Your connection

[TheOriginalH]

I am troubled that the UK is falling to the backwaters of the net.

Was reading about the X-Box spec yesterday, and noted that they hadn't bothered with dial-up support, only cable/dsl.

Went looking for a freebie firewall this evening on download.com (after getting distracted, was really after spyware free mp3 sharing program - hah!), and discovered that the most popular options also only cater for cable/dsl.

Are we getting that far behind here?

Apparently ADSL is available to the majority of the UK population (so BT espouse). But considering the majority of the UK population reside within the M25, that's hardly an impressive claim.

I am in a major UK town outside the m25 and no site of it yet.... - am I really connectionally challenged?

[Bob]

I am on a 56k, should have some form of DSL / Cable within 12 months considering I live in the capital city of this small and slow country.

[Sparkie]

I'm still on 56k as well. DSL isn't available in my area and an ancient cable company has taken over all the wires and they don't provide cable modems and I hate that.

I remember when I used to connect to compuserve at 2400baud.

[bman]

I have a cheesey 56k.. but i am lucky if i am able to download at 28k. Getting a cable modem soon, i hope. Been talking about doing it for about 6 months now. I want to get the computers in my house networked first, and just havent had the time lately.
My brother just got DSL, grrrr.. he can barely find his way around the internet, and he has a DSL, what does he need that for???
but oh well.. its all good, i will have my cable modem soon.

[AlexC]

Cable here - i live in one of 'poorer' areas of the north of england as well :|

[weirdbeardmt]

I'm on a 56k here (with 3 other people sharing it) and it always seems OK to me. We should have digital cable here (Southampton) soon, but the major problem is the price. ADSL is available but it is £150 install plus £40 per month. ISDN really isn't worth the expense either.

I only ever really notice it when I am downloading stuff, but if I am doing anything serious then I have nice and fast uni connection and a zip drive to rely on.

[mmj]

Any Australians using cable? Ever tried Telstra Bigpond Cable? I'd like to have to chat to you please.


I get free T1 via LAN at college but I'm moving out into a house soon and I'm thinking of going for cable. Optus@home looks much better but the benefit of Telstra Bigpond Cable is that I can save by putting it on the same bill as my phone, foxtel and mobile. PM me.

[platinum]

I dont think renmark's ever gonna get cable

But i've heard that cable is pretty awesome if your in the right area to get it... apparantly the actualy cable isn't in heaps of spots.

[hillsy]

I've got a cable running right down the street in front of my house - you can look out the window and there it is about 5m away. Does it come into my house? Not a chance

Still on my 56k dialup. Gets a bit sluggish as I run a server on the same connection.

I was looking at Telstra BigPond Direct ADSL recently, but it's pricey. Dunno what the consumer packages cost.

MMJ - a couple of my friends have Optus cable and they reckon it's the bomb I've never made an objective comparison as I just sit there with my tongue on the carpet over how fast everything is

[Dan Morgan]

Well at home I dial up on a 56k, but at work I have the advantage of a speedier connection. I would get ASDL but its too expensive for me right now on my own!

When I am at university (currently on placement year), we have ASDL with connection sharing so we only pay for one line (£50 a month) between 5 of us, so thats only a tenner! Cheaper than dialup!

ICS with always on connections are definately the way to go for value!

[iTec]

Originally posted by mmj
Any Australians using cable? Ever tried Telstra Bigpond Cable? I'd like to have to chat to you please.


I get free T1 via LAN at college but I'm moving out into a house soon and I'm thinking of going for cable. Optus@home looks much better but the benefit of Telstra Bigpond Cable is that I can save by putting it on the same bill as my phone, foxtel and mobile. PM me.

i worked for optus for a while doing door to door sales, optus cable if you can get it is AWSOME... to the point were i had people i had sold to ring me and thank me! its *insert word* quick! just as a side not optus give you a FREE lat (local access telephony) line when you get cable, (saves you the $299 install fee) and if you take optus tv with it then you get a discount off your cable subscription. tho this is all based on a 1 year contract (line is free so atleast take it, and if you want to stay with telstra, then dont use it) if you go to optus website look at the choices packages, you want choice 5 or 6... as a side note, the switch that optus install supports both telstra and optus, were as the switch telstra install is not supported by optus.

[nOttY nUt]

56k for me as well....

i will move to DSL in couple of months....

[mjames]

I just went from 28.8Kbps dial-up to 800kbps cable via Comcast@home.

[mmj]

Thanks for the info hillsy and iTec - I've pretty much decided to go with Optus. They certainly look a whole world better! My email got a quick response too. All I needed to know was that they allow more than Telstra's 3Gb per month and they do (about 6 times as much), so I'm sold!

Also Optus allow me to share it on a LAN (at home), which I was going to do anyway.

As for cable TV, I was kinda hoping to get Foxtel... however with the money I save on this cable internet (over one year) I could get foxtel and it'd work out cheaper.

Hey that's dirty - I enquired as to whether it was available at my house and the result was "maybe". Then I had to fill out my phone number and email and then it turned out the result was "no" - they just wanted to include my contact info in a database.

[JMulder]

Last September I finally managed to connect with my ADSL, it's still not fast (512/128) but the big advantage is, it's flat-fee! Flat-fee is something that's not/hardly available in The Netherlands

[Adam P.]

Cable here...I could never go back...

[chimaera]

I'm on 56k dialup - but I usually only connect at 37333 bps max. Often 28

From what I know of broadband in Australia, Optus@Home is the ****! If anyone is interested in knowing more about Australian options, the other forum I "live" at has lots of good sections on all of the options availabe. Ausforum.com

When I get back to England (I move back at Xmas) I really want to get some sort of broadband connection, whatever is available really. Probably just cable I expect. And yes to the original poster, from what I see, the UK is way behind Australia and the USA

[sbdi]

I am on a 56k, should have some form of DSL / Cable within 12 months considering I live in the capital city of this small and slow country.

You didnt tell them the whole story!. The telecom company where myself and pixel lives has a monopolly on the local loop, IE no one can install any new telephone/ adsl lines without losing massive amounts of money.

So after a good few years the telecom decides to unleash ADSL on us, only problem is it would cost you around 140 euro's a month with a 3GB bandwidth restriction!!!


NTL bought out the local TV cable company and installed some of there 512k lines but only about 5% of Dublin has access to it! Then they stopped because of the whole world economy thing. Just check out www.irelandoffline.com or www.boards.ie/irelandoffline and you will see

[Mark T.]

Cable for me, couldn't live without my 256K .

[moonman]

56k at home, ADSL at work. Looking to get it upgraded as well.

[Bob]

sbdi, don't it just suck huge amounts of ***?

[sbdi]

Obviously So does half the country that has a clue. Look at it this way we should be waiting a few months (ADSL is already installed and ready to go they just need to sort priceing) But imagine your living in some place like Leitrim, they will never get it!