is there any point to 50Meg

with Virgin Media's traffic management policy reducing speeds to around dial up at peak times for people using news groups etc is there really any point to it?

What else would you use this kind of speed for? my line manages well with streaming video I can download an MP3 quickly enough from I Tunes and when I am gaming I don't suffer any serious lag?

Do you think that Virgin Media would re-think their policy if we all started to downgrade to 20 or 30Meg? we have put up with being bullied by ISP's for years, they tell us what we can and can't do with the products we pay for and we simply fall in line.

I have spent some time in France and they would not put up with it, they said NO and the ISP's had to back down.

Piracy.

It's hard to find a reason for more than 5Mb/s for a single user at the moment. 10Mb/s for a household, perhaps 15Mb/s ought to be ample for most properties. I suspect that's why BT is struggling to get people onto its FTTC service. The only people who would really benefit are those currently on less than 10Mb/s. For anyone else it's pointless by and large.

Really I think FTTC is pointless in a lot of cases and isn't being used where it would do the most good. I'm all for upgrading the network but right now we have enough time to wait while FTTP is rolled out. Use FTTC for not- and slow- spots or places where FTTP will never be viable.

Unfortunately the economics just don't seem to support that strategy so we're stuck it seems with a half-arsed solution that will need replacing by the time there's a real need for high speed.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 18-Apr-11 20:22:49)

Yes, it's fabulous for those of us who want to get large files from Steam, etc, you know things we've actually paid for, and want to do it more quickly.

Also great for working from home and shifting large amounts of data quickly.

Virgin Media won't rethink their policy. They don't want the business of people who pay a relatively small amount for their products and use them to leech hundreds of GB of copyright material each month.

If you don't like the product an ISP supplies take a service from another one, same as if you don't like the cars Ford make you buy from another manufacturer or you don't like your mobile service you change to another. You dictate to operators by not paying them and moving elsewhere.

Regarding your comments on France multiple ISPs shape.

Why do u say Piracy?

I have 50mb because i enjoy having a fast connection, i can download videos that my friends make who are backpacking in Australia which are usually 1GB+ cos they are HD, download emails and browse at the same time where when i had 20mb it would struggle.

I opted for it cos at the time Virgin give me a damn good deal on it.

Not everyone who has a fast connection wants it for purposes you are suggesting, mine is purely for convienience and ease of what i stated.

Andrue brings up a very good point, BT is mainly installing in area's with either cable (VM, smallworld media, ect) or where the adsl speeds are very good (10meg+) so few people want to bother with the costs/hassle of changeing.

Now if BT installed in areas like where i live that has a adsl speed of LESS then 3meg (and b4 anyone say's anything yes i do live in a city and not a small town) then they would most likely find they would need to install mutiple roadside box's because just about everyone would want it.

I greatly respect BT for this fiber rollout but theve gone about it the wrong way, they should have started in the area's where theres low speed and low competion, only a fool would leave a 50meg service for something that gives 40meg max (at the momment)

What is it, a year (if that) into the proper roll out?

Look at where ADSL was back in 2001 at the same stage. In a few years everyone will be using a FTTC or FTTP based product and ADSL products will be obsolete.

All this talk of "no one really needs it" or "i want it but can't get it" is short sighted and short termism.

Andrue makes an assertion that "5mbit ought to be enough". Do people not learn that speed in itself is irrelevant? If there are services out there that make use of greater speed then greater speed is desirable. At the moment I reckon most people can do what they like on something around 12-15Mbit but speeds will only continue to rise as technology advances. I'm sure in 2003 Andrue probably pimped 1Mbit as enough...a few years down the line and that speed is cause for vociferous complaints from those unlucky enough to "only" be getting it.

As it'll take BT a few years to do this roll out it'll soon become the benchmark with people say "30Mbit is probably enough" and "why would you need 100Mbit?" and so it continues.

BT is installing all over the country in areas that have VM, those that don't. Big cities and dormitory towns, town centre and outskirt. It's simplistic to try and label the rollout as focusing on areas of a particular type - they might just happen to be the areas with the most people.

Edited by orly (Tue 19-Apr-11 02:28:47)

In reply to a post by orly:

If there are services out there that make use of greater speed then greater speed is desirable.

Name them. Go on, feel free. Don't just look at the UK. Look at countries that already have high speed internet connections and tell me what applications and services they are using them for. We are not at the forefront of development here. There are several countries we can look to if we want to see what services and applications a high speed connection makes available.

I'm sure in 2003 Andrue probably pimped 1Mbit as enough...a few years down the line and that speed is cause for vociferous complaints from those unlucky enough to "only" be getting it.

First off, no, I don't think I did. Back then I was often having to download applications and I could see the advantages of video over IP. I didn't know much about video encoding then so probably thought that fibre was a basic necessity.

Secondly I haven't denied the need to upgrade. Read my post again. What I've said is that FTTC is a half-way house. We should be aiming for universal FTTP and using FTTC only where FTTP is not practical. My point about 5Mb/s being enough is to show that we have time to spare. Instead of rushing the majority into FTTC we can concentrate on getting them FTTP. Use FTTC where it will do the most good.

Oh and as for needing a fast connection to work from home:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/3993659-re-...

I'll concede that when I needed to download the ISO for BackupExec(*) it was lucky I did my preparation and was able to kick it off overnight but that's the only time our office connection has been an issue.

