My internet is rubbish, and I love it

[andrewducker]

My parent's internet, on the back of a lane, in the middle of nowheresville, Devon, is 1.5Mbit when the wind is in the right direction. It was slightly painful to use at times when I was visiting, but mostly when my Dad's new Windows install was sucking down wodges of updates from Windows Update.

My internet at home is outmoded. You can't actually buy my current speed (20Mbit) on Virgin any more, and every so often they try to upsell me to the 30Mbit connection instead. But as I'm currently connected to work on a Citrix connection, downloading a game from Steam, just watched a couple of trailers, and Julie was catching up with Eastenders on iPlayer on her PC until a few minutes ago, without any hitches at all, I think I'll live for the moment.

I'm sure something will come along in a few months to tempt me to upgrade to the 50MB or 100MB offerings, but right now I can't think of a single good reason to.

Comments

[dalglir]

I have 8mps and it's just fine for me :-/

It's plain old BT DSL and I'm happy with it for a number of reasons.

I'd consider cable DSL if BT really annoyed me.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Until last month I was paying $60 a month for an unreliable 3MB connection, which usually maxed out badly around 2.

I'm now paying the same for 20MB, which is much better - I *could* pay for 100 but that would be an eye watering $150 a month... you guys don't know how lucky you are.

I'm still astounded that I'm now paying more for a slower connection than I had when we were in our flat in London 5 years ago.

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Gah!

I was on not-quite-16 meg from O2, which actually meant Be, who were great.

Then I transferred to Orange to get a newer phone, moved my broadband too, to save a fiver a month... And now I get a flakey 7 meg over the same line.

Not. Happy.

Wot?

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

You commies socialists got better broadband than us? ;-)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I must admit that I can see faster broadband as an advantage of city living. (For me at least it's more than offset by house prices, crime, pollution, noise, light pollution, public transport, overcrowding and crap restaurants, but your mileage may vary.)

We're in a tiny village in southeast Cornwall (although it's a Devon telephone number) without things like mains gas or street lighting, but when I've tested our download speed, it's been close to 7mb (we're paying for 8). Our exchange is due to be updated to ADSL2+ next month, so this should go up a bit.

Where exactly are your parents? And what ISP are they on? They may find significant speed improvements if they switch ISPs. www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest tells me that the average BT broadband speed in my area is 2.4mb. Talktalk is 3.1mb, but Zen gives us 6.8mb. That's a big difference, even if it is a little bit more expensive. Zen also usually wins customer service awards etc. Admittedly we need it for bunn's business, but even if we were using it purely for domestic use, I'd be willing to pay that much extra.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

My father is in a rural area with poor ADSL options, and gets 2-3mb.

We have just upgraded to Virgin 30; if it were just us then the 10 would have lasted us forever I think, but the kids (especially M) tend to stream all day.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I am sick of living in RURAL is the awful connection. Allegedly we're on a 2MB line (the maximum we can get!), but the speed test usually says we're getting 1.5MB and I am so, so tired of waiting anywhere from three to thirty minutes to be able to watch a 5-minute video. I don't know when we're moving or where we're going, but it's going to have a decent bloody connection.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't think of a way I could justify a 100MB connection for personal non-commercial use. I can download a song in seconds and a film in the time it takes to make a sandwich already. There really isn't much waiting around! Sometimes Steam is slow, but this is usually a problem with Steam itself rather than anything on my end.

Does the 100mb connection still have a bandwidth usage cap for peak times? It'd be hilarious if it did.