BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

in Ebbsfleet in Kent anyway..

BT are trialling fibre to the home, and will be offering 100Mbit (not 100MByte as the Grauniad said) for £44.95 wholesale. Apparently, the current markup for ADSL is 30%, which translates to a price of around £60 per month retail.

Various speeds will be available. Speeds below 10Mbit will be "assured" rather than "up to", and speeds above 10Mbit will be "up to".

More info at http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/pric...g_Jan_2008.pdf

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Amazing.

I thought BT had decided against FTTH?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

is it me or is the price table in the pdf a little confusing? it states the 30 and 100mbit are 'add-ons' then says the price includes that of the 10mbit, so the 30mbit is 120pa more than 10mbit which seems a little too cheap for the increase in speed. not to mention it says no connection charge for 30/100mbit but then does so afterwards

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I suspect that BT will go for FTTH at some point, and this may just be the first in a series of trials designed to test to viability of doing so.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

FTTH is the future,but why is it always kent that gets these trials??

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

This means good competition then, even if its on a limited basis.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Absolutely. :)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

ETHO nice releases, keep up the good work.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

qué?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I also noticed from that PDF that they are giving an assured 2Mbits/sec upstream on that 10Mbits product.

Nice. :)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Check pm's :tu:

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Not bad BT seem to be going on the correct track

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

BT have no plans to offer residential fibre services (that I'm aware of) as they're too expensive. BT doesn't want to pay the full cost of "laying" fibre, and other ISP's aren't interested in paying to upgrade a network they do not own.

This is for business' only.

---------- Post added at 20:23 ---------- Previous post was at 20:22 ----------

They have, at least for now. This is FTTP - fibre to the premises.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

JANET have just implemented this Lightpath
10Gb/s - droooool.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I was under the impressions it was Thatcher that stopped BT doing this years ago, as they feared it would give them then monopoly.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Wrong...this is a move made by BT since the govt gave them a swift kick about rolling FTTH out, this trial is to see if its viable/profitable for them to roll it out fully, if it works out then there is plans to do a full implementation.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Erm, wrong..

From http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/prod...s/fttp/fttp.do

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

@flamingeck: ISTR it was something along the lines that BT said they would invest in a national fibre network if they were allowed to carry other services over it ie TV. The government of the time said No.

@Neptune: Righto, although the OP says FTTH. Even so, FTTP is better than nowt!

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Apparently “boggits” over at Think Broadband believes this system is based on GPON, which if true would mean it works on a similar principle to how Virgin Medias cable network works, albeit with allot more bandwidth per UBR to play with. Verizon in the US appear to be using the same system, so I have no reason to doubt this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Whaa? :)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Yep, my fault for posting late at night without checking things first.

Looks like BT is going to target new housing developments only. But it's still fibre to homes, lucky those people who will live in those homes.

But, as for mass rollout of fibre to the masses, it ain't going to happen any time soon. Until someone decides to bite the bullet and stump up the 10 billion odd quid to roll fibre out across the country. I doubt BT will stump up the cash unless they can keep and control the fibre network for themselves.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

gets them in the news.

BTs policy seems to be provide something that has best headline speeds to as little places as possible to keep costs low.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

It's a trial. They aren't going to spend billions (or tens of billions) of pounds rolling out something nationally before they can ensure it is viable and works well.

The same could be argued about Virgin. The difference being that they have talked publically (to the BBC of all people) about the 50 meg trials, and even said that at some point they are rolling it out nationally. BT have only leaked details to a few IT news sources.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Virgin is very different.

Every customer on virgins digital network can get a synch equal to the speed they have paid for so every 20meg customer gst a 20meg synch on the modem.

With BT the 'MAJORITY' of customers do not get the advertised synch speeds only around a quarter can get 8meg on adsl1 and it will be single figures who are able to get close to 24meg infact under 5%. To me thats a large difference.

