Posts Tagged ‘broadband’

Orange really wind me up…

December 28th, 2009

So as you probably know, I recently built my own computer. It’s all going brilliantly. Except from one thing…

Orange are a little bit annoying sometimes. In fact, they aren’t what you’d call an A* ISP. Their router is a little shabby (it can’t decide whether it prefers English or French, and it often forgets that it has ever been turned on), and their customer service isn’t brilliant either.

However, the one thing that annoys me most of all is the poor management of bandwidth usage. It’s a pain. I know that Orange seem to provide 40GB of monthly usage but they give you no means whatsoever of monitoring how much bandwidth you have consumed in one month.

Then, they say that if you use more than 40GB a month they’ll send you a warning and then cut your speed to 512kbps!! What the hell? They won’t let you monitor your bandwidth but they’ll send you a letter if you go in the slightest over 40GB.

And then if you fail to lower your usage after that, they’ll cut your connection!

Frankly, I’d rather pay a little extra per month than have my speed throttled if I go over my usage. Doesn’t that seem like the more sensible thing to do from a company point of view? They make a little more money rather than loosing a customer.

Honestly I think Orange are making big mistakes and ripping us off. Bethere do unlimited 8MB broadband for £13.50 per month on a shorter contract (12 months, compared to Orange’s 18 months) and there’s no set limit on how much you can use per month!

Come on Orange, this is rubbish!

Sod the Digital Britain broadband tax – mobile broadband is the way forward

December 15th, 2009

Earlier today I was thinking about the benefits (if any) of the 50p phone line tax. There clearly aren’t any.

And then it made me think. Why the hell is the government trying to make us pay phone line tax when it’s become very clear the way forward is mobile broadband – not landline broadband?

I only realised today, but the 50p phone line tax is a total load of rubbish, because statistics have shown mobile broadband is rapidly becoming more popular and at this rate mobile broadband will overtake landline broadband in a very small amount of time.

To be totally honest, I think the 50p phone line tax is a waste of money and it, frankly, will get the country nowhere. In ten years time I suspect our mobile broadband networks will be huge and everybody will be using their phones or minuscule laptops to browse the network wherever they are. Why should the government make us pay a tax that nobody seems to agree with? There’s no evidence whatsoever that the tax will get Britain anywhere and there are too many people who are against it. What is going on?

Could 150Mbps broadband be on the way next?

December 15th, 2009

ISPReview UK has reported that O2 have successfully trialled 150Mbps broadband in the Slough area of the UK.

This is great news because this means that we could be seeing extremely high broadband speeds within the region of 150-200Mbps by the end of 2010. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

However, it’s not all good news quite yet. For starters, the tests weren’t conducted with a large number of people so (as ISPReview says) it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll be getting 150Mbps speeds if the bandwidth has to be split between several customers.

On the bright side, it would be nice to be seeing my download speed in the hundreds of Mbps. It’s about time our broadband speeds rose – I’ve been coping on 2Mbps broadband for years now.

Ah well, we’ll just have to see how this progresses. It looks like we could be getting some nice new technological services next year – not least with this faster broadband and Freeview HD.