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Moderate Malcolm's Mixed Model is a Muddled Mess

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 2:38 am
Post subject: Moderate Malcolm's Mixed Model is a Muddled MessReply with quote

This will, as ever, come as no surprise to people who understand economics, but the UK broadband model and the shite it feeds up is a freaking disgrace.

As Tannin has rightly explained dozens of times, when it comes to national broadband the problem isn't one of a lack of different options, it's about the provision of a minimum quality of service (QOS) at a reasonable price at a reasonable speed that can be easily increased over time along with broadband requirements. For the sane among us, that has always meant a centralised QoS guarantee through a government-backed FTP infrastructure.

Having sampled a dozen UK fixed line and mobile plans thus far in various areas from London to Reading (and if it's no good in London and Berkshire...), the quality across 24 hours at the many places I've stayed at has been a disgrace.

Forget relying on the average internet service under Moderate Malcolm's Mixed Model for anything involving economic productivity; you just stick to sending trivial, unimportant data like tweets about your new coasters or toothache, and be pleasantly surprised when they're uploaded. Turn it into a sort of a pot luck game, if that excites you. And praise the gods when you get a good run, because it will surely be balanced out by as many bad hours, if not more, tomorrow.

Oh, and no, it's not about Australia's geography as you've been told. You can throw that furphy in the bin. Next they'll be telling you it's the London fog or willy willies in the Western desert.

Nope, it's about what is still mostly a natural monopoly industry being used by a corrupt politics-business nexus to shore up the revenue streams of investment funds who don't know how to make real money off real investments. Trapping citizens in a quagmire of equally rubbish service providers, with equally rubbish service (though blessedly much shorter hold queues than Telstra's Until Jesus Returns Strategy), is a much easier way to make money when fixed investment returns are so low. It's far safer to bank on lobbying dollars and corrupt politicians than quaint notions such as "markets", whatever they were.

And don't be fooled by the choice of logos in the UK or the dazzle of new claims and marketing campaigns; these are just there to keep you thinking it's your fault that as a techno dummy you chose the wrong dish on the menu of what is otherwise a fine restaurant. There are after all, 38 other options you haven't tried yet! Just wait for that 24 month contract to run out and then make a smarter choice!

And yes, we all have friends whose service is marvelous; who've hit upon the perfect plan in the perfect spot and thus think they've just made "smarter" choices. What techno geniuses! For choosing a broadband service that vaguely works in the place they happen to live they should be given a job at Google!

I must confess the one service I haven't tried yet is fibre, which I am told by knowledgeable friends here is really good, even if harder to come by than cold beer. But then again, they think the food here "has improved a lot", so I'll hold judgement, thanks, until I cross the 23rd service off my list and move to a flat in one of the two streets in the entire UK fibre is rumoured to be offered.

Perhaps I've just had bad luck. Not to mention whoever is in charge here couldn't be half as "likeably moderate" as our Malcolm. Whatever the case, be assured that Moderate Malcolm's Mixed Model actually means "mixed quality, ranging from total shite one second, to okay the next, and then back to total shite again".

Mind you, Moderate Malcolm is right about one thing: Raping citizens trapped in a pretend market while dazzling them blind with marketing refuse is certainly a better business model than having to invest in a transparent, open industry where customers get to make rational choices.

The Guardian earlier this year wrote:
Broadband rage – symptom of a slow, patchy and expensive service

The digital age has changed the way we shop, bank and play but a rising number of consumers report being stuck with slow broadband and unable to leave costly contracts.

A home broadband service costs up to £35 a month, with consumers typically tied into 12-month contracts, but latest tests from communications regulator Ofcom show that the typical speed varies dramatically around the UK. It averages 26.4Mbps (megabits per second) in urban areas, 17.9Mbps in suburban areas and 9.9Mbps in the countryside. Many consumers, particularly those in rural and hard-to-reach locations, are stuck on speeds of less than 2Mbps.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, says: "People who are paying substantial sums for their broadband and still getting patchy internet service and lacklustre connection speeds are understandably angry.

