NTL broadband, why the UK economy could be better, and why i think Blair should sort out UK internet in general.

SO NTL have changed they're AUP, 'imposing' a 1gb limit a day.

Well that’s a load of bollocks for a start. The
NTHW forum thread on the matter has had 89 pages of posts at the time of writing, in just two days.

The thread is so big now, that it would take anyone several hours to look thought it, which means that no one can be arsed to. So people are just posting in they're 2 cents, which is saying the same thing:

"OMG that’s only 2.5 hours of constant maxed out downloading on a 1meg line"
"So this means i can't download all the CDs for (insert linux distro here)"
"So if i download 1.01gig I'm going to get cut off"
and it goes on

Shut up, all of you. Get some sense into you all. Your not going to get your balls busted if you download a load of linux ISOs. Your service isn't going to get mysteriously stopped if you so much a creep over the 1gig limit. It's a clause so that NTL can take some action over the people who are quite clearly taking the piss out of they're connection. They're just going to keep a beady eye over people who download gigs and gigs day in and day out, and take action accordingly.

Bandwidth, this is something that everyone wants. Unfortunately, in the UK bandwidth is very, very expensive. I wouldn't be too surprised if NTL are paying something between 50p and £1 per gig of bandwidth they use.
The trouble is, as soon as they made 1meg internet connections cheaper (now 35 quid a month compared with 50 quid it was last year) the service has progressively worsened in the space of a month. More people have been upgrading to 1meg, and it has put a strain on UBRs around the country (especially on colchester, full of students :P). If they had left it at that price, then economics would have taken over (ye olde demand and supply) and NTL would probably be able to afford the bandwidth that everyone was using.

Personally, I am going to carry on listening to 128k mp3 streams (24 hours listening would equate to approximately 1.3gig). I’m not going to worry about bandwidth at all, and just se what happens. I’m not a heavy user as such, some days I’l download 3 gigs, others, half a meg. We may get 'flagged' and watched closely, but there are some people who really do take the piss out of they’re connection, and they do need to be dealt with, as its costing a helluva lot on bandwidth for NTL.

A more sensible way of charging would be to charge by the gig downloaded. Maybe a two tier system with a flat fee for low users, and a per gig system for heavy users. That would be sensible, very sensible in my opinion.

Which leads me on to something bigger. I mentioned earlier that bandwidth in this country is so expensive. It is much cheaper in the USA, and other European countries, and notice how they have stupidly fat internet connections to the home, at very cheap prices. This has helped in the take-up of broadband in those countries. So many times you hear of the UK being behind the USA and the rest of Europe in broadband take-up, and its mainly due to it being expensive.

Its not the fault of the broadband providers, as they are merely passing on costs, costs for bandwidth. A good way to tell how expensive it really is, is to look at web hosting. You look around some American web hosting companies, and they will give you 5 gigs a month for little over a tenner! While here you can only really get 1 gig a month for a fiver (shameless plug for DX Networks here :P)

This is why our economy is currently slow. Broadband is still a superior good. A superior good, for example, is Tesco's finest range. Your only going to buy that sort of thing if you can afford it, if not you're stuck with the inferior alternative of blue and white stripe. In many other countries, the only reason why people don't have broadband, is either it isn't available in they're area (which is more uncommon in those countries than here) or because they don't want an internet connection. In those countries, there is no contest, because it is so cheap.

So of course out take-up is slow, because it is so costly. Also, think of all the startup companies, such as web hosting companies etc. They’re costs are higher than in other countries, which makes it hard to get any sort of foothold in the market.

If Blair stopped messing around and sleeping with Bush, and actually sorted out a fundamental problem in the UK, the cost of bandwidth, then maybe we could become the 'great nation' we once were in the industrial revolution and so on. I'm not suggesting things he should do, I'm just suggesting that the UK government recognises the problem, and that broadband internet is not a luxury, but is becoming increasingly more a necesity in this modern day and age.

by cake, posted on Saturday, 08. February 2003 @ 2104.32 gmt