# BT broadband upgrades



## Anonymous (1 Mar 2005)

For those of you on BT broadband (basic, regular or yahoo), you may be interested in knowing that BT started a customer-wide bandwidth upgrade on 17th Feb, due to finish within 5 weeks of that date.

Details at this web page here

Broadly, for non-basic subs on 512k, you'll be going to (up to*) 2Mb, basic subs going to 1Mb, no extra costs...sounds good to me

* depending on line quality, and all other usual caveats.


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## RogerS (1 Mar 2005)

I'm sitting here counting down the hours to when we're finally supposed to be getting landline broadband. The trouble is we are a long, long way from the exchange..  

Midnight tomorrow is the witching hour. We've been on satellite b'band but it's now too expensive.


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## Woodythepecker (1 Mar 2005)

ES, AOL are doing the same. 1mb up to 2mb etc, also no extra charge.

Regards

Woody


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## Midnight (1 Mar 2005)

let me guess... are they using bigger syrup tins or thicker damp string...???


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## Signal (1 Mar 2005)

Watch the BT upgrade.

Theyre upping to 2Mb/s but dropping monthly bandwidth to 15GB as opposed to 30GB.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/14/bt_upgrade/

Half as much twice as fast :x 

Signal


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## chiba (2 Mar 2005)

Download limits?! That sucks. Badly. :evil:


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## RogerS (2 Mar 2005)

chiba":pcy550ft said:


> Download limits?! That sucks. Badly. :evil:



Why? The vast majority of users don't come anywhere near that data volume. 

Roger


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## llangatwgnedd (2 Mar 2005)

ntl is supposed to changing their speeds this month e.g. 300k to 1million but with a *3gig* *cap*.
What I like to know is what happens when you reach your limit before the month is up, do they lower your speed to 56k or charge you more ( thats more like ntl) or cut you off?

Check the small print.

Your number one ntl & Telewest cable resource.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/


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## Anonymous (2 Mar 2005)

Signal":37str07a said:


> Watch the BT upgrade.
> 
> Theyre upping to 2Mb/s but dropping monthly bandwidth to 15GB as opposed to 30GB.
> 
> ...



I've always only had 15Gb limit - there are 2 BT Yahoo bands, one with 15Gb limit (which stays at 15Gb) and one with 30, which also stays at 30. Don't know about the non-yahoo version, but I'm pretty sure that had a 15Gb limit before they started this upgrade process.


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## Anonymous (2 Mar 2005)

chiba":15dhlu5f said:


> Download limits?! That sucks. Badly. :evil:



I have a limit of 1GB per month (cheapest broadband option) with 4 people using it and don't use 20% of that most months (even with this forum mod lark :wink: )!!!

Not many people would struggle with _15GB per month download _limit


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## chiba (2 Mar 2005)

If all you're going to do is surf, you may as well have ISDN. The point of broadband (for me at least) is that I can be on the company LAN as a regular user, drag CD images off vendor sites (and huge PDFs of documentation), VC with my friends and family, play online games, watch the news, listen to CD quality radio, get some tunes off iTMS, etc, etc. Half a gig a day ain't going to cut it. And I'm not even in Korea, consumers of bandwidth par excellence. If you've got it, use it!


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## Anonymous (2 Mar 2005)

except ISDN costs a fortune in the UK, and the bandwidth's rubbish 

I use my broadband for home-working, connected to the corporate lan, and find 15Gb a month more than enough!


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## Signal (2 Mar 2005)

My business partner was on 1Mb with 30GB restriction, just about coped with that.

They have kindly doulbed his BW and reduced him to 15GB so that means if he stays with BT for half the month he isnt going to be able to work.

The only way he can increase his limit is by moving to yet another tarrif and they will penalise him for the remainder of the current tariff.

Im am unlimited, forntunately, and am using between 60 and 100GB / month depending on how busy I am.

Bye bye BT


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## Anonymous (2 Mar 2005)

Hmm, according to the BT web-site, the 1Mb service (as was) was the only one with the 30Gb limit, and their table says it's still 30Gb!



BT":39f78xru said:


> Please note: only the speed will change. All other features of your Broadband from BT package remain the same.



Hey ho, what do I know? lol
2Mb & 15Gb is good enough for my needs


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## aldel (2 Mar 2005)

BT have just upped my broadband to 2.2gig and I have not noticed any real difference in speed.
They have now capped me at 30gig per month and this is going to cause me real problems.
Their capping _does not apply to just download traffic_ but to total traffic i.e. up and down!!
Running a website means that I receive an enormous amount of spam and of course this counts towards that traffic.

Regards aldel


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## trevtheturner (2 Mar 2005)

Hiya, chiba,

So what do you do with all your spare time then? :shock: :wink: 

Cheers,

Trev.


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## The Wizard (2 Mar 2005)

Lets get a few things in context here. Broadband is a contended service, ie, you are sharing your 500kbps or whatever with a number of other users, sometimes several hundred(Dependent on supplier). If you are fortunate enough not to be downloading large chunks of data or fighting with Billy round the corner playing Doom oline then the increase may seem irrelevant. However, if the contention ratio stays the same, you have a greater chance of getting the bandwidth that you did not previously.
A point also worthy of not that in a TCPIP network, you are always as slow as the weakest link. If your target website or email host has only 64K access to the Internet backbone, any increase in your access speed will have no impact on your access to your home site.