"Since April last year there has been a 27% jump in the number of people coming in to seek help about internet and broadband issues. People living in rural areas can find unreliable internet a particular struggle. It is vital that value for money with internet costs is not an urban luxury so that everyone can freely access the online market."

The government has plans to ensure superfast broadband, typically with speeds of 30Mbps and above, reaches 95% of UK homes and businesses by 2017 after extending its deadline by two years, but some areas have little prospect of being upgraded to the new fibre optic technology in the short term.

"Installation is expensive and takes a long time," says Dominic Baliszewski, telecoms expert at broadbandchoices.co.uk. "Providers are upgrading areas that are already relatively well-connected first before turning their attention to more isolated regions."

Take Paul Bellchambers, a 55-year-old chef from Moulsford, Oxfordshire, who has been battling an average speed of 1.5Mbps in the morning, and 0.9Mbps at other times of the day with BT.

"This is just about enough for email but I wouldn't think about much else, and it's incredibly frustrating, " he says. "There's not a lot we can do as everyone around here has the same problem – it's a rural location where the infrastructure is meant to be upgraded at some stage over the next few years, but we don't have a date for this, and it's hard to believe it'll happen after so long with poor speeds.

"We are typically paying around £50 per month for our landline and internet when extra calls are included or extra broadband used," Bellchambers adds. He would like to switch provider, "but there are few options where I live, and anyway the BT contract keeps rolling over".

His is one of a number of complaints from readers facing problems with their broadband providers. Ofcom's latest report on complaints in the broadband industry named Orange/EE as the most complained about provider between July and September 2013, for the fifth consecutive quarter. The service has received double the average number of complaints from users, standing at 0.45 complaints per 1,000 customers, up from 0.32 the previous quarter. BT was the second most complained about broadband provider, again showing a significant rise over the previous quarter.

A third of people who call their broadband provider do so to complain, according to Ofcom, with speeds remaining the biggest issue for customers, followed by problems with customer service and switching packages.

Baliszewski points out that most broadband connections are still delivered through the "grindingly slow" old copper telephone network. He says: "This technology is decades old and subject to numerous shortcomings, the main one being that if your house is a long distance from the local exchange, the strength of your connection weakens, giving you a slow broadband speed.

"The old network can also experience a massive slowdown if lots of people are online – it's a little like 10 people trying to get through one door at the same time."

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/03/broadband-rage-slow-expensive-complaints

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 5:19 am
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Don't know if it comes as a surprise to people who understand economics, but having lived here for 20 of the last 23 years, it comes as a surprise to me. I have two internet providers - one in London, one in Oxford, near Reading. Both offer effectively unlimited broadband at high speeds for £25 a month, and the service is generally excellent and 99.5%+ continuous and has been so for many years, in my experience.

I'd recommend PlusNet- "no nonsense Broadband from Yorkshire", who have a proper local call centre if you have a problem.

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 4:50 pm
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Mugwump wrote:
Don't know if it comes as a surprise to people who understand economics, but having lived here for 20 of the last 23 years, it comes as a surprise to me. I have two internet providers - one in London, one in Oxford, near Reading. Both offer effectively unlimited broadband at high speeds for £25 a month, and the service is generally excellent and 99.5%+ continuous and has been so for many years, in my experience.

I'd recommend PlusNet- "no nonsense Broadband from Yorkshire", who have a proper local call centre if you have a problem.

I said it will come as no surprise to people who understand economics! Thanks for the PlusNet tip, BTW.

Lucky you, anyhow. Only your experience over the last 5-10 years of those on different infrastructures in different spots doing repeated time-critical tasks would tell much overall. Which is what the system banks on, of course, and why it's hard for consumers to know whether they're getting good value or not.

