Modern technology!!

Dave_C_2

goater78 wrote: »

At the end of the day it's more important to ensure big cities like London, manchester, Birmingham have the fastest broadband connections than rural places do as the population density is so much more.

An alternative view:

Leave the cities on copper-based broadband as most residences are within a short distance of the exchange and will not suffer from attenuation due to long line lengths. ADSL2/21CN speed should give a reasonable broadband speeds of "up to" 24 Mb/s. In reality I would expect half that.
Also cities are well served by 3G (soon to be 4G) mobile coverage so wireless broadband is an option.
Cities tend to be cabled so Virgin media is another option.

As distinct from small towns/villages where there is no cable or even 3G coverage and all broadband speeds are throttled by the attenuation of long copper cables from the exchange in the nearest big town. 512 kb/s is not unusual, with ADSL2/212CN this could increase to 2Mb/s maximum.

I would therefore suggest that installation of fibre to the urban population is more useful in giving everyone high speeds, especially as the majority of the population live there.

Dave

vyle

Dave_C wrote: »

An alternative view:

Leave the cities on copper-based broadband as most residences are within a short distance of the exchange and will not suffer from attenuation due to long line lengths. ADSL2/21CN speed should give a reasonable broadband speeds of "up to" 24 Mb/s. In reality I would expect half that.
Also cities are well served by 3G (soon to be 4G) mobile coverage so wireless broadband is an option.
Cities tend to be cabled so Virgin media is another option.

The problem with cities is that they have indeed been cabled, but the exchanges have been set to support a THAT capacity. This means that new builds (and a lot of cities have been expanded) not only have no cable because ISPs dont want to foot the bill, but the exchanges are over capacity and need upgrading which isn't going to happen any time soon.

I know of a few places where you can have 160meg infinity, or 50meg virgin, then cross the road and have 3meg ADSL.

I'm on a new build in one such area and would KILL to get 512k, I currently get 189 (though it has been 300) and there are no plans to upgrade or unbundle my exchange.