On 22/01/2011 15:50, Norman Dunbar wrote:
Hi Rich,
What amazes me is how they can still claim up to 8Mbps service when the
vast majority of houses (except in cities) seem to get a lot less -
Welcome to the worldo slightly unscientific claims. Much loved by the
"woo" trade in health supliments, and Gillian McKeith, Patrick Holford
etc - who use words to con people into parting with their hard earned
cash for little or no benefit in return.
Read Ben Goldacre's blog (Bad Science) or better still, his book.
Basically, "up to" means anything from minus infinity through to the
quoted figure. Only one person needs to get the quoted figure to make it
accurate and all the rest who get less are still "legally" covered
because they are in the "up to" band.
It's a con. Much like hard disc manufacturers quoting Gigabytes when
they really mean gigabytes. 1024*1024*1024 seems to be quoted but actual
capacity is less as they are talking about 1000*1000*1000.
Advertising - legal lies!
Cynic? Me? But of course!
after all my 8Mbps which is promised by Talk Talk / Sky / Orange etc
Remember, 8 Mbps is not promised, only "up to" - that's the con.
<SNIP>
Sorry - enough of a rant just somedays I wish we could have just
installed a massive QL network between all the houses!
Isn't there a limit of 64 devices on a QL network?
Cheers,
Norman.
Hee hee - I don't mind advertising cynics.. I understand about the
advertised "up to" but more my point is that if someone next door to the
exchange can get 8Mbps, someone 3Km drops to 0.5Mbps - I feel sorry for
the large number of people who must live 5Km+ from the exchange - surely
they must be on less than the old 33.6K dial up speed if 8Mbps can drop
by 1/16 in 3Km (using a straight line graph, that gives a drop of 1/256
over 6Km) - now surely something is amiss if the loss of speed is not
based on a straight line graph.
I think a lot of it boils down to the rusty old BT phone lines, which no
amount of unbundling of the local network will overcome (as no-one else
is going to replace the BT phone lines). I also know about the
contention rations (1:50 on ADSL), which means I could be sharing
whatever line speed I get with another 49 households. Maybe the
government could give rural communities a boost by insisting that the
contention ratio is reduced once the line speed drops below 2Mbps so
that you get a 1:12 contention ratio (1/50th of 8Mbps is roughly 1/12th
of 2Mbps).
That might then improve line speeds on an evening when more people are
sharing the bandwidth. After all ADSL2+ "will probably not
significantly increase the speed when you are this far from the
exchange" and I can't see BT ever getting around to laying BT infinity
in rural areas - especially when such a large percentage of the
population no longer rent the line from BT.
At least the QL network could handle 64 households on the same loop
(back on track tentatively) !
--
Rich Mellor
RWAP Services
http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk
http://www.rwapservices.co.uk
-- Try out our new site: http://sellmyretro.com
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