Tech & Biz

Towns triumph in broadband tests

by liamssoft | June 3, 2008 at 02:32 am

444 views | 10 Recommendations | 8 comments

Whilst London and the UK Cities are receiving relatively fast broadband connections, rural and village locations are getting anything but fast connections. As more rural areas have broadband than the cities it is essential they have a faster service. Some villages are still on dial-up...

London's broadband users can go online at average speeds nearly twice those in Wales and Northern Ireland, a survey for BBC News suggests.

Thinkbroadband.com analysed speed tests from the last two months in 6,000 locations and found the average speed to be 3.2 megabits per second (Mbps).

London's average speed was 4.5 Mbps, but in Northern Ireland it was 2.3.

Rural areas generally fared worse than towns, with telephone line lengths and lack of access to cable being blamed.

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the red rocket

at 02:45 on June 3rd, 2008

It may be fast, but you've got to be able to get online in the first place. BT and Virgin have still got the stranglehold on the infrastructure, charging what they like to get people connected to their networks in the first place :-(

liamssoft

at 03:03 on June 3rd, 2008

Thanks the red rocket, good point with line connection at £125 in the first place there are a lot of people who are not prepared to pay this large amount of money. I paid my £125 connection fee in a house that only needed them to connect up in the box in the road, as the line was previously installed. It took 2 years to get broadband, and when it came it was only 500kb/s. After campaigning for a faster speed we got 1mb/s. Still too slow, but as you say they have a stranglehold on the infrastructure.

Mikasi

at 03:31 on June 3rd, 2008

125??? I am not even going to bother looking that up via a currency converter. It sounds too painful.

liamssoft

at 03:38 on June 3rd, 2008

Thanks

125.00 GBP	=	245.880 USD
United Kingdom Pounds		United States Dollars

Dave Keating

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 03:01 on June 3rd, 2008

liamssoft, I like this story. It's good stuff.

liamssoft

at 03:08 on June 3rd, 2008

Many thanks Dave Keating

The UK is lagging behind in broadband infrastructure due to all of the improvements being carried out in the cities, with not enough engineers to upgrade out of date equipment in the countryside and no other operators given the encouragement to invest in new upgrades.

the red rocket

at 06:08 on June 3rd, 2008

Yes folks and not content with charging you once, if you move house and there isn't a line installed (for example, if the previous tenant/owner was a Virgin customer), they'll charge you again! And again, and again. Sorry, you can tell I'm bitter about this...

The definition of broadband is very loose. A similar story found that Sunderland was the broadband capital, but with broadband counting as anything better than dial up there's significant variability in the results (hence the story being of interest).

So the choice for me boils down to Vodafone mobile broadband or Virgin: any takers?

liamssoft

at 09:21 on June 4th, 2008

Thanks the red rocket, an interesting article.

Vodafone mobile broadband are charging £15 a month for 3GB of web browsing and downloads. Or you can get 5GB a month for £25. If you go over your limit, any extra browsing and downloads will cost you £15 per GB. Ok for light users but downloading your MS updates would soon take you over the limit.

Virgin broadband Up to 2Mb service with no download limits at £4.50 a month looks a better deal providing you have Virgin cable in your street.