Comments on: EC ‘final step’ for broadband in Scotland

By: Stray Mongrel

Stray Mongrel — Sat, 03 May 2008 03:26:49 +0000

We were lucky enough to buy a new house where the new cable that was being laid out on the street was fiber optic. It was great at first.

Sadly, the local Cable company has piss poor multiplexing, and sold more bandwidth to our neighborhood than they could provide. SOP for Cable internet, and after 3 years (of consistently degrading bandwidth), we had to ditch them for a 10Mbs DSL contract.

I don’t know if our phone lines at the street are fiber optic, but they have more bandwidth and are more reliable than the cable company.

By: x3style

x3style — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:40:23 +0000

“Will ISPs in Scotland try to throttle users as they’re doing in Canada?”
They are already doing it.

The only pioneers to proper REAL Unlimited broadbands where the small cable companies like NTL/Telewest and so on but after Virgin Media bought them all up they are all traffic shaped.

Currently there is no Real Unlimited broadband in the UK anymore. VM took care of what was left of proper internet.

Besides UK has pretty much ONLY broadband try getting a synchronous connection as in T1 of 1MB without paying 3000 pounds installation costs as in you buy yourself the damn fiber optical cables.

Theres 3 Major distributions in the UK witch are Cable/Wireless/BT

ALL the rest are using these networks a.k.a. resellers.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:31:33 +0000

Well, they provide the bandwidth which may seem good value, but they don’t want you to take full advantage of it. It’s like the potato chip industry which only half fills their bags or tubes of toothpaste which are mostly filled with air.

I believe that if an ISP doesn’t throttle users it would be in their interest to say so up front and then they wouldn’t need to make exaggerated offers they don’t want to stick to. It would be an added incentive to join them.

Of course those that do throttle would never want to be open and honest about the fact they are doing something dishonest and unethical, and maybe illegal.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:19:36 +0000

So that’s all it costs to set up an affordable broadband network? Hell, anyone could do it with sufficient funding and motivation