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Communications News

8Mbit Broadband to Become Available in the UK 518

Posted by samzenpus from the cheap-broadband dept.
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.
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8Mbit Broadband to Become Available in the UK More

8Mbit Broadband to Become Available in the UK

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  • Dear UK (Score:5, Funny)

    by Letter ( 634816 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:42PM (#11487483)
    Dear UK,

    40 pounds? Now that's a heavy modem.

    Letter

    • Re:Dear UK (Score:3, Funny)

      by civman2 ( 773494 )
      Not just 40 pounds. 40 pounds a month. I keep my cable modem on my desk, and I wonder how long it would take before it weighed so much that it fell straight through!

    • Re:Dear UK (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:48PM (#11487565)
      > 40 pounds? Now that's a heavy modem.

      "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.

      • P0rn, NOT! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Dark Coder ( 66759 )
        OK, bub, let's see you carry that much pr0n.

        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.
  • I'm stuck on 1500Kb/s (256up) with 20gig a month for $50... and that's considered the best deal in the country now... it's not fair

    • Re:and here in Australia... (Score:4, Informative)

      by scum-e-bag ( 211846 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:52PM (#11487602) Homepage Journal
      What about the new DSLAMs that are being rolled out? Have you investigated any of the new plans?

      http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc-isp.cfm?id=10&s=2

      2048 / 384 kbps
      400 MB $29.95 /mo
      12 GB $49.95 /mo

      Primus DSLAMs will also support ADSL2/2+ when the technology is approved for use in Australia.

      • Re:and here in Australia... (Score:4, Informative)

        by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:02PM (#11487694) Journal
        iiNet will be announcing 2Mb+ plans within the next week or so as well. GB allowances will be better than they have been, but for Australia, 500GB is preposterous. The biggest plans I have seen have been in the region of 72GB total for 1.5MB plans, with a hefty price tag attached.

        The reason prices are so high is above my head but I understand it has to do with the USA charging us for both incoming and outgoing traffic, whilst expecting our traffic to them to be free. Perhaps the FTA will help (not likely!). Someone please comment on this and provide some more info.

        For foreign readers, telecommunications in Australia are monopolised by "Telstra", a formerly government owned body with a legal monopoly over the copper wiring throughout the country. Telstra, who see broadband (and hence, VoIP) as a threat to the vast revenue they obtain from local telephone calls, are deliberating holding back broadband within Australia, by preventing speeds over 1.5Mbit and by onselling DSL to third party providers at a port-only cost greater than Telstras retail plans. This of course makes it impossible for anyone to offer DSL at the same price as Telstra without making a loss. Great business model for Telstra, though.
    • OK, tell us where you're getting that one, and do they do an uncapped?
    • You think that's bad, 26k dialup for $35USD/mo (including spare phone line) sucks a bit worse.. Although I have no cap, but I don't think I could actually transfer 20 gigs in a month..
    • Don't complain.

      I live in Ireland and for EUR 47/month (about USD $60) I get
      - 512/128 kbps
      - 16GB cap (either up or down)
      - dynamic IP, daily disconnect

    • 1.5mbit down, 768kbit up. $99/month. ~50gb quota. Of course this is until iinet release their new plans- 2 mbit here I come.
    • More info! I'm paying $60 for 512/128 with 16gig soft cap...
    • This deal in the UK isn't exactly the best deal either - what I've failed to see mentioned so far is that this service is as a result of LLU (local loop unbundling) and thus the 8Mbps download speed is only available in a very small part of the country.

      Where I live is right next to one of the major exchanges in Scotland and also covered by our cable company - but the maximum this company can offer me is 1Mbps, which is slower than I have just now.

  • That's still ~$10/mbps.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tobe ( 62758 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:43PM (#11487493)
    With the exchange rate currently running at ~$1.8/£1..

    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).

  • There is a catch! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:44PM (#11487511)

    a free wireless router

    And how am I supposed to plug in the network cable? I knew there was a catch!

  • Brittain is a big slap in the face to the whole population density perspective on why the west sucks at infrastructure upgrades..

