Husky Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 just got this message from my broadband provider We have good news for you. Your telephone line is in an area that can now benefit from our new broadband network (this is known as 21CN). Over the past year we have been trialling this new broadband network and our trials have now completed. The main advantage of this network is that it will help to offer better performance for all of our customers. We will be switching your service over to this new network and there will be no need to change any settings on your ADSL modem/router. You will remain on the same 'up to 8Mbps' speeds that you have currently but are likely to see a better broadband performance. The change is free of charge and there will be no other changes to your existing broadband account, contract or usage allowance. We expect this to happen within the next 5 weeks. sounds nice of them does anyone know what this is about, not like them to give me something for nothing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 mine was upgraded last week from 2.5mb to 7mb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rtbiscuit Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 it will be as BT are slowly upgrading all its old copper phone lines to fibre optics. among other things. you even find you can now get virgin broadband. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BulletMagnet Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 BT sent me an upgrade letter too. gone from 7.4mb to 16mb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rtbiscuit Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 BT sent me an upgrade letter too.gone from 7.4mb to 16mb nothing like that for me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinmac Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 As I remember BT were being slated as their speeds were well down on what they claimed. As BM says the upgrading of the networks is increasing the speed and they started a campaign to publicise it. Everyone else then claims theirs is faster. I have a new dongle ( down Nixy) and that has the usual GPRS, 3G and HDSPA but now also has HDSUPA. Makes very little difference though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neilp Posted April 19, 2010 Share Posted April 19, 2010 ive got virgin fibre optics. runnin 20mbit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Husky Posted April 20, 2010 Author Share Posted April 20, 2010 fibre optic is the only way to go! dont have it here yet, untill they run sewers first i dont think we will get that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Yes, 21CN (century network) is the rolling out of fibre optic connections. My understanding is that they are replacing all the copper pair wiring with fibre lines, starting by doing the main exchanges to local boxes, and then at some point the local boxes to houses. Also branded as BT Infinity if you want to google it. I can get it in my area, but only from BT which means paying an extra tenna a month, and it will up my speeds to 15MBps. My friend is a lucky sod, his house is a stones throw from his local exhange, has done the upgrade and has 40MBps! Grrrrr! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beavis Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Running 20mb virgin here. Might go to the 50mb service soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Oh and another thing to note for the geeks out there is that 21CN will move voice services off PSTN and onto IP based services, freeing up yet more bandwidth on the local phone networks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 The upgrade to 21cn is actually a lot of different things grouped together. The broadband segment is the rollout of ADSL2+. This still uses the coper wires as before, but newer technology means you can now get up to 24mb speeds on the same network. Dont get too excited though, the major increases in speed are only going o be noticed if you are very close to the exchange. Those with line lengths of 2500m or closer will be the ones who see the most drmatic increases. This all depends on whether tyour ISP passes on the speeds for free too... We are all probably now on a "up to 8mb" product. As that is the max speed on the current ADSL product. If we get a bump to 24mb, the ISP could always cap our speed at 8mb on the "up to 8mb" product, and then sell a whole new product of "up to 24mb"... Until BT bring down the costs of their capacity based charges (I think its about £1.3M per year for a 622mbs pipe) then expect to see either usage caps, speed restrictions or selective port speed restrictions in order to cope. People claim they have "unlimited" packages - but it is simply impossible. A 622mbps pipe will only allow about 26 people with a 24mb connection to have full speed permanently. Unless ISPs are going to charge £50k a year for a 24mb connection then you cannot guarantee a customer full line speed 24 hours a day. They have to put many more customers on that line, knoiwing that they probably wont all use it at the same time etc.. 24mb speeds will only make the problem worse. on a 6mb connection, at peak times someone may get 5mb, so not that much of a slow down, and its accetable to the user. Now if they suddenly get a speed increase to 20mb, it wont suddenly increase the size of the BT pipe/s that the ISP has, so you will probably find that same 5mb at peak times. Now 5mb when you can get 20 at other times of the day certainly will raise questions. I will be very interested to see the fallout from this when everyone gets faster technology, but the ISP capacity remains the same.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Husky Posted April 20, 2010 Author Share Posted April 20, 2010 the frustrating thing is that using something i cant remember the acronym for my line splits through my neighbours (two lines through one wire) so BOOOOOO its always going to be cack when they log on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s1xtyn1n3 Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Running 20mb virgin here. Might go to the 50mb service soon. it is the absolute business I found 21CN highly disappointing, went from 6.5mb DOWN to 5mb. It was quite early on though so there might have been technical issues with it back then. Either way, 21CN looks like dial up now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixy Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 My telephone exchange is still a shed but I seem to get good service with BT unlike others i've used in the past. Expensive in comparison though and as i'm not unlimited I got stung for extra on the bill this quarter presumably for watching I player which i didn't think counted when it was streaming now downloading but apparently it does! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Holy bejebus! I would kill for a download speed like that. Whats the pings like on it though - thats the more important one for me given my gaming activities Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s1xtyn1n3 Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 depends what i'm doing. the speedtest shows it to be quite high as london is a reasonable distance from here and is the only place that i've found that i can test up to 50mb. Gaming is superb though; Counterstrike tends to be about 5-15ms for most UK servers. I almost never get lag on xbox live and if I do, it's always because some chump on the other end has a terrible connection. The beauty of the 50Mb connection is that it's completely uncapped and unthrottled. BBC iPlayer HD is instantaneous, as is loading web pages. Downloading stuff is really where it's at though. I've had download speeds of 5.4MB/s (~5530KB/s) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixy Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 does xbox live eat into your download limit if you have one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Id have it tomorrow if it was in my area, but I doubt that will happen any time this millenium. Its an even worse case in Chesterfield borough councils area (which Im now not in). They allowed NTL to lay cable for a while, but then ran into an issue whereby council tennants were refusing houses because they werent in a cable area. Rather than the council giving these layabout chumps a kick up the jacksie as they were getting a house for free anyway, they instead told NTL (and now Virgin I believe) that they cannot lay any cable in any "private" areas of Chesterfield until all the areas with council houses are connected. Needless to say NTL, and now Virgin have told them to shove it up their backside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 does xbox live eat into your download limit if you have one? Yes. Depends how much it is used, and also if any downloadable content (maps, cars, tracks etc etc) is purchased. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixy Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 well that bloody explains a lot then!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s1xtyn1n3 Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 does xbox live eat into your download limit if you have one? It does, but it doesn't use very much. Even if you have it running 3 hours a day, every day, you'd struggle to rack up too much usage. Most people report it uses aprox 50MB per hour but that's obviously an approx figure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixy Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 mm, i need to rethink the whole broadband provider thing when i move house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s1xtyn1n3 Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Id have it tomorrow if it was in my area, but I doubt that will happen any time this millenium.That is the big problem with Virgin. Unless you're in one of the areas they put fibre in during the early 90's when it was being heavily subsidised, then you're pretty much out of luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s1xtyn1n3 Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 mm, i need to rethink the whole broadband provider thing when i move house. Either that or play the xbox less! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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