Which Package Would You Take?

[Ignitionnet]

No STM, no caps involved, everything same price, which would you choose?

I am curious after noting the lack of response to my comments about BT's big roll out plans and Rob's quite accurate remark that VM customers can already get 'faster' speeds - so long as one only looks in one direction.

[MovedGoalPosts]

For home use upload is convenient since I maintain a couple of game servers and occasionally need to upload some 0.5 GB updates. But that is occasional and I can walk away from the PC and come back to it later. Same with large downloads. I set those running if I'm not needing the internet for other stuff.

Personally I don't need (yet) 40 / 50 meg download. But the time may come where we see more quality streaming services that do make decent use of it. A more proportionate upload than currently available would be good. But it's the price that would make me decide, and that isn't quantified in this vote.

[joglynne]

I upload photos to a joint family website and sometimes it can take hours.

I would go up a tier but I can't justify the cost when I know that I don't need any faster download speeds. All this fanfare about 100Mb/200Mb downloads just seems to be like putting go faster stripes on an old Morris Minor in the hopes that you can sell it as Ferrari.

[alexcopeland]

To be honest I would continue to use Virgin Media as my ISP as in my area there is no sign of over subscription and I always have a fast steady connection to the web. Upload isn't a problem for myself and house hold at this time. My partner uploads to FB put they compress all images and I use PSN which works fine. I would like the 50Mb service Virgin Media offer for streaming HD content from PSN or Xbox LIVE in the future.

[AbyssUnderground]

I would take 40/10 of course. Upload is just as important to me as download, but seeing how I struggle to max out 10Mbps down a lot of the time, 10Mbps extra download instead of upload means nothing to me.

[Ignitionnet]

For home use upload is convenient since I maintain a couple of game servers and occasionally need to upload some 0.5 GB updates. But that is occasional and I can walk away from the PC and come back to it later. Same with large downloads. I set those running if I'm not needing the internet for other stuff.

Personally I don't need (yet) 40 / 50 meg download. But the time may come where we see more quality streaming services that do make decent use of it. A more proportionate upload than currently available would be good. But it's the price that would make me decide, and that isn't quantified in this vote.

It was supposed to be an either, or, hence no 'neither' option. Original question did specify same price on both :)

Which service would you take, same price, no caps, etc.

My own opinion is that BT 'get it' much more than Virgin do in this regard. Virgin keep flashing the e-peen with every higher downstream speeds while spending as little money and time on upstream as possible having only been spurred into doing anything with it due to BT's choice of products.

From Openreach CEO Steve Robertson (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/interviews/355987/bt-we-wont-need-gigabit-broadband-for-a-long-time):

If you look at the whole development of the internet, I think the thing that makes it unique is the ability to share in two directions. It puts power in the hands of the users, allows them to share stuff with multiple audiences, it allows them to share stuff with people that are hundreds of miles away, and play games with people who are thousands of miles away.

The minute we open the tap and say you can have 10Mbits/sec up as well as 40Mbits/sec down, I think people will start to use that. The only reason there’s not a big focus on it just now is because people haven’t been able to utilise those sort of up speeds until now. I think when they’re available, a lot of cool stuff is going to happen.

From VM CEO Steve Berkett:

There is nothing we can't do with our fibre optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100Mbps service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience.

Just as we led the way by launching the UK's first ever next generation service, we want to keep giving our customers the very best broadband available, by investing in technological innovation and transforming the experience they have when they are online.

Robertson has a point, no point in offering higher speeds if there's no applications on the horizon for them, or if you can't sustain them. In BT's case every customer on their FTTC network will have 40Mbps nailed up for them right the way back to the exchange where the amount they pay their ISP and the amount their ISP is prepared to pay for interconnect decides what happens - premium services with guaranteed low or no contention are perfectly possible, indeed an operator could offer 10Mbps symmetrical guaranteed bandwidth with 'bursts to 40Mbps' quite easily. There's also no reason why Sky, et al, can't do HD IPTV over such a network through local VoD servers in the exchanges.

Meanwhile Virgin announced trials of 10Mbps upload speeds in July 2009. So far this has been seen in exactly two areas on the live network, with the odd smattering of other lower tier trials elsewhere.

My 50Mbps service is precarious at times streaming at a couple of Mbps.

I just took my own thread off topic, oops :(

[soulspawn]

the up down ratio are getting rather pointless to download at the 20mbit speed you have to upload a small amount saying when you recieve a file, with only 764kbit up it is been maxed out just downloading i hope they upgrade this to 1-2mbit very reasonable.

not only that but would allow us to do a lot more online than we can right now photo would take seconds videos minutes and ability to host good servers for online game for your friends and family

[Spectato]

.... to download at the 20mbit speed you have to upload a small amount saying when you recieve a file, with only 764kbit up it is been maxed out just downloading
That's VM's 'mentality' in a nutshell.
They give you the bare minimum of upstream bandwidth for your connection to be able to work, and not a drop more!

[Mick Fisher]

Since being moved to docsis1.1, when my 20mbit service is downloading at it's max speed I find browsing is so slow that a lot of pages just time out.

I would hazard a guess that this is because the puny upload is being completely saturated to keep the download going.

I didn't experience this when the modem was on docsis 1 but then I rarely achieved speeds above 10 - 13mbits except occasionally during the early hours.

