8Mbit Broadband to Become Available in the UK 518
UK Online is offering 8Mbit broadband service to the UK. The upstream is 400K, and there's a monthly download cap of 500GB, but at 40 pounds per month, plus 50 installation and a free wireless router in the package, that has to be among the best deals on offer from anyone.
That's still ~$10/mbps.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus.. I *rarely* max out my 1mbps line as it is.. who's going to have a good use for this.. (I don't use BitTorrent, mind.. the donkey does for me).
Students (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Dear UK (Score:5, Interesting)
"and there's a monthly download cap of 500GB"
OK, bub, let's see you carry that much pr0n.
If a CD-R weighs 20 grams and holds 700MB, then a spindle of 50 CD-Rs (35 GB) weighs about a kilo, or 2.2 pounds. 14 spindles * 35 GB = 30 pounds.
So you're breaking even (pound for pound as you pound the pud) after about three weeks.
Conversion to Libraries of Congress full of dead-tree editions of Mayfair (it is the UK after all) is left as an exercise for the rest of you wankers. Er, for the student.
Why the upstream? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I think would make the most sense is giving people a few mbit upstream (closer to 2:1 or 3:1) and then limiting them to something reasonable, like 2gb/day (best done a floating 10gb/5 days or something). That way the upstream is there when needed, but doesn't let people run massive servers 24/7.
Ha ha (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in Sweden.
Re:Huh? "Become available" (Score:2, Interesting)
P0rn, NOT! (Score:3, Interesting)
For a rabid Linux hacker, it is easy to bust that CAP by downloading DISTROs after DISTROs not to mention package updates after updates.
Try Gentoo Distro [gentoo.org] for starter.
meanwhile, back in Sweden... (Score:2, Interesting)
Then there's several other companies offering DSL with various merits as well as prices.
Me, I'm happy with my fiber-LAN hookup. 10/10, no caps whatsoever, and five IP-adresses to use for whatever purpose I want. Price about US$40/month. If I want to I can get 100/100 for about US$80/month.
And yes, I know that we who live in Sweden are totally spoiled with broadband.
Re:you guys are getting screwed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats less than £10 per month and with no download cap! Come on UK... Getting beaten by the US is bad enough, but by France? That's terrible!
(BTW: I'm a Brit in France, so I have mixed feelings on this one!)
dependant on the size of the ISP's pipes too.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be that they only have a 1 gigabit pipe connecting them to the rest of the internet, which would ensure that the only time you'll reach 8 megabits, is when you are only transferring to other people on the same ISP.
Then the routing might be so bad that you have 600ms lag which will make it terrible for gamers.
Anyone actually on this ISP and checked the lag, and the average speed?
Re:Not really a great deal... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you fully clog a T1 for a month, that is 461 GB, and I shouldn't need to tell you how much they cost.
Re:Is that really a news? (Score:5, Interesting)
We have only begun to tap the potential of the Internet. When the average connection can both download and serve hi-def video faster-than-real-time, we will really have arrived at the Internet of the future.
France has got UK Beat: 20Mbits/sec @ 30 Euros (Score:5, Interesting)
thanks for playing [adsl.free.fr]. You read it well: 20Mbits/sec DOWN and 1Mbit/sec UP. No cap. and that's for 30 Euros per month.
The service comes with free telephony [adsl.free.fr] to any french landline (calls to mobile phones cost something), and very cheap international rate, like 3 eurocents to europe.
Once you've got all that, you can pay an extra monthly fee to get hundreds of TV channels [adsl.free.fr]. With 20Mbits/sec ... that should do it.
All of this is given to you thru Free.fr triple-play box, the FreeBox. My Mom's been with them for a couple of years and has the original, more clunky incarnation of today's sleek freebox. Here's a picture of it [flickr.com].
Re:Not really a great deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Erm. Unless it's a common practice to move to the USA to get cheaper internet, why would one from the UK even consider this factor?
Re:500GB (Score:4, Interesting)
More and more I expect our HD's to become caches for content on the internet.
Imagine for a moment a filesystem driver that uses a local disk to cache files, expiring the old unused content and replacing it with a torrent file (or whatever the latest p2p is) that can be used to transparently download the file again the next time it is requested.
Videotron isn't that great. (Score:3, Interesting)
- In my neighborhood, cable would get slow at Rush Hour. This was back then with a 4mbps connection
- They constantly change the deals. Sometimes, they make things better and sometimes really bad. For example, We (family) left because back then, the download limit per month was 6GB and for that speed, completely ridiculious. we payed $270 cause we downloaded around 20GB. Not long after we left, they made a sudden change by raising the cap's limit although we were never informed if such possible change to occur in the not-so-distant future.
- Their slower plans have silly caps that are in place to make more ppl go with the fastest/unlimited plan. The caps are easily beat within days. At least 500GB makes more sense than 20.
That being said, we use AEI because it's $30/monthly for 3Mbps/800Kbps. Of course, the technical support blows beyond your imagination but it's fast most of the time. Of course, Bell's Sympatico (competing xDSL-providing company) isn't that great either "Can you verify if you have a microwave close to your modem?" shrug...
Re:Is that really a news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:you guys are getting screwed... (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you seen our petrol prices?
Re:Not really a great deal... (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in one of "the worst serviced areas" in the Netherlands: my employer (a university) claims to have 96% national coverage for employee DSL, but not in my area. Most providers have near or total national coverage.
Still I could get for instance the following comparable offer with no cap: 8064/640, no cap, EURO 49,95 (Tiscali).
Minimum no cap: 256/256, no cap, EURO 15.00 (Speedlinq).
What I have is 3200/768, no cap, EURO 59,95 (but tax deductible), with a provider (XS4ALL, see for instance this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org]) that has a reputation for fighting the government and others in court to protect the privacy of its customers, a good ping, and the best helpdesk for UNIX users.