Virgin Broadband

[pr2thej]

The new 50 Mbps service will cost £51 a month, although this is reduced to £35 if users also take a Virgin Phone line for an additional £11 a month.

The service will put Virgin at the top of the speed league for UK ISPs.

Close behind is Be Broadband which offers at 24Mbps service for £17.50 per month.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7776139.stm

Just to share the stupidity of British Journalism. Apparantly 24Mbps is "close behind" 50Mbps.
Is anyone picking up this service? Do you anticipate improved performance?
I have a 16Mbps connection on a 5.5Mbps line and honestly i cannot see how my latency could noticably improve. I fail to see the application of 50Mbps aside from if you were downloading 24/7 in which case you would just be hit with a FUP.

 

[jamesgoddard]

Virgin never cut you off completely - the worst they do is throttle you by 75% - so if you were a 24/7 download user the 25% of 50M (ie 12.5M) is still not bad huh...

 

[jamesgoddard]

BTW how do you have a 16mbs connection on a 5.5mbs line... Do you just have a 5.5mbs connection???

 

[llama_man]

I think he means that the service he's signed up for is up to 16Mbps, but he is restricted by the capacity of his line connection (presumably a phone line) at 5.5Mbps.

 

[pr2thej]

ya, sorry for the confusing wording. I pay O2 £10 a month for a 16Mbps service, of which i recieve 5.5Mbps due to my distance from the exhange and whatnot. Should probably look at downgrading to 8Mbps but it only saves £2.50 a month.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

Get yourself some lovely fiberoptic goodness.

 

[pr2thej]

But whyyyyy?
Its not as if Pr0n takes forever to dl, and games use small packets. Seems like a gimmick to me, albeit a very impressive one.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

Photons are faster then electrons.