Be chums offer 1Gbit/s fibre-to-the-premises in London A new ISP arrived today courtesy of Be Broadband's founders, offering extremely speedy fibre connections. However the telco currently has very limited reach to some larger residential and commercial properties in London. Hyperoptic is offering 1 Gbit/s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) to some homes and businesses in the capital …
According to the FAQs on their website (www.hypersonic.com) the 20Mb product is 1Mb up, but the 100Mb and 1Gb products are symmetrical. Not sure why they bother with the bottom rung product given the other two; I guess it helps get lots of subscribers onboard in a single building which makes putting the fibre in viable.
It's currently quicker & cheaper to use my T-Mobile dongle in the hotel than connect to their in-room 'super fast broadband' at £5/hour (or £24/day).
Even if they've got a 100 room hotel, they'd be making money even if they only charged £1/day/room.
When can I get it!
Yes after an optimistic start, I just tried the website (would have helped if the article linked to them) and clicked on the button to see if I can get it.
Several pages of forms followed, which start titled "Can you go Hyperoptic? Find out now" and gradually morph into a process harvesting your full name, address, telephone and email, under the title of "Register your interest - join the campaign for fibre to your building!". Very misleading, and not answering the initial question - Can I get this ISP?
At that point I aborted and left trusting the new company less than the Be they used to run. I'll keep watching them but wait for a bit of word-of-mouth from early adopters before signing up.
Ordinarily, I'd think the same. However, purely because it's the old be people, I'm interested.
I'm a happy old Be customer, but I only get about 6mbps due to BT's line made largely out of compressed milk bottle tops and damp sawdust.
BT keep (what I can only describe as) harassing me over Infinity, but I won't go to them out of principle. And as much as I'm still happy with Be, it's clearly just O2 under another name now, with all the good management and tech people all gone.
So if the old team can do it all over again, I'm up for it.
But that's a big 'if'. I remember after the family who built up Pipex into an outstanding ISP sold it for 30 pieces of silver, they tried to launch a new ISP, and even posted on the Pipex newsgroups blatantly asking how many people they could rely on poaching, but it never lived up to the old Pipex. I don't even know if it's still going.
So... Yes, I would switch from 6mbps/£18 Be to 20mbps/£12.50 Hyperwotsit, but cautiously.
Conversely, I'd rather work for a year at the minimum wage as Paris Hilton's fluffer than go to BT Infinity. I'd like to get rid of BT as a phone line supplier too, if Hyperwotsit can offer me that while they're at it.
And what are the bandwidth limits?
It's all very well offering a 1Gbit service when you could plough through your bandwidth allocation in no time at all. Some providers are offering fibre services but are taking the sneaky opportunity to lower their download limits. Indeed that's one of the reasons I've opted to stay on standard ADSL2 for now. It may not be as fast, but at least it won't end up costing me more.
"The company's initial strategy for rolling out its tech appears to be relying on large residential buildings such as blocks of flats to sign up to its FTTP offerings."
So the cynic in me says this will be a single 1Gb pipe shared amongs multiple (10's or 100's?) of flats...
It's worth reading the FAQs (http://www.hyperoptic.com/web/guest/faq) - which state:
Q: Do you "traffic shape" or throttle your connections?
A: No. We don't restrict the flow of our online traffic at all.
Q: Do you have a traffic management policy?
A: We prioritise our voice service over other data traffic to ensure a consistent and reliable voice service.
So it's an unthrottled, unshaped connection but VoIP traffic gets a higher priority.
Original Be was excellent. Been with them for almost 4 years. Now I live somewhere else and am waiting for Sky to connect us - i feel crippled without net. Shame my flatmates want TV and I'm sure they'll enjoy it for first 2-3 weeks and then it will be business as usual, freeview channels and net only. Oh well
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