For £24 a month customers of broadband provider Be are being offered a download speed of up to 24 megabits, three times that available from closest rivals UK Online, Bulldog and Homechoice and 12 times that on offer from BT and Wannadoo.
The bandwidth offered by the new service will be enough to allow consumers to stream two high definition TV channels through their computer simultaneously, while they surf their internet or make voice calls.
The service will also allow customers to upload information onto the internet at a speed of up to 1.3 megabits – five times quicker than any other service on the market.
Boy, am I jealous! I pay the equivalent of £40 a month for 3.5 megabits max.
Customers would be provided with a “Be Box”, a wireless router including two phone ports, and that the company planned to later offer voice over internet protocol (VoIP) which would allow people to make calls using their computers.
“Be is relatively pioneering when you consider people are still announcing one meg unlimited broadband and we are making available up to 24meg connections at only just over twice the price,” he said.
“What we’re trying to be competitive on is not necessarily the price, though, but the technology.”
It’s heartwarming to see our competitive marketplace keeping the US in the forefront of technology. We’ll probably see the FCC and Congress offer up legislation making this illegal unless offered by our Telcos, first.
“the new service will be enough to allow consumers to stream two high definition TV channels.”
I’m guessing Charter and Comcast are working on exactly that. But then again, under the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act they’ll be able to block such services that could interfere with their gravy movie on demand services.
So in other words, even when we get such awesome broadband in the US, we won’t be able to use it for anything useful.
I pay £36.5 (USD$65.50) a month for what is advertised by Comcast as a 384k/4meg cable connection while the actual speed is 137k/799k . But I do not see this changing, between the hidden taxation of franchise fees ( Muncipal group increases them, then bills go up, wonderful huh?) and the power that cable firms have I doubt we will see this change.
My cable connection;
-Times out pings 17% of the time to its own mail and web servers
-Completely disconnects me (for a period of over 20 seconds) an average of 4 times an hour
-I get regular downtimes run from 3 hours to 3 days.
-When service is out they are incapable of providing support within 24 hours.
-Each time I call them I get the same scripted garbage from the first 2-3 tiers of support before I get one capable person.
-Their tracking system appears to lose cases older than a few months so if you have problems on a consistant basis they have probable deniability since they cannot seem to find past work perfomed.
My only alternative is SBC/Yahoo and their DSL standards in my community are as low as those maintained by Comcrap. Not to mention which I have to pay for a land line number that I would never use, which makes their price the same as Comcasts. At least the worthless 25 channels I have to tack on from comcast provides some entertainment value to my children. No other competition is allowed and with the common carrier rules being laid down, and the ability to fight municiple access by the cable companies, I will never have another choice for service.
So I watch as people all over the world get better service, speed, and costs, and I realize that the US is heading towards a Soviet style situation where only our military will keep us being considered first world, and between Clinton and the Bushes, our military is not half as effective as it was in 1990.
Fishy — you’re comparing apples and oranges. Unless I misread the article, Be is offering their service over copper. Phone lines will suffice. You wouldn’t need fibre.
Anyone on east side of the pond have more techie info?
Thanks Eideard, sometimes it pays to read the article. That’s great news that they were able to get such incredible bandwidth over copper!