Aside from one HQ ADSL-based connection at a B&B in an estate near Winnersh Triangle, and one OK one in Southbank in London, the rest were unusable for anything but non-critical browsing.

The mobile phone broadband services are even worse, which is expected, but still; a minimal QoS would be nice to give you vague confidence that something you've submitted or uploaded has been committed. And then there's the London Underground. Having just come from South Korea, that was a rude shock.

Unlike myself, most people move very infrequently in their lives, so you can't make something as critical as broadband service quality that arbitrary. And you can only get seamless quality through a single underwriting body that can deal with the political and cost complexities (the technical complexities are purely a function of cost).

This article captures some of the reasons behind the variation that Muddled Malcolm's Dog's Breakfast Systemically Accountable Broadband Model will always face:

The Guardian about mid year wrote:
London’s much heralded Old Street technology startups are struggling to grow their businesses because of poor internet connection services, the Guardian has been told.

Lengthy installation delays and high fees have caused some companies to leave the area, while others complain of months of costly hold ups moving to new offices.

Startups and smaller ISPs, as well as technology collective Perseverance Works, are all due to meet Labour MP Meg Hillier on Thursday to discuss the crisis in the capital’s broadband provision. Hiller represents Hackney South and Shoreditch where many tech companies are based, and described the situation “a national embarrassment” that requires urgent action.

Hillier claims that some companies have left the area because of problems accessing high-speed broadband - and despite government access grants of £3,000. She called for a “comprehensive review of broadband, plans for infrastructure and roll out and a competitive framework for delivery”.

The Old Street area was labelled ‘Tech City’ as part of a government promotional campaign for the area in 2010 and is touted as the centre of Europe’s technology scene, yet startups say the difficulties accessing adequate broadband have been an issue from the outset.

Affiliate marketing service Skimlinks moved offices in 2013, but it took five months for the fibre broadband to be reconnected in the new office near Old Street.

“After mixups with council addresses, wiring and hardware deliveries the SDSL (slow backup) lines were finally active one week after our move,” said chief technology officer Richard Johnson. “During this time we attempted to make-do with bonded 4G dongles, so most people worked from home. Our fibre was active on 4 March 2014, having given the go-ahead to move on 11 October 2013.

“Five months without fibre for an internet-based organisation is difficult to swallow. Our old office was vacated and demolished in the time it took to get fibre connected,” said Johnson. “There is nothing more frustrating than rapidly needing to provision new servers and seeing your terminal take seconds to acknowledge each keystroke.”

‘We paid rent for months on an office we couldn’t use’

Another business, the money transfer service TransferWise, endured a four-month delay while the internet service provider (ISP) paid to secure a wayleave from the new landlord, which gives the ISP permission to enter the property to install the fibre cable.

This process, TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus explains, can take weeks because the landlord is under no pressure to comply, and can also choose their fee.

“It’s ridiculous that it takes so long for a company building an online business to get internet - not to mention that we had to pay rent on an office we couldn’t use for months,” said Hinrikus. “If the UK is serious about making Silicon Roundabout into a global tech hub, we need to do something to speed this up. Now it’s all installed, we are happy with the speed and reliability of the connection but it took far too long to get to this point.”

New, faster BT service

BT announced a new trial of faster fibre-to-the-remote-node broadband for the area on Thursday which will offer speeds of up to 80 Gbps, in addition to existing Openreach business service offering speeds up to 10Gbps.

“However, we see a lot of smaller businesses going for consumer lines, because they are cheaper, lacking service up-time agreements and extra security services,” said spokesman Richard Knowles, explaining that three-quarters of business premises in the Tech City area will have fibre connections by the end of 2014.

Entrepreneurs have been quick to blame internet service providers (ISPs), including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, yet those ISPs have also failed to communicate to customers the significant costs and logistical challenges of installing broadband in a heavily built-up area. Many of the problems can’t be solved with faster speeds alone.

