Curiouser and Curiouser! on broadband

NTL to merge with Telewest

Thu, 11 Jul 2002 18:43:35 +0100

Liberty move on Telewest faces legal challenge. Bondholders baulking... [The Register]

» NTL merging with Telewest. Sure, that'll be good for competition.

HomePlug and Wi-Fi will make a good solution

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:02:44 +0100

Okay so I've been dreaming about having the money to put Wi-Fi in the house. The problem is that I know I'm gonna need several base stations to cover the entire house and garden, maybe as many as 6 in order to get good signal everywhere. That's expensive and, worse still, I have to run cable somehow to connect them all up.

Bob Cringely has been writing about HomePlug which is a networking standard that uses the power sockets as connectors and the electrical wiring in your house to give you a 14Mbps broadband connection around your home. 14Mbps may not be that great, but it's surely good enough and the best part is: no wiring.

Now, like Bob, I tend to have my laptop plugged in to the mains most of the time. HomePlug would mean I could dispense with most of the wireless access points in the house. Maybe just having one for the conservatory and garden.

Now where on earth can I get this in the UK?

Broadbandits

Mon, 23 Sep 2002 22:49:11 +0100

BTo gets tough with Sat bandwidth hogs. Stoppit [The Register]

» There is something I fundamentally don't understand about all these hogging charges by broadband vendors. They sell you broadband, lets say 512Kbps, then get all uppity when you actually use it. Is it just me or are they having their cake and eating it?

Buying a broadband router/firewall

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 16:57:48 +0100

Tomorrow I am going to buy a Netgear FVS318 firewall/router for sharing my home cable connection between a group of PC's. Looking around the 1.1 firmware update seems to fix the major issues I've seen reported about this unit, otherwise it looks like a strong product.

Does anyone have any caveat's they want to draw my attention to?

Bad NTL! Bad!

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:42:20 +0000

Users call for anti-NTL protest. Valentine's Day massacre [The Register]

BlueYonder execs take note.

Yet another monopoly... cos that works

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:45:19 +0000

Telewest-NTL merger possible: Burdick. Cable Guys get it on [The Register]

This is either great news for NTL customers or sucktastic news for Telewest users. Overall i'm not sure that a cable monopoly is a healthy thing...

Telewest broadband upshift

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 09:42:21 +0100

Telewest boosts broadband speeds. More zoom for same dosh By Tim Richardson . [The Register]

w00t! Go Telewest!!

Even faster into the wild Blueyonder

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:56:04 +0100

I was just thinking the other day as I struggled along downloading at 250KB/s how it must be time for Blueyonder to upgrade our broadband and, lo and behold, they are.

I have 2Mbps/256Kbps at the moment which they are upgrading that to 10Mbps/384Kbps in September. That's a pretty hefty speed bump although it shows up the upstream bandwidth still further as the ratio climbs from 8:1 to 26:1. It's still pretty cool tho.

What remains to be seen is whether they can continue with an uncapped service and whether service variability increases. We've had some problems slow-downs but generally I think it's been good.

Looking for ADSL recommendations

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:05:13 +0000

For the last 3.5 years I have been a very satisfied user of BlueYonder Broadband. I'm leaving behind a cable-modem delivering an uncapped 4mbps/768kbps connection. I think I was paying about £35/month for that (bundled with cable TV).

Now I have a BT line again (which I'm not very happy about, I never wanted to go back) and am looking around for ADSL ISP's. Frankly I'm starting to feel like it's a make the best of a bad situation deal.

All this "up to 8mbps" I won't trust until I've seen 1Mb/s downloads. So for now I'm comparing companies on the bandwidth they guarantee for my line (i.e. 1mbps).

I've had one recommendation for Nildram where they're saying I'll get 1mbps/256kbps for £25/mth. That doesn't sound that great a deal and it's capped at 50GB per month during peak hours (8am-midnight). However they seem to be well regarded. On the other hand I've been waiting 3 days so far for them to respond to an email to their sales desk. If they don't answer sales messages what on earth should I expect from their support desk?

Bulldog are offering 500kbps upload, uncapped for about the same money (there's a deal on right now but it's £25/mth when that ends). On the other hand Bulldog seem to have an appalling track record with endless customer compliants, referals to OfCom, etc... I'm inclined to give them a wide berth.

Pipex are offering 2mbps uncapped at £18/mth with no connection fee. However I've seen suggestions that they "traffic manage" heavy users. Seems an odd kind of uncapped service where you can't use it. Or are they just talking about people streaming at 2mbps 24hrs a day?

Zen Internet, Wanadoo, Tiscali, and so on are all offering similar kinds of deals. But I have very little to go on choosing between them.

Without some reason to think otherwise I guess I'd go with either Nildram or Pipex but I'd be grateful for pointers from others who are getting good service.

ADSL is a mine-field

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 10:32:37 +0000

Thanks to everyone who responded to yesterdays post and pointed me at the ADSL Guide website and forums. Their site has a very useful comparison tool allowing you to rank up to 6 ISP's on speed, reliability, and customer service. I guess I've narrowed the field to Zen, Pipex, and Nildram as being fast, reliable, and friendly.

However I ran a broadband checker today that showed I shouldn't get too excited about ADSL

It seems that, at 2.33km from the exchange, I might be lucky to get 1mbps. Today that seems pretty slow. Also ADSL seems pretty much capped at 256Kbps upload which sucks. An old friend tipped me the wink about something called MaxDSL which, if I understand it correctly, might change the picture somewhat as long as the SNR on my line is decent.

My impression is that, today, I should opt for a cheap, slow, service with monthly billing and no activation charge and wait and see what MaxDSL brings.

Nildram it is!

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 16:37:27 +0000

After some deliberation I have choosen to go with Nildrams Broadband2 service. It's an "up to 8mbps" service but I am thinking I will be lucky if I get 2mbps. I guess I can live with 1mbps, 3 years ago I'd have been happy with it. I also went with a single static IP address because I think that's a useful feature to have.

Luckily my Dad has a spare ADSL modem (a Nokia but I forget the model) and micro-filter so my costs are only the £40+VAT setup fee.

I went with Nildram because several people have now told me that they got excellent service from them and certainly they are among the best performers that I can see on the ADSL guide.

With luck I will be connected on the 20th March. Here's hoping for a happy first ADSL experience!!

Ludicrous

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 10:22:28 +0100

So according to one of the online ADSL guides my local BT exchange has been upgraded to Max DSL and should be able to cope with 1.5mbps instead of the 1mbps I get now (even if I already had 4mbps from TeleWest some time ago.. whoo). So I called my ISP Nildram (recommended) and asked about getting Max DSL speeds.

The guy I spoke to said that his system (I didn't ask what it was) didn't show my exchange as being upgraded but that he could put the regrading request through anyway. Before he did that I asked him whether there was any risk that the regrading might leave me with a lower speed.

In fact he said there was. His system showed that BT thinks my line is 512Kbps (even if it has been working perfectly at 1mbps for 3+ months) so it was quite possible that I would end up being downgraded to 512Kbps and stuck there. WTF?

He explained that this was the thrust of BT's Max DSL terms & conditions and, if they do this, there is no way to get back to my original speed of 1mbps. He mentioned that this had happened to another customer in a similar position. That customer had even tried switching ISP afterwards but it had done him no good, he was stuck at 512Kbps until BT said otherwise.

What kind of a shitty system is this when a customer can ask for an upgrade and stand a good chance of getting their service cut in half? Why are BT so utterly useless? And being this useless how is it that they still call the shots?

Ludicrous!