    >$85 a month U.S. Jimminy
  • We've had 8 Mbit/sec ADSL in the UK for almost two years now... I know because we've got it.

    http://www.easynet.net/broadband/broadband_categ or y.asp?id=1

  • Not really a great deal... (Score:5, Informative)

    by scifience ( 674659 ) * <webmaster@scifience.net> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:47PM (#11487543) Homepage

    I pay $105.95 a month for Speakeasy DSL. That is for a connection with 6000kbps down, and 768kbps down. That connection has no bandwidth limits. Not a bad deal, if I do say so myself, considering I can run any servers I want on the connection.

    Now let's look at the offer that was described in this article. If we convert 40 UK pounds to US dollars, we see that this connection costs around $75 a month, depending on the exchange rate.

    My connection through Speakeasy is roughly $25 a month more, has no bandwidth limits (and 500GB is very easy to reach on a fast connection) and a faster upload speed to boot. There is also no mention as to whether this connection allows servers or not. However, I am guessing it doesn't, considering that Speakeasy is an exception on this policy rather than the rule.

    When you consider all of these factors, this "best deal around" doesn't really seem to be quite so great anymore.

    • 500GB a month is hardly anything to sneeze at. If it is single layered DVDs, that is about 111 DVDs. Per month! If you saved all of that, you'd be spending at least a couple hundred dollars a month in hard drives.

      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:Not really a great deal... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:59PM (#11488078) Homepage Journal
      "When you consider all of these factors, this "best deal around" doesn't really seem to be quite so great anymore."

      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?
    • You work for which ISP?
    • I live in Australia. I pay $85 per month (approx US$50-$55) for the best deal around. It is 512kb/s down/256kb/s up. It has no cap. This is the best deal in Australia.

      In summary, I am now moving to America.
      • Move to Japan instead. Closer and *much* higher net speeds.

        NOTE: It is ok if you do not speak Japaneese. That would be a problem only for people that require human contact - any geek does not.

    • I pay $105.95 a month for Speakeasy DSL. That is for a connection with 6000kbps down, and 768kbps down. That connection has no bandwidth limits. Not a bad deal, if I do say so myself, considering I can run any servers I want on the connection.

      And I paid that for a 1500 kbps down 384 kbps up cable modem with a 20 GB cap ($5 per GB over that). Now I work for an ISP, so I get my connection for free, or I'd be paying $90 per month for 1.2 Mbps by 320 kbps with no cap. Not all the US has fast options availab

    • Re:Not really a great deal... (Score:4, Informative)

      by eyeye ( 653962 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @03:00AM (#11490066) Homepage Journal
      "If we convert 40 UK pounds to US dollars.."

      theres the thing, £40 is CHEAP (ish!) here, just because it equates to a lot of dollars doesnt mean its expensive it just means that dollars are not worth very much.
    • I am also not impressed. Why is this news?

      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 provi
    • It's a great deal for the UK.

      It'd be a fucking great deal here in Norway

      Perhaps in the US it's only a good deal.

      I'm sure in Japan, South Korea etc. it is a poor deal.

      Somehow, I'm not about to move to either of those places for the Internet connection though. Would involve leaving my mom's basement and all, yes? Seriously though, most of us have a life where we are, and a vast improvement in internet connection where we are is "news for nerds" :)

  • you guys are getting screwed... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ltwally ( 313043 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:48PM (#11487550) Homepage Journal
    I pay half as much for the exact same speed here in the States, and I don't have a download cap... and the US is supposed to be lagging behind the rest of the world in broadband. You limies are really getting screwed!
    • Actually George Bush likes broadband and thinks everyone in America should have access to it. Thats why you guys get it so cheap. Over here our government are screwing us over with 1.5mbps down 256kbps up and 20gb cap for $50/month. That is the best deal avaliable and the fastest our connections get to is 2mbps. Later on in the year ADSL2+ is being released so we should be able to catch up to the rest of the world soon.

      FYI I am in Australia
      • What about the new DSLAMs that are being rolled out? Have you investigated any of the new plans? The 2mbps is a Minimum download speed. Speeds of 6-8mbps may be possible depending on your line.

        http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc-isp.cfm?id=10&s=2

        2048 / 384 kbps
        400 MB $29.95 /mo
        12 GB $49.95 /mo

        Primus DSLAMs will also support ADSL2/2+ when the technology is approved for use in Australia.

    • Re:you guys are getting screwed... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TecraMan ( 12354 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:08PM (#11487749)
      It gets worse... I have 8Mbps DSL in France for 14.95 per month (basic idea is that everyone pays the same, whether they get 1Mbps or the max 8Mbps).

