Ironic, this report from Oxford University as Oxfordshire being a very rural English County has abysmal broadband coverage. So outside of large cities the UK broadband coverage needs a giant kick up the a**e as the quality (speed) is pants. Where they talk of 20Mbps, when the reality is much lower.
Hmmm…Living in London, I don’t experience this, but I know what you mean. My Broadband is roughly what we pay for, but that wasn’t before some new lines were put in, among other things…
And the key words that they so subtly mention are: ‘up to 20Mbps’
With those two words, they can pretty much give you what ever speed they want…which is usually less than you pay for…
Almost certainly (NOT), because that is a physical impossibility on a dial-up modem which has physical maximum of 56,000 kbps, so it can’t get beyond that ;D
My provider says I have up to 7.2mbps. I am usually lucky to get 1mpbs in the real world. Other wireless users in my area with same type accounts - whether with my provider or rivals - have the same browser connect speeds or worse.
To put things in perspective, you usually need about 1mbps to run a video clip through without any momentary timeouts.
Sometimes my connect falls back to 2G which is dial-up speed 53.3kbps. I can still work on dial-up if I want and I would put this down to the bandwidth not being saturated. But Im only guessing. When fallen back to dial-up speed I usually find something else to do. One of my friends says his broadband is so slow, he hardly notices the difference between the two - his connection falls back to dial-up speed once he reaches the limit for his monthly GB allocation.
Considering as previously stated Oxfordshire, hardly out in the sticks, the heart of England, but over 9KM from the exchange, so broadband is unreliable/unobtainable and if you can get it they say, ‘up to 25Kbps’ (yes that wasn’t 25Mbps but Kbps ;D)
As I said a physical impossibility when connected by dial-up modem, so no passing 56Kbps, no passing go, just jail with your dial-up locked up at a max of 56Kbps, which isn’t even attainable in my case.
You have got to be crazy, I’m on-line for over 6 hours a day, so 3G in the UK that isn’t even an option when mobile plans they charge like everyone is on footballers wages.
Not to mention 3G coverage isn’t great, same sort of issue as the reason of being on dial-up ;D
They aren’t so generous in the UK (rip-off is closer to the mark) with a 3GB cap and less in some tariffs and pay through the nose for going over. Some are reasonable in that they charge by the GB and some that charge by the MB if you go over your cap.
So for me this is another non-starter, I hate being ripped off and as I said 3G coverage isn’t great.