UK News: NTL Announces New Range of Broadband Services

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ntl, the UK’s leading provider of broadband internet services, today unveiled plans to unleash the potential of its fibre optic cable network by launching three super-speed broadband internet services. Available in early 2005, the new services will offer 1Mb, 2Mb and 3Mb broadband connections.

Having been the first company to offer UK consumers a choice of speeds at great value prices, ntl believes that the time is right to offer higher speeds while maintaining mass market prices.

By focusing on more speed ntl is enhancing the part of the broadband service that will make the most difference to customers such as fast downloading of music, emailing digital photos in an instant or delivering high quality video performance.

The three new services will be highly competitive:

£17.99 per month: ntl 1Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 5GB) will offer super speed broadband for 60p a day. For the same price BT Broadband offers a basic 512K service with 1GB usage allowance.

£24.99 per month: ntl 2Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 30GB) will operate at a stunning speed, but at a price that’s in line with most 512K ADSL services. For the same price BT Broadband offers a 512K service with 15GB usage allowance

£37.99 per month: ntl 3Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 40GB) will operate at up to 60 times faster than dial up services. BT and Wanadoo do not provide 2Mb or 3Mb services.

News source: Chetnet.co.uk

Please note, this is not the place to discuss whether or not you like the bands mentioned in this article. The article is about CD/DVD Hybrid discs making their way into the public market. Thank you.

(2 replies) #1 jmc777 on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:37

I hope Blueyonder do the same. Price cuts = good!

#1.1 axious on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:46

QUOTE

£17.99 per month: ntl 1Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 5GB)

£24.99 per month: ntl 2Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 30GB)

£37.99 per month: ntl 3Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 40GB)

All with limits. Don't want that on Telewest Blueyonder!

40gb limit on a 3mb connecton. Waste of time.

#1.2 jmc777 on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:52

Christ! I didn't notice the limits!

#2 cashman on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:39

If that is the case then I can see quite a few people "downgrading", going for the cheaper but still faster than what they have at the moment service.

Great move by NTL, I just hope people don't start complaining about usage allowances now...

(1 reply) #3 Tartan on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:39

WOW - That capping is disgusting, such a shame a company like that decides to increase speeds, but sour the whole deal with capping.

#3.1 cashman on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:43

I sure am good at predicting the future of neowin posters

(2 replies) #4 craybox on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:44

yes blueyonder could be cheaper but the service i have had from them is good and its unmetered. i am willing to put up with the extra £10

#4.1 Tartan on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:48

Yup I agree, its far better to pay more for unmetered, than less for capped. I just don't see why NTL can't offer different levels, ie...say even $49 per month for 3mb broadband unmetered, and $37 for the capped version for lite users.

#4.2 axious on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:48

Absolutly agree with you here. Would rather pay the £10 extra and have no capping.

#5 Oneill on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:46

ouch, i cant see the capped monthly download going down too well, 5gb a month for 1mb?

Whats the point in having really fast speeds if its capped, might as well just get 56k again.

#6 welshkid on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:49

i hate bandwitdth limit

that is going against broadband which is for downloading

(2 replies) #7 axious on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:51

The speed increases will be rolled out to new customers during the first three months of next year, although existing customers must cough up a £25 "administration fee" to make the switch.

The words "RIP" and "OFF" spring to mind here!

#7.1 xmintox on 03 Nov 2004 - 15:57

Well my modem can only hit 1mb right now, So it may be for a new modem, seems fine to me

and the capping thing, most of us are on a 1GB a day thing now. I'm using 750k right now, So when I get 2mb, I'll still have pretty much the same cap. Its still a pretty sweet deal for £24.99

#7.2 Oneill on 03 Nov 2004 - 17:28

The point is the 1gb a day cap isnt strictly enforced.

With these monthly caps i can see them being anal about it, if they want to start this im gonna cancel my full package NTL Digital TV, Phone and Cable and go to unmetered ASDL

#8 the_bearded_dope on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:06

This is not bad!

, I just use my internet connection for gaming and I rarely download large files anyway.

(2 replies) #9 sgr55 on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:18

u know i really wish bt would get off there back sides and follow suit

I'm paying £24.99 for Unlimited 512K and usuing 10~15Gb a month
so £24.99 for 2mbit with a 30 gb cap wud be fine for me and a gr8 price 2

i really hate bt

#9.1 DeviantUK on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:21

Why not try a different provider? I'm paying £40 a month for 2mb and no limit

#9.2 sgr55 on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:24

Errm i'm on the cheapest provider with the best service i can find atm

it goes down to £20~21 at the end of my contract (3ish months left) - its at 24 because i had got a modem with my package (which i binned 2 weeks after getting the stupid thing)

#10 DeviantUK on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:18

Don't forget of course, NTL's reputation as a company. I had 1mb through them for 2 years. First year was fine, but the second... it was awful and slow. You could sit on hold for over an hour waiting to actually speak to someone.