      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!)

  • holy expensive! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Blymie ( 231220 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:48PM (#11487558)
    Actually, it seems quite expensive. I pay $60 per month CDN (at 26 pounds, it's just over 1/2 the price of this "deal"), and receive 6.5Mbps down, 900kbps up, with no limits.

    There's no installation charge, and the cable modem is included.

    I prefer to have more upstream.. and a little less downstream. That upstream is far more useful. So is the lack of limits.

    Oh. By the way, this isn't make believe speed either. Videotron actually delivers. I get downloads at > 700kbytes/sec all the time.
    • You make it sound as if it was something wonderful. As somebody who's had Videotron in the past, I'l fill up the necessary information.

      - 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

  • Is that really a news? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sam0737 ( 648914 ) <sam@chow[ ].com ['chi' in gap]> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:49PM (#11487570)
    Here in Hong Kong, I am getting 10Mbps Up and Down, with no upload/download limit (Of course they said you can't setup any kind of server in your home in the fine prints but who knows :P)

    How much? Not more than USD 20 per month! The service was there for some years already. And there are now serval ISP providing the same service so the price is getting even lower~
  • this looks pretty good. their other broadband offerings are good too. my housemate signed up to aol broadband (512k service) because it was the only one with no monthly download cap. these guys have the same thing for the same price, so i might check it out. good stuff

  • 500GB = 4000Gbit (Round Numbers) (Score:5, Informative)

    by datastalker ( 775227 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:49PM (#11487574) Homepage
    500GB = 4,000,000,000,000 bit
    8Mbit = 8,000,000 bit

    4,000,000,000,000/8,000,000 = 500,000

    8Mbit/s gives you 500,000 seconds

    There are 2,592,000 seconds in a month (30 days).

    That means that if you let it download constantly at maximum speed, you only get to use it for a week.

    Of course, if you can find 500GB to download (constantly), then you've probably already figured that out.

    Ironically, here in the US, with cable, I routinely get 1.5Mb/s down, with no cap.

  • Despite the reliability concerns of Verizon, they do offer a pretty hot deal on DSL. Here in New York, we get 3mbps down and 768k up, which is far better for bittorrent, for $30 a month. No kidding. That's alot better than 40GBP. We also have no cap. They have a 500GB per month cap, and on just 3mbps you can download 972GB per month. Seems like we've got the better deal here in NY.

    Now, if they'd ever deploy fiber instead of just claiming it's deployed...

  • Why the upstream? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rufus211 ( 221883 ) <rufus-slashdot@@@hackish...org> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:50PM (#11487590) Homepage
    I'd love 8mbit downstream, but why is it still a sad 400kbit up? I can understand that upstream costs nominally more and they don't want you to run a massive servers, but that large of a discrepency (20:1) just makes no sense.

    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.
    • If they're buying transit from a telco, the line they buy has symmetricaly identical bandwidth... The only thing that would make upstream more expensive per byte is if they have caching proxy servers they feed you through, so you're getting stuff from their network rather than IP transport they're paying for from someone else.

      The 33:1 contention ratio (I never see contention ratio advertised by US ISPs, I note) means that for every 8mbps they're piping to the DSLAM, there are 33 people who could be trying

  • Ha ha (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Djupblue ( 780563 )
    I pay less than half of that for 8/1 and no cap!
    I live in Sweden.

  • 8MBit to the CO (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:58PM (#11487659) Homepage
    How fast is the connection from the CO to other major backbones? How much of the 8mbit is committed bit rate? How much is guaranteed if say all possible users start downloading at the same time?

    Is that ISP's network multihomed?

    And even more importantly what is the latency to yahoo.com, Torontos 151 Front St, backbones in NYC, and the Silicon Valley Sprint networks? How much is the delay to alter.net routers?

    In short, will you see 80ms or 30ms playing counterstrike on your average server in the US, Canada or Korea?

    All this is assuming their internal switches are all non-blocking preferably gigabit switches with either gigabit or 10gigabit uplinks, not 10mbit ethernet hubs. Also assuming their modem and CO equipment are both nonblocking doing the pppoe and breaking up 1500-sized packets to fit because most people dont enter 1492 in their MTU settings.

