Broadband in the UK.....It is a Joke!

I feel like a rant and here it is!

Broadband in the UK already started behind many other countries. By the time 1mb had became available residentially Broadband Users in Asia and America were almost hitting 10mb. Then now you see many companies restricting people's speed by more than half if they exceed a 1GB,2GB,3GB limit in a peak-time usage policy. I think that UK broadband is going downhill and I don't think all the blame can be put onto BT. The ISP's need to get a grip and take a bit of responsibility.

What isn't helping furthermore is when companies compete, all ISP's compete in a competitive market (wtf?) but this impacts upon us (the customers). What do you want from an ISP? Reliable internet? Fast Internet? Low latency? Unlimited?

It very often seems that we can't get all these things, yet many other countries can and parts of America far worse off than ourselves still get much better than us. Something needs to change soon because customers will think, who is the best ISP?

ISP's should spend less time monitoring people's usage and concentrate on putting pressure onto BT for improving the quality of the copper cabling to people's homes. If every ISP did that then we may get somewhere. It infuriates me that ISP's will offer top speeds and discard so easily that "you will only receive 2.5mbs" and assume that the customer will accept that. Why should we accept it?

ISP's in the UK, stop making excuses, the reason your services are degrading is not the people who download, it's a montage of BT's bad cabling and You being lazy (bad words).

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Rant Over

> I don't think all the blame can be put onto BT

Ah but I do. The main reason for bandwidth caps is the staggering cost of the BT centrals - the end point of the BT network at the ISP.

The main reason for connection issues is the general poor state of the BT copper network coupled with the idiosyncratic RAMBO system they designed (is that too strong a word?) which does cut down support calls but only at the expense of slowing down the already slow copper at the first hint it can't cope.

If you want a better experience look to ADSL2+ LLU from Be/O2 or Sky - don't expect any customer service though and if things don't work from the start woe betide you.

http://www.qwest.com/dsl/ - 7M DSL in the USA
http://www.rr.com/rdrun/index.htm - 5M cable in the USA
http://www.earthlink.net/dsl/ - 6M DSL in the USA

not quite the picture as painted.

ADSL 2+ is still not the answer. Especially if you have an attenuation over 40db ADSL 2+ will not benefit you much over standard DSL.

Some of BT's prices are kept high by Ofcom to give other providers a fighting chance. The problem with Centrals is that they have to be available at every exchange in the country. There isn't any other company in the UK that operates that kind of presence. The LLU providers and Virgin are allowed to pick and choose and can stick to the more lucrative exchanges. In point of fact BT didn't /have/ to roll any kind of BB out across the country. They made a business decision that no other company has chosen to echo.

The same situation exists all over the world. The headline speeds quoted in Japan are not available everywhere. Parts of the US can't even get DSL.

The UK has issues but claiming that it's a joke is an exageration. It is a complex situation and it's compounded by the fact that no-one can explain why we even need high-speed broadband. Seriously. I keep asking in various forums and the only use for it that anyone can come up with is VoD (Video on Demand) but even then there's a lot of uncertainty over how much revenue can be generated that way.

To all those that are adamant about the UK needing a better network - you tell us what you want to do with it that you cannot do now and why it's worth

Edited by Andrue (Tue 18-Dec-07 20:06:02)

I find with ADSL Max that even switching routers three times in one hour and my profile goes right down.This in spite of reading that you have to switch off and on 10 times in an hour before it will affect your profile.
Any excuse and it seems the RAMBO wants to clamp down.


All I ever seem to do is wait for my profile to go back up or my noise margin to drop....it's just a pathetic poorly designed system and I also blame BT I think they are a joke.

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Dec-07 22:14:20)

the IP profile just follows the sync speed, if one of the routers connects at a duff rate the profile will follow it.

The ISPs sell on price. Cheap prices don't carry an investment budget for openreach. There is no demand from providers for higher price, higher speed services and no sensible idea what we are going to do with high price, high speed services.

Providers that use their own non BT networks or non BT backhaul still face the same issues and are either heavily throttled or losing shed loads of money.

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Dec-07 22:24:22)

In reply to:

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The ISPs sell on price.

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Not all, there are fortunately a few who sell on quality.

But as you imply, they're not the cheap ones.

In reply to:

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But as you imply, they're not the cheap ones.

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They are also not the ones with significant customer numbers.