When a business orders broadband, it sets in motion a multi-stage process involving bartering deals, on-site visits, permits, digging up roads and eventually the installation.

“Planning regulation accounts for approximately 85% of the costs Virgin Media faces in building network,” explained Dan Butler, Virgin Media’s head of public affairs. “This has a direct effect on the number properties we’re able to serve. Currently, planning regulation prevents us from deploying network in more cost effective and less disruptive ways, such as narrow trenching.”

‘The government needs to get involved’

Tech City also includes several red routes, some of London’s busiest and most strictly controlled roads, including limitations on road works. Utilities have to apply for a permit and pay a fee, which can take 10 days.

“Getting a broadband connection capable of supporting our businesses has been a nightmare,” explained Paul King, chairman of Perseverance Works - a co-operative of technology businesses in Tech City. “It’s the kind of thing government will have to get involved with to solve.”

The government’s broadband connection voucher scheme – a grant for up to £3,000 aimed at covering the installation costs of broadband for small businesses – alleviates some of the financial burden placed on startups trying to fund a solid internet connection, but does nothing to speed up the process.

King and the Perseverance group went beyond BT and other big ISPs to fit their own broadband infrastructure, clubbing connection vouchers together to cover the cost. It took the group two years to be ready to start installation.

Broadband: one of top three issues for small businesses

Some critics have suggested that the problem will remain until internet connections are treated like water or electricity, already connected to the building or property as part of the landlord’s responsibilities.

“This area of London produces more job opportunities than anywhere else in the country, primarily in the digital economy,” said King. “It is absolutely vital that we have an infrastructure set up that enables us to compete with the rest of the world.”

Hackney Council has made moves to try and address the complaints of local businesses, launching public Wi-Fi in central areas across the borough, while EE launched a high-speed 4G network in the area for anyone with a 4G handset, capable of reaching speeds around 300Mbps.

“Broadband speed is one of the top three issues brought to me on a regular basis by business leaders in Hackney,” said Andrew Sissons, head of regeneration delivery at Hackney Council, told the Guardian.

“Companies moving into the area need to better prepared, giving people more notice especially when moving into properties like old warehouses where there was no previous provision for high-speed internet. But internet connectivity is a thing of national importance, and critical to our economy.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/31/tech-city-broadband-startups-bt-virgin-media-fibre

And that sort of debacle is Two-Tier Tony and Moderate Middling Merchant Malcolm's real strategy in a nutshell: To force a two-tier market on society by dividing those desperate enough to pay more from those who are too naive to know that broadband delivery is just like the road network: You only notice the quality when you need it for something important. The cost of any bad infrastructure is always mischievously hidden in aggregate inflation.

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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:29 pm
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I've got Telstra Cable, tested download speeds of 1mps once I plugged the ethernet cable into the PC.
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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 8:30 pm
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stui magpie wrote:
I've got Telstra Cable, tested download speeds of 1mps once I plugged the ethernet cable into the PC.

Did you mean 10 or 100?

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 5:34 am
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Shabby, pathetic companies with shabby, pathetic software on shabby, pathetic infrastructure managed by shabby, pathetic morons. That's what you get when you have pretend competitors in a pretend competitive market with zero accountability except to a shabby, pathetic initial contract negotiated by bought politicians in back room deals.

Moderate Malcolm's BS Model Vs. UK Reality:

BBC.co.uk wrote:
Consumer watchdog Which? has called for regulators to change the way broadband services are advertised.

Currently providers can use a headline speed for services even if only 10% of customers will actually get that speed.

Which? found that a quarter of people would have chosen another deal if they had been better informed about the actual speeds they would receive.

Providers say various factors can affect the speed individual customers get.

"Internet connection is now an essential part of modern life so it beggars belief that providers can sell people short by advertising speeds that only 10% of customers could receive," said Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?

"We want advertising watchdogs to pull the plug on confusing adverts and ensure broadband providers show the speeds the majority of customers will actually get."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30039814

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