Aaargh! Broadband driving me insane!

[Bizzel]

I've had it with broadband in this country! We've had 3 engineers out to look at our phone line and they've swapped cables around, repaired boxes and dug up the road - the line quality is still being reported as awful by the modem. I'm not even that far from the exchange. Next door gets 3x the speed we do. I'm thinking of moving to Japan just for fibre-to-the-home!

 

[nibiyabi]

Wait, there's no fiber optic in the UK?!

 

[Bizzel]

Well I believe one company, Virgin Media, is rolling it out in limited areas to provide 20meg. Their existing network is digital coax but the majority of the country runs on plain old copper. Ugh.

 

[Mindless]

Move to Sweden, most households and apartments have 10-100Mbit download and 5-10Mbit upload. But then again, you don't want to live and work here so Japan might be a good idea...

 

[Bizzel]

I stumbled upon this the other day:

 

[magnetic]

 

[milamber]

Quote:

Originally Posted by magnetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif

x2

 

[Thelonious Monk]

isn't Be supposed to be a really good uk isp?

 

[nibiyabi]

Holy ****, average Japanese connection is ~7.5-7.75MB/s? Good god. . . .

 

[YamiTenshi]

Guess I better start learning Japanese, ne?

 

[milkpowder]

My internet up in Scotland isn't all that bad. I'm with British Telecom (8Mb, unlimited up/down) and because I'm relatively close to the exchange (within 1 mile), I can get 7Mbps downstream (8Mb quoted speed). Upstream is less than inspiring at 376kbps (quoted 448kbps). 7Mbps isn't that quick considering we're getting 100Mbps up/down in Hong Kong soon but entirely sufficient for torrents and internet surfing. (1Gbps is also possibly via fibre to home, but the setup and monthly costs aren't quite worth it) I guess I'm more pissed off at the super-aggressive traffic shaping that BT enforces on non-HTTP traffic during peak hours (6pm to around 12/1am). I've tried all sorts of traffic encryption and nothing can get pass the shaping

As someone said, the connection from main central distribution to exchanges is done via copper. Speeds to the end customer could rise exponentially if those connections were all changed to fibre.

 

[DJShadow]

I've been with Tiscali for the past 3 years. Two tins and piece of string would've fared better than their abysmal service. Heres a list of what is crap about Tiscali:

-Randomly cuts off with no warning.
-If the house phone rings and someone picks it up the connection is severed (yes I have plugged the cables staight into the phone socket)
-Abysmally slow at times
-Modem has a mind of its own
-Function like 56kbps dial up in that I have to....dial up in order to connect. 30% of the time it won't connect.
-Daft adverts

 

[Bizzel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJShadow /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've been with Tiscali for the past 3 years. Two tins and piece of string would've fared better than their abysmal service. Heres a list of what is crap about Tiscali: -Randomly cuts off with no warning. -If the house phone rings and someone picks it up the connection is severed (yes I have plugged the cables staight into the phone socket) -Abysmally slow at times -Modem has a mind of its own -Function like 56kbps dial up in that I have to....dial up in order to connect. 30% of the time it won't connect. -Daft adverts

- Throttles bittorrent traffic

 

[fraseyboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bizzel /img/forum/go_quote.gif I stumbled upon this the other day:

IMO, thats not very accurate.

It says that we have better broadband than Australia, which is definatly not true. ATM, there is really only one ISP in New Zealand, and that is Telecom/Xtra. All the equipment at the exchange is Telecom's and all the other ISP's are just buying the same broadband from Telecom then reselling it.

At least Australia has ADSL2+ as well...

 

[Bizzel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fraseyboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif There is really only one ISP in New Zealand, and that is Telecom/Xtra. All the equipment at the exchange is Telecom's and all the other ISP's are just buying the same broadband from Telecom then reselling it.

It's my understanding that that's the case in the UK too. Most ISPs are simply paying BT for the privilege of using BT equipment in BT exchanges. Some ISPs, such as Be, are rolling out LLU (local loop unbundling) at certain exchanges and installing their own equipment but the majority of the network is still BT's. In fact, if and when Orange finally send an engineer out, he or she will actually be a BT tech.