Now I know virgin have traffic management (BT do also tho) but at least with virgin customers can expect to hit their max speed at some point during the day even if its at 4am whilst if you on adsl and synch below the max speed you will never ever download at max speed because your line is incapable.

As to this trial BT are not going to be doing a national rollout, the shareholders have made this clear and ofcom are sending out noises they wont push for a rollout so the only way BT are doing fiber is if someone subsidises it aka the government.

BTs 21CN will upgrade the dslams to support adsl2+ 24mbit speeds, this will benefit the already lucky few with short lines meaning a higher headline speed for a minority of customers exactly as I said. BT are doing nothing in 21CN to improve things for long lines, they not even replacing ADSL1 with ADSL2, ADSL2 was designed with long lines in mind. (ADSL2 and ADSL2+ are different).

In addition it looks like they removing their fixed 512kbit, 1mbit, 2mbit products from wholesale putting everyone into a one speed fits all product priced the same regardless of synch speed you get, ignoring the fact some lines are unstable on rate adaptive adsl and need fixed speeds to be stable. Cable has its problems but believe me adsl is far worse in equality.

The grass may seem greener but it isnt always the case.

I am speaking as someone who has used cable and adsl in recent years, I was in one of ntls worst areas analogue only services and congested ubr's dispite this I have found adsl to be a significantly worse experience in both performance and stability.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

This trial is not using ADSL, so any comparison with ADSL is irrelevant.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Didnt ntl trial FTTH a while back, im assuming it didnt turn out well as it never made it out of trials? will BT have a more cost effective solution?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Unlike BT, Virgin doesn't need FTTH to obtain high speeds.

Unlike BT, Virgins fibre network runs up to very close to the property already within a few hundred metres as opposed to a couple of km in the case of BT.

Theoretically you can speeds of 250mbs over copper.

This is just a headline winning exercise by BT after Virgin announced their "achievable to most customers" 50mbs, BT have decided to announce their "achievable to 2 cats and a dog in ebbsfleet" 100mbs.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Yep, Dolphin Square:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...l-100mbps.html

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

yeh, thought it was dolphin square. would be nice to see FTTH as it can offer greater services than current broadband technologies. but i cant see it coming any time soon :(

Any ideas on which ftth system they will be using?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

BT, unlike Virgin (apparently) don't announce products until *after* they have been successfully tried them. They haven't officially announced 100 meg. 50 Meg was announced by Virgin while they were still trialling it.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Its relevant in that BT will not want to provide ftth to all their customers as it will reduce their profits not only in the investment required but a hit on the leased line business and they will no longer be able to save on bandwidth from customers who have low synch speeds. BTs model works on them providing a high headline speed to few customers so adsl is perfect for this.

This trial does wonders for PR tho and may keep people of their back for the short term.

One thing I have learnt since using BT again the company has the worst treatment of customers in any company I have recently dealt with they simply dont care about the quality of their service and customer support all they care about is their shareholders.

---------- Post added at 07:58 ---------- Previous post was at 07:58 ----------

indeed

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Unless they have suddenly cabled the 48% (not sure of the exact figure) of the country that isn't cabled, and enabled the cabled areas that don't have broadband all without anyone noticing, the same arguement applies to Virgin.

Edit: And they still haven't officially announced it (unlike Virgin, with the 50 meg trials, who went on BBC Breakfast and announced it nationally). So, how, exactly are they headline seeking?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

This is hilarious............this bunch of incompetants cant even supply my house with 512k on a regular basis, I find it most amusing that they even think they could offer this speed.

It will most likely only be available to a spotty geek who lives in a cupboard at the exchange!!

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

And the old joke comes out again. This trial is using Fibre to the premises. Fibre offers the same speed whether you are 2 metres or 200 miles away from the source..

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Not true I'm afraid Stuart!

Optical fibres still suffer from attenuation and, more critically, dispersion like copper cable - it's just that it tends to be at higher data rates.

