UK 1mbps broadband

[SteveC]

From telewest - register your interest here:

http://info.blueyonder.co.uk/onemeg.html

Also, I believe NTL: are doing the same - dunno of any signup thingummybob though...

[foft]

I wouldn't recommend NTL to anyone! They sold me broadband internet access (512kb/s). It didn't work and it took 20 phone calls and 4 visits from "Engineers" for figure out that they made it mistake. It was not enabled in my area.

[Ant]

NTL are great, so long as nothing goes wrong, then you may as well try and fix it yourself.

[Fat Tone]

The only real problem I've had with NTL is the hole they made in my central heating pipe!

I believe 1 or 2mbs is available (I have 512kbps) but it costs somwhat more than the £40/month I currently pay for cable modem/digital tv/telephone rental!

They were shite getting the interactive stuff on the telly to work, end even now it is too slow to bother with, but the internet is fine most of the time. I sometimes have to manually specify a proxy to get around stalls, but it only takes a second.

T.

[roadie]

we've only had one major problem with telewest, this was when their router/amplifier across the road failred, and they thought it was our cable that had been cut. they replaced it twice, disconected some of our phones and made a mess of it. however when they realised what the problem was they sorted it very quickly. i would reccomend telewest to anyone if you can get them

[borat]

telewest service is great when it works but the workman they use(i think they contract out) are a buch of cowboys. they were gonna dig my drive and pateo up to lay a cable till i told them that the connection point was the other side of my house. when they saw this they put the cable through some blue tubing and covered it with abbout a millimetre of dirt along the border so when it rained it became exposed. 1mbit/s would be sweet though.

[RichL]

Argh! More load on their proxies!

1mb downstream is of little interest to me except to wonder what damage that will do to the already overworked Telewest systems!
I currently have a 512kb Downstream / 128kb Upstream from Telewest that costs me £25 a month. I rarely manage to use all the 512kb down, a bigger upstream would be more interesting as then I could try running a decent game server.

The way Telewests systems work means you share bandwidth with a whole bunch of other people and go through a transparent caching proxy server. This means your download/upload traffic is very bursty (looks like a sawtooth if you watch it on NetMedic) and when gaming you have to devote all your bandwidth to the game or get horrible lag spikes every few seconds.
It also means under periods of heavy usage I've had horrendous packet loss to the first hop (their UBR router at their local headend) and their proxy servers, which are poor at the best of times, can slow down so much you'd be faster with a 33k modem.

AFAIK, Telewest no longer have anything more than a token installs team, they subcontract to the lowest bidder who can use a pickaxe.

[Taz]

Re: Argh! More load on their proxies!

Originally posted by RichL
...a bigger upstream would be more interesting as then I could try running a decent game server.

Assuming they use the same download:upload ratio the 1mb package should have 256kb upload

Some of the BY transparent proxies are slow/peaky, the only way around this is either to move or set a manual proxy

A list of their proxies can be found here :- http://www.proxyinfo.co.uk/proxies.htm

[breezer]

NLT have final told me they have no intention of cabling my street after a year of them saying soon, so its pipex asdl for me now, at £23 a month and not having to connect to a windows machine will be great.
Now all I have to wait for is bt to tell me the line is asdl ready and away we go.

I may actually get serious about genome again as there will be no bandwodth (modem) problems.

Breezer

[RichL]

Actually, they're almost definately legally bound to cable your street before their franchise runs out.
The UK govt sold franchises for certain areas to the cable companies, one of the conditions was that all properties in the area had to have access to cable services before the end of the franchise agreement.

[breezer]

The cable companies I believe only have to provide a very high 90% of all residents as some locations are uneconomic.

-That is what I have been lead to believe, it is probably bolox.


As far as I can see with ntl at the moment they are just starting the process of getting more revenue out of their existing customer base and when they have more that 25p in the bank they will start to expand again.

[RedRed]

I have had no problems with NTL, personally, except that my set top box crashes, especially since Grace (eldest daughter, almost 2) took the card out of it and used it for a spoon with yoguart!!!

Taz Proxies are a bit of a black art to me, can you give me some info on how to set up/optomise my home network? It does seem a bit bursty sometimes.....

redred