Making use of broadband

Maybe that should be making full use of broadband.

I chat to many people, Lorry drivers, people at work, friends, family, and broadband comes up now and again, and it surprises me how many pay out for broadband and use a fraction of what it is capable off.
Someone at work, who asked me what Zzoomm is like, only use their broadband for their phones. My brother, broadband just to browse the net and email and maybe use Alexa. Other people seem to do the same sort of thing.
Most of these people have a smart TV, why not connect it and use the smart functions, even if they don't want to pay for streaming services, there are free ones, and bound to find something they want to watch.
If they have a smart speaker, use it for radio, mine is playing Boom radio downstairs at the moment, doing some housework, just came up for a coffee.

Up to them at the end of the day, but a lot of money each month just to browse and connect their phones.

Dial up days it was different, for a start the speed was slow, and you could not do much with it, but I did used to chat with a few people in different countries using a webcam, even if it was naff, those days it seemed amazing.
Also, if you did not use it that often you could pay when you use it, in fact I think it was Freeserve that came out with the pay a set amount and use what you want type of thing.

ADSL changed everything, for the first time I did not get moaned at by my mum because my phone was engaged a lot

Now look at it, I can go to 2Gb/s if I wanted to. I would not want to work at how much faster that is than dial up.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Now look at it, I can go to 2Gb/s if I wanted to. I would not want to work at how much faster that is than dial up.

So.... dialup to the end was advertised as 56k - 56 kilobits per second.
1 Gigabit per sec is 1000 Mbit per sec, or 1 million kilobits per second (2 gigabit, is 2 then 2 million kilobit/sec)

Or 2 gigabit is 3,571,300% increase over 56k.

As long as people are wiling to pay the going rate, what speed people go for isn't really anyone else's business. We all use our broadband differently but I have lost count of how many times I've read people saying, "so and so" doesn't need 150Mbps, 500Mbps or whatever speed as if they are an expert on how "so and so" uses their broadband. I could do a lot more with the service I have but I am happy with the speed I pay for and thats all that matters.

Edited by PCJM40 (Sun 18-Aug-24 16:20:10)

An estimated £4Bn of UK gym memberships are unused, so even using a part of whats available via internet must beat that.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

I have lost count of how many times I've read people saying, "so and so" doesn't need 150Mbps, 500Mbps or whatever speed

Well said. There are some AltNet providers that only have one or two products, the prices are typically lower than those on FTTC/VDSL, such as the Hampshire company Toob, whom have 900/900 symmetric for £29/month if you are covered.

Then people like myself, whom through hope of getting something else, have ended up paying high monthly fee for lower speed service, when the same money would get higher service.... but you have to be in a min-term contract lock-in to get the lower price. Virgin Media, Plusnet and many others do this.

I agree, and nobody "uses" their broadband really, connections sit idle most of the time. The point is that people want the burst capacity there and they weigh that up with the price to settle on a tier that they are happy to pay for.

If you smoothed my last month of usage out it would be a steady 1.6Mbps, that's not to say that a 2Mbps connection or even a 20Mbps connection would be suitable for my requirements. My current ISP charged about a 30% premium to get 1Gbps over 500Mbps which I didn't think was worth it at the time but if I found myself regularly shifting large files around I'd upgrade without any hesitation - I'm not waiting around on a connection for the sake of a few pence each time I need it.

Edited by jpm (Sun 18-Aug-24 18:10:11)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Now look at it, I can go to 2Gb/s if I wanted to. I would not want to work at how much faster that is than dial up.

So.... dialup to the end was advertised as 56k - 56 kilobits per second.
1 Gigabit per sec is 1000 Mbit per sec, or 1 million kilobits per second (2 gigabit, is 2 then 2 million kilobit/sec)

Or 2 gigabit is 3,571,300% increase over 56k.

Thank you. Wow, that is a lot. How did we cope?

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

As long as people are wiling to pay the going rate, what speed people go for isn't really anyone else's business. We all use our broadband differently but I have lost count of how many times I've read people saying, "so and so" doesn't need 150Mbps, 500Mbps or whatever speed as if they are an expert on how "so and so" uses their broadband. I could do a lot more with the service I have but I am happy with the speed I pay for and thats all that matters.

I am not saying it is anyone business what speed people go for and this is not about speed as such as even 36Mb/s is fast enough for most things, which is why I was not bothered about fibre.
I was saying it is a shame that people who pay for broadband don't get full use out of it.

In reply to a post by burble:

An estimated £4Bn of UK gym memberships are unused, so even using a part of whats available via internet must beat that.

I know a couple who paid for 12 months at our local private sauna, swimming poll complex, thinking that it would help them with their health issues and yet in the last 5 months or so, been twice. Such a shame, because it is a lot of money, certainly for them. I do try and push them, but not easy.

Re

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

and it surprises me how many pay out for broadband and use a fraction of what it is capable off.

You can say that for any supply, water, gas and electricity.

In reply to a post by APTMAN:

You can say that for any supply, water, gas and electricity.

Water maybe, since a lot of people still pay via the old system and don't have a meter, but people pay for the electric and gas they use. I pay for the water I use.
I suppose we could go back to that for broadband, I used to use an ISP called Metronet many years ago. I paid an amount and got so much data, then used to pay extra to get more data. Not sure if it would work so well in this day and age, saying that A&A still have a fixed data usage.

I am trying to get my brother to use his broadband more than he does, trying to get him to watch more streaming.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

saying that A&A still have a fixed data usage.

Not any more- https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/aaisp/t/4761829-no...

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Not sure if it would work so well in this day and age,

Thanks to streaming TV, and online gaming, there was a report a while back (in some newspaper) that the average home (2 parents, 2.4 kids, dog, cat etc) now uses around 10 Terabytes of data a month.