Multi-mode fibre - the sort most common - is good for 1Gbps for up to only about 500m or 2km at 100Mbps. More details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-mode_fiber

For longer distances we use single-mode fibre which has less dispersion. The fibre and the interfaces are much more expensive but are good for some 10s of kilometers - but not 200 miles!

A bit more overview:
http://www.fiber-optics.info/articles/fiber-types.htm

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I have worked on fibre's that are running well over 100 miles :) But you would not want to look at the end of the fibre with the laser on :LOL:

I have just today been involved in 2 links running 10 gig each at 50 miles.

but as for BT running 100mbit. It will be along time before they offer it to the masses. A small trial in one area will be all they will offer just to be able to say WE CAN.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Thanks for that Sirius.

You're a star!

;)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Telecoms network uses Single mode Fibre. ;)
Apart from some of the early stuff afaik

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Fair enough, but it's still not as sensitive to distance as ADSL.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I don't know for certain but imagine that any FTTH (or FTTP or whatever it's called these days) will use multi-mode fibre because it is much cheaper. Single-mode stuff is probably used between head ends where more speed and distance is required and the expense can be justified.

And yes, I would still prefer fibre. Even a mere 100Mbps at 2km will beat the pants of ADSL.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Multi mode Fibre only tends to get used these days for Short runs for private networks.
Anything going in in the way of telecoms from BT at least will be single mode.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

The day BT install a decent wire made in the last 50 years let alone Fibre to every home in the UK, is the next time I will ever sign up to a contract with that pathetic telecoms company.........!!!

Looks like I will never have to worry about another BT contract in the next 25 years then!!

---------- Post added at 02:41 ---------- Previous post was at 02:37 ----------

This was more referring to the fact that BT will only ever have Fibre at the exchanges, except in perhaps a few lucky circumstances (maybe new builds and business areas).......ie not the paying masses. It would cost far too much for them to replace all the cable in the UK. I cant even get them to replace my outdated perishing bell cable with something more 21st century as its not deemed necessary (my services work, phone line has crackle and ADSL peaks at 512k and drops off every hour, this is deemed acceptable by BT), so id tend not to believe that they will replace it with anything else unless I fork out £175 or more.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Is this switched on thing gonna improve broadband or anything? http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/switched-on.php

On the page it says:
What exactly are they doing to 'improve the phonelines'?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

On that page is a linked FAQ explaining more details.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Multimode fibre is used over shorter distances and you can also get more data down it because of the larger core. Most Urban CCTV systems will probably utilise Multimode or internal office networks.

Standard Single Mode G.652 fibre is the one used most and with standard equipment you can usually run around 100km before repeating.

If you use raman amps you can easily get 230km before repeating.

If you use special fibre such as non-zero dispersion shifted single mode, you don't get any further but you can use more of the light spectrum within the fibre for WDM & DWDM systems.

If they were to utilise fibre to the home, for BT, I would expect they would have to use Single mode. Unless they built a new network topology specifically for it.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I wonder what type of fibre they're using for this!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7202396.stm

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

http://www.h2o-networks.uk.net/about-us/?faqs

So that article shows what Cable can achieve. If I were on ADSL in a non cabled area, I would pray for a company like H2O to come and wire up the sewers. :)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Something new has been reported by the bbc about a company doing a consumer fiber rollout using the sewers which I am susprised noone is doing until now. Requires no building of new ducts so a big portion of costs are bypassed. I expect BT will be watching how it pans out like a hawk and if its successful may trigger a rollout of some sorts from them simply to kill them of as a competitor.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Official Fibrecity Website if anyones interested:

http://www.fibrecity.eu/

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I hate being stuck with the prehistoric company that is BT...

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Would be rather expensive though, given that most of their network would need overhauling.

*Edit*

Saying that, if they are using the sewers it would make it a lot more cost effective.

