50mb upload speed

[southwell]

Ive searched and cannot find an answer.

Is the upload speed going to be increased once it's rolled out or is it set to stay at the current speed?

[broadbandking]

Virgin have hinted once the UBR equipment can handle upstream channel bonding they will increase the speed to 5Mb, but I have heard its going to be increased to 2.5Mbit once rolled out but again these are all rumours.

[Ignitionnet]

I've heard rumours but nothing from Virgin themselves.

The rumour mill did suggest 2.5Mbit once bonding were ready, which is laughable, but we'll see.

[Peter_]

It really is laughable in comparison to this http://www.upc.nl/internet/

[Ignitionnet]

It really is laughable in comparison to this http://www.upc.nl/internet/

You stealing my links Moldova, I'm the UPC lover here!

You forgot http://www.comhem.se/portal/comhem/bredband_start though :p:

For the nerds both of those networks are full on EuroDOCSIS 2 - I've seen UPC upstreams at 60MHz and slightly above. Where VM presently have a single upstream for 50M / 20M covering a larger area and 4 for 2 / 10M all giving maximum 8.8Mbit each UPC pack 5 or 6 17.6 - 25.4Mbit upstreams in.

[Peter_]

You stealing my links Moldova, I'm the UPC lover here!

You forgot http://www.comhem.se/portal/comhem/bredband_start though :p:

For the nerds both of those networks are full on EuroDOCSIS 2 - I've seen UPC upstreams at 60MHz and slightly above. Where VM presently have a single upstream for 50M / 20M covering a larger area and 4 for 2 / 10M all giving maximum 8.8Mbit each UPC pack 5 or 6 17.6 - 25.4Mbit upstreams in.
I know you posted that a long time ago but a 10Mb upload is very memorable.:D

[Ignitionnet]

I know you posted that a long time ago but a 10Mb upload is very memorable.:D

Especially when paired with 120Mbit down, over cable :drool::drool:

[pabscars]

Especially when paired with 120Mbit down, over cable :drool::drool:


thats semi on material :D

[Peter_]

thats semi on material :D
Many people say the same thing:D

[Impz2002]

things are unlikely to change until the average punter see's the need for a faster upload. The market is dictated by demand and at present there isnt enough. I know we would all like a fast upload but most customers are clueless and just see the headline downstream figure. As technology progresses and gives a need for fast upload to your average joe bloggs user things will change very quickly

[broadbandking]

I just hope they will increase the upload to around 5Mb

[Ignitionnet]

Minor issue, price.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/63/33646676-which-services-would-you-buy.html

[Fatec]

Minor issue, price.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/63/33646676-which-services-would-you-buy.html

Yep, everyone in this country wants ultra fast broadband for £10/M.

No wonder we are in such a state :rolleyes:

[sammyjayuk]

Yep, everyone in this country wants ultra fast broadband for £10/M.

No wonder we are in such a state :rolleyes:

Hear, hear! The market has degenerated to the point where price is the only important factor, so we have things like draconian traffic shaping and capping, awful call centres mainly staffed by barely trained monkeys (both Indian and British!) and supplied equipment that is far from fit for purpose (the bloody Livebox, oh the bloody fscking Livebox!). It's only just starting to recover - Virgin Media thinking they'll be able to sell a rather expensive connection is very hopeful.

Sometimes I wonder exactly how this happened...

Sam

[Ignitionnet]

It's only just starting to recover - Virgin Media thinking they'll be able to sell a rather expensive connection is very hopeful.

Sometimes I wonder exactly how this happened...

Sam

Shame that rather expensive product is missing one half of its' bandwidth, 53M is great but 1.75 the other way is not.

It's also not really that expensive - Virgin charge 47.50 for XL TV with Movies and Sport!

[sammyjayuk]

Shame that rather expensive product is missing one half of its' bandwidth, 53M is great but 1.75 the other way is not.

While it may be disappointing that the upstream isn't as fast as it could be, XXL is still the fastest home broadband in the UK. It confuses me though - I can sort of understand how the price thing happened (although not why it was allowed to - I suppose OFCOM's the word!), but where the upstream:downstream ratio disparity came from I have no idea.

It's also not really that expensive - Virgin charge 47.50 for XL TV with Movies and Sport!

I'm not sure I see your point - after all, Sky charge only £1.50 less for their full (SD) standard channel package, with sports and movies. Besides, sports and movies are undeniably premium television, and XXL is decidedly premium broadband. There's probably a much smaller market for premium broadband, but they are both still premium offerings.

It's sort of difficult to compare premium TV with premium broadband since Sky could probably be considered the monopoly provider of premium movie channels in the UK, with the situation not much better when it comes to premium sports - while the broadband market does have at least some competition at 16Mbit/sec (theoretically, anyway) and up.

Nobody yet comes close to VM's 50Mb downstream, though...

Sam

[Horace]

Piracy, porn and free content have always driven download speed demands, while movies are still being released in Xvid and music in MP3 format then most people will be happy with the 4-16meg download speeds. Also, while the largest torrent sites don't require a ratio along with mass P2P clients like Limewire having loose ratio requirements, upload isn't a big issue either.

[broadbandking]

Very true they haven't come close but the average customer is going to want upload soon so Virgin needs too look into increasing the upload and not just the download

[lowei]

Piracy, porn and free content have always driven download speed demands, while movies are still being released in Xvid and music in MP3 format then most people will be happy with the 4-16meg download speeds. Also, while the largest torrent sites don't require a ratio along with mass P2P clients like Limewire having loose ratio requirements, upload isn't a big issue either.