My friends in the US on the (hated) Comcast Cable ISP have had usage caps from 800 Gb and now 1.2 Tb a month. No wonder in areas they have options, people switch. (e.g. to Verizon Fios FTTP in the north east).

Puts it into perspective the UK setup where the Openreach and Cityfibre networks are wholesale, and in 2025 it is reported that the Virgin Media network will open to wholesale.

The US is similar to having an Alt Net and no other option in majority of areas. You want to change ISP, you either try DSL (1.5 Mbit is common) or mobile data, or you move house/city/state.

10TB as an average (median?) I find unbelievably high. We use maybe 2TB a month and that’s with a lot of olympics, and football streaming, iPlayer / Channel 4, full-time WFH and downloading content off newsgroup services.

I can’t see how to 5x our usage and that being the average.

To put it in perspective there are office locations I have access to the reporting on with 60 staff members and they do less than 5TB in a month, this one in particular is quite relaxed about people streaming Olympics, Tour De France etc. at their desks.

In reply to a post by jpm:

To put it in perspective there are office locations I have access to the reporting on with 60 staff members and they do less than 5TB in a month, this one in particular is quite relaxed about people streaming Olympics, Tour De France etc. at their desks.

I assume the only way you get close to 10 is having multiple 4K/UHD televisions, but agreed it does seem high. I would assume offices that allow staff to stream TV are most likely to be using smaller screens?

I thought Offices (not streaming TV) use significantly less than most home connections?

Adrian,

I agree. Another thing that a lot people don't utilise fully is domains. How many businesses purchase a domain and only use it to host their website and then advertise an AOL / Hotmail / etc email address??? I've always associated that with purchasing a UHD TV and only watching B & W films....Why aren't they using all the features that they paid for???? Someone answer me that question and I will gladly bequeath (upon my death in 10,000 years time) them everything I own (which might be nothing at the rate I'm going)!

Yours,

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Why aren't they using all the features that they paid for????

Perhaps they don't need them?

I'm well beyond retirement age with no business interests, I bought a domain to get email that was independent of any ISP I might go with¹, what do I want with my own website?

I certainly don't have the sort of ego that assumes anyone might be remotely interested in my doings, comings and goings (even ignoring whether it's any of their business). There are enough of those around without me adding to the total


¹ And of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Hotmail etc- I don't trust the free offerings

I'm just the same, with my own domain. However, I also have a GMX address for shopping, etc. This has worked perfectly for years until now, when they have introduced their own spam detection that dumps anything it doesn't like into a folder that you can only access via their website. There is no way to disable this infuriating feature. Since I have managed spam perfectly well using Mailwasher, I resent being forced to obey their rules, and am currently researching an alternative free account that respects my choices, without stealing my information.

In reply to a post by cjn:

I'm just the same, with my own domain. However, I also have a GMX address for shopping, etc. This has worked perfectly for years until now, when they have introduced their own spam detection that dumps anything it doesn't like into a folder that you can only access via their website. There is no way to disable this infuriating feature. Since I have managed spam perfectly well using Mailwasher, I resent being forced to obey their rules, and am currently researching an alternative free account that respects my choices, without stealing my information.

Both my paid-for domain and my ISP's email systems come by default with spam filters which do the same, but at least I can turn the damn things off (and have done). Like you I prefer to handle it locally, especially as I find the server-based filters are often a bit too trigger-happy for my liking. Even the fairly primitive MacOS Mail app catches most of it with only an occasional mistake in the wrong direction, and even then there's a "Not Spam" button to put it back in the inbox

For not much more than the price of a cup of coffee per month, the lack of aggravation of having to log in to webmail every few days to see what it's screwed up on now is well worth it in my opinion!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Thanks to streaming TV, and online gaming, there was a report a while back (in some newspaper) that the average home (2 parents, 2.4 kids, dog, cat etc) now uses around 10 Terabytes of data a month.

Do the dog and cat use it then? I have no idea how much data I use, there is nothing on my ISP portal, in fact it is pretty bland and don't say much apart from what service I am using and my bills/payment info. My router as far as I can see don't show how much data.

My friends in the US on the (hated) Comcast Cable ISP have had usage caps from 800 Gb and now 1.2 Tb a month. No wonder in areas they have options, people switch. (e.g. to Verizon Fios FTTP in the north east).

Puts it into perspective the UK setup where the Openreach and Cityfibre networks are wholesale, and in 2025 it is reported that the Virgin Media network will open to wholesale.

The US is similar to having an Alt Net and no other option in majority of areas. You want to change ISP, you either try DSL (1.5 Mbit is common) or mobile data, or you move house/city/state.


My cousin use AT&T and she says it is awful, and that we are so lucky in this country, my problem in this country is having a large network owned privately and still having government money chucked at it, while smaller networks are struggling. I don't like Openreach, never have liked openreach and I doubt I ever will. There, said it.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Adrian,

I agree. Another thing that a lot people don't utilise fully is domains. How many businesses purchase a domain and only use it to host their website and then advertise an AOL / Hotmail / etc email address??? I've always associated that with purchasing a UHD TV and only watching B & W films....Why aren't they using all the features that they paid for???? Someone answer me that question and I will gladly bequeath (upon my death in 10,000 years time) them everything I own (which might be nothing at the rate I'm going)!