We need more cable providers in the country, BT's Dark Ages infastructure is beyond contempt

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

*thread bump*

what intrigues me about this is BT are going the same route as VM and offering pitterful upload speeds...though much worse than VM as BT have a ratio of 100mbit download and only 2mbit upload for the trials :rolleyes:

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7448704.stm

Latest report on it quoting that the trail will start off at the blistering speeds of .....2.5Mbits download

Interesting that BT is slamming off Virgin in that report, also really nice to see that people are stating that greater upload speeds should be seriously looked at for the future.

Kymmy

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Yep i read that, its using the same system comcast use, 2.5mbit but when you start a download it will speed burst to 100mbit for a set time* (i only imagine BT is making it till the download completes then set you back to slower speeds)

Glad to see people are finally getting sick of the really poor upload speeds over here.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Just to get 2mb would be nice from BT :(

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

You will when they roll fibre out (i would note, despite what alot of people think its not a "if" anymore its a "when")

Unfortunetly dont expect good pricing stratergy or anything.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Hmmm the sewers? I bet the infrastructure engineers would want a big salary for going down there and wait until the water companies such as Thames Water start charging rent for using the sewers. Nah! It will just accumalate more costs.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

LOL...i cant really tell if your post is sarcasm or not but that's not how it's put down.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Also wouldn't portsmouth or Brighton be a fibrecity already? Nearly every home and business is in reach of Virgin Media's network there and its all digital and Broadband capable.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Kinda wish I lived in Sweden with my uncle, to be honest
10/10 is free, 100/100 internet is only about 40 euros over there. (gahhh)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Same with france 100/100 35euros/month.

or 50/50 or 100/5 dependant on which isp you choose.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Well the water companies are not going to do it for nothing! I mean Thames Water which covers much of Berkshire and London needs to replace all the victorian sewers by a fixed date, so they will be wanting some money for that, otherwise profits are gonna be falling.

And because Virgin Media has already got a customer base and because of the fact that its already fibre optic and that it covers more than half of UK homes means that by the time H20 complete roll-out, Virgin Media would have completed its upgrades and maybe even expansion of the network and by that time Virgin Media will be offering Cable broadband half the price of what H20 would be offering.

Also, some people jut dont care how fast there internet is, many people just use the net for email,facebook ect.... which means 1MB is suitable and some people would even put up with 128K!

And one last thing how much money do you think other companies have? firms like France Telecom,Cable and Wireless and Thus would through a lot of money into if they all merged up.

I think all the companies which have been using BT's network for piggybacking should chip in too and get BT's network upgraded, that includes BT chipping in too.

So far we have:

Tiscali
Cable and Wireless
Virgin Media
Thus' Demon internet
France Telecom-Orange PCS
Sky
Opal Telecom(TalkTalk/CPW/AOL)
Telefonica-O2
Verizon
Colt

And loads more using BT's network.

Many different companies have tried using techniques to get the internet moving but are really no good enough.

Cable and Wireless is the largest LLU provider and supplies very few abandoned residential users who never paid there bills to Bulldog before it was sold off. But many C&W LLU is used by other providers such as Virgin,Tiscali,The Post Office and Tesco Broadband and maybe O2???? Not too sure about O2, however C&W provides O2's Mobile internet to O2 customers. The maximum speed through this between 16MB and 20MB although Tiscali finds it hard to put an extra 50p in the meter and upgrade its customers to 16MB.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

VirginMedia is only fibre optic upto a local exchange point, its COAX to you after that, so no they are not exactly fibre optic, BT is fibre optic then copper to you, the only difference is VM distance is alot shorter and thus faster speeds.

Err, you do realise with H2o a full city rollout would only take 6 months, right?

2-3 Years could see the whole of the UK done and with faster speeds than what VM would ever be able to offer.

Most customers dont care what speeds they recieve? your seriously wrong there...and IPTV is on its way, we need fast speeds.

BT will be rolling fiber out at a cost of £15b, you can thank offcom that other companies using BT's network wont have to chip in.