(*)3.4GB for a backup package. Presumably it comes with your data already backed up

Edited by Andrue (Tue 19-Apr-11 08:26:03)

50mbps will be too slow for many business users, especially with given bandwidth caps. Proper 100mbps fibre optic services should be offered everywhere where there is a demand. Things are often made worse because the upload speed usually is only a fraction of the upload speed. Reliability of a broadband is important, the network shouldn't go down on its knees next time there is a big football game or a tennis match in Wimbledon. BT already has all the ducts and telecom poles, so why not offer fibre lines on demand to users who need them rather than doing global rollouts to areas where there is no demand?

"network shouldn't go down on its knees next time there is a big football game or a tennis match in Wimbledon"

Which is nothing to do with the local loop, and the core network is already fibre based.

True. Still, even the existing fibre core network seems to be either insufficient or, more likely, overpriced.

Now if BT installed in areas like where i live that has a adsl speed of LESS then 3meg

Strange, I've installed three in the last two days where the punters were getting 2.5meg before.
Could it be that you have no basis in fact for your statement ?

In reply to a post by phillyboy111:

with Virgin Media's traffic management policy reducing speeds to around dial up at peak times for people using news groups etc is there really any point to it?

What else would you use this kind of speed for? my line manages well with streaming video I can download an MP3 quickly enough from I Tunes and when I am gaming I don't suffer any serious lag?

Do you think that Virgin Media would re-think their policy if we all started to downgrade to 20 or 30Meg? we have put up with being bullied by ISP's for years, they tell us what we can and can't do with the products we pay for and we simply fall in line.

I have spent some time in France and they would not put up with it, they said NO and the ISP's had to back down.

I regurly max my 30mbit downloading of FTP servers.

But of course isp's now sell something they dont expect to be used, which is why the trend of selling high speed and then throttling protocols that typically are related to heavy usage.

Alot of the problem is that whilst in other countries this would be put to bed, ie. isp's forced to backtrack, here our regulator welcomes it as it contributes to lower prices, ofcom is obsessed with low prices.

VM have issues at the moment in that they are shaping unidentified traffic which in turn is affecting non p2p/nntp traffic, even ofcom are looking into it as there is a new code of practice recently passed where isp's are supposed to provide open and accurate information in regards to traffic management which VM are not.

In reply to a post by JNeuhoff:

50mbps will be too slow for many business users, especially with given bandwidth caps. Proper 100mbps fibre optic services should be offered everywhere where there is a demand.

They are. Almost any business can get fibre installed at their office. They just have to need it enough to want to pay for it.

A fact that is often forgotten - it is as if fibre had only just been invented.

FTTH connections are the price they are in ANY country because the capacity is contended at some aggregation point. Business fibre is often 1:1 or 5:1 thus costs a lot more, and other things like they see an engineer in a guaranteed X hours if it breaks etc

Faster downloads of large media, for me that primarily includes digital distribution of games and video/audio such as steam, games can often be well over 10Gb these days, on something like ADSL I was previously getting 3mbit which would take about 10 hours to download a game like GTA IV but now I can get the same game in about 35 minutes.

It means I can impulse buy games from steam and be playing them after a short wait rather than having to schedule the download overnight and wait 1/2 a day.

Same with game demos and patches, if I want the latest MMO patch which is like 1Gb and want to get in game I don't want to be waiting for 45 minutes when I can be playing in under 3 minutes.

In the grander scale services like faster broadband need killer apps and vice versa, it takes some people to be early adopters and show there is at least some demand for high bandwidth services before they will actually arrive. Being a technology lover I not only want to be on the cutting edge for my own benefit but also to help drive usage forwards so that we see continuous improvements, if that means high cost with less value early on then so be it, someone has to help fund the network growth.

Also, they don't throttle to dial up speeds, that's stupid. Most networks mitigate the high amount of data transfer that piracy and whatnot causes, they do it in different ways, you'll find similar management or restrictions on other networks. In fact throttled speeds are a function of your package so the fact that throttling isn't as low on the 50mbit package is just another reason to take it.

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Apr-11 12:38:17)

In reply to a post by JNeuhoff:

50mbps will be too slow for many business users, especially with given bandwidth caps.

Could not use such a slow speed at work, during an experiment recently we transferred approx 11TB of data at 1Gbps over 24 hours to the Netherlands. (we do this several times a year).

Wouldn't a big external HDD taken on a ferry be faster and cheaper?

We do that 3 times a year too. We have experiments that run for about 3 weeks that are recorded to disk packs that vary in size from 960GB (tiny) to 8TB. They are then shipped by airfreight to their destination. It is not uncommon to record around 60+TB of data during a run.

I have to agree. After going from dial up to broadband, I was like "WOW!" - then going from half a meg to 8 meg, I was like "WOW!"

But going from 8 meg to 30 meg I was like "meh ..."

Now we've been offered 100mbps and I can't think of anything I need in 5 seconds instead of 20 seconds to justify upgrading.

20 seconds? I take it you dont download much then

on 30mbit I have certianly downloaded enough to think 'that could be faster'. But it is fast enough that isnt a major issue now, on 5mbit adsl things could take many hours to download.

Its worth noting as well multitasking gets a significant boost.

an example is if I streamed iplayer on adsl the latency would be up in the 100s for the duration, on my 30mbit cable connection it doesnt budge meaning things I do alongside wouldnt be affected performance wise.