OK so you have Infinity FTTP or on the 80/20 trials?

I did not say it was slow NOW, but in the past providers who get a rep for cheap unlimited quickly draw in the leechers, which can cause issues. For Infinity is fairly safe as the low price of Sky keeps most leechers heading that direction.

Indeed.

While what RamdomJointer says maybe true in a proportion of cases, I've also heard of cases where people have complained of slower FTTC service on various ISPs and been told its due to local exchange contention.

A work colleague of mine was issued with his MAC and told to leave by three cheap ISPs for loading his connection with P2P traffic 24/7, I think he is now on Sky.

It's interesting to see how many providers who have touted unlimited broadband have now had to bring in traffic management as they have obviously got to the point where they can't afford to just keep adding capacity and sooner or later Sky will do the same I'm sure.

As for BT Retail's Infinity FTTC being the 'best value', when you own the infrastructure you can always undercut your competitors as when all is said and done, Openreach and Retail are wholly owned by one holding company.

I'd like to see Openreach made a mutual non-profit. just like LINX, LoNAP or one of the other exchanges so that it can be owned by and accountable to, its customers, the ISPs and telecom service providers so that we have a level playing field.

Edited by techguy (Fri 10-Feb-12 19:33:16)

I like how people complain simultaneously about slow rollouts of the latest and greatest technologies and they complain about being asked to pay more to get the latest and greatest. I wonder if there isn't some connection there....

Cheap, fast, low contention. Pick two.

Edited by deleted (Fri 10-Feb-12 20:18:47)

In reply to a post by techguy:

It's interesting to see how many providers who have touted unlimited broadband have now had to bring in traffic management as they have obviously got to the point where they can't afford to just keep adding capacity and sooner or later Sky will do the same I'm sure.

No chance.

You Zen guys just don't get it

Dont get what?

Sky has bottomless pockets, or that the BT Wholesale pricing system makes unlimited expensive to provide?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Dont get what?

Sky has bottomless pockets, or that the BT Wholesale pricing system makes unlimited expensive to provide?

Why sky does broadband.

I knew you were.

Why is sky into broadband?

As an adjunct to satellite deliver to ensure a place in an increasingly VoD world

When the Sky acquistition of Easynet was announced I did wonder whether their long term aim was to abandon satellite distribution and pipe it over their own network as its got to work out cheaper than renting transponder capacity on a satellite.

As for 'not getting it' it would appear some people understand little about the physical characteristics of the networks that provide their services.

Routers, switches, optical transceivers and even the DSLAMs all have limits, either how many connections they can physically support and the amount of data they can process, when these limits are reached the equipment has to be upgraded, via the addition of line cards, routing processor boards, or when a router's chassis is full, a new or additional router or switch.

Unsurprisingly, they aren't given away for free and an average carrier-grade router maybe upwards of 3 grand to buy depending on its capacity and features and your average SFP opitcal transceiver which is used for terminating a fibre link is generally over £300, if these upgrades are not done the company can either employ traffic shaping or just take complaints about slow service.

Now, if you are a company like BT, O2 or Sky and regularly make large profits from other parts of your busines or you are a publicly traded company you can absorb a lot of these costs thus keeping your customer broadband subscriptions low and employing staff to answer the phones that may not understand the technical details of what the company is providing aside from what appears from the script on their screen.

Or you can gp the other way, charge a bit more, employ staff that understand instinctively what they are supporting and selling and invest in a quality infrastructure and the future development of the business.

When problems occur IMO it's far better to deal with the latter than the former.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Why is sky into broadband?

As an adjunct to satellite deliver to ensure a place in an increasingly VoD world

It's simpler than that. Sky Broadband exists to sell Sky TV.