Network management Toolkit

Story: 24Mbps broadband arrives in the UK

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I for one welcome BeThere & their 24Mbit service to the UK market. Many of my friends from Stockholm have been making me green with envy at having this level of price/performance service for years. It is high time some new operators shook up the UK market; too many white elephants have left us artificially behind the technology curve.

I think Easynet are an excellent company; but everyone needs competition. BeThere are the same people who delivered the Stockholm 24Mbit service, so for my money actually have a stronger track-record than Easynet in walking the walk rather than talking the talk. Spin-doctors have a way of taking their downsides and turning into what sounds like upsides :)

Having said that, we use Easynet as corporate ISP, and are happy with them there. At home, I am hoping to migrate off the damn Bulldog 'service' to BeThere as soon as the LLU migration plans have been worked out. I really don't want to have to install a BT phone line again just to get off Bulldog!!

Talking of white elephants, that is an artificial barrier to consumers choice of provider. With the technology evolving so fast in VoIP these days I really don't see much point in paying BT or anyone else for POTS service. Sure; I'll pay for the copper-line (as an embedded part of the DSL cost), but don't make me pay a monthly 'service-fee' for something I don't want! As part of LLU, I would welcome regulatory pressure to let consumers make such choices. In practise today this isn't possible - to my knowledge you can't get ADSL from anyone without having a current POTS line. I believe the french (for once) are ahead of us in that respect.

I do understand why the POTS number is used - it is the easiest way for normal punters to identify the line going to their residence. However, I'm sure BT must have another way of identifying the actual copper-line pair going to our residences (probably something like exchange-number combined with line-pair number); surely this identifier could be exposed to the world at large? If BT were to be split up like British Gas were; the phone-line equivalent of Transco would be providing this service.

Closing remark: my mother, who lives in the sticks in Denmark, is about to have fiber optic cable pulled past her front-door. She lives in a small community of 150-200 people; 10km from nearest town. Small-town councils have obviously identified knowledge-workers as worth investing to retain as tax income sources.

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