    If their networks are in such good shape, more uplinks will be appreciated more than higher speec downlinks, maybe 4mbit/1mbit or even 4mbit/4mbit SDSL, especially if they provide static non-pppoe IPs. These things simply allow other possibilities even for the consumer market which wants to share pictures, stream out videos to relatives, and run game servers.

    With all ISPs inching up their technologies, upgrading their equipment in each iteration, it escapes me why dont they quite simply lay down fiber optic ethernet lines in the streets running at 100mbit both ways, and just be done with it. Their operating costs will absolutely plummett, and fiber optics do exceed the ADSL distance. What is cheaper, a new cisco or juniper DSLAM, with countless ADSL DMT/DOCSIS modems, or piles of made-in-taiwan switches and fiber cables??

  • In an entirely unrelated story... (Score:5, Funny)

    by trawg ( 308495 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:58PM (#11487665) Homepage
    ... UK downloads of major BitTorrent clients have increased by a factor of eleventy billion.

  • Sorry, the French already won this one. 20MB/30Eur (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:59PM (#11487669)
    http://www.free.fr/

    20 Meg Down, 1 Meg up, 100+ channels TV,
    Free fixed calls to all of France, Free
    installation!

  • Expensive! (Score:5, Informative)

    by silverz ( 803241 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:00PM (#11487672)

    That is very expensive. In Japan, for example ADSL connection from Yahoo Japan costs you about 4000 yen per month (less than 40 US dollar) for 50 Mbps ADSL.

    And also fibre optic connection has become very common and cheaper. For example Usen Networks (one of the provider in Japan) provides 100 Mbps fibre optic connection for only 2950 per month.

    I use the fibre optic that comes with 5 static IPs. And it costs me about 5000 yen per month.

    Download cap is totally never heard in here. As far as I know, all packages come with unlimited bandwidth.

    • I'm getting 100mbit by end of the month here in japan. I will want to see if I can get it slashdotted.
    • Why does one person need 5 static IP's to their house? I mean... Isn't NAT good enough? How many servers does one household need?!

      I wish I could just get *one* static IP at a decent cost... (well, free with my connectivity really)
      • "Why does one person need 5 static IP's to their house? I mean... Isn't NAT good enough? How many servers does one household need?!"

        Well duh. Obviously 5.

    • Re:Expensive! (Score:4, Informative)

      by pcgabe ( 712924 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @12:21AM (#11489251) Homepage Journal
      I live in the middle of nowhere in Japan (it's not all like Tokyo - From my house I'm surrounded by rice fields, stereotypical but true), and the only thing available to me is the ~$40/month 54Mbit ADSL. Of course, I'm so far from the center that my actual download speed is closer to only 8Mbit (I know, I know, you feel my pain).

      What's really worth mentioning is the Yahoo-BBphone. VoIP comes free with my internet access, and I can make phone calls to the U.S. for around 2.5 cents a minute, or free calls to other BBphone users.

    • Re:Expensive! (Score:4, Informative)

      by mattgorle ( 807823 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @01:27AM (#11489660) Homepage
      My post may seem a bit terse.

      This offering is *not* expensive for this country (the UK)! Pretty much all suppliers offer capped access with limits in the region of 100-150GB/mth (ignoring the "exceptional" ISPs like BT who offer lower caps). Furthermore, this is going to be considered to be a very high speed connection in this country. Just to give you some perspective, I'm on a 1Mbit connection, which is more than most people in this country have.

      If someone could come over here and offer high speed, reliable, uncapped broadband internet access to the home for a reasonable price, they would absolutely conquer the market.

      I suspect that precisely the same would occur in Australia and New Zealand, where I understand the internet connectivity possibilities are even less impressive.
  • Here in Sweden this is commonplace. You can get 8mbits/1mbits from the Telco, pricetag about US$56/month. No download cap, no upload cap. You can get 24mbits/3mbits as well, but I'm too lazy to check the price on that.

    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.

    A
  • That speed is definitely impressive!

    Keep in mind that the price is in pounds, however.

    For example, up here Sympatico offers their "Ultra" service - 4Mbps download, 0.8Mbps upload - for CAD$60 = US$48 = 26 pounds. That's with no caps.

    Their regular service, 3Mbps down, 0.8Mbps up, is CAD$45 = US$36 = 19 pounds. Again, no caps.

