BT reveals vanishingly small detail about its fibre broadband network BT's Openreach has released a tiny amount of information about data usage over the former state monopoly's fibre network. In fact, it's so insignificant that Ofcom wasn't even aware of the firm's shiny new quarterly index until The Register flagged it up to the UK's communications watchdog. Highlights (if you can call them …
Period Usage
03 Oct - 03 Nov 47.36GB
03 Sep - 03 Oct 25.83GB
03 Aug - 03 Sep 22.02GB
Used 23Gb since 3rd Nov. Those effing great Databases that I'm working on and stupidly large Server 2012 Patch files (1.088Gb...Wtf?)
seems to make up for most of it though.
I guess BT will have to keep on laying fibre for a while yet.
I'm lucky, here in Germany. The local telco laid fibre in our small town several years ago. I am currently on 35mbps, although I could pay extra for 50 or 100mbps, but even with streaming HD films from Amazon Prime the 35mbps is usually fast enough.
In May I re-ripped all of my CDs and storing them in the cloud, plus our streaming and normal activities pushed our volume up around the 700GB mark. I think on average though it is much more around the 400 - 500GB mark.
Even 10 years ago, when I was living in Bavaria with a 2mbps line, I was getting through 150 - 200GB a month, doing testing for the pre-release builds of SUSE.
Yes,
A light day in my household incurs about 11GB of traffic, a heavy day (ie Saturday and Sunday) is between 25-33GB.
A month we consume damn near 467GB a month, of which 90% is Netflix or CBBC IPlayer, 8% is Facepunch and the last 2% is likely me doing ISO's or patch files. Its either that or a LOT of porn.
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BT was owned by the state from its inception in 1980 until its privatisation in 1984.
Prior to that, the network, which later became the property of BT, was created, owned and operated the GPO, which itself had formerly been a government department. BT was spun out of the GPO, which is why it inherited that network.
The fact that this network was constructed by the state (i.e. the taxpayer) in the first place, means that the fact of it technically being a monopoly is somewhat moot, since it was a "monopoly" created by the people, for the people.
It's still a monopoly, in every sense that matters, only now it's a monopoly that only benefits a small handful of privateers, to the tune of £3.17 billion a year, while everyone else pays through the nose for the privilege of being connected to a network built with taxpayers' money.
This is presumably what free marketeers mean when they talk about the "benefits" of a free market economy.
Telegraph and voice were brought to the UK by the private sector but the General Post office exercised its monopoly powers to license them (after Indian Mutiny has revealed their importance) and then nationalised most of them in 1912 - to facilitate mass eaves-dropping, justified by the spy scares during the run up to the First World War. Abut that time the suffragette's began causing chaos by cutting the lines. Were the suffragettes cutting the lines as a protest against the government because they had been nationalised? The historical articles I have consulted do not contain any clues.
I'm fairly confident that there's nothing left of the infrastructure built by the Electric Telegraph Company in the 1840s, save for what's been preserved for posterity in museums.
The same was certainly not true for many years after the privatisation of the publicly funded GPO telecoms infrastructure.
Virgin reaches more than half of UK homes. Reaching most homes doesn't equal 'highly restricted'.
I guess that depends on context.
The context usually being whether Virgin are trying to have a pop at BT or not. When they are, their areas are "highly restricted", when they're not and are instead are trying to sell, you'd think their network covered every house in the UK, twice
Highly restricted by the fact they can't be bothered to roll it out. Just like Virgin and friends will complain BT took all the rural broadband money, yet they all chose to drop out of the bidding process. It has been over 30 years since BT were privatised. If they still have a monopoly it is because the other companies don't want to provide service to places they deem unprofitable. That is their choice, not the fault of BT.
The index also shows that a quarter of homes were munching their way through 75 per cent of the total data consumed in an average month.
I think the title says it all, those poor blighters with 0.5 MB access or less will not be downloading very much!
Exactly, sod making sure that central London has 1000Mb/s access, why not make sure that the countryside has at least 1Mb/s first?
Valuable low hanging fruit, probably.
Issue I've seen no attempt by BT to actually do this which is precisely why companies like Hyperoptic are growing so fast.
I want to say eff the countryside but I know it'll get me downvoted - but I will state that I moved from the countryside to London because essentially this issue but there's no hope of BT sorting it out.
Internet connectivity by any of the major providers in London is utter trash just like it is in the rest of the country. It's no better and sometimes it's worse. We're just lucky that because of the density there are providers like Hyperoptic around that are trying to build fit for purpose networks.
BT Superfast Braodband?
30m between my connection and the Cabinet - connected at 80 / 19Mbit
Typical 24 Hour Period Analysis here :
00.00-15.30 Connection works largely as advertised
15.30-18.00 Connection speeds drop steadily (largely on the upstream bandwidth)
Kids coming home from school playing games - businesses starting daily backups?
18.00-22.00 Speeds hammered down to 20 / 0.7Mbit
Even streaming standard iPlayer virtually impossible without buffering - gaming forget it!!
22.00-00.00 Speeds steadily increase back to as connected speeds
So it seems there is insufficient capacity at peak load times and that all 'as connected' / 'as advertised' speeds are arbitrary, BT by their own admission traffic shape their network to prioritise data for their BT TV products so as to give their customers unbuffered IP TV, presumably at the sacrifice of those of us who feel that with an 80 / 19 package and connection we shouldn't need to pay extra to view catchup on iPlayer.
Is there any chance of any balanced journalism from El Reg? This is no more than a headline grabbing short article. A look at related articles and you just love to bash BT. No company is perfect, but in my area I waited 20 years for the assigned cable company in my area to lay cables, which never materialized - it was Openreach (BT) who finally delivered a fibre cabinet.
"....former state monopoly's fibre network" Really? The network sold off by the state some 30+ years ago I doubt exists any longer, it almost definitely wasn't fibre and has taken considerable investment from shareholders I'm sure - and some from the BB subsidy, agreed.
Sky, TalkTalk, Vodaphone etc all had the opportunity to bid for those subsidies or reinvest some of their vast profits in a network of their own. Of course why should they when they can lobby a regulator hard and get access to someone elses network instead, all with zero financial risk !
Do we see the same arguments over equivalence of access to Sky's content or Virgin's network?
EL Reg your better than these tabloid headlines....
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