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I'd be happy with just 1Mbit if I actually got it most of the time.
Download speed is throttled by forcing tens (usually up to 50) users through one small pipe. (known as 'bandwidth sharing')
I think that ISPs should not be allowed to advertise bandwidth that they cannot deliver to the customer.

After a long while without, I recently signed up with BT for broadband in Aberdeen.

They advertise 'up to 8mb'

When I 'test' my line using BT's own online tester it says I can get 'up to 6mb'.

However in a couple of months of use the fstest I have ever actually had is 800kb with the average being about 400kb. Which is fine for the use I make - If I need faster I use it at work where we go through the JANET academic network and speeds of 50mb + really happen.

This is in the city centre of the third largest city in Scotland.

The quoted rates are simple fantasy and I think there is a long long way to go until speeds actualy get anywhere close to what providers pretend they are now, let along the make believe speeds I see quoted in the press.

It is amazing how people take the internet for granted. I am living in Cape Town South Africa running an online business and the issues we have here are unbelievable. Telkom is the dominating provider, Neotel has only just arrived to SA shoes bringing with it some competition but I am afraid they are just as hopeless. Online is what you have to be these days but I am afraid that some 3rd world countries, especially African are leaps and bounds behind 1sr world countries again effecting their economy. The United Kingdom and little towns such as Ullapool should than themselves lucky that they have a reliable connection at all!

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ablackadder - I think you have fallen victim to the confusion between units that happens a lot. It's the industry's fault!

8MB/s is actually 8 megaBITS per second (not the megaBYTES we are all used to).

800kb/s is 800 kiloBYTES per second (i.e. the second unti of measurement).

800 kb/s is actually 6.25 megaBITS, so about what BT predicted (although if that is occassional peaks, then it's still not great versus them telling you you can "get" 6MB).

Your work connection is therefore running at around 400Mbps - usual for academic institutions, usually connection to the backbone of the web.

lol @qforce

In trying to explain to ablackadder the difference between kilobits and kilobytes, you've made exactly the same mistake.

qforce - I agree too, but you may want to check your cases! 'B' refers to bytes and 'b' bits, so ~6.25Mb/s is ~800kB/s.

And, as we all know, there are 8 bits in a byte....

"the 24Mb podcast took six minutes to download..."

24 megabits eh? That's a 3 megabyte file, so should be pretty quick to download ;)

Makes me laugh, folks trying to be clever using abbreviations and falling over them. They aren't standardised anyway, so just spell it out in full to avoid confusion.

The other massive lack of understanding is that a 6 Mbits/s connection to the exchange will only deliver that when it's quiet on account of bandwidth sharing that is inherent in producing an "affordable" product. The spec for BT's "up to 8Mbits/s" product has always said it will slow down to the same speed as a 2Mbits/s service at busy times.

Similarly mobile broadband is crippled by available spectrum, any given mobile company probably only has access to about 12 Mbits/s of bandwidth so how many customers are going to be able to max out to their link speed at once - two ?

I'm living in a sleepy town (what would be classed as a village in the UK) in Western Australia in the middle of nowhere. I am with an ISP who provides 8000/384kbps, I get exactly what is stated. I am very happy so I don't really need ADSL2 if I can reliably get these speeds.

I don't agree with Clarevz. If you live in a country that makes a big deal about the internet and you also have the largest telephone company in the world you should be getting a lot, lot better. Unfortunately BT don't want to invest in the infrastructure and rather faff about at the fringes doing the cheaper option for maximum profit. BT have been doing this for a long, long time and have done their best to hinder other ISP providers doing a better job of installing better and faster connections than they are willing to do.

the exchanges you talk of where upgraded by BT in part due to a 拢30 million grant given to them by the Scottish Parliament, otherwise due to customer spread BT or any other provider would not have done it. My friend lives just outside the technical reach of broadband even though his exchange is enabled. He is now fortunate to live near a 3G mast and gets a regular connection of 3.6mbps. Other neighbours of his have satelite broadband, up to 2mbps, the latency is no use for online gaming but does fine for browsing.

