http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic cable Copyright 2008 Matt Mower. Some rights reserved. Squib/0.5.0.382 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002931.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:56:09 +0100 <p>I'm just going to keep on saying this because it's true.</p> <ul> <li>ADSL sucks.</li> </ul> <p>Three years ago I had a good, fairly reliable, 8mbps cable internet connection from Telewest.</p> <p>Then I moved to Maidenhead and was forced to switch to 1mbps (and later 2mbps) ADSL over a BT line (forcing me also to take a line from BT, a company I never wanted to do business with again).</p> <p>In my new house I have an ultra-flaky 3.5mbps line. In 6 months I have experienced more dropped connections, high latency, and performance drops than I would expect to get in 10 years.</p> <p>Today I've had a BT engineer to the house to try and diagnose some kind of exchange fault. Will my service improve now? Based on the dropped connection and still highly variable noise margins my DG834 is reporting I am not getting my hopes up.</p> <p>In the same time Virgin Media (who swallowed NTL and Telewest up) have upped the speed of their fast cable service to 20mbps. I'm more than ready to try my luck and hand them my cash but I can't because, throughout this whole time, they report that I am in their "analogue area".</p> <p>My only choice is ADSL which means the stupid copper cable between me and the BT exchange.</p> <p>I'm 30 miles West of London not in the Outer Hebrides. Why the hell are Virgin not here offering me digital service?</p> <p>Why is there no choice?</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002931.html