Posts by AndrueC

I live on a new build estate (Dec 2015

Your builder might be at least as much to blame there. FTTP has been an option for new builds for a while now. Sadly it sounds like yours went with the cheaper copper option :-/

For anyone currently buying a new build you might want to look at openreach's current offering.

We already do. Sorta.

Re: What about BT wholesale though?

BT wholesale can continue to do that. The agreement is not saying there will be no further contact with the rest of the BT group. In fact it makes that situation better as BTw might be free to resell products from other suppliers. Maybe even the altnets, once they become mature enough to tolerate losing some of their margin to BTw.

Re: Stupid dick.

if my understanding is correct

It is. We now have a pretty good idea of what 'the people' want and it turns out that most people do not want the fastest connection possible. A lot of people who could get up to 80/20 (by which I mean they are close enough to the cabinet to benefit from it) in fact choose lower packages. Only a minority of VM customers bother to pay for the top rate. And as you say there's still a lot of people happy with their ADSL service. As time goes on this is likely to change but the idea that 'everyone' is clamouring for ever faster speeds is simply not true. The market is showing that very clearly.

Now of course this is an evolving market and over time it's likely that the demand for speed will increase but people demanding investment would be wise to understand the market they are operating in. There probably will come a time when everyone wants 100Mb/s so it would be sensible to plan for that. It's just not wise to claim that time is now because market sales do not support it.

Now would instead be a good time to work on the have-nots and that's what this USO is trying to do.

Re: I need to start doing this

I've been doing that for many years now. It's the reason I run my own mail server. Although most mail servers support the '+' notation it's a bit too obvious for my taste. Instead I've set my mail server up with a wildcard based alias system. If anyone does ever crack that I can change the template and continue anew.

I almost never get any spam and if I do it's a simple matter to blacklist the address.

The only downside is that it does leave you with a deep and abiding hatred of the 'CC' function in mail clients.

Re: Actual broadcast has a lot of advantages.

You're right, it probably won't help with OTT.

I suppose it could be useful in seeding multiple CDN dumps but I'm not even sure that UK CDNs have bothered with multiple dumps.

Re: Actual broadcast has a lot of advantages.

But at what cost? Will people on pensions be able to afford it?

A good question. Maybe the answer is that by 2030 no-one is not going to have a broadband connection and we all just accept it as another utility bill. All part of life in the UK.

Mind you if we're going to do that we need to tighten up the 'SLA'. If it becomes ubiquitous faults need to be treated more seriously as they are with water, electricity etc.

But first-off the install cost could be pretty horrible. The cost per property rises quite rapidly when you're talking about the last few communities. So let's say that it's technically feasible sometime in the next two decades but questions remain about both unfront and ongoing costs :)

Re: Actual broadcast has a lot of advantages.

As I said in the first sentence: at least at the network level. By that I mean that the 'UK data network' has (or will have) plenty of capacity.

Individual properties or even groups of properties still struggle but there's relatively few of them left. Less than 5% of properties now. By 2020 it'll be a very small number. Sadly they will be the most difficult and expensive to supply but by then the national roll-out will be smaller and hopefully more funds can be allocated per property to get them finished off.

Let's not panic about this. What we're talking about here (pensioning off broadcast TV) is not likely to happen for several years yet. I can't see it even being seriously mooted until the 2030s and by that time it'll be an unusual property that can't have at least 50Mb/s. Most will probably have 100Mb/s available, maybe even faster if a true FTTP roll-out starts.

Re: Actual broadcast has a lot of advantages.

I don't think bandwidth will be much of a problem - at least not at the network level. Most connections in the UK are now physically cable of supporting four or five reasonably compressed HD streams. UHD makes it a bit harder but I'm not yet convinced that UHD is going to take off that quickly to be a problem.

With today's codecs 10Mb/s is ample for all but 'on the fly' HD compression. And yes, I know, we don't all have a decent connection but most properties can get 40Mb/s by now. The last mile might be an issue here and there but the overall network is not going to struggle. CDNs and multicasting (openreach's offerings support that already) will do a lot to help smooth things out.

It's a bit of an ask but I believe it's well within our abilities. IPTV could take over from broadcast TV without much of a struggle.

Re: Fire sale of fully sweated asset?

and the content providers can control how the adverts are targeted (even to post-code level) as well as being able to prevent (most) punters from skipping them.

I really hope you're wrong there. The thought of returning to the days where adverts couldn't be jumped over fills me with dread.

Re: Linear TV?? . . . OTT??

I think OTT is a bit more than just the broadcast medium being the internet. It's also about the viewer having control over what and when they watch. They don't have to wait until the broadcaster makes the next episode available and don't have to set aside a specific time to watch it. Instead the entire 'box set' is available from day one and episodes can be watched as/when the viewer chooses.

It's the next logical step up from DVRs. DVRs allow you to easily time shift everything so you're no longer tied to the broadcast schedule but you do still have to wait until the broadcaster choose to show each episode.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out. I've long been a fan of Sky+ and haven't watched live TV for many years now. But I've never really caught on to box sets because after a couple of episodes in a row I start to feel burnt out and fancy a change. Given how relatively poor most programming is I'm nearly always happy to wait for the next one to turn up. But then I'm fifty in two weeks. Apparently the young whipper-snappers hate having to wait for anything and perhaps their pathetic attention span means they have to watch back to back or risk forgetting what happened a week ago.

Whatever. Apparently the future of 'TV' is going to more akin to visiting a video library. Aside from truly live events like news and sports everything is 'just there' to be watched. Oh brave new world!

Podkayne of Mars could be a big hit with slightly older teens as well. It's a little bit less soppy than Have Spacesuit.. and in the final few scenes are quite dark, especially if they include the original ending.

It's not common but does happen. The most common issue is when the gaining CP doesn't get informed or fluffs up the activation date. In theory the losing CP is supposed to be notified of a successful gain before disabling the account but sometimes it goes wrong.

I've had it happen to me once (had no internet for nearly 12 hours) and to a couple of friends. One of them ended up falling into the BT rabbit hole. The losing CP closed his account three days early (someone trying to get things tidied away before the weekend I suspect). The gaining CP's order hadn't gone through(blocked by the weekend). That left Saturday, Sunday and some part of Monday during which he was in limbo. At some point during that period openreach gave his cabinet connection to another customer. What knocked it into a cocked hat was that the cabinet was full. openreach refused to give him back his connection so he had no choice but to drop back to ADSL for two months.

To be fair he did get two free months free internet but that's poor compensation when you go from a 50Mb/s connection down to 4Mb/s.

Re: It's a con

No they don't - there are ISPs that don't use an Openreach last mile. BBrn, gigaclear, fibrecity.

But none of those allow other CPs to use their cables so the only thing you can do is switch back to an Openreach based solution. The ones you list are mostly present in areas where they offer a far better connection than openreach so it's not much of a choice.

If you're in a big city, KCOM, Colt and Verizon will lay a fibre to your door.

Eh? KCOM are rolling out fibre everywhere they cover (Hull and environs) but I don't think they operate anywhere else. Do Colt and Verizon actually lay any local loop cable in the UK? I'd be moderately surprised. I thought only openreach and VM laid local loop in the UK.