MunkyMagikUK

Living a Digital Existence

Week 2 – Part 1

This week, I thought I’d shake up your usual Living a Digital Existence, with it consisting of 3 parts, culminating in your usual Living a Digital Existence blog on Saturday. Over the next couple of days however, it’s time for a rant, here’s what grinds my gears...

Broadband is all a big joke!

Earlier last week me and my friends were sat around in a free period at college, and got onto talking about Broadband suppliers. After the news that the first fibre optic cables were being laid in London and Cardiff, we were wondering if it would really make a difference and would it be worth it. We came to the conclusion that no, it wouldn’t make a difference and no, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Now, you might wonder how we reached this conclusion, because by using the fibre optic cables would bring us quicker broadband speeds, which you would have thought would be better. But no. This would be far too much effort for the broadband companies, as this would mean they would have to make an effort into supplying everyone with fibre optic cables to give everyone the highest speeds possible. This would mean that they would have less time to drink tea, talk about the weekends footy, and play with their testicles. Well, at least that’s what I presume they do, as they seem to do bugger all when my internet gets cut off halfway through a game of Halo. So we thought, what speeds are we likely to receive with these fibre optic cables? Well, we concluded, as with the current cables, it all depends where you live. If you live close to the exchange, you may well receive the full 50 mbps, but if you live further out, god only knows what you get. In fact, I don’t think even he can understand the logic behind our testicle fiddling friends. So as with so many things, it’s a post code lottery, doesn’t instil you with confidence does it?

So, once we had discussed this, we got onto the subject of download limits. Yes, now these fat cats have settled their fat arses in their executive chairs, charging us for 50 mbps broadband when in fact we are only receiving 10mbps, in their infinite wisdom, they decide to put a limit on how much we can download, and once that limit has been surpassed, our internet speed gets cut; I mean, it isn’t as if it’s low enough as it is. So, they are actually punishing me for using my 50mbps broadband (and I don’t even get the benefit of the 50mbps in the first place). We then came to the conclusion of, how in god’s name are we supposed to download all these HD movies etc. which this broadband is meant to be for, if they give us a 4GB a day download limit, and then cut our internet speed. Pure idiocy from our tea drinking, chocolate hobnob eating, moronic friends.

We then had a long discussion about price. What we don’t understand, and want to know is, how can the Koreans, who are supposedly a less well developed country than us, with poorer infrastructure and less money to spend on these things, have 100mbps broadband by 2010, when we are struggling along on 20mbps broadband. Now, I understand that the Koreans are very big on their technology and they are among the most enthusiastic internet users in the world, but in an age where almost every business uses the internet to complete transactions, and with Britain having one of, if not the biggest service industries in the world, how can we be lagging behind so much. And it is almost guaranteed that the Koreans will be paying half the price that we will be for our 50mbps speeds.

So, our final conclusion came to this. We want them to stop lying to us. We want them to give us a fair price. We want them to charge us for the connection we receive, NOT the connection we COULD receive, and we want them to get off their fat backsides and sort our broadband industry out.

And that Ladies & Gents, is what grinds my gears.

Check back over the next couple of days for more, including illegal downloading and ridiculous games that should never have been released.

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InsaneNutter

I’m really glad you brought this up, I’ve been planning on posting something like this for a while but never got round to it. I agree totally, in the UK broadband is becoming one big joke.

It 2000/2001 it was amazing we could get broadband and actually surf the net and download at 60kb!! I remember that been an amazing upgrade from a 3-5KB connection using a 56k modem that was disconnected every 2 hours, from then on things got better as the years went by we got 1mb broadband, 2mb, 4mb, 10mb and so on if you were on cable.

The way I saw it was we used to have two options for broadband, the good one and the bad one. The good one been Cable and the bad one been ADSL. With cable if it said you would get 20mbit you got 20mbit, where as with ADSL if you didn’t live next door to the exchange it probably wasn’t worth having unless you couldn’t get cable in my opinion (at least on my street anyway)

Then along came “Traffic Shaping”, Caps and Usage restrictions.

Lets take Virgin Media the only cable ISP in the UK, they will sell you a 20mbit, 10mbit, or 2mbit connection but if you actually dare use that connection they will throttle your speed to 5mbit, 3mbit, and 1mbit if you download more than 3gigs on the 20mbit package, 1.2gigs on the 10mbit package and 500mb on the 2mbit package.

So basically there saying you can have a fast connection but dare use it and we won’t tolerate it, how nice of them... what not just cut to the point and offer 5,3 and 1 mbit packages insted of this rubbish about traffic shaping... 1gb downloaded on there 10mbit package in the eveing is not excessive usage... heck a demo on Xbox Live can be more than 1gig...

Another example is Mobile internet, on o2 pay and go I can get “Unlimited” data usage for £7.50 a month, however they have a “fair use policy” which sates if I use more than 200mb I will be charged £2.50 per MB!! I mean what the... why not just be honest and sell it as 200mb of internet use.

Coudnt have summed it up better myself, thing arnt really going to improve until we stop using copper phone wires for ADSL and Vrigin Media actually upgrade there network to support the connections there trying to sell customers.

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Icharus_Falling

what do they charge for broadband over there? here in FL they charge about $40-45 base charge, and add at least $15-25 in bullshit taxes and surcharges. i have a cable package thats supposed to have digital cable, broadband internet, and phone service for $99 a month, but i end up paying $220 with all the added charges.

xzKinGzxBuRnzx

Same here man. It's suppose to run me $99 a month for all three but some how it makes its way to 200 a month.

InsaneNutter

For 20mbit cable broadband its £37.99 a month which would be about $60, that’s all we have as the Phone is with BT (the main phone provider in the UK, that’s probably like another £10-20 a month... not too sure.). If you want all the TV channels and phone it would double the price.

Still can’t believe you guys are paying £100+ you usually get most things a lot cheaper than the UK.

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Icharus_Falling

i've never heard of an american internet provider (broadband) imposing a download limitation.

InsaneNutter

Comcast do: Comcast's 250GB Limit Is An Insult To Internet Age Consumers - Retail - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

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CurlySteve

I completely agree with you when you talk about how our providers rip us of to no end. I do believe that it is completely over priced.


The reason why they have better Internet speeds is because Korea was forcibly annexed by Japan and remained occupied until the end of World War II in August 1945. This left Korea basically ruined and many years later whilst rebuilding everything they decided to lay down fibre optics to future proof themselves. We are behind because we were not completely destroyed in World War II so we are laying things down as we need it.