BT and all the other providers know the future is fast access broadband, but there are costs to be met. Costs that shareholders balk at as they seek higher returns on their shares.

Its chicken and egg in my eyes, get fibre to every house and considerable cost, and reap the rewards, not only for speed , but to allow homeworking and proper speeds for meetings video conference calls etc.

So Lord whatever his name is , is only wasting oxygen telling us things we already know, and we will be paying a lot for his report and nothing in the meantime will be done about it.

BTW there is a wireless hotspot at Inverness Airport

At home I have a 20mb cable (Virgin Fibre) connection which usually hovers around 18mb. It's fast enough for what I need it for and I am so pleased I moved away from the darn awful ADSL with it's intolerably slow speeds and claims of "up to" that never came close.

BT should hang their heads in disgrace, don't they make enough money from us to invest in broadband needed for future use? We in the UK should be the proud owners of 256mb BB by now but we're stuck in the dark-ages of "up to" 8mb. Wow.

i live in Cardiff and was promised an upto 8 megabit connection, when BT setup my broadband what i actually got was about 1.8 megabits, however this would only run stable for about 3 weeks at a time, i logged no end of calls with BT for faults which they never found, i was constantly told that if they decided that if the fault was found to be mine they would fine me for it.

I was also told if I cancled an engineers apointment I would be fined for wasting their time! On 3 occasions I woke up to find that the service had returned on the morning the engineer was due to come out and each time was told that they may be cost involved to me for canceling the apointment!

After over a year of this my telephone line stopped working and the voice team at BT sent an engineer out who found a fault on the line, and replaced it, my broadband is at least connected all the time now but my speed is now limited to between 1200 kilobits and 800 kilobits, its not like i live in the middle of nowhere Cardiff is a major UK city.

Speaking to other people around I have been told this is about the speed to expect for this part of the city.

Question to ask now is this.

Is it sensible to spend money getting broadband to areas, when in a year or two, that basic broadband will once again be below standard? Would not a better solution be to spend more on a longer lifetime solution?

Fast enough for you?

in a word, NO

my internet connection is barely capable of streaming from youtube, and as an avid online gamer it is nigh on impossible to get decent latency between any server (ruining any sort of competitive first person shooter) due to a barely "broadband" 512kilobits-per-second line

HURRY UP BT AND GET OFF YOUR LAURELS and sort this mess out before we completely miss out

I live and work in a community where broadband WAS a real issue. Instead of waiting for either the Government or BT to do something about it, we did something about it ourselves - AND SO CAN ANYONE ELSE.

But it does take effort and someone to lead and drive a project like this through. By co-ordinating need, you can overcome the biggest hurdle to Broadband Inadequacy - Being without a voice - the issue is usually due to the infra-structure responsible for getting broadband to your door, NOT with the ISP, so complaining to your ISP will almost certainly get you no-where.

By building a substantiated case for service provision within your community - you can really make a difference. Our case became so strong, that we formed a company to co-ordinate, deliver and support the service. We now have more than a dozen remote parishes comprising of some 500 homes and a multitude of businesses connected to a genuinely high-speed broadband service.

If ever evidence were needed of the importance of broadband to rural development and regeneration you would not have to look further than the difference our project has made to so many lives. We have case studies of communities satisfied, businesses saved and individuals empowered.

So my message to anyone stuck with a poor service is simple - HELP YOURSELF TO FASTER BROADBAND. We did and we'd be happy to share our experiences with anyone who wanted to do the same.

@Clarevz - yes we all understand we are far ahead of third world countries, but when you compare the UK to the far east, places like Singapore, Japan, Korea etc. we might as well be 3rd world as well and the fact is we pay for the service we do get and we're not getting what we are paying for.