    I'd be interested to hear what the prices are like in Korea, for example... :)

  • From my reading on Broadband Reports, I thought that 128k up couldn't support 3M down, and Verizon offers 768k up with its 3M down package. Isn't 400k really cutting it to support 8M down?

  • Eh? (Score:2, Funny)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 )
    Sorry what was that!? UK customers are getting something thats not a rip-off? whats next, tube fairs going down!?
  • Cogeco up here in Ontario offers 10Mbit Download/1Mbit upload cable connection, which is caped, but not enforced for about $70 CDN (which is probably like $50US)

  • 100Mbps in Japan for $52/month + VoIP (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hedley ( 8715 ) <hedley@pacbell.net> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:22PM (#11487825) Homepage Journal
    I was just there. Now *that* is what I am
    expecting for broadband. Its fibre to the home.
    (This was in Kyoto). VoD applications (movies, pay for shows, pr0n, its all possible).

    In the good old US of A we can get 1.5 or 3mbps WooHoo!

    Hedley
  • I have 10Mbps at home for some months now, with TelstraClear [telstraclear.co.nz]... Is New Zealand that ahead of the UK?
    • Yes, but you also have a 10GB international cap...
      which is a lot less than 500GB

      Personally, I'm on the 2Mbit cable plan with the awesome-o FIVE gig cap :)

  • dependant on the size of the ISP's pipes too.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by auzy ( 680819 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:26PM (#11487856)
    Might want to checkout the maximum theoretical inbound and outbound bandwidth of the ISP too before you rush into things...

    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?
  • The assymetry has gone too far...There should be at least 1 Mbps upload. Preferably 8Mbps.

  • In Canada (Score:5, Informative)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:43PM (#11487988)
    In Canada, You can get 5.0/800 for $45 and there's no cap on how much traffic you can generate. Come to think about it, I've never seen a cap on cable internet. BTW, most people in canada have cable available, as there is usually only 3 channels (1 of which is french) if you just use rabbit ears. So cable covers most of the country. Cue the "But I Don't Have Cable" whiners.

  • France has got UK Beat: 20Mbits/sec @ 30 Euros (Score:5, Interesting)

    by valmont ( 3573 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:52PM (#11488047) Homepage Journal

    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].

    • Add to that that there's no cap whatsoever, and you can run servers as you want. Additionally the modem is free, includes optional router functionnality and you can add a WiFi card for a mere 20 euros.

      Oh and they now give you 1GB hosting space with no ads, PHP, MySQL, and unlimited traffic (no pr0n allowed though obviously).

      That shit rocks.

      You can also get 2Mbps upstream but that requires disconnecting the baseband phone line (and you have to pay ~90 euro for it).

    • Re:France has got UK Beat: 20Mbits/sec @ 30 Euros (Score:4, Informative)

      by valmont ( 3573 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @12:05AM (#11489124) Homepage Journal
      Oh, and to top-it all off, free.fr is like super Linux friendly. I remember back in the day when all they did was offer free dial-up, they'd really stress the fact that they were a lean and mean operation because they used linux on commodity hardware. Now, if you look at their various FAQs, tutorials and manuals, you'll ALWAYS find very very precise instructions on how to configure Linux with, say, their freebox, outlining which kernel extensions you need to get, how to compile and load them, so you can do things like IP over USB and crazy shit like that.
  • India the "heart" of outsourcing is a country that has horrible broadband. They do have DSL with caps, and there cable internet service is really bad. I believe in India there is something called a local loop where they use wireless transmitters to local subnets which have some sort of ethernet implementation on some private network. Just a way to suck money out of the customer. Looks like a lot of the telcos in India are out there to suck money out of the consumers and bail out. Maybe Bangalore and Bombay

  • Much better than Australia (Score:2, Informative)

    by toby ( 759 )
    Where 512kbit with a <10GB quota will set you back A$170 or so per month, if you need a static IP. Also, some ports are blocked, including HTTP. (1.5Mbit was the highest offered speed for residential ADSL last time I checked.)

    Contrast that with Canada: CD$50/month for 3Mbit, effectively unlimited (up to 8-10Mbit available).

  • 5 megs, symmetrical, static IP, no bandwidth limits, allowances for personal servers, no blocked ports.

    Is that so much to ask?

  • Through Free [adsl.free.fr]. It also includes TV through ADSL, and VoIP including free nationwide calls.

    Talk about a breakthrough!

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