By Jo Best, 9 November 2005 13:25
NEWS
UK Online has become the first ISP in the UK to roll out its ADSL2+ network nationally, promising speeds of up to 22Mbps.
The service will be available for £29.99 per month in most urban areas, UK Online said, although customers will need to buy a specialised ADSL2+ compatible modem for £79.99 and pay a one-off connection charge of £25 - bucking the trend of free modem giveaways among mainstream ISPs.
While the popularity of super high-speed services with consumers is yet to be proven, a 22Mbps service will certainly prove popular with Sky, which bought UK Online's parent company Easynet in October of this year.
Ian Fogg, analyst at JupiterResearch, said the switch to ADSL2+, which was announced prior to the acquisition, will have been one of the reasons Sky found Easynet an attractive buy.
Fogg said: "To offer the kind of services Sky are looking at offering at the end of 2006 and in 2007, Sky need to have the fastest network possible."
UK Online's announcement follows a spate of news from fellow ISPs looking to boost broadband speeds. Zen and Wanadoo, among others, have opted for local loop unbundling to deliver speeds of up to 8Mbps.
ISP Be was the first to launch 24Mbps using ADSL earlier this year, although only within the London area.
Analysts have speculated that the high-speed revolution may end up being a very localised phenomenon. A research note published last month from broadband watchers Point Topic said speeds of 24Mbps will only be available to homes and businesses within 300 metres of a telephone exchange, with speeds dropping as the distance from an exchange increases.
Point Topic said in the note: "ADSL2+ high-speed services will be unavailable to a large percentage of the population unless and until there is some major investment in extending fibre deeper into BT's access network."
Comments
There are 12 comments. Join the discussion
1. Chris Brown
lets get contention issues in the network sorted out before overloading it with more traffic. Contention kills my 2Mb ADSL connection most of the time and its just going to get worse. BT needs an overhaul.
2. Steve Hemingway
Exactly! Data speed is not a problem, it is the overselling of capacity. I had to give up my 2MBit 'user' service from NTL because it was unuseable becaues of contention. I replaced it with a 0.5MBit 'business' service from NTL, hoping that the (undisclosed) contention ratios would be better. They are, and the access speed is better, but only because (I suspect) the service is unpopular and NTL haven't found enough <del>mug punters</del> customers to sign up for the business broadband service yet.
3. Mark Hudson
It's hardly "nationwide". Some careful interpretation of press releases should be used.
Looking at their coverage list on
http://www.ukonline.net/broadband/exchangelist.php
There are big urban areas not covered. For example, Brighton, Northampton, Peterborough, Ipswich, Norwich, Swindon & Preston are all examples of large urban areas in England not mentioned. There's not a single place in Wales mentioned, not even the capital city Cardiff. In Scotland, unless you live in Edinburgh or Glasgow there's no service, so large urban areas such as Livngstone, Dumfries and Aberdeen are not mentioned.
So please, less of the faithful belief in press releases about the word "nationwide"!
4. Richard Taylor
My experience as a domestic user is that many of the remote sites which I visit impose a transfer limit below my 2Mbps download speed. A few sites will consistently supply data at my full bandwidth, but most do not. I doubt whether I would notice much difference in performance if I had a 24 or 24Mbps connection rather than my current 2Mbps.
5. Cliff Surgeoner
22Mbps fine, but what about the uplink speed? VoIP (which is being taken up rapidly by businesses using broadband) would benefit more from improving upload speeds.
6. Dixon Jones
I agree with Chris - contention ratios are the delimiting factor now, not speed. 22MB Broadband sounds great, but Contention ratios even with lower speeds are 250 or even 500 to 1! When I looked at my choices I went with a 50:1 contention ratio. Sadly, there was nothing in the small print to suggest it would stay that way.
Contention ratio is not a difficult concept for the consumer - if they realized it was a factor.
7. anonymous
As a home user i would find it hard to justify the extra cost, also would you notice the speed difference to a 2Mb connection. Any home user who goes for a 22Mb conection must be seriously lacking in some area's. You can only download as fast as the server you are connected to will allow. I have to admit that the difference between 512K and 2M is hard to notice at home.
As for business surly the contention ratio is much more important than speed. We upgraded from a 2Mb Adsl to a 2Mb Sdsl (only company on the exchange with Sdsl) and the difference was very noticable (speed and quality of service).
You have to ask if this is a number game, the higher the number the better it is allegedly, how about advertising the contention ratio instead, see how many people go for a higher contention ratio. Those who know will go for the lowest possible.
8. martyn
Ho Ho Ho
It won't be xmas stocking it will be a bad case of indigestion for Rupert if he thinks they will deliver this nationwide
9. Chris Brown
Cliff has a point - upload bandwidth would also be useful if not so much for voip (requiring only 10k or so) but for the transfer of large files and also the hosting of content. Contention has to be no1 in my book though.
Anyway back to uni tommorow where we have a 100Mb pipe right to my room. I can get 8MB/s at times :)
10. Mike Doyle
Many of our customers are still unable to get even 2Mb connectivity. We offered free upgrades to 2Mb when BT rolled out the last lot of upgrades, but after the problems experienced by huge numbers of users BT downgraded the bandwidth they would support. My own domestic line will only support 1Mb and I am only 2 miles from the main telephone exchange. What is the point of offering a very fast service when the basic infrastructure in the UK is not up to the job.
11. dave livsey
great for those who are able to get 22meg, it would be far better if BT spent more money on getting at least 2meg to rural users who yet again are forgotten.
12. Hid S
I have just got the 22mb connection from UKOnline.
Basically, u get about less than that... i get a 16 mb connection and my mate who has the same service, gets about 14 mb.
Point is tho, an unlimited 2mb connection with a decent ISP is about £22-25 a month (ie AOL doesn't count).
The so-called 22 mb conn is £29.
Uk Online support is some of the worst support I have ever come across (and I've dealt with NTL!!!) but once it's up and running, u just hope u never have to contact them.
As for the guy who said that u must be lacking in some areas to want 22 mb?
Why is that?
What's wrong with wanting to download your tunes (from legit sources obviously) quicker? What's wrong with me downloading my Adobe Illustrator CS2 Trial quicker?
Oh, I get 760kbps upload speed as well. That lets me do VoIP laughably well. In fact, I can do pretty damn good video as well. Use a decent Polycom codec and half meg upload speed will show remarkable results.
Don't tell me, you're gonna say, who needs 1 Gb of RAM? In the old days, we could program Asteroids in 1k of RAM on the ZX 80....