Broadband 'Connected Britain' Is Rubbish

I am currently uploading a 120mb MIR Show video at the whopping WHOPPING average speed of 18.5k per second. Fluck all use that ‘cloud’ is when I’m whizzing away at 18.5k/sec.

In fact thinking back about 15 years ago, if I was lucky, I got similar speeds on my 56k modem.

I’m using an 8mb ‘high speed’ British Telecom broadband connection.

If you get a brochure from BT any time soon talking about their 21CN network — the fabled brilliance that will connect us all with gigabyte speeds — please do send it to BT Centre, Newgate Street, with a note attached with words to the effect ‘stick it up your arse jumper.’

Can we just do a test here? Across the comments today, there’s been a number of readers giving examples of their slow slow connections (that are meant to be super fast).

Could you please respond telling me what average upload /download speeds you’re getting and what connection you actually are meant to have?

Don’t do one of those broadband speed tests. I want to know real life, real examples. Take a 100mb file and upload it to Vimeo — during the upload it gives you a throughput stat. I’d like to see just how bad (or good) it is.

I know that Ben Smith has a lightning fast Be Unlimited connection in West London.

But in Billericay, Essex, we’ve got shit.

Witness, for example, this comment from Dominic Travers:

I Currently live in Bristol and can get O2/Be ADSL2+, which is exactly what BT aim to have rolled out nation wide by 2011 as the culmination of their 21CN project to make Britain world leaders in IP based communication technology. 15 months ago when I first signed up to the service it was pretty good, 16Mbps down and 1.3Mbps up. For at least the last 6 months the O2 box in my local exchange has been full to bursting and the thoughput can only be described as dismal. I can still get the maximum speeds once a connection is established, but the latency in ordinary browsing the internet is abysmal now I am on the max contention ratio.

If this is as good as UK domestic broadband is going to get we’re doomed.

Rubbish.

Absolute unmitigated rubbish.

We can’t do better than this?

And if we can’t get the sodding FIXED connections working, what hope have we got of making it work whilst mobile?