31 Aug 07
Broadband in the UK Internet and Soapbox
The UK currently has more than 10 million broadband users, but rather than prices going down as it becomes an essential part of daily life- internet use is set to become more costly according to BBC News.
''The explosion in popularity of online video could lead to increases in the cost of broadband for UK consumers.''
The thinking is that use of high bandwidth sites like YouTube, online video services like Joost, and on-demand television services like Channel 4's 4oD and the BBC iPlayer will congest the network.
''Our position is that high bandwidth content services like iPlayer are being launched without proper attention to the cost of delivery. As these services become more popular they will undoubtedly cause congestion. It is only broadband operators that can increase bandwidth and this comes at a cost.''
Tiscali via BBC News
Considering the UK has extremely poor speed to price ratio, to say Sweden, the ISP's complaining like little girls that they can't cope is, frankly, is an insult. A fairly typical broadband connection in the UK is about 2Mbps, now in reality very few people actually get anything close to that, and 1.6Mbps is probably closer to the mark. I did an online speed test, and got a download speed of 1.7 Mbps.
Now if I was feeling terribly flush, I could technically get myself a 24Mbps connection! Wow- that's amazing, 24Mbps! Well no it isn't really that amazing, in Sweden, Korea and Finland I could get 100Mbps... in Korea for crying out loud! Sweden is also the least expensive monthly subscription for always-on broadband at just £5.40 per month. Seems like all that porn has boosted the Swedish economy.
Vint Cerf, (commonly referred to as one of the "founding fathers of the Internet"), was quoted in the Guardian as saying;
"In Japan you can already download an hour's worth of video in 16 seconds... And we're starting to see ways of mixing information together ... imagine if you could pause a TV programme and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out more about them."
guardian.co.uk
An hour's worth of video in 16 seconds... ok, maybe that video isn't at full 1080 line (HDTV) resolution, but in Japan speeds of up to 50Mbps are not uncommon, so why does the UK have such a poor connection? It's not like there isn't a solution to the problem, VDSL and VDSL2 offer a huge improvement to broadband speeds, so why can't we get that in the UK? Well apparently faster broadband speeds over telephone lines could potentially lead to interference with radio stations. So there you are... incredibly slow download speeds is the fault of crappy little FM radio stations.
Well no, actually VDSL only appears to interfere with the relatively narrow (100-200-kHz) amateur radio bands, and this is usually due to physical mishandles such as improper shielding. So the choice is fast internet, or happy amateur radio nerds... sorry guys but no one listens to you anyway.
BT currently plans to launch ADSL2+, (its performance is equal to VDSL2) from early 2008 as part of its 21CN program to upgrade of its core network. In July 2007, Sir Christopher Bland, the Chairman of BT said that BT was considering fibre to the curb and that VDSL2 was a 'likely development going forward' but that no final decisions had yet been taken.
Bellow is a clip of comedian Marcus Brigstock on the BBC Radio 4 series, The Now Show, making it perfectly clear that he and BT don't exactly get on- please enjoy.