Yours,

I have a domain, but I only use it for email, I suppose I could use it for a website, but that would cost more and I don't need a website. But domains are cheap, and businesses normally buy them to stop others using them.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

My cousin use AT&T and she says it is awful, and that we are so lucky in this country

My family in US has Spectrum (Charter cable) which works well but speeds vary wildly, from 400 Mbps down to 80 Mbps at peak times. Their neighborhood has AT&T Fibre which is much faster and more consistent (same as UK FTTP in design) but the neighbourhood social media pages are full of outages, so my family ignore it.

my problem in this country is having a large network owned privately and still having government money chucked at it, while smaller networks are struggling. I don't like Openreach, never have liked openreach and I doubt I ever will. There, said it.

The BDUK process seems to be fair and open, the small alt nets don’t really want the complexity of doing the small villages and rural areas with miles between homes. Shame that nobody but OR bid for these; but they have the experience of rural. Even virgin media with their large national network didn’t bid.

You can see why OR are heavily regulated, and the other networks are not.

ISPs advertise faster is better (and sure it is) and people think they need to go faster and faster as a result and pay the extra it costs even if they will never notice those faster speeds

Its all marketing

Sure people can do what they want, but how many people are struggling financially and paying over the odds for a broadband service they don't really need?

ISPs thrown down our throat that everyone needs superfast lighting speeds (and the extra costs that entails), yet i know alot of people who pay it and really dont need to

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Why aren't they using all the features that they paid for????

Perhaps they don't need them?

I'm well beyond retirement age with no business interests, I bought a domain to get email that was independent of any ISP I might go with¹, what do I want with my own website?

I certainly don't have the sort of ego that assumes anyone might be remotely interested in my doings, comings and goings (even ignoring whether it's any of their business). There are enough of those around without me adding to the total


¹ And of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Hotmail etc- I don't trust the free offerings

I do precisely the same. Yes there is a cost, but it maintains your privacy and puts you in control.

Personally I think it is none of my business what people spend on Broadband.
However I do agree that it would be wrong for people to go without for faster BB, no speed is worth that.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Sure people can do what they want, but how many people are struggling financially and paying over the odds for a broadband service they don't really need?

Thats neither yours or my business, we have too many people poking their noses into other people's business telling them what they should and shouldn't be doing with their lives or their money as if others always know better. Just because people are on low budgets doesn't mean they don't need the services or products they purchase.

Of course, people can do what they want with their money. But ISPs tend to pray on people with constant advertising that you always need the fastest possible connection (which is also the most expensive package)

A lot just blindly pay it as they have been told they need it when they really dont. Its not nice to see people paying for something they dont need because of greedy companies telling them they need it

Edited by bobble_bob (Tue 20-Aug-24 11:20:14)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Of course, people can do what they want with their money. But ISPs tend to pray on people with constant advertising that you always need the fastest possible connection (which is also the most expensive package)

A lot just blindly pay it as they have been told they need it when they really dont. Its not nice to see people paying for something they dont need because of greedy companies telling them they need it

Every year a friend has to sort out his mothers Virgin account, they ring up and persuade her that she 'needs' certain services, trying to explain to her that she needs taking off the ring list is a waste of time as "they might need to ring me about something important".

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have a domain, but I only use it for email, I suppose I could use it for a website, but that would cost more and I don't need a website. But domains are cheap, and businesses normally buy them to stop others using them.

Who do you use for this? I have been using 123-reg for email forwarding but they now tell me that they are stopping this service so I plan to move

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have a domain, but I only use it for email, I suppose I could use it for a website, but that would cost more and I don't need a website. But domains are cheap, and businesses normally buy them to stop others using them.

Who do you use for this? I have been using 123-reg for email forwarding but they now tell me that they are stopping this service so I plan to move
[/quote

I do similar - just use the domain for email.

I have been with TSO Hosts for about 15 years, but they have advised me that the renewal price will increase from c£23 pa to c£73 pa for hosting so I will move before the next renewal.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Edited by michaelh (Thu 22-Aug-24 13:41:48)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

My family in US has Spectrum (Charter cable) which works well but speeds vary wildly, from 400 Mbps down to 80 Mbps at peak times. Their neighborhood has AT&T Fibre which is much faster and more consistent (same as UK FTTP in design) but the neighbourhood social media pages are full of outages, so my family ignore it.

I think I heard my cousin saying that Spectrum is available where she is, her opinion is that broadband is a load of poop in the states.

The BDUK process seems to be fair and open, the small alt nets don’t really want the complexity of doing the small villages and rural areas with miles between homes. Shame that nobody but OR bid for these; but they have the experience of rural. Even virgin media with their large national network didn’t bid.

Fair and open? look, there is a pig flying past your house.

You can see why OR are heavily regulated, and the other networks are not.

Yeah, but they still get money from the tax payers and government.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

ISPs advertise faster is better (and sure it is) and people think they need to go faster and faster as a result and pay the extra it costs even if they will never notice those faster speeds

Its all marketing

Well done.
Marketing and manipulation.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Who do you use for this? I have been using 123-reg for email forwarding but they now tell me that they are stopping this service so I plan to move

IONOS,

I have no issues with ISPs offering a range of speeds at varying prices, as long as they aren't being dishonest with their service tiers (e.g. selling you 1Gb when their network is only in a position to deliver 500Mbps).

It's not the ISPs job to find out what an end user actually *needs* and to insist on providing that instead, if I tried to order a 2Gbps service and was asked by the provider what I was intending on using it for that would put me off because they don't need to know.

Exactly like buying a 1.1litre or a 3 litre car.

The problem being when ISPs offer speeds acting like you NEED it

My aunt has a sales rep from Virgin come over to her house when they had Virgin in her area, acting like she needed to upgrade from her 40/10 fttc connection to FTTP 2gbps, despite all her using her connection for was Netflix now and again and Whatsapp and living alone (and telling the rep this)

Shes not tech savy so assumed she needed it

Edited by bobble_bob (Sun 25-Aug-24 18:36:17)

What you go for depends on what you need and can afford. I put my last surviving aunt on Talktalk 150 and she loves it, she's 91 years old and is happy using streaming TV services and the likes of Whatsapp (not all oldies are technophobes).

