Comments on: What is the future of broadband?

By: Neil_A

Neil_A — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:15:37 +0000

Hi Ray,
Your idea I've heard before, that price should be relative to speed. However that's not how ISPs incurr costs. It's actually the amount downloaded that determines cost. So 500kbps costs the same to provide as 8Mbps, but 50GB of downloading at either speed is more expensive than 5GB. So, not an impossible dream, but one that we (and most other UK ISPs) cannot support.
Neil.

By: Chris Merry

Chris Merry — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:17:56 +0000

Compared to the Far East who have had the benefit of fibre being installed from scratch with 100 Mbit bandwidths, we in Blighty have to suffer "up to" very optimistic 8 Mbit speeds, which in reality means between 1 and 6Mb depending on whether one lives within touching distance of an exchange. The problem lies with BT who like the water companies and most other privatised utilities, have sought fit to cream off profits rather than invest in replacing antiquated copper wiring, which is so old here in the country, that the weather outside can be judged by the variance in download speeds. Until this problem is rectified, I don't see very many advances in broadband. Incidently, what happened to WiMax? which being radio transmitted would bypass the problem, and really make a difference.

By: Ray Ravenscroft

Ray Ravenscroft — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:28:50 +0000

I would look to see a farer pricing structure from all broadband suppliers, so that "up to 8MB" also reflects "up to (the maximum in a given pricing band)" based on the simple ratio:
(mean broadband speed actually received)/8MB.
This would mean a core price for services and gigabytes supplied plus a pro-rata amount based on real-world performance. Impossible dream?