edge cases like Korea, Hong Kong and E Europe (where population density is so high and/or no existing copper infrastructure).

Go to the US if you want - FiOS is insanely expensive and the rollout was abandoned years ago. Same with France, Germany, Spain - far smaller penetration of any sort of FTTC/P and much more expensive service. I think this is all just Daily Mail talk - "the UK is the worst". In fact, we've done the best and with a comparatively tiny government subsidy. We should be proud of this as a country.

where the uk is unique is that we have decided to spread the rollout to low density rural areas, whilst other countries target urban high density areas with better technology, so we are very bad on FTTP rollout but our average speed is good because of the high availability of FTTC.

We also are probably on a average level better of than america who's isp's are still struggling to get to grips with netflix, and game digital distribution, youtube is full of videos of americans moaning about their isp limits dont allow them to download digital games as 'america isnt ready', and of course now at least one american isp has decided to charge netflix to route its traffic over non congested routes.

So to me our problems are urban areas are falling behind since they are effectively subsidising FTTC rollout in rural areas and that the fact openreach is unaccountable to the end user, I think the latter will never be addressed as ofcom seem to have accepted it in return for cheap broadband from BT.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 06-Mar-14 09:15:29)

You don't mean to suggest that the digital divide is less in the UK than other countries?

Shirley we are the worst in the world hence all the lobbying about digital divide and investment going to a monopoly provider to install BT Infinity.

its most defenitly less yes.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

its most defenitly less yes.

Often cheaper as well (although as that relates to RoI it might not be a good thing). I've been working with colleagues in Minneapolis and more recently Boston and both sets are paying more 'per Mb/s' than me.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You don't mean to suggest that the digital divide is less in the UK than other countries?

Shirley we are the worst in the world hence all the lobbying about digital divide and investment going to a monopoly provider to install BT Infinity.

Nope, we have the worst digital divide that I know of. But not in the way that this phrase is usually taken to mean.

To me, the "digital divide" is at its worst when the first line of a new technology goes in, and then narrows slowly while the rest of the country catches up.

Right now, B4RN has set the highest bar. It will be a while for the rest of us in the poor cities, on the wrong side of the divide, get a chance to catch up with that.

Obviously migrating all cabinet eligible lines to the corresponding cabinet, possible backwards compatibility with ADSL2+ would be out of the question?
Taking the exchange effectively out of the equation?
Total crazy talk?

I know the total unavailability of Gigabit in cities is terrible, oh hold on aren't people like Hyperoptic doing something about that?

In reply to a post by flipdee:

Obviously migrating all cabinet eligible lines to the corresponding cabinet, possible backwards compatibility with ADSL2+ would be out of the question?
Taking the exchange effectively out of the equation?
Total crazy talk?

Yes, there aren't nearly enough ports available in the FTTC cabinets.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

So to me our problems are urban areas are falling behind since they are effectively subsidising FTTC rollout in rural areas and that the fact openreach is unaccountable to the end user, I think the latter will never be addressed as ofcom seem to have accepted it in return for cheap broadband from BT.

Really?

Surely if anyone is being subsidised it's the urban areas.

I live in a rural area, more than 2 miles from either the exchange or cab. FTTC won't change a thing for me as the copper will still be the same and I'll be stuck at 2.5meg.

Yet my monthly ADSL bill is more than the cheapest (and faster) fibre product and my taxes go towards the rollout. My exchange doesn't even have a date at present so is likely to be 2016 at the earliest.