WE CAN still be BETTER than Germany on broadband, says Ofcom

Britain's communication watchdog has published a pathetic "scorecard" that compares this country's broadband prowess with that of only four other nations in Europe. The move comes after the British government finally caught up with the idea that it was never going to achieve the unreachable goal of having the "best" superfast …

[Anonymous Coward]

Look on the bright side.

Competition.

At least it's there. On the continent that fast broadband infrastructure that's crowed about is usually cable. The price is fairly sensible, if you happen to want a bundled high speed broadband and TV service, but standalone? OMFG!

[BristolBachelor]

Re: Look on the bright side.

I know a few people in Madrid City. Their fibre connection requires no bolt-ins. Telephone, TV, etc. are separate (at least one of them only has data, using VOIP and terrestrial TV for everything else.)

Tell me how much a data only connection in the UK costs, and where you can get one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Look on the bright side.

I'm currently living abroad, I pay €30 all in, I think you can get only internet for €20 and I get 30Mb/s all day, every day. I can go with one of the cable companies if I want a little more speed or I could chose another telecoms provider. I also get properly unlimited access although I had to pay a one off €50 for that.

We definitely get some nice cheap deals in the UK but the quality is mostly atrocious.

[Andus McCoatover]

Re: Look on the bright side.

Agree.

I got 2m/s included in the rent price. It's enough to watch BBC News video/ Bbcgoodfod.com's cookery class.

No cap, nothing. "All you can eat". Easy peasy. But, the quality of the connection is brilliant! Undecured WiFi, so even my neighbours use it - and I can still log in and watch po - sorry, aforementioned cookery programmes.

[big_D]

Re: Look on the bright side.

Not here, in Germany.

Our local Telco offers a pure internet connection, with VOIP for telephone, no analogue or ISDN telephone connection. We don't have to take any TV or film packages. 39€ a month gets 35/5mbps and flat rate telephone (well, actually, I get closer to 38mbps, I asked in the shop and they say they always try to give you AT LEAST what you are paying for). I could have paid an extra tenner a month for 50mbps, but 35 is more than I need.

Kabel Deutschland is also in the area, and here you can get internet only, telephone only, combined and combined with a TV package, with speeds up to 100mbps.

[sted]

so rather than fix the problem by for instance altering openreach's universal service obligation to include say 2mb minimum broadband with penalties if they dont they redifine the problem well done and they wonder why nobody trusts politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem being that if you did change the USO to include broadband, everyone else's broadband bills would go up. The USO doesn't say that BT are compelled to provide service at a loss, it says that they have to charge everyone the same and then divide the total cost by the number of lines to arrive at an average cost that the price is then built from.

Doing that just to BT would price them out of the market and thus drive up the costs even further, so it would have to be shared between all ISPs using BT's network.

[gloucester]

A DCMS spokesman told us that his department's plans wouldn't be affected by the budget cut as it hadn't "developed any future broadband plans on the assumption that [the €9.2bn CEF funding] would go ahead"

Is it going to develop some plans now that it isn't going ahead?

[David Neil]

Any chance

You could re-write that without the party political point scoring?

[bill 36]

speedtest.net comparison for you

Just thought i'd give you some data.................

From a village in the arse end of Salzburg over a Netgear 300mb wireless link to a Salzburg AG cable modem with analogue, digital TV and broadband. Over copper.

Ping to Klagenfurt 42ms

Download speed 23.20 mbps

Upload speed 2.89mbps

And i think it should be better :>)

[Version 1.0]

Meanwhile in the USA

Baton Rouge to New Orleans

Ping to Big Easy 22ms.

Download 2.24mbps

Upload 250kbps

And we're paying COX $240 a month for this - my heart bleeds for you poor buggers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meanwhile in the USA

I would melt for what these Brits are moaning over.

The key with a good connection in Baton Rouge is to realize that the industrial zone aka Exxon wants high speed, and so park yourself next to some large chemical plants which are good enough customers for COX or any other provider to lay down fiber for. I think they run the fiber to Houston.

(A side perk, is that the plants as major power customers, get back on the grid much more quickly than anyone else after hurricanes, so the power systems around them tends to be fixed quick. Chemical Plants are obviously more important than little people and businesses.)

AC as I work in the area.

[davenewman]

Don't forget Estonia

In Talinn all the private and public buildings got together to provide free WiFi everywhere. No tendering for a single party contract, just an agreement thrashed out in bars and meeting rooms.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't forget Estonia

Yeah, but are there any people left to use it apart from Skype employees? ;)

[Piro]

Sort out BT's service

I haven't had any service now for well over a week, due to BT engineers screwing up the line.. under the road.. then sitting on their hands, as mentioned, for over a week, despite constant reminders.

