SuperFast Unlimited Broadband

[Tonya]

Yikes!
I thought I had a fast connection with a measured download speed of 20Mbps on my dedicated fibre line.
It's just been announced that in two weeks time, Telenor, Norway's largest IP company, is rolling out a revolutionary new internet broadband service that will give customers a speed of 40Mbit per second down and 10Mbit per second upload speed using existing copper cable phone line installations.
The technology is based around VDSL which has a theoretical speed limit of 54 Mbps although there are plans to introduce a VDSL+ service that will attain a speed in excess of 100Mbps.
There are no download or upload caps and the price will be set at under 500 kroner per month which is around £50.
This is in direct competition with the competitor's fibre rollout that has been happening the past two years or so.
From 1st February 2011 this offer will be available to at least 400,000 residents all over Norway.
The dramatic increase in speed will enable subscribers to download a full length feature film in HD quality in around 3 minutes.
The selling point is no digging up your driveway to lay fibre cables, ultrafast and all you can eat for £50.

Can't wait to see what my fibre company will fight back with . . . .

 

[iMark]

It sounds very similar to what my provider (xs4all) in NL is offering. I don't really need it but I could upgrade my present subscription to 40Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. Maybe when we move house it would be interesting because it also involves a more modern modem: the FritzBox 7340 would replace the 7170 and would have n-speed for wireless and USB 2.0 for a network drive.

Our local cable company offers speeds of up to 120Mbps down/10Mbps up. But they never tell you that with their technology you are sharing bandwidth with other subscribers in your local area. These speeds never work in practice.

The VDSL2 standard is a quite complicated set of technology. I found this Wikipedia page quite informative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_speed_digital_subscriber_line_2

 

[Chewy]

Sounds interesting, if the UK's aging copper network can take it, that sounds like a credible solution to our current pathetic average broadband speeds!

 

[Anonymous]

This is VDSL and what BT OpenReach is in the process of rolling out isnt it?

 

[f1only]

With Virgin 50mb line i currently get 43.5mb download & 4.5mb upload speed via a wireless connection.

 

[Helmut80]

f1only:
With Virgin 50mb line i currently get 43.5mb download & 4.5mb upload speed via a wireless connection.

god I'm jealous!

 

[Tonya]

What made it interesting was the sudden announcement on the front page of the newspaper.
Sort of took everyone by surprise, looks like it's going to be interesting times.
Downloads have never been capped in Scandinavia so the competition arena is going to be fought over speed/price.
Going to call my fibre company in a few days and see what they say when I mention that the "other guys" have offered a better deal.
I'm guessing they'll up the speed at once, IP companies hate losing customers ;-)

 

[legoyoda]

I believe VDSL is what BT are rolling out in the UK as "BT Infinity". sometimes knows as FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet). Chatting to an engineer here the other day it's basically a better version if an ADSL setup with the only distance metric that's important being the line length from your phone socket to the street cabinet. I.e. you will only get the max speed if you're right on top of the street cab. However, you're never going to be that far away from one of those (at least in the UK) so speeds should, apparently regularly hit 30-40Mb/sec. Annoyingly it's slower to roll out than ADSL2+ as it's not "enabled in exchanges" rather they have to actually lay the fiber to each Cabinet so roll on the roadworks. ON the plus side though i can see them getting closer to my box!

Personally it's the 10Mb upload im looking forward to! Flickr is sooooo slow at 1Mb/sec!

 

[basshound]

Feel like I`m in another century reading this,I live in a rural part of the UK and the max speed I get is .5meg but it is regularly well below this. The government did have a minimum 2 meg download target for the whole country but this seems to have been quietly forgotten about in these tough economic times.

 

[Tonya]

UPDATE!
Due to the new competition, my original fibre IP supplier has now rolled out a new 400/400 service - now THAT's seriously fast

 

[DIB]

Just upgraded my Virgin Broadband to the 50mb, and after running a few tests this morning I'm getting from the lowest of 39.5 to a high of 49.5 download speed, and uploads from 1.39 up to a high of 1.6.

Quite a large difference, not sure which reading to believe really.

.

.

 

[Anonymous]

Someone told me on another forum, that knew a guy that lives right in the Canary Wharf, financial capital, and he can only get 8mb through BT. which is shocking.

I live 2.5km from the exchange, I can walk to it, in under 15 min, but I only get 12mb out of a possible 20mb.

I again find this terrible for 2011, when asia is offering over 100mb I think.

We live in the age of PC' s and laptops, everyone has one, but yet the only company that did anything about this was virgin.

I would go with virgin, but I pay 70.00 for everything with sky, and if I left to get Virgin I would be paying more as sky have given me a good deal I think.

I went to take up a pack with virign but they failed to call me back, and when I called back to take the offer, there was no notes of the deal we discussed and the sales person would not honour, and said i would have never been offered that price.

So didnt bother, if they want to treat new customers like this.

Then a manager called me back to say she will offer what I was first offered, but it was 100.00 per month not 6 months half price, and she again almost called me a liar and said I would have not been offered 6 months half price.

So I am with sky still, and will make due with my Unlimited download 12mb.

 

[bigblue235]

I'm moving to a new flat next month. As it's a whole new development, Jersey Telecom took the opportunity to run fibre to it. They're now running a trial, which I've missed out on (grrrr!), which is theoretically capable of 1Gb connections.

As much as I'd have liked to take part in the trial, the normal price is supposedly going to be about £100 per month and I couldn't come close to justifying that. I would maybe pay it for 1 month just to have a play, but somehow I don't think that will be an option!

 

[DIB]

I was already on the VIP package with Virgin which included 20Mb broadband. They offered me an upgrade to 50Mb plus the Sky Movie and Sport HD channels for an extra £5 a month so I went with it. When the new contract came it turns out I'm actually paying £1 a month less than I was before, which was nice.

I've had NTL/Virgin broadband for a number of years now and its been really reliable, not had any issues at all.

.

 

[Red Dragon]

Just done a quick online test of my Vodafone braodband speed and it's coming out at 7.01Mb/s download speed and 0.42Mb/s upload speed. not sure what that means, but compaired to some of the figures above, I'm guessing it's pretty average...looking forward to Upc getting their hi-speed fibre optic network setup in our area (Co Meath, Ireland)

 

[nads]

I pay for 11 up and 11 down.

 

[f1only]

Thats mine i pay for a 50mb Virgin line, i'm in Aylesbury & around 20 miles from the server.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1177476571.png

Thats the hard wired speed, it's around 10% slower on my wireless.