Posts by AndrueC

Re: So whats the point?

Only if "per user" is watching multiple HD streams at once.

Two people can each watch an HD video stream and others can be doing e-mail, surfing, etc. easily with 15 Mbps.

And yet HD is usually broadcast at a minimum of 10Mb/s with most pundits saying that's barely enough. In the UK the BBC broadcasts at 10Mb/s average using stat multiplexing across multiple streams. Last I checked most commercial HD is broadcast at 12Mb/s to 16Mb/s. Oh and that's just bog standard 1080i. If 4K ever catches on (hah!) bandwidth is going to quadruple.

There are some IP based services that deliver good quality HD at lower than that. Sky in the UK manages decent HD at only 800kb/s but that's a catch-up service so presumably has the advantage of more time in which to encode the stream. The BBC service which is designed to handle generic decoders and which carries live data requires 3.5Mb/s for HD and suffers from artifacting (not hugely so but it's clearly not really enough b/w for some content).

So in the absence of a sea-change in encoding/decoding technology (one that applies fairly consistently across all platforms that might be in use) I think it fair to say you need 10Mb/s for good quality video if you're going to be replacing TV broadcasting. Add in a couple of Mb/s for browsing and sundries and you're at 15Mb/s per user.

Re: So whats the point?

Ten to fifteen MEGABITS is plenty to deliver multiple HD video streams and surf the web with abandon.

Per user, yes. But that means a family needs going on a hundred Mb/s.

Re: Fiber to the press release

It's also interesting to see the same old game that any particular house in Austin has a choice of one and ONLY one gigabit fiber provider. You sign up for AT&T, Google, or whoever serves your block or you do without. There's no true competition.

Given how horribly expensive these roll-outs are it probably doesn't make sense to have more than one local loop provider. Better for them to cover different areas rather than duplicating effort.

But be careful what you wish for. Competition drives down prices which in turn damages RoI making mass roll-out of fibre unlikely. This is the situation the UK is in. Most areas only have a single local loop operator (though nearly 50% has cable running alongside). The competition is in the retail market though with the major local loop owner (British Telecom) being forced to give wholesale access to its network and to allow other operators to install their own equipment in exchanges.

As a result we have some of the cheapest broadband in the world but our speeds are second-best. On the plus side we have broadband of at least some kind available on pretty much 99% of lines in the country amongst the highest internet take up per head of population in the world. So for headline speeds competition may not be the way to go. But for cheap, widely available and popular it seems to work well.

Re: Plus ça change...

Why are these third-rate incompetents allowed to bugger about with things which they don't understand and haven't got a snowball's chance in Hell of ever understanding?

It's called democracy. It's hard to believe but the alternatives actually seem to be worse.

Re: 10,000 a week

Also worth noting is that BT would get that investment 4 times over back inside the first year, from each home

Really, based on what exactly? We have the cheapest broadband in the country and profit margins are wafer thin. When you factor in the pressure Ofcom puts on BTw (and BTor) to provide facilities for other CPs I doubt they are 'raking it in'. No-one in the industry is. That's why usage limits, traffic shaping and lousy customer service are rife.

Frankly most of us that follow this stuff are amazed BT could justify doing any kind of national roll-out. They must have negotiated some really long term, low cost loans off the banks. Another factor is that it prolongs the life of BT's copper local loop which is their biggest asset. That may be the only thing that makes it worth their while.

Re: fudging numbers

Exchange only lines are ignored with no timescale.

Mostly ignored. Some have had cabs installed but yes, EO lines are falling through the gaps. Still in terms of coverage EO lines are a small minority and most are short lines so already have over 15Mb/s.

No the sneaky bit of BT's figures is whether they include cabinets for outlying villages that haven't been enabled in their figures. In the more rural areas that could amount to a sizeable proportion of an Exchange's claimed 'footprint'.

Re: LinkedIn are dangerous amateurs

It has your work number as well.

Anyway this may well explain why twice now I've had to blacklist the email address I've given them and issue a new one. Cretins.

Re: The UK government has completely screwed up...

Sale of Royal Mail? Roll out of rural broadband? Pretty much everything, in fact.

And yet we still have people like one of the earlier commentards demanding that BT (or parts of it) be nationalised to improve the roll-out. Amazing, ain't it?

Truth is no-one but a large monopolistic provider could ever have done what BDUK wanted. The wholesaling requirements were killer. These are areas where everyone will struggle to roll-out an upgrade and then Ofcom (rightly so) insist that the provider offer wholesale access to the network. So all that expense and you aren't even allowed a full return on your efforts. Ofcom and its 'margin squeeze test' were always waiting just round the corner to pounce.

No wonder the only contenders were large corporations with better access to external funding. Even then Fujitsu knew it wouldn't make sense unless it could take the entire pot and when that didn't transpire they backed out. So BT ended up doing it all because, basically, only BT can. Will it be value for money - dunno. Possibly not. But at least it's being done. I'm reasonably sure this was the only way it was ever going to happen and at least BT are a known operator as opposed to Fujitsu. Better the devil you know.

In hindsight - it would have been quicker to just give the money to BT and be done with it. The BDUK oversight and these committees might at least curb BT's worst behaviours.

I have given up caring about mobile data and see it as this imaginary thing that people talk about but no-one gets to see or use.

I wouldn't go quite that far but it does seem very hit and miss. I was particularly perplexed recently. I was eating a meal in Coast to Coast in Birmingham near the ICC and wanted to check train times back home. I had three bars and 'H+' showing on the phone - but couldn't get anything to download. As soon as I stepped outside the download woke up.

But yeah my normal experience of browsing on my phone (GS3) is more akin to the days of analogue modems. Slow, unreliable and prone to random stalls.

In fact I just did a test from my office in Brindleyplace. Five bars and 'H+' on the phone. Speed achieved courtesy of Virgin/EE = 1Mb/s down, 1.3Mb/s up. And the graphs look like a silhouette of the Alps.

It all leads me to suspect that the problem isn't reception per se. It's the mast contention/backhaul or core networks.

Re: Wan side access to the router

They supplied Thompson devices. Is that still the case?

No, they supply Technicolor devices now :)

But yeah, it's the boxes you mean. Usually functional, nice CLI but the UIs tend to look a bit too 'Fisher Price' for my tastes :)