Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

I am glad I am TelfordCable, and the fastest broadband in UK are in Telford. :D;):):dunce:

http://s5.postimg.org/l83k5weqv/top_...adband_201.gif


http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...and-speed.html

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

That appears to be a pretty pointless table to me unless I'm missing some hidden meaning.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

The most useful information in that table is in the final column. It shows how many people are still on less than 3Mb download in each of those towns and cities and reveals the shocking state of Britain's broadband infrastructure. The supply of insanely fast speeds to a tiny minority of people is distorting the average to the point where it's pretty much meaningless.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

It always surprises me that my home town (Belfast) rates so well in these things. Normally it's the last to get anything good, but broadband (and cable especially) has been particularly sound there.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Personally I'd consider the 16% still left on 3Mbps or less (in Edinburgh) to be a pretty small minority myself.

---------- Post added at 11:13 ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 ----------

Probably some kid spamming speedtests on a 10Gbit work connection

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

It's not just that, it just happens that Northern Ireland in general is pretty good for cable (and presumably FTTC as well). I think of all the regions, it has the highest coverage? From experience, it's pretty well maintained as well. I think that we can probably thank CabelTel for that (Before NTL bought them out).

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Why pick on one result out of a table of 50? The average percentage of people on under 3Mb in that chart is 27. And that's just in the top 50 towns and cities.

More than a quarter of the homes in our best connected cities are on sub-3Mb connections. That's not very good at all, considering that the lowest speed you ever see actually advertised these days is 24Mb and VM are trumpeting the availability of 120Mb.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

I haven't seen anyone advertise "up to" 24Mb in a while now. Didn't the ASA slap them all on the wrist for this? I usually see up to 16mbit these days.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Point taken ... Though its hardly an improvement, is it, given the reality for far too many people. 16Mb would be more than 5x faster than the best speed someone on sub 3 Mb could dream about.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Yeah absolutely, it doesn't detract from your point at all. The "not-spots" they're talking about could really do with being targeted now. The problem is that it's not cost effective for many.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Because that's where I live and hence the only area I care about.

---------- Post added at 16:13 ---------- Previous post was at 16:10 ----------

Well the average speed across the *whole* UK is above 12Mbps now and probably nearer 16.

As for those on sub 3Mb - not necessarily true either. As we keep being reminded, there's still plenty of people on 512k to 2Mbps cable connections simply because they couldn't care less about anything higher. The same applies to ADSL - how many of those on sub 3Mb are on sub 3Mb because they have no other options, and how many are on 10-year-old-or-more contracts that they just see no damn reason to change? Over 98% of the UK have access to 3G, which does >3Mbps in *all* areas (though not necessarily 24/7), yet there's little demand because people seem happy with their <3Mbps ADSL.

Similarly most people on cable opt for the lowest possible package available to them - currently 30Mb - and certainly average speeds would be higher if everyone was on the highest package, but demand simply isn't there.

Simply put, the bottom line is this table represents average speeds of connections that people choose to pay for not the average speeds of the best possible connection available to them.

---------- Post added at 16:23 ---------- Previous post was at 16:13 ----------

To be honest most "not spots" could easily be dealt with by the community themselves, with a bit of technical knowledge and minimal investment. We've all heard the great stories about farmers digging up fields and laying their own optical fibre to serve local communities, yet those sorts of cases are isolated and rare, when they should really be the norm.

Setting up a 200Mbps+ wireless link to serve a remote community 50Km away from a decent connection costs a few hundred quid at most, or equivalent to less than a years' line rental for a single subscriber. People really ought to quit whinging and do something about it, given it's so damn easy to do.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Wow, the empathy simply drips from your postage ... :erm:

Although it is entertaining to hear you suggest that Mr and Mrs Average Villager would find it 'so damn easy' to source, acquire and deploy either fibre or wireless technology.

I know it can be done, my local village has had a mesh network since about 2002 and it continues to thrive despite the eventual equipping of the local exchange for ADSL. But 'so damn easy'? In your slightly nerdy parallel universe, possibly. Out in the real world, somewhat less so.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

If a farmer can do it, as well as bunches of technophobic Scottish islanders, it's pretty easy. If you don't know how to do it yourself, all you have to do is ask one of many people who'll do it for cheap or free.


And surprise surprise, autism and empathy don't go together. Who'd have figured.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

If you're high functioning enough to own the label, you're high functioning enough to edit yourself maybe just a teensy bit. It's not as if the thread's kicked off and you need to post as fast as you can type.

I do know a little about the subject.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

getting back on topic, it is disappointing to see that an area such as Milton Keynes which you would have thought been bang on up to date technlogy wise is the worst in the table with a third of it's population <3mbits. I accept the points Qas made but I wouldn't have thought it was the kind of place that has the demographic of "i am not fussed about my bb speed or contract and 2mbits is fine".

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

IIRC the problem in Milton Keynes has, for may years, been the aluminium wires that were used to connect the place up when it was built.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Yet despite being built recently it still turned out to be exceedingly hard to deploy FTTP over the existing ducts, so you gotta wonder about the rest of the country :-/

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

yes the ruling was an insult to me, only requiring 10% of customers to achieve the advertised speed. It smacked of one of those rulings where the regulator does so at the blessing of who it regulates but had to be seen to be doing something to the public.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

yeah that is stupid and just doesn't make sense. If a company is going to advertise a feature/service to its customers then they should be able to provide that service to the "majority" of its customers the "majority" of the time. I would say 60% of the customers 60% of the time. I know it is a shared connection bla bla bla and they haven't got the bandwidth to guarantee it but look at this way, how would you feel about the following 2 scenarios:

1) VM sign you up to XL TV for £30 a month (I don't know how much it is) and you feel great because you think you have got access to 200 channels. But hang on.........you can only access 30 channels and most of them are freeview. VM only have to provide access to all the channels to 10% of the customers for 30% of the time.

2) Xmas is coming and Asda advertise on tv and in the newspaper that Bollinger champagne for £10. You nip down to get some only to be told that it is available in 10% of the supermarkets and they can't order any for you.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

... And in my case, my exchange isn't even enabled for the 24Mb service I'm paying for. The hardware supports 8Mb max, yet BT sells me the same service plan at the same price as someone in the city centre who lives next door to an exchange enabled for 24Mb. And this is all perfectly legal and the regulator has nothing to say on the subject, despite the fact that those of us living in rural areas are still effectively dealing with a monopoly provider, precisely the sort or thing an industry regulator is designed to deal with.

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Gets even worse when you consider BT deliberately priced 80Mbps VDSL2 to cost the same as 24Mbps ADSL2+

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

I would not trust these results the whole uswitch speed checker is crap. ive ran tests before today on a 10Gbps server and only managed 92Mbps

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

Yeah, "anecdotal speed tests" is an oxymoron. Guessing would be a better word.

Telford netindex: http://www.netindex.com/download/4,140//
Dumbarton netindex: http://www.netindex.com/download/4,2...mbarton/?tab=3

UK Netindex (where Telford isn't even rated in the top 50): http://www.netindex.com/download/2,4/United-Kingdom/

Re: Surprise, surprise the fastest in UK are.........
 

No Virgin Broadband adding to the average speed as BT own the local cable TV network there:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/201...keynes-uk.html

http://www.netindex.com/download/4,8...on-Keynes,-GB/

BT waiting to wring the most amount of funding out of the government and local authorities:
http://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/b...band-1-5440536