8Mbit Broadband To Become Available In The UK

26 Jan, 2005 at 11:01pm ET Article published in Tech

UK Online is offering 8Mbit broadband service to the UK.

UK Online has smashed through the Internet speed barrier with the introduction of our unique 8Mb broadband service. UK Online Broadband 8000 is available now, and for a limited time comes with a free Wireless Ethernet Router (worth £69.99)

Groundbreaking speed at a groundbreaking price

Download speeds of up to 8Mb

Upload speeds of up to 400K

Contention ratio of 33:1

Massive download allowance of up to 500GB per month

One-off set up fee of £50

Free Wireless Ethernet Router (worth £69.99)

Only £39.99 a month

Wow! Bellsouth, you have an answer for this?

Source: UK Online

Comments

26 Jan 2005 ~ 11:51pm Thrax Bandwidth caps. Lame.
27 Jan 2005 ~ 4:31am Necropolis Hang on, it has a bandwith cap of 500GB a month. And your calling that lame???
27 Jan 2005 ~ 4:55am Thrax Yes. It boils down to the principle of it all.

I don't believe bandwidth should be capped; I pay for the line, the service.. Why should I have artificial restrictions on what I'm able to do with said line?

And for the record, I have transferred 500gb in a month before.
27 Jan 2005 ~ 5:44am Geeky1 If I did the math right, that's a sustained transfer rate of 196KB/s every second of every day of a 31 day month Thrax...
27 Jan 2005 ~ 6:16am Shorty Id try my best
27 Jan 2005 ~ 6:33am Jimborae Why is this news??? Its been available for a good few months now.

What is news is that they appear to be dropping the charge for the cr@p router that they insist you buy. Back in November when I first considered switching they wanted to charge me £120 for the priveledge. £50 setup fee & £70 for the router, I said no way I'll stick with what I have thank you. They said come on it's not that much so I replied "if thats the case you won't mind dropping the charge then". There was then an uncomfortable silence while he tried to think of what to say next.

So I'll now be switching to UKOnline & cos I live just around the corner from the exchange I should get the full 8mb.
27 Jan 2005 ~ 10:09am kanezfan That's a pretty good deal even in the US isn't it?? What's 39 pounds (sorry, don't know how to get that funky L on my keyboard on this side of the pond ) in US dollars? Thrax, yes a bandwidth cap is lame, but 500GB? You know when I think about it though, you could probably get close to that and over it with 8mbps down. That would be awesome, I'm jealous now. Last week I got all excited about Comcast raising my connection from 3.0/256 to 4.0/384, doesn't seem all that great now
27 Jan 2005 ~ 10:30am FAH_WW Grrin - nope can't get it
27 Jan 2005 ~ 1:24pm GHoosdum Suddenly it all makes sense to me. Recently, one of the cable internet providers around here raised their download speed to 5Mbps. Here's an announcement about 8Mbps.

A few years ago, I thought that eventually prices of high-speed internet would be driven down. I mean, who wants to pay 40 to 50 bucks a month for an internet connection? I've been waiting for it to happen, to fall into the $20-$30 range, for a long time. It's never going to happen. The providers will continue to increase speed and claim they're providing more for the same price, but never lower the price.

Crap. I'd be totally satisfied with my 2Mbps connection at $20 per month. Instead, I'll probably wind up being 'given' a 5Mbps line soon for the same price I'm paying. :shakehead
27 Jan 2005 ~ 2:48pm Thrax

Geeky1 wrote:

If I did the math right, that's a sustained transfer rate of 196KB/s every second of every day of a 31 day month Thrax...

It was more like 400 for 15.
27 Jan 2005 ~ 5:59pm Unregistered Wow, but bandwidth caps? 500GB will never be enough in the long run. And still, no upgrade on the upload??? Atleast upgrade it a little. I'm so happy I don't have bandwidth caps and that I still have just as much upload as that plan.
27 Jan 2005 ~ 6:00pm yagga Wow, but bandwidth caps? 500GB will never be enough in the long run. And still, no upgrade on the upload??? Atleast upgrade it a little. I'm so happy I don't have bandwidth caps and that I still have just as much upload as that plan.

*The above post can be deleted if someone wants to.
27 Jan 2005 ~ 9:28pm Garg At least 500GB is manageable as a cap. Around here, the DSL is capped at 6GB a month. Altough why anyone would chose the expensive and slow DSL over cable internet here is beyond me.