[Merged] NTL Increasing BB Speeds Late Summer 2004

[erol]

NTL and TW do not compete for customers but they do compete for investors (as well as to a degree for commercial partners)

[Matth]

It surely doesn't take much to change the speeds - remember when they gave the 150k (or was it 128k then?) users a month's trial of 600k? - click, you're up, click, you're down!


I'll rake over a couple more points from way back in this thread...

You CANNOT compare contention ratios between dialup and cable - a 15:1 ratio on dialup is the ratio of user who could actually CONNECT, whereas on cable, it's bandwidth usage.
They could double all the speeds, and also double the bandwidth contention, then if it get's busy, you're back where you started!

It's obvious to anyoune with any sense, that the cap/warning for the 1.5Mbit tier needs to be raised pro-rata to 1.5 Gb, as the 750k tier will allow you to burn your entire quota in a short enough time anyway - and yes, it's clear whay the 600k gets the smallest increase, any more and people aggreived at the 1Mbit price rise wouldn't hesitate to downgrade to a service not much slower than what they had ... would you notice a 25% drop?

If they make the news and email finally work as they should, that's also most welcome.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Hell's Child

To add some facts and figures to this one, the following is ntls approx % for each speed.

150k - 66%
600k - 29%
1MB - 5%

5%, it's a very small %. And, tends to be gamers, people who download for profit (i.e download games/dvd's and sell them!!) and small buisnesses. I am not saying ALL 1mb users are the above but the majority are.
Most of ntl's broadband customers are people who are fed up of slow dial up, which ties the phone line up. Especially when you can get broadband for 17.99 with ntl (or 15.99 with pipex/bulldog etc) when on average dial up is around £15-£16 (bt 16.99, aol 15.99, freeserve 14.99).

Also, why should ntl be worried about telewest having a 2mb line? They are not competition. They do not operate in the same areas and so in theory, do not need to compete. Takeup of a 2mb line would be fairly small, as the UK does lag behind europe/usa with regards internet takeup.

I would guess that over 90% of customers will continue to do the same after their speeds have been increased as they do now so they will not put any extra strain on the system. There may be quite a number who reduce their speeds in order to save a bit of cash.

I wonder what will happen with the AOL customers who use NTL broadband? At the moment they charge customers £27.99 for 512k supplied either via ADSL or NTL broadband. I can see the ones that have their supply via NTL broadband moving direct to NTL for an extra 238k download and £3 per month cheaper.

This may reduce the chance of customers leaving NTL to go the ADSL route and may even tempt some ADSL users to move to NTL. Time will tell.

[Hom3r]

I'm looking forward to the speed increase , I hope thay improve/add spam filters for their e-mails as well

[Rik]

Originally Posted by DrAwesome

Not really there is still a restriction in place
plus .5 of a meg extra is it really worth £3???

Do u realise that is a extra 500K?
If the answer is yes then you are a very silly billy for asking that question

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by david.ewles

I'm looking forward to the speed increase , I hope thay improve/add spam filters for their e-mails as well

I have heard it said that NTL have been filtering spam for a while now. If they have they must have requested known spammers to put their system to the test as I seem to be getting more and more over the past few weeks.

[dev]

i can't wait for people to start complaining about speed problems, remember you asked for the speed increase so dont complain if you have speed problems

[Ramrod]

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=1639
(fyi)

[Neil]

Originally Posted by dev

i can't wait for people to start complaining about speed problems, remember you asked for the speed increase so dont complain if you have speed problems

Well said.

[DeadKenny]

Originally Posted by Rik

Do u realise that is a extra 500K?
If the answer is yes then you are a very silly billy for asking that question

Yeah, but when you're on 1Mbps, an extra 500kbps doesn't seem like much. In fact the way the net works generally, over 1Mbps that 500kbps isn't much of a difference anyway. At these speeds you're likely going to be using broadband to an extent where the next step that's worthwhile will be an extra 1Mbps or much more. If you're not using it to that extent you probably don't need 1Mbps (as I've found).

Originally Posted by ianathuth

This may reduce the chance of customers leaving NTL to go the ADSL route and may even tempt some ADSL users to move to NTL. Time will tell.

Perhaps but they're blind to the fact that ADSL has the huge benefit of a 256kbps upstream on 512kbps downstream. I'd much rather have 512/256 than 750/128. Then there's NTL's customer service...

[td444]

Originally Posted by dev

i can't wait for people to start complaining about speed problems, remember you asked for the speed increase so dont complain if you have speed problems

There appears to be a lot of spare capacity on my area - everytime ive checked the node, there's only been a max of 13mbits/30mbits of downstream used....

However, I feel sorry for many others...

[esdxc37]

as a telewest customer on the 1 mb service paying 35 quid a month it is excellent news for me.

[Jonboy]

these upgrades are most welcome but what do they say beware of strangers bareing gifts i smell a rat nibbleing away in the back ground just my 2p's worth

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

Perhaps but they're blind to the fact that ADSL has the huge benefit of a 256kbps upstream on 512kbps downstream. I'd much rather have 512/256 than 750/128. Then there's NTL's customer service...

Why is this a huge benefit to me, the Average Broadband Customer(tm)? The only thing I send, bar page requests and ack packets, are e-mails and IM messages (and posts to web forums ). The difference between 128k adn 256k upload wouldn't be noticeable for me.

But whereas I don't upload a lot of stuff, when I choose to download, I like it to be nice and swift. The extra speed announced by the cablecos today benefits me... I really can't see why people are being so negative. It seems to be a case of attack NTL no matter what, even when they're upping the speeds for the same money.

Of course, there is the issue of whether NTL have the capacity to up the speed for all customers. But I've heard it said many times over that it's the upload capacity that's the problem, rather than download. And in any case, ex-CWC areas should fair quite well, given the extra downsteam capacity they have on each UBR compared with Langley and Telewest, so I'm not worried

[Chrysalis]

Ok here is my take on it

First of all I think this is excellent although I am 90% sure NTL were pushed to this by telewest (same day announcement long delay before it happens) 500kbit extra traffic for £3 is a bargain.

My say on customer's usage, at the moment the uk is lagging our internet usage pattern is different to other countries because of this as in we do more web browsing rather then volume usage so we are still on bursty usage patterns, whilst globally people tend to do activities that have sustained transfer's more like streaming and downloading, although only a small % of ntl's customers are on the top tier I would say a large % of those customers are probably doing volume usage (i wouldnt justify spending an extra £10 a month just for nippier web browsing) so obviously in this case when you downloading large files 1mbit to 1.5mbit is a great boost, I also think NTL have no backbone capacity problem the only problem they have is with some ubr's so the backbone will cope fine with 1.5mbit especially if they keep the same cap, I really hope the cap gets reviewed in line with the speed so its more realistic and fairer to those who are paying more money.

So things that would be interesting to know

exact date of deployment?
will cap be raised for the high end users?
will price not be raised until deployment?

and to the guy who said that guy leeching 24/7 was making everyone miserable that is a terrible exaggeration I doubt 1 person maxing a 1mbit connection alone is going to affect a 30mbit ubr a huge amount.