Ive gone from 20meg to 50meg, Just because i couldn't host games on xbox live.I don't download anything just occasional web browsing,Things you do just for gaming,Its costing me a fortune.So yes i would love more upload.

[graf_von_anonym]

Hear, hear! The market has degenerated to the point where price is the only important factor [snip]
Sometimes I wonder exactly how this happened...

The two factors that I think you can point to are the way telephony services were regulated over the last twenty years, and the way that the cable market was deregulated. Dialup was a bit of a nightmare, but BT could give anyone an 0845 or an 0800 number for their customers to dial, and then you just needed the lines to handle customers and the trunking to handle their usage. BT did the national routing, and had to treat it like any other call. Riding essential services made things alright, even if everybody was effectively dealing through a monopoly.

ADSL was worse, ignoring completely the vagaries of ISDN provision, with BT effectively being put into a position where it had to allow other companies to use their hardware and not charge them too much for it. Bad redress to a monopoly situation, and a stack of companies who were effectively resellers of the same product. That narrowed the margins as they competed, and since they were all selling the same thing with no room to invest in improving their services (and nothing extra to sell for the most part) it came down to narrowing the margin thin enough that the takeup of customers would increase enough that they would be making money again. LLU improved that some, but since they had already ground the prices down as low as they could that was mostly an exercise in widening the margin back up.

With cable constantly competing with ADSL the various cable providers had two ways to compete: they could provide a better service, which wasn't impossible because they had entirely seperate infrastructure, they were selling a different thing; or they could price their internet low, as an optional extra to their core television services. Given that almost every one of the cable companies was built on the same debt-forward model used in the US (borrow loads, lock customers in, service debt for the tax write-off, trebles all round!) many of them had difficulty raising extra funds for infrastructure investment, so network improvement was kept to a minimum. For NTL and Telewest it was basically a race as to who could borrow enough to assume the others' debts, and by the time they'd swallowed everyone else up they gave it a bit and then ate each other. Now that the ADSL market has come to an approximate equilibrium, VM can concentrate on their unique selling points.

Throw in the distinctions between Internet and Online services (AOL singled out here), the brief fad for 'portals' and 'planets', not least the relative lack of sophistication among internet users (starting with the address bar) and you've grounds for what we've got now. People pay for a connection and for the most part don't use it as it can be used.

Now, we can lay blame at a few doors. BT bear some responsibility, but it's not their fault they had a monopoly position, and it's not their fault that they were privatised in a clumsy way that made a handful of people very rich. It's not VMs fault that it started as a mass of public companies with a dodgy business model predicated on easy access to borrowing. It's not either side's fault that internet usage has changed so significantly in the last ten years, but you would have hoped they might have twigged as to how it was changing a while back. It doesn't help that the market is so split between Cable and ADSL. There isn't the same problem across much of the US, ADSL just never took off because their telephone technology was a bit cruder because it was adopter earlier. Japan, Korea and so on have totally different planning regimes, and quite responsible state-owned monopolies. The JPO is a miracle of organisation, hardly surprising though in a country where houses on a street are numbered in the order that they were built. The plight of resellers isn't anything unique here, just look at car insurance; yes, they're all different products from different companies, but they've all got legal requirements that force homogeneity, and furthermore all you're really buying is a slice of your insurer's own insurance. There's only a handful of reinsurers, and Swiss Re are still earning enough that they can maintain the Gherkin down in the Smoke. Then we could blame the bankers a bit, as they were seeking internet millions in a more reliable way; investing in big firms with real customers who had long contracts seemed safe.

Then, of course, there's the real nub, which is that price is easy to explain. You can talk about contention, about upload speeds, about routing, about reliability, but these are all qualities that take time to convey. Now, don't get me wrong, you can sometimes make your product message as sophisticated as "UK only call centres" or "Fastest!" but even that takes effort. The logarithmic complexities of exchange distance also meant that ADSL providers couldn't tell you in advance what kind of speeds you would get, but they could tell you how much you'd be paying.

I could throw in The Peril Of Retentions (unhappy with our service? the remedy we recommend is paying less!) and the fact that people who use the internet heavily still tend to be cranks and weirdoes but that's really just icing. The former's a complete enough explanation that it will suffice; customers continually cite price as a reason for switching, and when they do threaten to cancel their services can usually be mollified by a reduction in their bill*. That that tendency combined with a series of factors that meant ISPs were generally only distinct at a billing rather than technological level and that the cable network covers the same terrain as ADSL so its competition (and its own internal competition) was a significant influence just made it more the case.

* To the extent that "threatening to cancel" has become so commonplace a means of attempting to extract something from an ISP that it's almost lost meaning. Cancellations have no bearing on front-line staff, for the most part, and nor do specious suggestions that one's wages are paid by the customer. Beyond its churlishness, it ignores the fact that no matter how much you pay for your services, your subscription charges alone come nowhere near the cost of a member of staff. That sort of behaviour is a whole other rant though, probably best saved for somewhere like notalwaysright, so I'll leave it, because a post that I had intended to be relatively brief seems not to have finished yet.**

** Oh no, wait, it has.

[pabscars]

Ive gone from 20meg to 50meg, Just because i couldn't host games on xbox live.I don't download anything just occasional web browsing,Things you do just for gaming,Its costing me a fortune.So yes i would love more upload.

ditto