Give me cable everytime. but then i do work for telewest/virgin
Sorry, but I like fast uploads (I upload around 150GB per month), and I also like to be able to use my connection, uncapped and unlimited, 24/7. Okay it only runs at around 11.8Mbps/1.3Mbps but anything over 8Mbps, lets be honest, its just a numbers game.
I like the fact I dont suffer from throttling or traffic shaping because my ISP isnt overselling a product to the extreme and have a backbone and infastructure that can easily handle the usage on the network, and I like the fact they are not invading my privacy to target advertisers at me, or handing out my details to the BPI to prosecute me for downloading a music single illegally, I also like the fact my ISP does not monitor my usage, what I am doing etc. I like being able to use around 300GB a month of data transfer and not having to worry about being disconnected or throttled down to silly slow speeds.
Added to this, the fact that my ISP is statistically the fastest ISP for average downstream, and by far the fastest ISP for upstream capabilities (1.3Mbps as standard, upto 2.5Mbps), and one that has excellent customer services for free (even from my mobile I might add), located in the UK and available 24/7, and I highly doubt I will ever want to move to NTL:Telewest's crap, unless someone like Microsoft takes over them and actually invests in the company lol.
And to think all I pay for my ISP is £7.50 a month!!
I have 20Mbps :)I get my full up n down. 100Mbps soon
£26 pm but i get phone line for free. Plus if you take it that with all dsl and cable as the company grows its user speed slows.
One day it will all be cable or sat. Copper has had its day plus its far to costly to upgrade in this day n age.
I dont worry about my ISP looking at what i do and if its not the isp its the goverment black boxes sifting all the data.
As the ISP's wont hand over any user details (well none that you dont hand out yourself anyways) the companys are going after the websites and the users Youtube has been told to list all its users and what they watch.
20Mbps.... hmmmm yeah, thats the service that you can max for just 7 minutes before they throttle you down to stupid speeds
Not what I call a good service?? I may only get 11 - 12Mbps downstream, but hey, I can use that 24/7/365 without being throttled!!
As for the 100Mbps shite; considering you work for them, you dont seem to realise, that firstly, there isnt enough capacity on the entire internet (nevermind NTL:Telewests network) to provide 100Mbps services to everyone (the internet is already fast approaching breaking point), and secondly, your connection is only as fast as your source server.
And 20Mbps upstream, dont make me laugh, its DOCSIS for crying out loud, you would kill every other fooker on your UBR if you had that; I seem to recall its actually a miserly 768Kbps upstream... im getting 1.3Mbps on o2 and im paying pennies for it in comparison to that 20Mbps service.
You are correct and incorrect, cable WAS the way forward, unfortunatly, with the crap companies in the UK, they messed the whole industry up (it still makes me piss myself laughing, NTL buying CWC UK Residential for £8.2billion and thinking they were somehow getting value for money ) and as for their customer services, well you may as well talk to trained chimps half the time. And thats before we bring their billing (or should that be mis-billing) practices into it all.
The only saving grace for the cable companies, is that their network, well most of it, is well suited to the future rollout of FTTH, but they seriously need to sort out the underlying issues within the company itself before they go about rolling it out.
I mean come on, some parts of the network are still using the DAVIC standard for crying out loud, you would have thought they had got past that by now!!!
Either way though, you should know as well as me, 20Mbps/24Mbps/50Mbps/100Mbps etc is all just a numbers game, and you know what, I know the VM propoganda machine has been spouting its shit about the fastest in the UK... ahem, Be* had 24Mbps services 3 years ago, 24 months before VM even announced their 20Mbps service iirc, and yes, I know of at least one person on a somewhat personal level who gets in excess of 21Mbps when he downloads from my LeaseWeb servers... okay hes literally down the road from the exchange, but still, it shows exactly how valid VM's bullshit claims really are. Oh and did I mention he gets almost 2.5Mbps upstream?? Numbers you DOCSIS guys can only dream of!!
As for the £26.00 per month, you are obviously getting a staff discount, or did you threaten to leave like most VM customers do, and so desperate as they are to hang on to the little custom they have (lets face it, their net retention rates are abysmal), did you hold them to ransom and save £5.00 a month, as the last time I checked, it was £31.00 per month for the 20Mbps service with a phone line?
I think im paying a grand total of £17.50 per month, £10.00 for Sky Talk line rental, and hell, my calls are exceedingly cheap, something which cable has NEVER been, they dont even seem to compete with BT on price, and as for calls to mobiles, well cable pricing should be illegal its so high!!
Its just a shame the UK cable industry is sooooo fooked up, by companies and people like Barclay Knapp who are both wreckless with money and make stupid decisions with regards investment (or lack of) and the massive problem is, they never learn from their mistakes!!
I used to be a big believer in cable... but it got a bit tedious after half a decade of waiting and watching them fail time and time again... CR3 lmao, when did NTL eventually release that, 2003 or summit, CWC had planned rollout in 2000 ffs, and as for their "Interactive TV" we were all promised in 1998 when digital came along, well it was still showing the same "Coming Soon" screen in 2002 lol.
