ISP that'll charge a low rate for 2MB unlimited connection?

My friend lives in a rural area in the UK and is looking for a broadband package. According to a few potential connection speed-checks, they're in for about 2MB/sec download.

Looking around at the various offers online for them, I see most of the cheaper unlimited packages (£15�25 roughly) offering 20�24MB/sec. Obviously they won't be using that bandwidth, and would be, I think, spending money on something they'll not be getting for some time i.e. a faster line in the future. So, I'm wondering if anyone knows of an ISP that'll offer a 2MB package that'll come in at a low price; or even if that's technically possible, and that the impossibility of that is what is causing this gap in the market.

Disclosure: I am, due to discovering this problem, also toying with the idea of starting a service that'd offer such a deal, but haven't the technical know how or capital to start one any time soon, so please don't worry about me running off with any technical answers and making money off the back of them.

I would like to understand why this gap exists.

If you have or know of an ISP not listed on thinkbroadband that you'd like to point me towards, please do.

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Jun-17 19:40:04)

I don't think you'll find anything like what you're looking for. There are fixed costs incurred in providing broadband, so just because you're on a long line doesn't mean you're costing the ISP significantly less.

Ah, I see. Thanks, Kris.

Longer lines are slower yes, due to the technology at play.

That being said maintaining a longer line is generally more expensive than a shorter one. There is more cabling for starters and more to go wrong. Also when figuring out what has gone wrong, it's more challenging when the length is longer.

Combine this with the underlying fixed costs e.g. Exchange equipment etc, the longer line becomes more costly.

Effectively no such service exists that'll be cheaper for them. If they can get a service at £15 inc line rental that's very good.

Thank you. That's very insightful.

I agree with the answers you have been given. However there's a minor point you need to know about the meaning of MB/s.

It is purely a convention, but applies everywhere as far as I know. MB = MegaBytes and Mb (or occasionally mb) = Megabits.

There are 8 bits in a byte. So 2MB/s = 16Mb/s.

Estimates are give in Mb/s or often in Kb/s (M = 1000K for connection speeds).

The previous posters and I believe you mean 2Mb/s, but elsewhere you might find people thinking you meant 16Mb/s.

That I hope is fairly easy. Then comes the difficult bit that at first seems daft.

When you do a speed test the result is given in Kb/s or Mb/s. But when you download a file most downloaders tell you the speed it is coming down in KB/s or MB/s.

The reason for that is that files at made up of bytes, where most "characters or numbers" take 1 byte each. So a ten-million character file is 10MB. It makes sense when downloading it to tell you in terms of the speed those 10 MegaBytes are arriving as it's easy to relate the size and the reported speed.

This is even more so given the second complication. When file sizes are being discussed 1MB = 1024KB = 1,048,576 bytes . This is because when file storage on tape and then disc was designed it worked with everything being in powers of 2. it just made it all so much easier. RAM/Memory works the same way.

Ignoring overheads in data transmission, which of course in real life we can't, the quickest a 10MB file could downloads with a 2Mb/s connection would be (10,485,760 x 8) / 2,000,000 = 41.94304 seconds. Not (10,000,000 x 8) / 2,000,000 = 40 seconds.