Doesn't matter how fast it is if I can't use it (even when it works, it was shite, but at least it was better than nothing).

[Farmer Geddon]

Meanwhile in the UK

Ping to Milton Keynes from home in the midlands - 780ms

Download 0.7 mbps

Upload 0.2 mbps

No broadband by phone available - 'too far from exchange' @ 7km

3G Broadband via mast on my roof - Hello 21st Century

[Charlie Clark]

Investment and deregulation required

In Germany the telco's big bang wasn't until the mid-1990s but it was followed by huge investments in infrastructure around the county with companies keen to compete with Deutsche Telekom on providing full service (telephone, mobile and internet) to customers. This meant not only leasing capacity from Telekom but also putting cables in the ground to the DSLASM at least and occasionally to the kerb of the house so that only the twisted pair cable in a house is still owned by Telekom. Together with fairly extensive cable coverage, at least in metropolitan areas, this has led to a competitive environment which competes on both service and price. So I've gone from a 2 MB/s a connection ten years ago to 50 MB/s today for roughly the same price. Service quality is important and will drive customers away if it is not maintained and as it will be plastered all over the press.

AFAIK the UK has invested less and competes mainly on price and I wouldn't expect that to improve until the investment climate improves. Several El Reg hacks have suggested that there is no money in providing capacity but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

At the end of the day, however, broadband speeds seem to be a rainbow and I'm not sure if the idea that faster broadband will somehow automatically increase productivity and drive growth. I think for most of us having a connection of say > 256 kB/s would be sufficient for the vast majority of what we do and I've yet to OECD or similar figures painting a different picture. Higher speeds seem simply to favour media consumption which leads to a diversion from, say, CD and VHS rentals to streaming.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Investment and deregulation required

>followed by huge investments in infrastructure around the county

Typical underhand Hun trick - investing in infrastructure, damn sausage eaters will be building up an industrial base of high tech manufacturing next, can't trust the Boche .....

[SpaMster]

BT Suck!

I'll start believing our broadband is getting faster across the country when my upload speeds get above 600kbps (BT). It's ridiculous that in this day in age, the vast majority of the country without fiber internet can't even live stream a video game in HD. It's not like were not paying enough for these services to warrant the up in speed! I'm paying for the fastest possible speeds I can get for my area, which is in the middle of a city where you'd think the speeds would be best, nope! BT are offering fiber internet for the same price as i'm paying for my normal broadband and it's not even available, this is about 2 years after they said they were installing the cable in my area!

[All names Taken]

Always look on the...

... bright side of life

Whew-oo

Whew-oo

Whew- oo-oo-oo-eh-oo

Look doodz, time for <cliche warning> reality check no?

Germany is very, very vastly becoming Grosser Germany and in the process lots of other 'lands want to be part of the Grosserland. Maybe several hundred meelleeonz of peeps already?

And when Europe (that is Gross Germany) emerges from the present economic woes (say 2018?) the Gross Germant is going to be strong.

It will be territorially strong (there have not been many wars lately apart from those prompted by UK and USA?)

It will be fiscally strong (why should a market of many billions of euros with many millions of people be weak, forever weak?)

It will be operationally strong.

On the other hand there is rapidly diminishing UK.

Once an empire, now fragmented and fragmenting and for jolly good reason too (what purpose for the Treasury but to impart employment to its bastard descendants of present employees?).

And where Germany is on the up-and-up, the UK is on the down-and-down.

Why do you think the banks are not investing in UK?

For ill manners or because better prospects exist elsewhere?

Yes UK millionaire - last one out switch off the lights?

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Always look on the...

I'm English but I still find it offensive the way you refer to "Gross Germany".

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Always look on the...

> I still find it offensive the way you refer to "Gross Germany".

Ja ve are not gross, ve are just big-boned

[jonfr]

Denmark using Syd energi fiber broadband (called Waoo! internet)

Here is my speed test result. Based on a server in Odense, Denmark.

Ping 20 ms

Download speed 42.44Mbps

Upload speed 56.66Mbps

Link to my result can be found here, http://www.speedtest.net/result/2553340682.png

For comparison. Iceland is now upgrading most of its infrastructure to carry at least 50Mbps VSDL2+ internet connection in most places. What is not on fiber already gets VDSL2+. There are some farms that for now are just on normal ADSL1 or 3G. Until they can be upgraded to faster LTE connection in few years time.

[Clyde]

Off Topic - Jeremy Hunt

"one-time Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt - who is now doing a good job of dismantling Britain's health service -"

I expected more accuracy from Kelly - The good Mr Hunt is only in charge of England's health service. Other places are doing other things. E.g. - Scotland's health service is not under threat of privatisation. Maybe that's down to effort being put in to manage the service, rather than wind it down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Off Topic - Jeremy Hunt

Hunt by name .....