British ISPs Favour Well-Connected Customers 88
scurtis writes "An insider has told eWEEK Europe that some Internet service providers in the UK only sign-up customers who can be guaranteed a good service, in order to improve average speed claims. The revelation comes after the regulator Ofcom criticised broadband service providers earlier this week for not delivering the speeds promised to consumers. Meanwhile, TalkTalk's chairman Charles Dunstone has argued that Ofcom could be doing a lot more to push BT — as the operator of the copper infrastructure — to improve maintenance of the lines and its communication with fellow service providers."
Re:Well, Virgin signed me up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea, the summary seems to complain about ISPs not being able to deliver promised speeds while at the same time complaining that ISPs try to avoid selling their services to people in areas where they can't meet their promised speeds. I realize that yes, in an ideal world everyone would have 10GB fiber run to their door, but that's simply not the case.
I agree with Charles (Score:1, Insightful)
Some of the phone line backbones are in a terrible mess in even concentrated zones where you'd expect there to be more focus and resources spent.
I'm apparently supposed to be capable of running at 5Mbps at the moment, my average is usually around 2 with tests. (Ayrshire FYI)
As for today though, i'm guessing i'm barely getting 512kbps for some strange random reason that usually pops up at least twice a month.
Friends connection is perfectly fine though, and he is almost certainly on the same exchange. (both of us are TalkTalk now after BT screwed us over in 2 unique ways)
When i was with BT, the connection was terrible, always dropping, moved to TT, connection is actually stable most of the time.
It isn't just the lines that are buckled stupid, their hardware and network in general is just awful, including their hub that takes about 10 years to change any settings and restart the damn thing. (exaggeration, but damn it there is no way it should take that much to change some simple settings. Even BELKIN are better, and that is sad)
I remember they even suggested to me to change my MTU settings beyond the standards because it is easier on their networks... SERIOUSLY?!
God knows what the people on top are doing at BT, probably hoarding all the money for steaks and bubbly.
Re:Eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Except there's no reason to charge more for more downloaded, because it doesn't cost more to provide it. What costs more money is additional bandwidth, which is entirely different from $X/byte. It's more like $X/byte per second.
That's why caps are horseshit.
Re:tiered pricing based on service possibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
I live at the end of 5km of old copper, where the fastest ADSL speed seems to be about 600k. The smallest package I can get, however, is for 1mbit. It's not all that thrilling for a geek. :(
Would I rather have no connection? Err, no. Slow is fine, relatively speaking.