Why is the UK's internet so crap??

Places like japan have cheeper internet probably because there government censors half of the stuff people want to see.

I think you're thinking of China there.

Don't worry mines not all that either.

Ahem....
This is when I'm signed up for an up to 8Mbps connection. Orange are really doing us up the arse with this service.

Oh ffs, stop bitching about copper.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_bitrate_digital_subscriber_line


Copper can handle higher speeds than most people have, it isn't a 3mbps line.


You don't NEED FO for 100+Mb/s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni-DSL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL2



DURR WE NEED FIBAR UPTAC.

No, we don't, we need updated copper service at the moment, because FYI typical Fibre Optic service isn't PON FO service and thus won't reach PON speeds.

I have a 9.70mbps download rate according to that website, should be 15! At some points in the day it is pretty shocking, I suspect it is about half that again at 5-6pm when everyone in the area gets home from work!

It's not all about fibre! When I was with Virgin Media up where my uni were, I had a really rubbish connection (was paying for 20 mb/s). For something like 2-3 weeks, the connection was averaging between 200 kb/s and 6 mb/s). I was once able to get speeds of 2.4 mB/s (not Megabytes in this case, not Megabits) but on the whole the connection would drop, be slow, provide excellent (i.e. huge amounts) of packet loss, etc.

I'm on my placement now (in Bedford) and I'm with O2 (on the Be network). I can do a speed test at any time of day and get pretty much this speed (which is about right for my distance from the telephone exchange):

Mainly because BT can't be arsed to upgrade their network, the government (labour) is pandering to the poor to get votes (phone line tax!) and not putting pressure on BT to upgrade the network at BT's expense.

Virgin don't factor in as much because they actually offer fibre connections but it's on thier network with less penetration than BT (most broadband providers, even good ones like O2/Be use the BT network) so it's all lumped onto BT who, as a privately owned company, are thinking more about thier profits than thier users.

Sweet! I think we are switching to O2 in the next few weeks!!

Don't get too excited. How far from the exchange are you?

Well I think its planned for this week...

Yeah, I was referring to the distance from the exchange in terms of what kind of speed you're likely to get. Don't think that by changing ISP you're instantly going to get ADSL2+ speeds out in the sticks.

Ohh right.. no no, that isn't the reason. We currently have Sky and they are putting the price up. Plus we don't want to have everything tied in to Sky

I agree with the posters on here, our government hasn't invested in our Broadband networks at all.

How about putting some of that money their paying that goon who keeps saying hes going to "stop illegal file sharing" into the county networks so we actually have the capacity to download illegal content in the first place!

When they introduce phone tax and broadband tax at £5 per month I'm going to cancel by Broadband because thats just disgusting, I'm already paying £10+ for a 20Mb connection when I'm only getting 1Mb on a good day!