I don't habitually have need of a fast upload but recently I uploaded a sub/idx multi language subtitle file, to an FTP, for study re: the development of an application that I am involved with. The .sub was only 27 mbytes but it just seemed to take forever. Totally rediculous.

[Sephiroth]

Igni's spot on comparing the "I get it" message from BT vs the 5 mile high club bluster from VM's CEO. Berkett focuses on download only and thus misses the point.

VM have a lot of infrastructure upgrade still to do. BT are in the middle of doing it.

The interim poll showing is no surprise. Whether people will flock away from VM to BT is another question. Perhaps the poll should have this option asked. Of course there is the less well defined issue of the LLUs' interest in FTTC because if they don't go FTTC enabled a lot of their customers wil be disappointed.

[Ignitionnet]

Igni's spot on comparing the "I get it" message from BT vs the 5 mile high club bluster from VM's CEO. Berkett focuses on download only and thus misses the point.

VM have a lot of infrastructure upgrade still to do. BT are in the middle of doing it.

The interim poll showing is no surprise. Whether people will flock away from VM to BT is another question. Perhaps the poll should have this option asked. Of course there is the less well defined issue of the LLUs' interest in FTTC because if they don't go FTTC enabled a lot of their customers wil be disappointed.

Nice quote regarding quality over quantity from Openreach's CEO:

There’s an obsession with access speed, but when I look at the world from an Openreach perspective, the last thing I’ll actually be worried about is access speeds. Even if we’re talking about 20, 30, 40Mbits/sec access speeds, to actually give the end user a true 30 or 40Mbits/sec experience on an end-to-end basis, you very quickly get to issues around the backhaul network, the way that the server structure that supports the internet works, and a whole bunch of other things.

LLUs are doing it - the big 3, Sky, Talk Talk, Telefonica O2. They were waiting on scale and availability of 10Gbit handovers, phases 4b and 5's 303 exchanges give that scale.

[Ed2020]

I went for 40Mbit down, 10Mbit up. Doesn't need any thinking about at all.

My upload usage is fairly limited, but when I do use it, its for things I don't want to be waiting around for. An upgrade of upload bandwidth is far more important to me than an increase to my 20Mbit download. 20Mbit down is more than enough for the foreseeable future - the only time it's a bit of an issue is when I've been throttled back to 5Mbit and two of us want to watch a hi-def stream from iPlayer.

I'll be interested to see whether VM actually deploy upload improvements beyond the trial. My guess is they won't. :(

Ed.

[pip08456]

I

I'll be interested to see whether VM actually deploy upload improvements beyond the trial.

Ed.

I certainly won't be holding my breath waiting for that to happen!

[Paul]

No contest - 40/10.

The difference between 50 and 40 is insignificant 90% of the time (its rarely 50 anyway).

The difference between 1.5 and 10 upload is very significant.

[Ignitionnet]

No contest - 40/10.

The difference between 50 and 40 is insignificant 90% of the time (its rarely 50 anyway).

The difference between 1.5 and 10 upload is very significant.

Couldn't agree more. Giving up 20% of your downstream in return for another nearly 600% upstream would appear to me to be a no-brainer.

In storage terms (ignoring any fluff (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/New-FiOS-Speeds-A-Little-Faster-Than-Promised-103282) before we get all the 50Mbit speedtests saying 'but my 50Mbit does xxMB/s / kB/s') dropping from 6MB/s to 4.8MB/s down in return for going from 180kB/s to 1.2MB/s up.

If we are talking about VM and including the fluff on the 50Mbit VM tier, then dropping from 6.1MB/s to 4.8MB/s and 200kB/s up to 1.2MB/s up, so a 21.3% drop downstream in return for a 500% increase in upstream.

[Welshchris]

Ignitionnet, what do you think VM will deploy on their 50mb as an upgrade for 50mb upstream?

Will they match the BT 10mb or will it be 5mb as roumered for ages? Personally id be happy with 5mb up.

I also wonder if they will introduce extra tiers of upstream choices which could be phaps more than 10mb up.

[Turkey Machine]

Ignitionnet, what do you think VM will deploy on their 50mb as an upgrade for 50mb upstream?

Will they match the BT 10mb or will it be 5mb as roumered for ages? Personally id be happy with 5mb up.

I also wonder if they will introduce extra tiers of upstream choices which could be phaps more than 10mb up.

They can't match the 10Mb on the 50Mb tier due to oversubscription and poor equipment in the headends.

[pip08456]

They can't match the 10Mb on the 50Mb tier due to oversubscription and poor equipment in the headends.

But that does depend on what upgrades they may or may not have planned.
If they wish to compete with Openreach there're going to have to do something.

At least the CEO from Openreach has vision about what the future of the net is and what people will want (now it's only a minority, myself included.) unlike our Steve "dipsh*t Berkett.

[pabscars]

They can't match the 10Mb on the 50Mb tier due to oversubscription and poor equipment in the headends.

VM,s current top offering as mentioned is just the bare minimum, any short fall in upstream bandwidth creates problems, as is being seen atm

this wouldn't be noticeable with 10Mb upload (would it) so for me BT would get my business in a heartbeat.

If I had a choice in the matter that is

[bonzoe]

Which one would I take?

Neither!!

Well you did ask.

[Ignitionnet]

Which one would I take?

Neither!!

Well you did ask.

No, I didn't, that's why there wasn't an option for neither :p: