ntl Confirms 10Mb Broadband Speed Increase

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by MysticKiller

So when can I as a 300k cutomer get 10mb? and what will the cap be? 5gb/month? I'm sure it would be something ridiculous like it is on 1mb lol.

According to the press releae you will get it sometime before the end of next year. We will have to wait for details to be released for further information so it's no use asking on here or by calling NTL customer services. Just keep an eye open on this site and you will be amongst the first to know. The current "cap" on the 1 mbps is quite sufficient for the majority of customers so cannot be called ridiculous. Same as with most things in life, if you want more, you pay more.

[tom101]

Does anyone know what the upload speed will be?

Unlimited packages at 10 meg mmmmmm poor giganews will not know whats hit them In the middle ages everybody used leeches as medication.Im a leech for medicinal purposes

All depends on pricing.Ive got 7 meg coming into the house and I do use it,5 meg pipe on one machine browsing newsgroups (not for linux distros btw im not gonna lie) 2 meg on another for browsing and gaming so in reality it wont make a huge difference to me,mind you 1.25 hours for a dvd5 download

[Chrysalis]

I think NTL having something else up their sleeve with this, possible streaming of TV channels, would be good for areas where no digital tv and can get digital channels over the net.

[jtwn]

Heres what I think would be nice - 5-10gb on bottom, 20-30 on middle, and nothing, 300gb or guideline for the top. Then everybodys happy, and they possibly get a load of people upgrading.

Those in the know - do you think the network as of now could cope with just all 3mb users moved up?

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by jtwn

Heres what I think would be nice - 5-10gb on bottom, 20-30 on middle, and nothing, 300gb or guideline for the top. Then everybodys happy, and they possibly get a load of people upgrading.

Those in the know - do you think the network as of now could cope with just all 3mb users moved up?

If that happened I would upgrade to £37.99 and be fairly satisfied. For 75gig I would feel hard done by at £37.99 as I feel content amount is more important then burst speed. I dont think the middle tier will be below 30gig it will more likely be static or have a small rise so possible 30-40gig.

[Gareth]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Unlimited packages at 10 meg mmmmmm poor giganews will not know whats hit them

Just a shame that NTL don't offer the same number and type of newsgroups that giganews do, eh

[Robc66]

The 37.99 package should not have a cap at all. This would encourage the people on the 2 bottom speeds to upgrade and ntl wud b leeching in the money! If that happened they could also advertise 10mbit for 17.99 with a cap which noobs would be droolings over and i think that is the main reason for this....to attract new customers.

[DeadKenny]

Originally Posted by slowcoach

How soon before the "I'm back" threads start showing?, methinks Bulldog etc. slipped up with the 1 month contract.

Unless they can guarantee me a stable connection, I won't be one of them.

They couldn't before which is why I left. No point in 10Mbps if it doesn't work

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

I wouldn't get too excited about this news - most web sites operate at 2mb so an increase to 10mb will only typically benefit people who want faster music and movie downloads (if the site can do it)?

Indeed, and those people are capped at 75Gb anyway so unless they're desperate to download a particular piece of music or movie very fast, it's little benefit as the only other bonus to them is they can download more in a month... but they can't because of capping

It would be of benefit for video streaming, but NTL already has VOD and that's done through DVB I believe, not broadband, and for DVD quality via MPEG-4 you only need half of the 10Mbps speed.

You can increase the speed between ISP and customer to whatever you like but there's always going to be a limited resource somewhere, and if they let everyone do P2P downloading at 10Mbps 24/7, it will be unsustainable and they have to do what most other ISPs are doing and traffic shape if they want to have uncapped packages.

Originally Posted by Just William

Speeds any faster will require the coax cable to each house to be replaced with fibre cable as coax can only cope with speeds up to 12mbps.

No need for fibre to home. NTL have got the copper phone network which will support ADSL2+ and with distances to the equipment likely to be no more than between house and street cabinet, this means speeds up to 24Mbps without much extra investment. Future DSL technologies may increase this further, and the phone copper is a dedicated connection which avoids a load of unpleasant noise and reflection side effects you get with the local neighbourhood coax.

They could even do a combined system using coax and phone copper.

Fibre would mean a lot more investment as a lot of digging up would be required as well as new equipment.

Not sure what would be involved with DOCSIS3 though, but if it still uses coax, I'd be happier if they concentrate first on ensuring everyone has a solid stable signal rather than just dumping a modem on the customer and saying "tough" effectively if it doesn't work.



The big question though is what the upstream will be.

[BBKing]

as coax can only cope with speeds up to 12mbps.

Incorrect - the USB port is 11Mb and older boxes with only 10Mb ethernet have issues, but modern CMs and STBs with 100Mb ports can theoretically go up to whatever EuroDOCSIS spec is valid for 256QAM downstream channels, which is 52Mbps or so, or a bit less with overheads taken into account. I'm not sure any modems would be particularly reliable at such a rate, however.

[Chrysalis]

The benefit gained depends on the usage style. For people who generally web browse and read email they will notice nothing, people using p2p may notice a improvement but I doubt they will be bursting upto 10mbit, the upload bandwidth on p2p comes from other residental users and is shared amongst many leechers. People who are most likely to see nice download speeds are when downloading files of big sites like microsoft and bbc, downloading of 100mbit+ ftp's inside the eu, (transatlantic is normally 5mbit per download thread or 0.25mbit on some backbones), newsgroup servers, and home's that have multiple users.

One thing that I havent posted about yet, is the timeframe NTL have put together for this, I have heard of a few ntl bod's already that they have apperently prepared for this and are good to go, then I have to ask why is it schedule for end of 2005 for the first set of people and then the rest spread out until the end of 2006. That is a 12 month timespan quite a long time for someone who is supposed to be preprepared and is a possible 18 months since the PR announcement. I remember when my area got upgraded but it was very congested before the resegmentation and I assumed the upgrade wasnt for a future service but to solve the congestion caused by the at the time 1.5mbit upgrade. I dont want to be negative but I have a concern that if high latency occurs due to local congestion on the ubr will NTL upgrade it again to resolve it.

Originally Posted by Just William

Speeds any faster will require the coax cable to each house to be replaced with fibre cable as coax can only cope with speeds up to 12mbps.

That has made my day.

[ntl.wotcha]

It's all very interesting, but I have to say that increasing from 600k to 2mb has given me a 80% increase in satisfaction with the service. But going from 2mb to 10mb may only give me a 20% satisfaction. The only real benefit is downloading large files faster.

I don't think I would pay any extra for higherspeed or uncapped downloads.

Before NTL get into this I really would prefer to see some big advances in the TV service, namely, HiDef and PVR, both of which I would pay extra for in the blink of an eye.

[Salu]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

The benefit gained depends on the usage style. For people who generally web browse and read email they will notice nothing, people using p2p may notice a improvement but I doubt they will be bursting upto 10mbit, the upload bandwidth on p2p comes from other residental users and is shared amongst many leechers. People who are most likely to see nice download speeds are when downloading files of big sites like microsoft and bbc, downloading of 100mbit+ ftp's inside the eu, (transatlantic is normally 5mbit per download thread or 0.25mbit on some backbones), newsgroup servers, and home's that have multiple users.

One thing that I havent posted about yet, is the timeframe NTL have put together for this, I have heard of a few ntl bod's already that they have apperently prepared for this and are good to go, then I have to ask why is it schedule for end of 2005 for the first set of people and then the rest spread out until the end of 2006. That is a 12 month timespan quite a long time for someone who is supposed to be preprepared and is a possible 18 months since the PR announcement. I remember when my area got upgraded but it was very congested before the resegmentation and I assumed the upgrade wasnt for a future service but to solve the congestion caused by the at the time 1.5mbit upgrade. I dont want to be negative but I have a concern that if high latency occurs due to local congestion on the ubr will NTL upgrade it again to resolve it.

I would imagine this is a commercial decision to ensure that they can stay ahead in the game. With ADSL2 round the corner they need to be able to upgrade at short notice. Also they will have scored points by going to 10MB rather than ADSL's 8mb. They have probably announced the upgrade for the 3MB customers first to preserve the revenue stream until the upgrade. Otherwise people may downgrade first.

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Unlimited packages at 10 meg mmmmmm poor giganews will not know whats hit them In the middle ages everybody used leeches as medication.Im a leech for medicinal purposes

All depends on pricing.Ive got 7 meg coming into the house and I do use it,5 meg pipe on one machine browsing newsgroups (not for linux distros btw im not gonna lie) 2 meg on another for browsing and gaming so in reality it wont make a huge difference to me,mind you 1.25 hours for a dvd5 download

Its always so refreshing when someone can have the balls to say it as it is. Instead of hiding behind the Linux distro scam

Nice one zingle have a greeny