Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply <helbig@astro.multiclothesvax.de> wrote:
> I've read something about "1 MB per minute", presumably in both
> directions. With ADSL, the bottleneck will be the upstream rate. For
> 128 kb/s, which is 16 kB/s, one minute would be 960 kB, or almost a MB.
> So, 128 kB/s is cutting it pretty close. Even if the 1 MB/s is the
> I'm in Germany. What are the speeds available in the UK? Here for a
> long time ADSL was 768/128 (with 384/64 in rural areas occasionally),
> but about a year ago this moved to 1024/128. About 6 months ago
> 2048/256 and 3084/384 became available in addition, with optional
> increased upstream speeds of 384 and 512 available as an option. A
> couple of months ago, 3084/384 was replaced with 6016/512 (with no
> faster upstream available).
I don't think 128K upstream is available.
Commonly available speeds are .5/1/2M down, 256K up.
There are also a comparatively few companies offering higher upstreams.
> What are prices like in the UK? Here, one pays separately for the "DSL
> connection" and the "internet connection". The former is EUR 16.99,
> 19.99 or 24.99 per month depending on speed (these are prices from
> Deutsche Telekom, but what little competition exists is roughly the same
> price) and the latter can be had for EUR 5--10 per month, depending on
> location (NOT from Deutsche Telekom, but from several other companies;
> Deutsche Telekom is much more expensive). This is with the connection
> over the telephone line.
You pay for the BT phone line, as if it was a normal phone line.
On top of this, you pay an ISP of your choice from 15euro up to around
60 euro.
See
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/
There is also LLU, Local Loop Unbundled operators, who you pay the line
rental to, and they supply both phone and ADSL service. Bulldog are one of
these.
This means that your ISP can now screw up your phone line, if you choose this
route, but in some cases can give higher speeds than BT will on a given
line.
For non-LLU ISPs, the big cost is bandwidth over BTs 'central pipe' service
from the ISPs NOC to the customers who may be on any BT exchange.
This is rather expensive, a 512K user maxing out their connection
can cost the ISP well over 200 euro/month.
Hence, caps are present in some form on many ISPs.