150 would not work well for me at times either home in Wales or home in Spain. I've had the grandkiddywinks staying in Spain for two weeks so, lad is on his PS5, gal is video chatting with chums in Wales, wife is streaming HD and I'm running two PCs in the ham radio shack. Then when you look at pricing there is not a massive difference in pricing between the likes of 100 and 1gb...depending on your budget. The difference in prices for the Talktalk 500 and 900 packages is two pints a month

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

The problem being when ISPs offer speeds acting like you NEED it

My aunt has a sales rep from Virgin come over to her house when they had Virgin in her area, acting like she needed to upgrade from her 40/10 fttc connection to FTTP 2gbps, despite all her using her connection for was Netflix now and again and Whatsapp and living alone (and telling the rep this)

Shes not tech savy so assumed she needed it

This is the problem and a lot of people don't have the knowledge to know, they don't require it. Take Talk Talk, 150Mb/s is £28, which is about average I think for that speed, but if people get talked into the Gigabit package or 900Mb.s because Talk talk don't seem to go up to 1Gb/s, anyway that is £39.95, until it goes up to it's normal price of £45. May not seem a lot but for someone who is counting the change and trying to keep to a budget that £11 odd could make a difference, certainly in the winter. ISPs are very good at trying to talk people into something they don't need.

Then they also do the., we will give you super-duper speed for 24 months at such a price, don't forget the price rises that happens every 12 months, then at the end of 24 months the prices rise right up to the out of contract prices and the providers let it happen.

The only reason Plusnet emailed me was because they wanted me to change to FTTP, but I keep a very close eye on all my contracts, not that i have many these days. The only one I have that I am locked into is the 12 months I renewed for my broadband last week. I tend not to do contracts if I can get away with it.

Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

Not with the size of game updates now, they're frequently 100GB which is a 2.5 hour download at 100Mbps (so you're leaving some capacity for the other people accessing the internet) and only 16 minutes at 900Mbps.

The way the updates work is you are frequently prevented from launching older versions of the game, so the existence of an update stops you from playing until it's completed. Even if an update of that size only happens every two months the delay is not worth the small cost savings when the nature of FTTP means if you can get 150Mbps then you can get a gigabit.

Not everybody buying the fastest service available to them is doing it because they've been misled by marketing, lots of people are capable of assessing their needs and making appropriate decisions.

I work from home and if I found myself regularly shifting files around that were much larger than the ~20GB or so that I deal with at the moment I'd be upgrading my 500Mbps to 1Gbps the same day, time is money.

Edited by jpm (Mon 26-Aug-24 14:35:57)

In reply to a post by broadband66:

150 should be more than enough.

I know some companies that have branch offices with 50 to 100 staff, their connection to the main office is a 100 Mbps symmetric leased line (for 100 people).. It is home users that have these high speeds.

In reply to a post by jpm:

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

Not with the size of game updates now, they're frequently 100GB which is a 2.5 hour download at 100Mbps (so you're leaving some capacity for the other people accessing the internet) and only 16 minutes at 900Mbps.

The way the updates work is you are frequently prevented from launching older versions of the game, so the existence of an update stops you from playing until it's completed. Even if an update of that size only happens every two months the delay is not worth the small cost savings when the nature of FTTP means if you can get 150Mbps then you can get a gigabit.

Not everybody buying the fastest service available to them is doing it because they've been misled by marketing, lots of people are capable of assessing their needs and making appropriate decisions.

I work from home and if I found myself regularly shifting files around that were much larger than the ~20GB or so that I deal with at the moment I'd be upgrading my 500Mbps to 1Gbps the same day, time is money.

You'll be lucky, in my experience, if game update servers will give you 900Mbps or anything near to that.

In reply to a post by Rhynchelma:

You'll be lucky, in my experience, if game update servers will give you 900Mbps or anything near to that.

I notice with steam that a lot of time it don't even get to 500Mb/s. so getting 1Gb/s would be almost impossible,


Not that I am a big games player, and a lot of my games are older ones, but when I had a hard drive problem a couple of months ago, i had to reinstall all the games, only now and again it would burst to the full speed of what my broadband is capable off

This is the problem and a lot of people don't have the knowledge to know, they don't require it

Ever been to Currys and they try to upsell you on the laptop, TV, vacuum cleaner etc? If you don't tell them specifically what you want they will look to sell you whatever their management are currently pushing (either to max profit or to get rid of old stock). And of course when you buy that TV they will tell you that you will need a new HDMI cable for £50.

Or when you buy a pair of shoes and they try to sell you the shoe protection and cleaning gubbins.

Or when you are in a restaurant and they will try to push the specials or convince you to have a desert (the waiting staff are their as much to try and increase the take per customer as they are to serve you the food - a higher income per customer means better profit for the restaurant).

All of these and many more are examples of up selling. Every industry does it to maximise their profits. I am not surprised that ISPs do the same - income per customer is a critical number and the higher it is the better your bottom line generally looks.

Oh dear, good point but there is now so much more for this fella zyborg47 to go on a tangent about.

Surely he is still on his OP topic ?

In reply to a post by ian72:

This is the problem and a lot of people don't have the knowledge to know, they don't require it

Ever been to Currys and they try to upsell you on the laptop, TV, vacuum cleaner etc? If you don't tell them specifically what you want they will look to sell you whatever their management are currently pushing (either to max profit or to get rid of old stock). And of course when you buy that TV they will tell you that you will need a new HDMI cable for £50.

