It's a tough life in "Broadband" Britain

Couch Potato

Article from Digitalspy.co.uk ...

BTopenworld offer free ADSL upgrade
Posted on Thursday, 4th October 2001 at 1:16 am BST by Mark Hughes
In another move to push ADSL, BTopenworld have announced that during October existing customers of their unmetered dial-up services will be able to upgrade to BTopenworld ADSL for free, saving the £150 install fee (which itself is currently only £75 for anyone until January, due to the BTwholesale offer affecting all ISPs).

Still, a saving of £75 is not to be sniffed at, and I certainly am pleased with my ADSL connection from them which I've had for a few months now (a review will be coming shortly). If you are a BT dial up customer considering making the switch, this could be the time to do it.

With that, and the slew of advertisements that they seem to have taken out across the net, BTopenworld really do seem finally to be making a go of ADSL. And not before time either...

The stumbling block that most people will come across with ADSL is the monthly fee - at a minimum of £39.99 (with almost all ISPs charging at least slightly more than that), it is considerably more expensive than the respective cable modem monthly fees. And when you factor in phone line rental on top, even more so.

Phone plus ADSL, at it's cheapest, would be £49.98 a month, from the cable companies you would be looking at between £35 and £40 a month, and would probably get a basic TV package in that aswell. Is the quality of service the same? I'd venture that in comparison with BTopenworld ADSL, the cable modems seem to have a better quality of service - although the service has improved markedly over the last couple of months on BT ADSL, so maybe it would be about equal. Other ADSL ISPs do offer more services and, quite probably, a better quality of service.

But then you are looking at even higher monthly fees.....and you still have to put up with the USB connection rather than the Ethernet one provided by the cableco's.

It's a tough life in "Broadband" Britain.

Shinji

Heh. Illustrates rather nicely the fact that ADSL is a bit rubbish really. A lot of people are very disillusioned with the tech, particularly in the USA, where not only the high expense and low performance of the tech is causing issues, but the inability of any of the ADSL providers to make money is a hell of a strain on the market as well.

It's hard to see ADSL as a viable solution to consumer/SME broadband going forward. Cable tech is a much more likely prospect in the short term; there are tons of possibilities long-term, although many of then require widespread fibre rollout, and god knows how far we are from that in many areas....

m1ke

for about £40/50 month you can get a bitching blue yonder or ntl cable modem service... really low pings, fast downloads and that.

And in some areas like Guildford outside of London - it's like £20/month for a great ntl cm service.... rar.

If ntl here could offer a cm/phone line/digital telly or normal telly service like they said they would it would be the true "killer app" or whatever the tech foo's call it that would get everyone onboard.. even the people that usually wouldn't go for adsl, a standalone and slightly lame technology.

Urban Weigl

The reason the UK is falling behind the rest of Europe is due to the high price of ADSL -- £40 sterling is just not within the casual Internet users' price range.

What's even sadder though is that Ireland is falling behind the UK.

CoNfOuNd

I've said this before, but here (Belfast) I get 56k ntlworld 101% free, as long as I spend £15 on other services (telephone or tv).

I can get ntlcable for £25 a month OR £19.99 a month (with an initial £130)...
If I'm right cable isn't available in some parts of England and alot of Scottiland...so I'm surprised we've even got it here....

I think it's strange how ntlworld is totally free in the north and only free at weekends in the south...

*all prices in stirling

SkepticOne

Originally posted by CoNfOuNd
I've said this before, but here (Belfast) I get 56k ntlworld 101% free, as long as I spend £15 on other services (telephone or tv).

I can get ntlcable for £25 a month OR £19.99 a month (with an initial £130)...
If I'm right cable isn't available in some parts of England and alot of Scottiland...so I'm surprised we've even got it here....

I think it's strange how ntlworld is totally free in the north and only free at weekends in the south...

*all prices in stirling

NTL cable is available in one part of Dublin (approx 30,000 homes) for IEP 50 per month. In that same area, you can get 24/7 flat-rate dial-up over the two way network. The rest of NTLs network is quite old and is not capable of two way services and NTL have no plans to upgrade. The weekend offer is available to NTL customers on the one-way network and involves using Eircom's local loop for which they pay by the second. To avail of this service you must subscribe to NTLs carrier pre-select phone service but ordinary local calls then become much more expensive.

chernobyl

Originally posted by m1ke

If ntl here could offer a cm/phone line/digital telly or normal telly service like they said they would it would be the true "killer app"

I actually read in the paper that NTL still plan to offer these services to all NTL digital customers.
The Digital Set tops already have a CM built in and also the ability to do VOIP.

except
CM internet will be via TV.


tut tut!!!

SkepticOne

Originally posted by chernobyl



I actually read in the paper that NTL still plan to offer these services to all NTL digital customers.
The Digital Set tops already have a CM built in and also the ability to do VOIP.

except
CM internet will be via TV.


tut tut!!!

I suspect this might be a "forward looking statement". Outside of a few area in dublin, the network is just about able to offer a limited 35 channel non-interactive digital TV service. Maybe when the financial climate changes, they may upgrade the network to make use of the built-in CMs.