This is without even mentioning their billing procedures! They frequently bill you too much and its very difficult to get your money back (though not impossible).

I moved away from NTL last year and I've not looked back since.

#11 sgr55 on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:22

yeh telewest arnt much better for billing btw- they tried to sue us for just over £1000 for 2 months broadband.... they never fixed it either... still to this date 2 years on. We never did pay them for about 4~5 months broadband (cause of the screwup - they never sent us a proper invioce so we threathend them leagal action if they didnt stop harassing us and they eventually did)

(1 reply) #12 Nebula2020 on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:29

Any ideas about the upload speeds?

#12.1 Mando on 04 Nov 2004 - 09:07

itll be 256kbit upload (isps enforce this to reduce p2p traffic congestion of their networks

)

#13 mrbester on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:29

Now I just have to wait (like I have been for the last 3 years) for NTL to get off its butt and install cable in my street...

#14 C64afx on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:30

Never had a problem with the services or billing with ntl, and don't they have an unenforced cap in place at the moment?

(1 reply) #15 Nebula2020 on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:34

Just checked my last 7 days on NTL 600k, 12GB in 7 days = 48GB a month.

Oh-oh

#15.1 Sporkguy on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:37

Sure that aint 750kbps mate? We were all upgraded a month or two ago....

#16 Sporkguy on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:36

heh - limits... so much for the theory of evolution, this, if anything, is devolution.

I'll be sticking with my 750k until something faster with less limit is released.

kthxbye

#17 sgr55 on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:38

they will prob have an unlimited service.... if not then thats really gonna suck

(2 replies) #18 Confuser on 03 Nov 2004 - 16:55

Here we are three connected to Vidéotron "Extreme" cable (4.5Mbits down and 1Mbits up) for $70/month so this is very inexpensive. I share the connection with my father and my brother who lives on the second floor in a duplex. We have no cap for downloading and uploading and they plan this november to upgrade the download speed to 6.5Mbits. Because competition is very high here in Québec everybody upload at around 100K/sec and the download is minimum 3Mbits.

#18.1 Oneill on 03 Nov 2004 - 17:34

No its not inexpensive at all, im assuming yours is Canadian Dollars.

Just did a Currency convert for the NTL 3mbit, and its nearly $90CAD a month.

You get 4.5mbit (soon to be 6.5mbit) for $70CAD? Currency converted thats about £30GBP which is what we will pay for 2mbit, thats 2.5mbit more, and will be 4.5mbit more when you get upgraded.

#18.2 Confuser on 03 Nov 2004 - 22:44

You're right this is canadian currency. I pay $23/month

#19 Dessimat0r on 03 Nov 2004 - 17:13

That cap is disgusting for a UK company, I hope they lose all their business

#20 _Dom_ on 03 Nov 2004 - 17:26

not to mention that the service is already overused and very slow at times

*_Dom_ an NTL BB User

(1 reply) #21 Dazzla on 03 Nov 2004 - 17:30

Well, I'll be monitoring my average monthly usage on my £24.99/750k NTL connection in the coming months and if I don't really get close to 30GB then I'll see about switching.

Bear in mind that they already contact customers who consistently download over 1gb a day on average over a 1 month period about how they are "degrading the service for regular customers".

#21.1 Oneill on 03 Nov 2004 - 17:35

Which is fair enough.

But some days i download more, others i dont download at all, with a monthly cap its going to be every month i download more than the cap. Pointless having such a fast connection if you cant use it to its full potential.

#22 BigCheese on 03 Nov 2004 - 18:11

This is great news. I currently have the NTl 750k broadband service. i don't care about haveing a 30gb cap, because I never download anywhere near that much and whoever does is a serious warez junky.

(1 reply) #23 Chrisnet on 03 Nov 2004 - 19:54

what a rip... I get 5MBit down uncapped for $40cdn

#23.1 BigCheese on 03 Nov 2004 - 20:36

I wish I could get that.

(1 reply) #24 Knight' on 03 Nov 2004 - 20:45

What are the upload speeds and are there limits on this? I run my own webserver and this is important to me.

#24.1 Mando on 04 Nov 2004 - 09:09

256kbit upload (limit imposed on UK ISPS to com bat the prolific use of p2p apps )

(i work for a major uk isp we have no choice)

#25 deadmonkey on 03 Nov 2004 - 21:37

Is the cap a hard or soft cap? By this I mean when you get to 40GB your access is cut off (hard cap) or can you go over your 40GB cap but if you keep going over it NTL will write to you (soft cap)?

(1 reply) #26 Bazildondude on 03 Nov 2004 - 22:33

Urgh, stupid ISP's. Still peeving me off that BT decided to do this. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for downloading that much (i.e. Linux distros for example).