Not for many years have I been to Currys, the last white goods I got, which was the Freezer I got from a local company, Vacuum cleaner from Amazon, TV from Argos, online, they do try and sell you some insurance, but doing it online means just ignore it.

i know they do try to upsell things, certainly PC world that used to try and sell more powerful machines than what the person needed. The last time I got anything from Currys was my Huawei phone a few years ago, I went in, told them what I wanted and told them not to try and sell me anything else, in and out in 10 minutes.

oh yeah, the HDMI cables with gold connections, to make the ones stand up better and the Zeros rounder. As I said, I got my last Tv from Argos and ordered it online.

Or when you buy a pair of shoes and they try to sell you the shoe protection and cleaning gubbins.

Not had that for years, but then again I order my shoes online from Shoe zone and then pick them up

Or when you are in a restaurant and they will try to push the specials or convince you to have a desert (the waiting staff are their as much to try and increase the take per customer as they are to serve you the food - a higher income per customer means better profit for the restaurant).

I don't do restaurants, I pop into a cafe now and again, but restaurants is not me.

All of these and many more are examples of up selling. Every industry does it to maximise their profits. I am not surprised that ISPs do the same - income per customer is a critical number and the higher it is the better your bottom line generally looks.

The difference is they don't keep trying to upsell, you're on a broadband service, and they have your email address, and they can keep pushing. Thankfully most do have a leave me alone tick box in the contact preferences and most do follow that, apart from Talk Talk.

Plusnet contacted me twice to do with selling me stuff, one was their TV service, but I told them I don't have a Tv licence and the other was to do with their mobile phone service. No point in contacting me about updating my broadband, as I was on the fastest speed I could get. They did contact me when my contracts were coming to the end.


Zzoomm, been very good, they sent me emails when they were doing maintenance and when we had that bit of a problem when someone decided to cut the fibre at the start of my time with them, but that was it until my contract came up for renewal, and they were even late contacting me about that

i thought they would have sent me emails asking me about going to a faster speed, but they have not.

You are ignoring the fact that these things happen all the time because you happen to not use those places.

We frequent the odd restaurants. Most of them if I don't say "no marketing" will contact me every few months to do offers or to suggest I book again.

If I browse an item on Amazon I will get an email a couple of days later suggesting I might want to buy it.

I bought some headphones online and I get regular emails about their new headphones suggesting I might want to upgrade. Do I need the new upgrade headphones? Probably not. Might I consider it if they are slightly better despite not making a huge difference? Possibly. Are they wrong to try and tempt me?

These are the same as the ISP. You say you can opt out - which you can with all of these and if they ignore that opt out then they are in breach of GDPR marketing rules.

You won't take any examples if they don't specifically apply to you. All companies do this but somehow you think an ISP should be different and not attempt to sway their customers towards higher end products.

Can you quantify what "making use of broadband" actually means? if I need to max it out a couple of times a month does that count as making use of it? do I need to be maxing it out every minute of the day to qualify? Is there a definition of how one should make use of their broadband?

I know you think few if not anyone needs more than 36Mbps (probably just so happens to be the exact amount you had on FTTC) but people out here don't necessarily use broadband the exact same way you do fella.

Exactly. People buy things all the time whose performance is greater than they will ever need. For example, cars. Most are capable of doing well in excess of 70 m.p.h., but this would only be of use if you regularly use the autobahn (which I suspect few British drivers do). It does mean that you have some capacity in reserve. The same is true of broadband - you normally may only need 36Mbs but if some temporary problem halves that speed your connection might not meet your requirements. So it's sensible to buy something with a little extra capacity. Again, some are happy to wait a hour or more for large downloads - others want them immediately.

My bête noire would be Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, etc. Many spend more on such streaming services than on the connection. To me that's a waste of money (I can't keep up with what's available for free let alone paying for another "57 Channels and Nothing on"). But I've no reason, or right, to condemn others for (IMO) wasting their money in this way.

I think its more for people who aren't savvy being tricked by jargon speaking salesmen into paying for something they don't need.

If you know your stuff and happy to pay for it then great. But this debate isn't aimed at those people, its aimed at those that don't know they don't need it.

If someone who had no clue about PCs went into a computer shop and was sold a £2,000 gaming machine when all they wanted was a PC that could run Office applications, they have rightfully been conned and ripped off because they're paying for a powerful PC they dont require.

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 28-Aug-24 15:36:31)

I'm reading the OP and I don't see a question there just the same statements from the same person for the three thousandth time.

Jargon speaking salesmen have been around since forever, just what they are hawking changes. Whether mystical remedies, cars, whatever, it's a thing in many fields. You seriously think a thread on here will educate those who most need it? Just a bored Adrian recycling the same old knowing it'll produce responses and getting the same answers back, briefly entertaining him and all for free.

Plenty of web pages online on this topic from consumer, industry and commercial sites.

I’ve not seen any evidence of people being conned into buying faster broadband than they need. Most ISPs seem to explain the various use scenarios.

After a blissful period of silence, it seems that "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole" is back in the public domain.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I’ve not seen any evidence of people being conned into buying faster broadband than they need. Most ISPs seem to explain the various use scenarios.

Just to add to what you have said, I've never ever been called by an ISP other than to update me on faults (prior to FTTP), I also don't currently have the fastest FTTP package and they have never felt the need to call and upsell.

Seems to be happening since a lot of the FTTP installs and sales reps going round trying to get people to sign up (particularly Virgin).

I posted about my Aunt who was convinced she needs FTTP over FTTC despite living alone and only using WhatsApp and Netflix streaming occasionally. If its happened within my small family circle, im sure its happened across the UK.