Rgds

The Wiz


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## chiba (2 Mar 2005)

Hey, that *is* my spare time! :shock:

Seven years ago, Japan had BT style broadband (worse, actually). Within 5 years 12-20 meg broadband was around for about 18 quid a month. Now it's up to 50 meg. All uncapped, of course.

My prediction:
By 2010 in the UK you'll have at least 8 meg uncapped broadband for, say, 20 quid a month. 8-12 Mbps is, IMHO, the lowest speed that can legitimately be called "broad" band. I had that for a while and never felt constrained by it. For home use there's little noticeable difference going from that to 100 meg fibre. Up speed is at least a meg, which will handle even quite a high traffic webserver with no issues (unless you want to stream video).

All you've got to do is wait...


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## Woodythepecker (2 Mar 2005)

There's no limit with AOL.

Regards

Woody


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## trevtheturner (3 Mar 2005)

Me - longing to have broadband available   

Cheers,

Trev.


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## trevtheturner (3 Mar 2005)

Nice one, Chiba - didn't realise that that was your spare time. :wink: :wink: 

Yep, I reckon we'll never catch up with you over there!  

Cheers,

Trev.


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## chiba (3 Mar 2005)

Trev - if you're off the beaten track, try to get a community wireless network? They seem to be cropping up in rural areas in the UK now. Basically you club together for the connection and a wireless "ISP in a box" type solution. For example, I think Digital Dales are doing this in North Yorkshire.


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## trevtheturner (3 Mar 2005)

Thanks for that, Chiba. I will have a look at it. However, on my little 'patch' here we are all waiting in eager anticipation, having been told that broadband will be available to us in June this year. Fingers crossed, not too long to go now!  

Cheers,

Trev.


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## RogerS (5 Mar 2005)

Delighted to say that my Zen 2Mb broadband connection burst into life at the appointed date...even down a very, very long length of wet string. 

Having used satellite broadband ...with all its' inherent limitations but better than ISDN :wink: ...being able to download and upload so darn fast is refreshing.


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## Anonymous (7 Mar 2005)

So much better that you figured you could spare the extra bandwidth for the whole 'Roger' instead of just 'r', eh? :lol:


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## RogerS (7 Mar 2005)

Espedair Street, you can call me Horza Gobuchul instead if you like? Or _The Ends of Invention_ if you prefer that one :wink: 

Leaves others wondering just what on earth rs is on about :wink:


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## Anonymous (7 Mar 2005)

I always liked _ultimate ship the second_, personally


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## RogerS (7 Mar 2005)

Quite liked _Clear Air Turbulence_but felt it didn't count as neither a GCU or a GSV :wink:


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## RogerS (7 Mar 2005)

Quite liked _Clear Air Turbulence_but felt it didn't count as neither a GCU or a GSV :wink:


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## houtslager (7 Mar 2005)

will sommeone please write in plain ENGLISH - you lot lost me after the 2nd post here  
I need to get round to making a web site, with all this bandwidth talk and up/download speeds I really am in a dither. 
God, just give me wood to butcher or restore and I am ok but this pc/web/download talk loses me in a trice.


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## Anonymous (8 Mar 2005)

Whjat are you guys doing that you actually *need* more than 512K and 30Gigs a month?  I'm quite a heavy user and my wife runs her business from home and we hardly ever go beyond 3 to 4Gigs a month. I can only imagine that contention is a problem for you, or you're into gaming on the Internet? 

FWIW my connection consistently runs at around 420K (I test it when I am bored) and we sometimes have wait up to a whole 4 or 5 seconds for pages to load. How terrible :wink: 

Downloads of huge files takes time, but they don't lock up your computer -- you can still do other things while the 'post' arrives can't you, or are you a serial worker?

I often work from home and my email (notoriously slow and cumbersome Lotus Notes) runs faster on my wireless link and broadband connection than on the company 100MB network in the office! There are reasons for that, but who cares, really? A few seconds is nothing, not even enough to brew a cuppa as we used to be able to do when downloading some stuff 10 years ago. I miss the excuses...

Now try and convince me you really need a Pentium if all you're doing is writing letters and doing basic calculations.  Oh, I forgot that Mega$oft makes sure that all current software requires at least a mega-giga processor and several terabytes of hard disk just to install...


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2005)

Well, my upgrade is complete - does it make a difference? Certainly seems to - web pages loading very nicely indeed, thankyou very much.

Mind you, I have been out in India all week, struggling with a very frayed damp bit of string, so that could have something to do with the appearance of speed!


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## cambournepete (10 Mar 2005)

Just done the NTL upgrade (300k unlimited to 1Mb limited to 3GB). Works nicely - definitely quicker although I did try it latish last night so the contention would have been low anyway. I can't see the 3GB limit being a problem when they do enforce it - most of my browsing is from work... . If I end up needing to do lots from home I'll have to upgrade...

My feeble website is hosted on the NTL servers so any traffic to it (apart from home) doesn't count in the 3GB.

Pete


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## Jorden (11 Mar 2005)

I just noticed that we have been upgraded - now running at 2.2Mb. Does it make any difference - not a lot, in fact I probably wouldn't have noticed except for the connected message.

We are heavy users of the internet and the between us download around 30 to 40 gb of films and music each month so are not happy about the comming caps, so I have written to BT asking when they will come into force so I can arrange to move my account to another supplier in good time. Still waiting for a reply....

Dennis


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## RogerS (11 Mar 2005)

Jorden

Where do you download films from?

Roger


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## Jorden (11 Mar 2005)

Normally newsgroups Roger


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