#26.1 Mando on 04 Nov 2004 - 09:11

heheh come on dood thats not technically true, say a linix distro is say 4-9gb in size, are you tyelling me youll download that distro at least 10 times in a month....no i didnt think so either hehehe

#27 Jazza on 03 Nov 2004 - 23:54

BT and Wanadoo do not provide 2Mb or 3Mb services.

Not completlely true. BT is starting a trial of a 2mb service at the end of November. Pipex is offering it £39.99, others will follow. Which I thought was a good price until I saw NTL's price. But those of you who have suffered thought NTL customer service, will probably think twice

(1 reply) #28 tele-fragd on 04 Nov 2004 - 01:41

Whinge whinge whinge... Come to Australia and see how we feel.

#28.1 tterb on 04 Nov 2004 - 02:31

Your right, the scary thing is these plans would be really good value in .au, what with our pathetic download caps and slow speeds as the industry standard. Expect things to get worse with the privatisation of Tel$tra and government inaction on competition reform. The broadband consumer in aus will get screwed for a while yet..

#29 donachello on 04 Nov 2004 - 01:48

I might have mentioned before but I used to be a Cable Modem Senior for ntl: in the UK... and although I was working for an American company their backbone is pretty large... and I understand were they are getting the figures from because if you work it out:-

At the moment they cap at 1GB per day on a 1MB connection...

So relatively speaking you will gain from upgrading to a 3MB connection because you will gain 0.43GB on top of your connection now...

40GB is not that bad really... around 1.43GB per day. Makes sense...

Yeah...?

The backbone of ntl: is big enough but they would have to cap the hell out of your connection though… I have a cap and monitor my connectivity and use about 2GB in about 4 days which is monitored by my router and I trust this more than their stats…

And I download like crazy… never go over 40GB in a month… and this includes online gaming as well…

People will suffer if they use the connection a lot. Which is why the capping was brought into affect in the first place…? There is a way around the capping which is a very easy to perform but, I would never reveille this to anybody so don’t ever bother asking me…

What I would suggest is don’t even try uncapping your modem because they still use MRTG to monitor the connections, so if you downloaded a different TFT file to the modem it would show up like a Christmas tree on the MRTG graph because of amount of data downloaded in a time scale of 10, 15, 30, 1 day SO DON’T BE a NUMPTY AND UNCAP YOUR CONNECVTION…

(2 replies) #30 ^vøødøø on 04 Nov 2004 - 08:46

1.43gb a Day how stupidly dumb can NTL be!!! Halflife 2 preload alone is way more than that. Oh and uncapping is as easy as pie, Sb4100 motorola modem

, Disable Snmp walk .. Limiting people to such low limits really puts a block on the upcoming technologies with streaming video
Dont mind if its inforced on a monthly rata rather than daily amounts i suppose

Last edited by 14952 on 04 Nov 2004 - 09:03

#30.1 Oneill on 04 Nov 2004 - 10:28

Id actually welcome daily limits if i had to choose.

Say for some reason i went over the cap it would throttle my connection back to a low speed or something. Rather than send out letters and threaten to disconnect people. Not every day would i be going over the cap.

#30.2 donachello on 04 Nov 2004 - 12:15

Yeah I understand what you are saying Voodoo... and agree online gamers are going to suffer... I know for a fact the backbone is capable of holing these connections... and know the size of the backbone is enough... The problem is Voodoo is oversubscribing which is the reason why there is a cap in place in the first place to make sure everybody gets an allocation of the network...

1.43GB per day is enough for me... although some people will see this is rather stupid where I agree... ntl: has always had their head in the clouds to be the ONE...?

This means ntl: is going to end up with oversubscribing again even more than they are already at…

It will work… I just hope the Head-End can take the amount of data going through there…

#31 RaINE on 04 Nov 2004 - 13:19

what thery forgot to quote was

"If you already have ntl Broadband your service will remain unchanged, but if you wish to upgrade to the new speeds you can – for a one-off administration charge of £25. A dedicated online registration system will be launched in the New Year for existing customers to order an upgrade"

thank **** for that, 5 gig permonth limit on 1mb broadband, 1 linux dvd and your screwwed

#32 Devil Fish on 04 Nov 2004 - 13:39

Christ, always with the moaners. It's got a cap, I can't download 5000 linux cds that I just have got to download everyday, blah blah blah.

If you dont like it, piss off somewhere else.

#33 renegade69 on 04 Nov 2004 - 14:57

Yeah right - If anybody actually manages to download 1.5Gb a day constantly they need to get out more, cos they have to be cheap-asses downloading films and games constantly. For any ordinary person who downloads music, plays games and surfs web - those speeds kick ass for that price. I'd imagine one reason for the capping in the first place is pressure from anti-piracy companies cos of warez junkies!

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