I believe i saw another poster on here too from another ISP sales rep who used underhand sales tactics about the copper cables getting removed in their area so they need to upgrade to FTTP

Edited by bobble_bob (Wed 28-Aug-24 17:25:38)

It must happen as there are rogue people in all industries but who decides if it is or isn't the exception to the rule?

I can believe that this is happening door-to-door. The moral is to never buy anything at the door, or sign up for a charity there. Take the time to do a little research first.

I still don’t believe that it’s a widespread problem.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Seems to be happening since a lot of the FTTP installs and sales reps going round trying to get people to sign up (particularly Virgin).

I posted about my Aunt who was convinced she needs FTTP over FTTC despite living alone and only using WhatsApp and Netflix streaming occasionally. If its happened within my small family circle, im sure its happened across the UK.

I believe i saw another poster on here too from another ISP sales rep who used underhand sales tactics about the copper cables getting removed in their area so they need to upgrade to FTTP

Opportunism, and you'd have been very upset at what the cable companies did when they first built out to areas. Gentlemen suited and booted as was the way back then.

If you would show me where this was specifically mentioned in the original post, which could be summarised as a statement that they neither want or need the higher speeds so at best no-one else should and at worst they're mugs that'd be appreciated.

I might be mistaken as I began to lose both consciousness and sanity having seen the original poster bang on about these things so many times across various websites, complete with the references to their really rather tragically small world as typical of everyone that I had to tap out.

To be clear: if everyone took the lowest possible tier that they could get by with that tier would go up in price. The pricing relies on people using a fraction of the capacity available to them and falls apart if usage is too heavy. That model breaks the alternatives are higher prices across the board or a standing charge and pay per gigabyte.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Rhynchelma:

You'll be lucky, in my experience, if game update servers will give you 900Mbps or anything near to that.

I notice with steam that a lot of time it don't even get to 500Mb/s. so getting 1Gb/s would be almost impossible,


Not that I am a big games player, and a lot of my games are older ones, but when I had a hard drive problem a couple of months ago, i had to reinstall all the games, only now and again it would burst to the full speed of what my broadband is capable off

I get 2.5 Gbit/s on both machines I use regularly. Steam decompresses as it downloads. Your bottleneck is your ISP or your PC, not Steam.

Agreed, if you're not seeing 800Mbps+ from Steam then take a look at what your CPU usage looks like, as well as your storage. If you're trying to download and uncompress 100GB of files onto a low end SSD it's likely you'll fill the cache and see a throughput hit.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Can you quantify what "making use of broadband" actually means? if I need to max it out a couple of times a month does that count as making use of it? do I need to be maxing it out every minute of the day to qualify? Is there a definition of how one should make use of their broadband?

I know you think few if not anyone needs more than 36Mbps (probably just so happens to be the exact amount you had on FTTC) but people out here don't necessarily use broadband the exact same way you do fella.

It is nice having the extra speed if you need it, I have found it useful myself and while paying £24 a month for it was fine, I may as well have it since it was the same price as what I was paying Plusnet for FTTC speed. When the contract ended, and it went back up to £35 more or less, I had to decide if I wanted to stay on 500Mb.s or drop to 150. In the end I decided to stay where I am as the price difference between full price of 150 and full price of 500 is only a fiver a month, I waste more than that a month down the toilet when I go out for a few pints.
If I was in a different situation then yes I would have dropped to 150.

Anyway, as for people using full advantage, I wonder how many people who have even 100Mb/s ever tops it out? Maybe a few years ago when more people had computers, downloaded files, redone their OS now and again, oh how the extra speed would have been useful when I used to sort out people's computers
Gamers may do if they download a lot and maybe need the bandwidth if they play cloud based games, not sure if they really need super-duper high speed.
But gamers are a different thing, we are talking about say someone like my next door neighbour or my brother, those that do very little with their broadband. My next door neighbour connects their phones onto it and have a tablet and that is it, even their sky don't use it as such because they use the dish.
I am not saying their Sky boxes don't use the broadband for some things, but normal TV watching is via the dish. Only two of them next door.

My brother, has a computer, has a couple of tables and laptops, but he can only use one at a time normally, but I doubt very much if he comes close to maxing out his FTTC connection, never mind a high speed FTTP connection. I am going up there later to sort out his computer/printer, so will try and sort out some streaming services, like Iplayer, ITVX and other stuff on his TV so he can make better use of his TV and broadband.

Oh yeah, someone at work asked me a couple of weeks ago about Zzoomm and what it was like, as their Talk Talk contract is coming to the end, found out all they use their broadband for to connect their phones too, what a waste.

I think if you are paying for something then make the most of it, that is why I got rid of Netflix as I was not making use of it.

I say 36Mb/s because it is more or less what everyone I know on FTTC gets, with a couple of exceptions and they don't come anywhere close to maxing out that and most never will.
The majority of people I chat to are around my age or even older, all they want is maybe something to stream a bit of TV, listen to some music and maybe browse the net and use some apps on their phone.
again, there are exceptions, my other brother who is 70 while I doubt will use the 500Mb/s FTTP to it full potential will give it a good go.


At the end of the day it is up to people and have no problem with people buying what they want, just seems to be a waste and if they can save a bit of money, then go to a slower speed.

