By Natasha Lomas, 1 February 2008 14:50
NEWS
Broadband Britain has never had it so good with fat pipes cheaper and faster than ever.
Average broadband costs have dropped 36 per cent in the last four years, according to price comparison site uSwitch.
Back in 2004, customers could expect to pay an average of £27 per month for a less-than-fat 0.5Mbps connection. Now the majority have signed up to packages with speeds of up to 8Mbps at an average monthly cost of just £17.
The list from A to Z
Click on the links below to find out more...
A is for ADSL
B is for BT
C is for Cable & Wireless
D is for Dial-up
E is for Education
F is for Fibre
G is for Goonhilly
H is for HSDPA
I is for In-flight
J is for Janet
K is for Kingston
L is for Landlines
M is for Murdoch
N is for Next generation
O is for Ofcom
P is for Power lines
Q is for Quad-play
R is for Remote working
S is for Satellite phones
T is for Trains
U is for Unbundling
V is for VoIP
W is for WiMax
X is for Xbox
Y is for YouTube
Z is for Zombies
The most expensive standalone 8Mbps package is currently offered by Orange at £20 per month, while the cheapest is Plusnet's bargain basement tenner-a-month ticket.
When it comes to connection speeds, cable broadband provider Virgin Media's planned 50Mbps rollout - set to be available to some nine million homes by the end of the year - is keeping it at the head of the field (its current top speed offering is 20Mbps).
But other companies are also looking at boosting the UK's fat pipes by laying fibre cabling in sewers - which could realise connection speeds of up to 100Mbps.
Nearly 15 million households in the UK are spending more than £3bn on their broadband, according to uSwitch.
Broadband analyst Point Topic estimates broadband penetration will hit 19 million households by 2012 - or 74 per cent of the country.
The analyst said the UK's telecoms landscape is set for "enormous change", with the rollout of BT's 21CN all-IP next-gen network this year.
21CN, which is due to reach almost 10 million Brits by the end of 2008 provided it doesn't slip behind schedule, will give a boost to broadband services by enabling cheaper and more flexible offerings, said Point Topic.
A recent O2 Broadband survey found slow connection speeds top the list of frustrations for the UK's fat pipe consumers.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
but compared to the rest of the world we are still being ripped off for a substandard service
2. Roger Huffadine
The problem is still poor core network performance - yesterday I got frustrated with e-bay so ran an analysis - only to discover that the cumulative packet errors in the core networks between me and e-bay was 200%.
3. Simon
What a load of fertiliser !
"The most expensive standalone 8Mbps package is currently offered by Orange at £20 per month ..."
Rubbish. There are 'up to 8M' packages for more than that - mostly from the smaller providers that understand the concept of customers getting pissed off if they can't get any data through their ISPs over congested backhaul. I pay about £24/mo for my broadband, but I get decent transfer rates even at peak times ! If you want to be really pedantic, I believe we pay something in exess of £900/mo for a 6M line at work - but that is uncontended and uncapped.
here we have YET ANOTHER "isn't it wonderful how cheap it's getting" article about Broadband that completely fails to mention that it's mostly so cheap is because the ISPs are marketing on price and forgetting the quality. We need more articles on why "cheap is bad" because it simply makes the product crap - and because of the fixation on cheap (and lies), it's hard for an honest ISP to market on quality.
4. GALLEY SLAVE#41
PROMISES AND DELIVERY ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
LETS WAIT AND SEE AND NOT BE TAKEN IN BY THE HYPE.
MIGHT BE BETTER IF WE ONLY PAID FOR WHAT WE GET!
5. Mike McNamara
You paint a rosy picture of UK broadband today, the reality I'm afraid is far from that.
Yes there are some good packages about and yes there are some fast speeds about, but what is missing is the joining up all those good packages and all those fast speeds across a UK wide infrastructure to ensure that everyone has access to the same deals.
Unless the UK government takes this 'bull' by the horns and gets down to financing an immediate nationwide broadband infrastructure upgrade (the commercial companies cannot or will not do it) then the UK will end up with another postcode lottery, only instead of the NHS, it will be Broadband.
Nice to live in Wales for 21CN, but here in Reading I think it arrives in 2010!
It's also not just about speed. ISP broadband support is at best appalling and at worst - well the phone just does not get answered!! My ISP should have been paying me for the technical assistance and feedback I had to give them to get then to fix 'my' broadband service.
Well I suppose it is now steady and giving me a constant 4.0 MB's, but no where near the 'up to 8mb' that so many ISP's like to quote and I'd like to have!