@Lloyd_Felton - you forgot to mention one thing, that doing what you did costs money, something which a lot of us in this country, the UK, who get bad service don't have a lot of to dispose in the hope we actually get somewhere.

Whilst this country is held to ransom by privatised ISPs and network infrastructure owners we will never reach the level of service other countries around the world, particularly in the far east have for the cost to the consumer that they have.

Dear ravenmorpheus (re post 16) - I have to be careful to retain neutrality in an open forum. This is not an arena for advertising which is why I havent mentioned where we are based or the name of our service. But I would like to respond to your post by saying that actually, what we did took effort and commitment more than money. It also took someone willing to take on the responsibility of making it happen this is often the hardest thing to find, and as a result we would be willing help other projects if asked. It also took time to co-ordinate - time that could be reduced for other communities willing to learn from our experiences. I hope the moderator will pass my contact details to anyone interested.

What our community now has as a result is a first-class service, which admittedly does cost something to join. Each subscriber pays 拢99 to join the service (which contributes towards the cost of installing the necessary equipment) and from 拢11 pcm in subscriptions. Our objective has been to deliver a rural service, at least equivalent to services provided in urban areas. In most cases, we have surpassed this objective.

My response is not intended to be a boast about what we have achieved (although as a small group of people we are very proud of what we have done), but to demonstrate what can be achieved with a positive 'can do' approach and the mantra that you can 'Help yourself to Broadband', rather than wait for an ever elusive solution to come to you.

I was genuinely interested in your comment about the network infra structure owners holding up development. My understanding is that it was the Governments insistence that BT open up their network to competition (hence the birth of BT Open Reach) that has given BT cause to argue that they (BT) should not be expected to invest in the development of the network for the benefit of other operators. It's a catch 22, with the cost of deployment far outweighing the short/mid-term financial returns available. I think the comment in post 10 re stake-holder returns is right on the mark in this respect. Hence a different strategy is now required to move rural broadband forward.

The UK has, up to now, been dependent on market forces to drive the roll-out of broadband. This has worked well in urban (highly populated) areas, but failed miserably in rural England.

Our alternative strategy worked for us, and didn't cost the subscriber any noticeable difference for an often superior service. But its not a strategy that will come to you, you have to make it happen.

Whatever happened to BT's 21 Century network that they were promising? Has it died the death?

PS if you think Ullapool is damp - try Glen Sheil!

As it took over three minutes to access this reply page from just outside the inglorious surroundings of Reading (well under 50m from London), Ullapool seems like internet heaven!

Some years ago the regional development agency OneNorthEast made a commitment to take broadband to every exchange in Northumberland. As a result, villages such as Belford (45 miles north of Newcastle) got broadband less than a year after parts of Manchester city centre.

All was fine and dandy for a few years. But, over the last year, things have deteriorated greatly. My 2Mb AOL service consistently drops to one tenth of that speed in the evenings. I can't even watch the 成人论坛 iPlayer which uses about one quarter of the speed I am paying for.

It isn't fit for purpose and I'm not the only one with this problem. But OFCOM just send out template replies (I know that because it forgot to insert my name at one point in the letter!) and witters about how it monitors ISPs and they are signed up to its minimum service guarantee.

It's a total rip-off. No other business would be allowed to charge people for a service and then consistently fail to deliver it the way AOL and BT are doing.

No, my internet is not fast enough, I pay for a 24Mb connection yet only get 7Mb, however I don't have any problems with my ISP. It's totally the fault of BT and their prehistoric network!

@Robabody 21 Century Network should be still in development but it won't affect internet for most that already have adsl2+ dslams. And it will still be affected by distance from the exchange.

This is a bit radical perhaps, but if we look at the price we all pay for our broadband you will invariably find it is the one bill that has reduced in cost. A big part of this cost saving has been by making the network more effecient, which in normal speak means cramming more poeple into the same capacity than was done previously.