Not for me to tell people what to do or spend their money, even if some people here think I do. I just think it is a shame that some people pay for stuff they don't use and could save money by dropping. If money is no object, then fine. If money was no object I would go for the fastest I could go for, maybe, then again maybe not.
Saying that, my partner is fine money wise, and she has just dropped from 1Gbs to the lowest she can go.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Exactly. People buy things all the time whose performance is greater than they will ever need. For example, cars. Most are capable of doing well in excess of 70 m.p.h., but this would only be of use if you regularly use the autobahn (which I suspect few British drivers do). It does mean that you have some capacity in reserve. The same is true of broadband - you normally may only need 36Mbs but if some temporary problem halves that speed your connection might not meet your requirements. So it's sensible to buy something with a little extra capacity. Again, some are happy to wait a hour or more for large downloads - others want them immediately.

My bête noire would be Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, etc. Many spend more on such streaming services than on the connection. To me that's a waste of money (I can't keep up with what's available for free let alone paying for another "57 Channels and Nothing on"). But I've no reason, or right, to condemn others for (IMO) wasting their money in this way.

I agree with you about streaming, I had Netflix, Amazon and Disney. I dropped Netflix, still have Amazon and Disney+. I am using Amazon, watching a couple of things on there, but then I don't watch normal TV, so not spending money on the T.V licence. But then I know people who spend, 50 or more a month on Sky, crazy amounts, but up to them at the end of the day.
TIt does annoy me when people say, I can't afford to pay my rent or bills, but they still pay their £50 or more on sly and 30 odd quid on their mobile phones a month.
I know if they are in a contract they can't get out, but once they get out of the contract they can drop the services. If I was in the situation of not being able to pay bills, I would look at what can I drop. Not that i pay out much these days to things I can drop.
Mobile phone is a fiver, and I pay out for Disney and Amazon Prime. I meet some friends on a Wednesday normally for a coffee, used to go to Spoons, buy once and get refills, but we stopped going there, our Morrisons are now doing the buy once, free refills thing. Not great coffee, but is fine. We do go into town now and again to a local coffee bar.
Now and again I go out for a few pints.
But if I was struggling, I would drop all of that, apart from maybe the coffee.

Oh yeah, I also do buy coffee beans on a subscription, that cost me a bit a month, but again if money was a problem, I would go for something cheaper.

If people are working, they can spend their money on what they want, as long as it is legal, it is the lazy ones that have no intention of working and get money of the state and seem to live the life of Riley that annoys me. Disabled people and those on pension, I have no problem with

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Seems to be happening since a lot of the FTTP installs and sales reps going round trying to get people to sign up (particularly Virgin).

I posted about my Aunt who was convinced she needs FTTP over FTTC despite living alone and only using WhatsApp and Netflix streaming occasionally. If its happened within my small family circle, im sure its happened across the UK.

I believe i saw another poster on here too from another ISP sales rep who used underhand sales tactics about the copper cables getting removed in their area so they need to upgrade to FTTP

The last time I had a sales rep was for Sky and that was about 10 years ago or more. I thought Zzoomm would have sent people around to be honest, it is a way to get more customers, but they don't seem to have.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

I get 2.5 Gbit/s on both machines I use regularly. Steam decompresses as it downloads. Your bottleneck is your ISP or your PC, not Steam.

Could be the PC, it is getting on now and the drive the games are on is not the fastest drive around, I got it more for it's size than speed, it is a Crucial BX500 2TB, I needed space and the drive was under £80 on offer, so for a 2TB SSD it seemed to be ok and still is for me, it is. Sata and not NVMe.

Nothing wrong with my broadband


It is crazy that not so long ago we were happy with ADSL and spinny drives, and now we are saying that maybe SSd is not fast enough


I expect at some point I will have to update the PC, the board is getting on and starting to fail in different places and even a modern AMD R5 is more powerful than my R7 1700 these days. Maybe next year, I am in no rush. I will then get a larger NVMe drive with a decent cache.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Agreed, if you're not seeing 800Mbps+ from Steam then take a look at what your CPU usage looks like, as well as your storage. If you're trying to download and uncompress 100GB of files onto a low end SSD it's likely you'll fill the cache and see a throughput hit.

As I said above, I would not be surprised if it was not my drive, but then I don't play that many games and the ones I have are pretty old.

"I also do buy coffee beans on a subscription, that cost me a bit a month"

What is wrong with instant, it is probably much cheaper?

So the irony of this whole thread is, this fella zyborg47 creates a thread complaining that people have a faster package than they actually need then admits to having a faster package than he needs!! to be clear more than 13 times faster than he needs and paying extra for something he doesn't need which he complained other people were doing.

You couldn't make it up.

Is this the point that I remind him he only needs 36Mbps? 😎🤣 No, I don't think I can be bothered with all the guff that will come back at me 🤣

And I was replying to a poster that had 4 users.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Can you quantify what "making use of broadband" actually means? if I need to max it out a couple of times a month does that count as making use of it? do I need to be maxing it out every minute of the day to qualify? Is there a definition of how one should make use of their broadband?

I know you think few if not anyone needs more than 36Mbps (probably just so happens to be the exact amount you had on FTTC) but people out here don't necessarily use broadband the exact same way you do fella.

It is nice having the extra speed if you need it, I have found it useful myself and while paying £24 a month for it was fine, I may as well have it since it was the same price as what I was paying Plusnet for FTTC speed. When the contract ended, and it went back up to £35 more or less, I had to decide if I wanted to stay on 500Mb.s or drop to 150. In the end I decided to stay where I am as the price difference between full price of 150 and full price of 500 is only a fiver a month, I waste more than that a month down the toilet when I go out for a few pints.
If I was in a different situation then yes I would have dropped to 150.

Think somewhere in the previous 1300 words that's the thread and pretty much every other one written on this topic any time recently pretty much anywhere.

But the poster wasn't talking about working from home.

I worked for a .com, many years ago, that had a 2mb leased line. Wasn't fast but was adequate.

But does he really need the extra speed of instant coffee?