Just remember BT have been down this route before and it was blair who said no to digging up all the roads ready for fibre, then again in the late 90s but BT decided against because they would be forced to open it up, yet again, funny how VM have a fully monopoly yet dont have to open their network up though :confused:

There is ALOT of things going off behind the scenes right now, and if they go to plan, VM will best left WAY WAY WAY behind unless they buck their idea's up.

Alas, H2o is not a trial to see if the fibre rollout will work, its more to prove to local councils and the govt that it works.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

isnt that because BT's network was done with public money and the VM network was all private?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Well kind of. Cable and Wireless used to be publicly owned too, between 1940's and 1982, Cable and Wireless was goverment owned.

The goverment in 1980's and 90's didn't expect so much competition, they expected as this:

Greater London 1996:

Telecoms:
BT
Cable London
Videotron
Mercury Communications
Telewest Communications
Cable Corp
Colt
Energis
Worldcom
IPM Communications(Interphone payphones)
New World Payphones
UK Cellnet
Vodafone/Vodac
Mercury Personal Communications
Hutchison Telecoms(Orange)


Utilities:
London Electricity
British Gas(Now National Grid Gas, it was publicly owned till 1997)
Eastern Electricity(Now EDF) Serving North of Middlesex
Thames Water
Three Valleys Water

And Greater London in 2008:

Telecoms:
BT
Virgin Media/NTL Telewest Business
Cable and Wireless(Mercury&Energis)
Thus/Your Communications
Colt
Verizon(Formerly Worldcom)
Infolines Public Networks(Was IPM Comms)
Opal Telecom/Carphone/TalkTalk
Spacetel
Fibreway
Spectrum Interactive(New World Payphones)
T-Mobile UK
Vodafone UK
Orange Personal Communications
Hutchison 3G UK
O2 UK
And lots more............

Utilities:
Thames Water
EDF Energy(Electricity)
National Grid Gas(Transco)
Three Valleys Water

And Greater London in 1993:

Telecoms:
BT
Mercury Communications
Mercury Personal Communications
Mercury Communications Payphones(IPM now Infolines)
Vodafone/Vodac
UK Cellnet
Cable London (Now Virgin Media/Telewest)
Videotron (Now Virgin Media/NTL)
Colt
Rabbit

Utilities:
Thames Water
British Gas
Three Valleys water
London Electricity
Eastern Electricity

So you see how it changes, its mostly the same companies around and some appear and disappear soon after because they have been gobbled up by a rival. This could be the case with H20.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

That may be but if they all chipped in, then BT wont be quids in long term as they all be shared ownership and would not be paying rental fees to BT plus BT will be having to share revenues with them. As far as the sewers goes even with rentals been paid its a far cheaper deployment option that digging up roads.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Yeah its cheaper and less disruptive that way. Also, wouldn't the councils start charging business rates to H20? I know that Virgin Media do for properties like council blocks ect....

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

No, they wouldnt and havent.

Anyway i'm really rooting for H2o, the guy who owns it is a great person, he understands how the net needs to progress, understands we need high upload speeds, no stm crap (seriously, you really dont need it with those speeds, even people who do 3-4tera/month will run out of stuff to download and upload at those speeds)

freeing up bandwith for everyone else :)

Oh...prices are good, that's all im gonna say :)

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

O2 own Bethere (Be*) who have their own LLU equipment and backhaul.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

If BT ever did decide to bring FTH to the UK, I think we all agree, we'd still get the same usage restrictions, caps, bandwith throttling and rubbish upload speeds.
So why bother? heh

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

No throttling, its simply not needed with FTTH.

True about upload speed though.

But that's why we need H2o 100mbit symetrical

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

Depends on the amount of backhaul.

The throttling isn't becuase of the bandwidth between you and the exchange, thats yours it's from the exchange back and the ISP centrals that get the congestion.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

The reason VM have throttling is oversubscription and the fact they are still on 10Gbit link ups.

They are only just moving to 40gbit which still isnt enough.

H2o use multiple 100Gbit links afaik.

