Broadband Britain has never had it so good with fat pipes cheaper and faster than ever.
Average broadband costs have dropped 36 percent in the past 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 most expensive standalone 8Mbps package is currently offered by Orange at £20 per month, while the cheapest is Plusnet's £10-a-month ticket.
When it comes to connection speeds, cable broadband provider Virgin Media's planned 50Mbps rollout &mash; 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 a total of more than £3bn on broadband, according to uSwitch.
Broadband analyst Point Topic estimates broadband penetration will hit 19 million households by 2012, or 74 percent of the country.
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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.
Talkback
What is the point in ramping up the speeds and lowering the costs when so many of the services are ridiculously unreliable? And when they do work, the majority seem to be "capped" or "shaped", reducing the amount you can download anyway.
And should something go wrong, you're on a 25p/min upwards call to a guy behind a desk in Bangalore who keeps you on the telephone for 15 minutes getting you to send PINGs while ignoring you telling him that there are no lights on your cable modem so there can't be a connection to PING-test.
Businesses should start investing in reliability and cheap support for their existing networks instead of simply trying to convince people that their 20Mb capped/shaped/unreliable connection is better than someone else's 2Mb always-up/uncapped one. Honesty in advertising would be a great start, but seeing as the advertising watchdogs don't seem to be particularly interested in the broadband comms sector, I can't see anything being done soon.
The unreliability is caused by the big FOUR trying to put too many customers onto an antiquated network that is at least 5 years out of date.
They also traffic shape to allow an even distribution of bandwidth (So they say....I for one do not believe that is quite the case) for all customers.
They also blame slow speeds on minority of heavy users. Is this ture or is it they don't want to invest in new hardware. And also invest is better 'Customer Service'. The answer from so many forums is 'NO'.
You have to ask the question of the advertising used; upto 8Mbs depending on length of line and how good the line is. In fact of point is that the maximum speed of a dsl 8Mbs is 7.1Mbs. No matter how close you are to the main exchange, you will never get 8Mbs.
It would appear that the big FOUR are out to make as much money as possible, at the expense of their customers.
Are OFCOM doing anything? it seems not. If they are? they are dragging their heels in getting anything done. OFCOM seem to be happy to waste the tax payers money on setting up this and that committee. Instead of reprimanding the ISPs that flout the law in this country.
I've been using the Internet for pleasure and work for more than ten years. And the service has gradually gotten worse in that time.
The question on my mind is, what are the authorities going to do about it and when?
Its all well and good for the government to say we must have a free market and that the ISPs should govern themselves. Its the governments responsibility to issue certain parameters that the ISPs must follow and adhere to. Otherwise these cowboy activities will continue unabated.