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.