There are good providers out there that if you have a 2Meg connection speed, can give close to 2Meg most of the time, but they aren't always the cheapest.

Streaming is perhaps the best test of a connection, as it requires either high burst speeds or a constant data rate. BT Total on its cheapest product limit streaming to 900Kbps, which means no iPlayer HD.

@Lloyd_Felton

99quid to join and 11quid a month?

can i join? (i live in south london btw - maybe we should set up our own!)

Looking at the broadband speed "map" of the UK, it seems pretty fair, with better connections if more densely populated areas, reasonble connections in semi-rural areas.

Given the speed that BT have gone from nowehere to this in only a few years, and 21CN coming online in the next year or 2, I think they have done a fantastic job.

I live in a semi-rural area, and get 8MB connection, It's not suited for IPTV, but it's good enough for pretty much everything else. Next year it should be 20MB ADSL2+ according to BT.

And here's me thinking I knew my bits from me bytes. Then I thought I understood it better and then I was confused again!
Anyhoo, I'm still agrieved about the whole 1024 thing that means your hard drive is never as big as you think it is.
Mind you the last time I had a connection at home I had a 56k modem (I'll just leave k so I don't mix up my K with my k) so even if it's not as fast as it could be, it still seems pretty fast in comparison to that.

BT's 21CN is primarily a "back office" feature about rationalising BT's multifarious networks into a single IP based infrastructure. In itself it doesn't affect end user speeds however BT's ADSL2+ services will utilise the 21CN equipment in exchanges.

BTW, nobody "pays for 24M" or "pays for 8M" you're paying for a rate adaptive service that will run as fast as it can, up to those speeds. The ISP will probably allocate somewhere between 25 and 100 kbits/s per user, which is what you are really paying for.

well i have moved out from good old london to a place called beverley, to my horror they DONT have BT OR CABLE just stuck with teh worst ISP and telephone company ever Karoo just be thankfull that you have BT and competition for ISP and not the rubbish i get up here from karoo or c r a p karoo as i would call them.

Where I live (which isn't actually anywhere near Barnsley any more!), I can get a maximum speed of 1mbps. All ISPs advertise "up to 8mbps".

If they know I can't do better than 1mbps here, then why do they insist I pay the same price as people that CAN get 8mbps? Surely I should be paying 1/8th of the monthly charge for Broadband?

What if you paid for 8 gallons of fuel in your car, then found out you'd actually been given only 1 gallon? Would that be fair? Should you still have to pay for the whole eight gallons, or just the one gallon you actually got?

Back in 2004 the way broadband was sold changed drastically, from been speed based, to how much you use.

In terms of costs to the ISP a user using 50GB a month at a rate of 0.5Mbps, is roughly the same cost as one using 50GB a month at a rate of 5Mbps.

Some providers do offer tiered speed/price packages still, and for most of the UK people have a myriad of providers to choose from, there are hundreds not just the four or five who can afford massive amounts of advertising.

Barnsley Dave not to worry soon all residential and industries in Sheffield, Barnsley,Doncaster,Rotherham plus their surrounding villages will have access to a new network with 25Mb/s being provided by the local councils and funded by the EU called Digital Region which is being put in place NOW and will be available at the end of the year according to the blurb.
see

I am currently with BT broadband and, for the moment, enjoying download speeds of 250+kbytes/s. The other week this nose-dived to 16kbytes/s. As with many other people, I tried to complain but just got an 'Indian call centre' and nowhere fast, but at least it was 3 times faster than dial-up!

The electronics and mathematics needed to achive even 16kbytes/s are impressive. As I understand,BT's ADSL uses 1-2 Mega-hertz of bandwidth above the normal speech bandwidth of a few kilo-hertz, hence the little filter boxs.

Even I know that 'stuffing' a 1Mhz signal down even 100feet of wire isn't going to do your 'message' much good without the correct balancing of the transmission line (wire or optical!).