Whilst satellite and copper may lag behind cable, technically at least, they are proven technologies that simply "work" here in the UK, without the need for spin and desperation manouvres to retain disgruntled customers and have clever and reliable companies running them, who carefully and strategically invest billions of pounds in long-term projects and arnt likely to file for Chapter 11 or sell out to a PE group the moment the going gets tough...
Yeah you sure did, sorry, I used have a weridly (in a geek kinda way) strong and unhealthy im sure, interest in the telecoms market... I still track it but nowhere near as much as I used to!
Out of interest, do you remember nthellworld.com... hehe I was a mod on there for a short while prior to its demise, havent spoke to Frank or Craig in some years though, NTL rudely shut it down with no good reason, to be replaced by the as usual "Coming Soon" but never arriving "NTL Community" website lmao!!
I see the "other side" ntlhell.co.uk and the backstabbers over at nthellworld.co.uk/cableforum are still going, its a real shame NTL didnt keep .com open as it was a massive resource for customers to refer to, full of people who knew the industry and network inside out, people even more geeky than myself haha!
Damn that would make you 5ish the first time i logged on Did you ever use wireplay BT's first UK online gaming service in them good old dial up days? We created the first internet online game services. that needed adsl but it ran happy for a few years on 56k so ive seen it evolve change and fail in manyways.
dunno haven't actualy been in to the office for 4 years or so(yes they still pay me :P) :)I just get feedback from the m8s who are still daft and want to work for them.
Heh no I never used Wireplay, me mum would restrict me online access till about 1997, then we got CWC in 1998, trialled the 64Kbps then increased to 128Kbps cable modem service from early 1999 onwards, think it got boosted to 512Kbps in 2000 when the launch became official, it was basically when we got the CM service that I got into the world wide web big time.
I do remember playing Colony City with Blaxun3D over AOL though!! Thats probably my earliest online gaming memory! Id hazard a guess that was around 1997ish??
Okay... had an issue whereby the connection was dropping every few minutes the other night. Phoned customer services about 11pm. The guy was so polite and friendly, it was almost like talking to a mate on the phone, a proper geek haha!
He went out of his way to try everything to stop the issue from happening, took his time about it (so obviously the call centre isnt target driven) and deffo wasnt reading from a script. He knew what he was talking about, and gave some good advice. He also said that if the problem wasnt resolved, that a new router would be issued.
I actually had a nice chat to him about it, all in all the call lasted about 20 minutes or so, it was free from my mobile phone of course, the problem is now resolved, and best of all, my upload does seem to be running about 0.1Mbps faster than before I phoned up!!
Rhea has moved to o2 last month, and being only 1.6Km away from the exchange, has insane speeds both down and up, and one of my other mates moved from Zen to o2 after being with Zen for 10 years, and he is loving it. He is getting around 10Mbps downstream and 1.4Mbps upstream, even though he too is only paying for 8Mbps down and 1.3Mbps up!!
They supposedly had a network wide issue last week thanks to some unrelated contractors cutting their some fibre in London, which lowered their network capacity by upto 40%, I didnt actually notice it personally, but on Digital Spy they are being given credit by many users for admitting to a fault on their network instead of trying to pretend nothing is wrong...
So still loving my time with o2 and I can say at this point, I wont be moving away anytime soon, and if people were to ask for a Broadband provider, based on quality of service all-round, id recommend o2.
Here is the amount of bandwidth I push each month, and have had no problems from o2 with it, so their unlimited claim seems to be true. And this is just my laptop, it doesnt include bandwidth used by my media centre and gf's laptop!
Been with O2 for around 3 months now, and have nothing but praise for them.
Currently on the 8 MBps service so paying £7.50 a month because i have my phone with them
Download: 6.514 MBps Upload: 1.183 MPps
These are true figures as of today.
They have tweaked my connection due to a connection issue in the first month, but everything has been running fine since.
Can't complains as its constantly connected 24/7
Did have to phone customer services twice though due to a network error. Wireless phone interfering with wireless router signal, they replaced the router (dont know why), then i had to phone them to reconfigure the new one because of the same issue. Turned out to be the wireless channel on the router
Totalled about 15 mins on the phone the 2nd time. Technician was very knowledgable, even included him taking control of my laptop to do certain things.
Its definately unlimited usage too. I hammer it at night but not the extent that Matt does, and have had no problems because of it.
Overall an excellent service. And well recommended
Do you have the white router? I have the old blue one, not quite as stable or good looking as the new one, but it has a bit more functionality in terms of hardware and software.
I had to use mine as a reference point to obtain the URL for my missus to switch the NAT firewall off on hers the other night. For some bizarre reason, o2 have removed the configuration links for a few things in the latest router. Although the configuration pages still remain and are pefectly usable once you access them lol.
![[Linked Image]](http://photowirral.com/newsig.jpg)
Did you ever use wireplay BT's first UK online gaming service in them good old dial up days? We created the first internet online game services. that needed adsl but it ran happy for a few years on 56k so ive seen it evolve change and fail in manyways.