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

So the irony of this whole thread is, this fella zyborg47 creates a thread complaining that people have a faster package than they actually need then admits to having a faster package than he needs!! to be clear more than 13 times faster than he needs and paying extra for something he doesn't need which he complained other people were doing.

You couldn't make it up.

Is this the point that I remind him he only needs 36Mbps? 😎🤣 No, I don't think I can be bothered with all the guff that will come back at me 🤣

Only changed because it was cheaper than staying where i was and because Plusnet was pushing me to FTTP anyway.
sure i could have stayed with Plusnet and gone to FTTP on a slower speed, but if I have to cope with the hassle of FTTP installed and Zzoomm was cheaper anyway, i may as well go for a better network.

I was also not complaining about people having a faster broadband than they need, I was saying it is a shame that people to make full use of what they are paying for.

I have said in post before I went to Zzoomm that I was happy to stay on FTTC at 36Mb/s, but I am not paying more for the privilege and being stuck in a 24-month contract.

In reply to a post by cjn:

But does he really need the extra speed of instant coffee?

I don't drink instant coffee if I can help it, I do at work, but never drink it at home. I have an espresso machine,

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have a domain, but I only use it for email, I suppose I could use it for a website, but that would cost more and I don't need a website. But domains are cheap, and businesses normally buy them to stop others using them.

Who do you use for this? I have been using 123-reg for email forwarding but they now tell me that they are stopping this service so I plan to move

123-reg ceased 'free' email forwarding some time around May 2023. A blatant ploy to force customers to pay for an email hosting package from them (or someone else) in order to continue receiving email for their registered domain or change registrar to one still offering a simple email redirect. The PR spin at the time as quoted below:

" Whilst we understand this decision will be disappointing for some customers, our catch-all email forwarding was not performing to the level our customers need, or what we expect. So, we made the difficult decision to stop offering the service. "

They also blatantly abused existing customers with a paid-for web hosting package which included 1 or more mailboxes by effectively terminating those allegedly 'free' mailboxes part way through the hosting contract period which had been paid for in full in advance. i.e. pay for a 3 year web hosting package including mailbox(es) but then find out just a few months into the contract that you will now have to pay more for a separate email hosting package from 123-reg (or someone else) in the very near future in order to continue receiving domain email.

Did you perhaps mean domain forwarding is now being discontinued by 123-reg shortly ?

The reason I ask is that I've just discovered that my 123-reg domain forwarding has suddenly stopped working despite no changes whatsoever by me for well over a year and I haven't managed to get any response from 123-reg customer service to explain why as yet.

Based on my past experience with the 123-reg alleged email system 'upgrade' last year, I certainly wouldn't be in any way surprised to find 123-reg/godaddy are employing very similar tactics in an attempt to also force existing customers to pay for a web hosting package from them or go elsewhere ... although I can't see any suggestion anywhere that's actually the case here.

When did you receive the email or advice from 123-reg that you refer to and what did it actually say ?

Edited by ambrougham (Fri 30-Aug-24 07:23:23)

OK, well it looks like my very OT problem is a 123-reg stupidity or incompetence issue as per bleedin' usual. The original domain redirect server appears to have been decommissioned but the 123-reg control panel is still automatically adding it's IP address to the DNS records rather than whatever the actual IP address of the replacement server is :rolleyes: Nothing I can do ... and 123-reg are doing ... nothing ! End result several weeks of all web traffic either disappearing down a blackhole or being hijacked by someone or something via AWS. Not a happy bunny and all that.



Anyway, with regards to the slightly less OT 123-reg email forwarding question that Michael_Chare asked:

This is not a recommendation as such as I'm still checking things out but hopefully a helpful suggestion: Have a quick look at improvmx.com

I'm currently test driving it to restore email functionality to a 123-reg held domain using an existing hotmail email address which was also associated with it as the final destination. Both of which are of very little importance in reality should things go a bit wrong in any particular way ! First impressions are that it looks and works OK and, I think, has fairly minimal potential security/abuse issues

You just need to change the MX records from 123-reg defaults to point to improvmx. Unlike other similar free email forwarding services (such as forwardemail.net) the destination email address is not being made public via the DNS records. However, there is temporary storage of incoming messages and log data to consider so do check out the privacy info to make sure that you're happy. To all intents and purposes, once the DNS update has propagated it simply replicates the functionality that 123-reg removed last year. All messages sent to the domain now get forwarded to hotmail again as opposed to being bounced by 123-reg with a 'nothing to do with us' error message. I'm using a catch-all as previously but you could use up to 25 defined aliases if you prefer.

It seems to me like a quick/simple solution without having to endure yet another potential out-of-frying-pan-into-fire situation or, worse still, several of them in rather quick succession ! Also no money changing hands is usually attractive of course However, the problem as always is that anything claimed to be 'free' could be changed/removed at any time and without notice or suddenly become chargeable at an extortionate rate once you get used to relying on it ... something that the likes of 123-reg know only too well and exploit often

Edited by ambrougham (Thu 05-Sep-24 19:41:21)

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

Except for certain combinations of use such as UHD streaming and on-line gaming.

Streaming services don't actually stream but burst their data every few seconds.
This can briefly saturate even a reasonable downstream link causing ping spikes for gaming.
My 150Mb/s link shows 50-100ms spikes with a single UHD stream running.

Streaming HD was mentioned, not 4K.

What speed is required for online gaming? Thought low latency, jitter were the main things for gaming.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Streaming HD was mentioned, not 4K.

What speed is required for online gaming? Thought low latency, jitter were the main things for gaming.

Streaming (either in HD or UHD) on a link that is just adequate for those will induce ping spikes that make a good gaming experience impossible when undertaken at the same time.