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Signed, although I'm with Virgin Media and I doubt the PM can tell BT what to do with their own company.

Actually I just got an email back yesterday from the petition about the BBC iPlayer and only being on windows, the BBC have now said they'll try and get it multi-platform ;)

We Win :D

-Rich-

What the?! The BBC have always said that the iPlayer will be multiplatform.

WTF? Can someone please explain to me how 8mbps isn't enough for home internet use please? Fast downloads, good latency on games, quick surfing.. i've got 8mbps through my provider currently and share that between me and my flatmate - we both use the net a LOT and have never found it to be restrictive in any way!

The only thing that faster internet speeds to end users is doing is driving up the cost for the providers.. and we're always moaning about ads in pages and subscription charges, etc - well, we keep asking for 100mbps internet to the desktop, those costs are going to keep going up - providers of sites / downloads have to find the server hardware to cope with those sorts of speeds, and the internet connections to pipe it.. they aint cheap!

FTTH won't happen any time soon sadly.

I'm originally from the UK and the only decent internet I could get was via cable. Now I live in Australia and the internet situation is pathetic to say the least. Some companies have broadband at 256kpbs, which is frankly pathetic. Add that to the download limits down here, its almost enough to make me want to move back home.

Following local loop unbundling can this happen?

If BT upgrades every line to fibre then the operator using LLU with suddenly find their own equipment useless or if they lease their equipment from BT the cost is bound to go up.

If the operators don't want it or OFCOM decides it makes the marketplace unfair in some way it's never going to happen.

There is a way around that, and thats FTTK (fibre to the kerb). Instead of running fibre into every house, you run fibre cabling to a central point in each village (or part of a town or city) and then run normal copper cable from there to the house. This way, the length of copper used is greatly reduced, and so you can get much faster speeds, and techs which only have benefits on short lines (ADSL2+, VDSL etc) will be available to everyone.

WTF? Can someone please explain to me how 8mbps isn't enough for home internet use please? Fast downloads, good latency on games, quick surfing.. i've got 8mbps through my provider currently and share that between me and my flatmate - we both use the net a LOT and have never found it to be restrictive in any way!

firstly, not everyone can get near 8Mbps. I personally cannot get more than 3Mbps, and my friend (who lives about 1km away) can barely get 512Kbps.

Secondly, if we want IPTV (especially HD stuff) and digital distribution (of things like full games etc) to go mainstream, then we need faster internet connections. IIRC, currently the average consumer ADSL speed is something like 3Mbps. That is no where near fast enough for HD video streaming, or for digital distribution of games (not everyone is happy leaving their console or PC on for hours on end just to get a game or any other big file)

Thirdly - we are in real danger of splitting the country in two. One half with long copper lines, not able to get anywhere near 8Mbps, let alone see any benefit from ADSL2+. And the other half with short lines, can easily get 24Mbps from adsl2+ and will be able to see benefits from new techs like VDSL.

  • 2 weeks later...

It amazes me that UK is not building an optical network.

Three companies in our country have started doing this two years ago in major cities. Those are the prices from one of the providers:

10 Mbps symmetrical 14 ?

20 Mbps symmetrical 28 ?

50 Mbps symmetrical 50 ?

100 Mbps symmetrical 100 ?

200 Mbps symmetrical 200 ?

300 Mbps symmetrical 300 ?

500 Mbps symmetrical 500 ?

1 Mbps symmetrical 1000 ?

It amazes me that UK is not building an optical network.

Three companies in our country have started doing this two years ago in major cities. Those are the prices from one of the providers:

10 Mbps symmetrical 14 ?

20 Mbps symmetrical 28 ?

50 Mbps symmetrical 50 ?

100 Mbps symmetrical 100 ?

200 Mbps symmetrical 200 ?

300 Mbps symmetrical 300 ?

500 Mbps symmetrical 500 ?

1 Mbps symmetrical 1000 ?

guessing the last one should say gbps?

i believe... though i cant be certain, that BT wanted to do FTTH years ago but Mrs Thatcher (Pm at the time) said no, possibly due to costs

noo it was because she was 'advised' by her 'advisors' to sell off BT from the government

note: these 'advisors' also had shares in NTL :p

also SIGNED

ste

I was just reminiscing the other day about when BT first introduced ADSL... with phone line rental it came to about ?50pm. It was 512kbps. That was so fast back then! Now I'm getting 20mbps and phone for ?34.50pm on Virgin Media.

Anyway, signed the petition.

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