From what i recall they are using roughly the same hardware setup as france's FTTH (orange) and sweden...and they both do 100/100.

Trust me, H2o have got it right on this one, it's just a matter of getting councils/govt to allow them to roll it out!

P.S BT Have a much smaller backhaul back to central but it's more than VM...and the BBC has completely gotten wrong the FTTH trial from BT

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

With regards to Sweden, Tele2 is a large player there:

http://www.tele2.se/tv-start-3-play.html

From what I can see, Tele2 is just as bad as NTL if not worse, they still offer Analogue TV,something that NTL/VM disguise on their website and marketing.

As for the digital Cable service, a definate no no, we have a much better channel line up than that!

Also, I've heard a few comments on how advanced Sweden's internet system is, well the UK is much more highly populated than Sweden, the UK has a population of between 60 Million and 62 Million whilst Sweden has between 9 and 12 Millon people. This means theres less upgrade works and costs in comparison to the UK, same with France too. Also if France is so good with its telecom networks, why is Orange so crap and expensive over in the UK????

And even the swedish companies such as Tele2 have commented on how open and the UK's telecom industry is in regards to predominant firms allowing open access. Something that the rest of Europe doesn't have, well not much of it at that.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

I've never understood why orange is so bad over here but in france it's a very highly rated ISP providing FTTH 100Mbit symetrical.

Hell, even orange ADSL+2 over there is miles better than what we get here and without shaping.

It's just a thing of this country where companies like to rip you off.

Swedens infrastructure was highly invested and done properly...which is why they can offer better speeds with no shaping.

IF the VM network was done properly we would be in roughly the same situation.

Who knows...one day the UK might be like japan with 1Gbit connections directly to your house/apartment.

Maybe in about 50 years ;)

FYI France Off 100/10 for 44Euro/month

100/100 for 70/Month

http://bandaancha.eu/shadow/story/4a...bx30onk1kh.gif

Free offer 50/5 for i think 25Euro/month on its own.

Cire Fibre offer 100/100 as well but i dont know the price on that?

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

The reason for the difference is the market, the uk market is very strange compared to others. The market here is typically cut throat price wars which means quality drops and there is no investment in future technologies. All the isps are scared to invest because it means higher prices and all the uk consumer is looking for is lowest price.

Most of the blame has to be placed with ofcom as they built the current market by breaking BT up and forcing competition on adsl, this has affected the cable broadband VM/NTL/telewest. The lack of regulation has allowed very dubious advertising which in turn discourages investment in the infrastructure.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

That explains Tiscali and TalkTalk's actions then.

With tiscali in London and Stevenage, you are able to get around 1.5mb broadband or 2mb if your really lucky,Free weekend calls and equivalent of Virgin Media's L TV package for about £21 per month. I reckon they are just doing this to get a big customer base and then sell it off for a nice price as i've heard Vodafone and Carphone warehouse are interested in it.

Maybe it would do Virgin Media some good to buy it, that will resolve some problems in the non-cabled streets as there are a few in London. Tiscali TV is what used to be Homechoice.

Cable and Wireless just dont like the residential sector for that very reason you stated. They announced that ''Users dont pay up quickly enough'' and that ''They dont see further than the word ''FREE''. Thats why they are sticking to large companies at the moment. Although they hold a few residential customers which were not included in the sale of Bulldog, Pipex-Tiscali would not take them on board because they owed so much money to Bulldog. So they were retained by Cable and Wireless and were sent letters giving them 30 days notice basically stating ''Pay up or get off our LLU network''

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

VM would do well away to stay away from tiscali.

1 - crap infrastructure, only capable of dialup speeds at peak. VM would have to invest heavily or get more bad reputation.
2 - Although lots of customers they are the customers to avoid they at tiscali for the reason they only prepared to pay basement prices for services, tiscali isnt making a profit.

Re: BT to offer 100Mbit broadband
 

1. Sounds pretty much like VM's infrastructure atm ;)