So for these people (BT workers not directors!) to be doing so not only over several kilometers but with wire that was probably made in the 1950/60's and designed for signals 1/1000th the bandwidth required for BB, is, for me at least, pretty impressive!

Not that I condone BT and others for their false advertising or the bandwidth sharing they practice. *Quick to take our money but not invest in customer services and infrastructure* seems to be the norm in British industry these days...

I thank the technicians, mathematicians and engineers who make it possible for me to send my 'rant' to this blog and *NOT* the directors at BT who don't give a hoot about me or my 'BroadBand'.

"So long as we don't break the law and the cutomer pays, we don't care about the quality of service provided" is their mantra.

The Digital Region project is a Fibre to the cabinet solution, that will compete with the Openreach FTTC solution in the cities probably.

Coverage is described as 97%, and while the project has been known about for some time, there is skant information on how consumers will buy the service. It looks to be a case of attracting retail broadband providers to the network.

Seems to me most people here, including Rory, don't know there bits from their bytes.
8Megabit connect - 1Megabyte
16Megabit connect - 2 Megabyte

Mb - Megabit
MB - Megabyte

Supermegafast broadband speeds are all very well, in theory. But as your latest story implies (, there is little point in subscribing to megafast broadband services if the ISP throttles their customers download speeds for the very service, and at the very time they need that speed most - the reason why the subscriber signed-up in the first place.

I was a very early broadband customer (Telewest, circa 2001?). I went from a dial-up 56k connection to a 256k connection. Telewest (and then Virgin) steadily and seamlessly increased my speed (at no extra cost) from that initial 256k right up to 8mb by 2008.

I recently downgraded to Virgin's basic 2mb service. Know what? There's not much tangible benefit from (upto) 8mb and going down to basic broadband. Sure, it takes longer to download movies and MP3's, but it's far less expensive (I'm saving to do a postgrad course) and I can watch the iplayer etc just as well as I could in the past.

Consumer Tip: DOWNGRADE!! That'll teach tye ISP's to throttle users for trying to make the best of the service they thought they were signing up to.

I've been doing a small amount of research, and I found that towns smaller than the one I live in are getting better overall connection speeds because of one factor. That being, that wherever Virgin Media is present, BT have done their utmost to provide a superior service than is provided elsewhere.
And therefore if you, like myself live in a non-Virgin area, you will not get a good quality service. No matter which ISP you go with.
This I would suggest is creating a 2 tier area of supply.
As to the infrastructure of the UK, well it's been in need of an overhaul for years. Other countries that have superior networks, are invariably helped by the Government with huge subsidies that are paid back over a long period of time. So the tax payer is not affected by sharp tax increases.
Maybe the way to go?
Advertising connections as Megabits should in my opinion be banned. They should advertised as Kilobytes. Megabits is an advertising mis-leader. It's all smoke and mirrors to mis-lead and mis-represent what the end user can expect. But this has been going on for years and isn't likely to change. Not the way the system is setup. OFCOM and other government agencies have no backbone to do anything because of the lobbyist and the old boy network.

Everyone is reporting about the lack of broadband connection in UK, especially in the rural areas. The Criticism in the media even goes high day by day. The government has planned to make every citizen in UK connected to broadband by 2012 at a average rate of 2 Mbps. The focus is mainly on the rural sector as it lacks the internet providers as those areas as not affordable for them. The important thing to be realized is that broadband connection in UK is improving day by day and the government is taking necessary steps towards it. The broadband penetration in rural areas of UK was always lagging behind the urban areas but this year a new milestone has been achieved in the era of UK broadband. Yes,the percentage of people connected to broadband in rural UK has surpassed their urban peers this time around regardless of the speed. The reasons behind this lies in the introduction of cheap broadband plans by the providers as well as the interest of the government towards it. So,instead of blaming the government for this,lets join together to take the initiative of bringing Britain to be on the top
of the broadband lists in the world.