High speed Broadband

[Mr P Cannop]

will we ever get this here in Thurso ??

[Kodiak]

What do you call High Speed Broadband? What I would call High Speed would be over 100mb and we are a long way from getting that.

At present I am getting a reasonable steady 13.5mb download so at present I am quite happy but would still would be happier with a faster speed.

[Mr P Cannop]

i mean fibre optic broadband

[RagnarRocks]

Have you considered the costs of laying all the cables in a rural area I'd say that alone will mean it will be quite some time

[Big Gaz]

You can actually pay to have fibre installed (FTTP) it is of course only good if your local cabinet has fibre to it (FTTC) It is the intention of BT to install fibre up to every local cabinet then ask customers if they want their copper cable changed to fibre for a price. How much this will be or how much faster your connection will be remains to be seen.
As for the "broadband demand" crap thats being spouted at the moment by BT etc. There is absolutely no difference between a small town such as Wick or Thurso and a small town somewhere south. The demand is there but BT just dont want to spend money to upgrade and are hanging on for the govt to fund this upgrade. Incidentally, the Wick exchange upgrade has been put back yet again to Feb 2014. Guess come Feb 2014 it will get put back again for another few months. been like this for the last 2 years

[gillsbay]

FTTC will be coming but I wouldn't hold your breath, currently giving up to 80Mbps depending on distance from cabinet, unless like me you are not on a cabinet and not connected directly to the exchange as I am with little chance of anything faster than ADSL2+ in my lifetime!!
FTTPod (on demand) is fairly expensive and so far only available in limited areas but it can provide download speeds of 330Mbps and as there is no copper involved then this is the speed you will get!!!

[orkneycadian]

What do you call High Speed Broadband? What I would call High Speed would be over 100mb and we are a long way from getting that..

However you define it, we will never get it. Remember the days when we all had to ask for ADSL, so we could go from an average of 28.8k to 512k? Then we got "up to 2", then "up to 8". Folk are still not happy with it, and we are all suffering from the fact that everyone now thinks its fine to watch films on demand without it having any effect on the network.

Netflix and Youtube traffic now accounts for "most" of the internet traffic. Meanwhile, delivery systems such as freeview and satellite are under utilised, and end up showing nothing but adverts and shopping channels to try and cover their costs.

As bandwidth demand continues to grow for whimsical reasons, then we will always be in a position in the north here where we have much slower services than those in London. Get used to it!

[little red one]

Id be happy just to get 1mb consistently!:lol: im with sky and suffering from what they call 'traffic managent' between 3pm and midnight (when im not at home) its more like 11am till 3am and all weekend. we are supposed to get up to 8mb with an average of 6mb and for the first few months it was okish but now i get about .6mb iv tried calling them but they insist there is no problem, even their own staff have advised me to go to BT!

my phone line was newly installed and i live a third of a mile from the exchange btw.

Its business' s and school kids who are losing out too its kind of rediculous really.

[Big Gaz]

If Sky said they would provide a service and they aren't doing this then complain and tell them so. 6 years ago i was with them and the broadband service was appalling. I complained numerous times to no avail so i just stopped paying. They soon got on the phone to me and they had no choice but to listen then. Outcome was that they were not fulfilling their part of the contract and i got out with no charges (even got to keep the withheld payment) . The big con nowadays is the statement that the service is "UP to 8mb" They know fine well that it won't be 8mb and if you are lucky you can surf the net but the Ptake is that Sky demand that your Sky box is connected to the internet at all times, thus it is taking up bandwidth that YOU are paying for and slowing your service down. Kick off and demand what they offered, you have nothing to lose and if they don't listen then when contract renewal time comes around, tell them where to stick it!

[little red one]

the Ptake is that Sky demand that your Sky box is connected to the internet at all times, thus it is taking up bandwidth that YOU are paying for and slowing your service down. Kick off and demand what they offered, you have nothing to lose and if they don't listen then when contract renewal time comes around, tell them where to stick it!

My sky box isn' t connected lol i did kick off and after they made some 'adjustments' the service seemed ok at first considering how much bandwidth i needed. My contract is up soon i just need to find out if i can keep my sky phone contract and use bt for broadband, not got the figures at hand but it was quite a bit more expensive for a like for like contract comparing the two, sorry for jumping thread.

back on topic ;) sky told me my area would get their 'unlimited' service once bt have upgraded my local exchange somewhere around 2015-16 :eek: