ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Re: Computers and the Internet ADSL??

Re the ADSL install I mentioned above, it has not gone as smoothly as it could have done.

I went round to the house the day after service was supposed to have been enabled to install and setup everything only to find no DSL signal on the line.

A check on the BT Broadband website against his line revealed that his ADSL order had been canceled!

It took a lot of calling to eventually come up with the answer that BT could not enable DSL on his line as it was running through a highly compressed DACS system. (That's a multiplex system to enable mutiple phones to share one physical pair back to the exchange -- The units can be seen by the dozen around here on poles.)

Anyway, BT are going to try to swap him onto a different line but will be charging him at extra £75 (about $135). He's not too happy, but should finally get ADSL service in a couple of weeks.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 11-02-2004).]

Yeah, the main problem with ADSL is that to set up the system costs money, and anyway it depends on the location, but when you have it, they can only guarantee you 128 kbit/s broadband, no matter if you have 768 kbit/sec. So very soon it will not be enough.

And other possibilities, such as cablenet and wifi are still VERY expensive.

Hard job.

One thing that surprises me about DSL-offers is the varying bit rates: You can get 128 kb/s from one company at ~$25 /month and 100 mb/s for maybe three times that from someone else. I don't quite follow their pricing structure...

Dear C-H! As far as I know in ADSL there is no 1mbps and if there is, the guaranteed minimum broadband is 128 kbps.
1mbps guaranteed is available only by cablenet, wifi or something else.

Of course who needs 1mbps now? But as the world goes, how long 128kbps will be enough?

[This message has been edited by Gloria (edited 11-04-2004).]

More on this continuing saga.....

BT has now contacted him again and told him that there will be no extra charge for the line work after all.

It really sounds as though the local area has not been very well organized to cope with the introduction of ADSL.

Hi Gloria,

> Dear C-H! As far as I know in ADSL there is no 1mbps and if there is, the guaranteed minimum broadband is 128 kbps.

This link I am on right now is 3mbps. This is now the slowest rate offered when one gets ones Belgacom line enabled to have ADSL. In the earlier days of ADSL they gave one 768kbps but about thirty months ago I think, everyone was upgraded.

I think it varies a *lot* from country to country; here in Belgium it is said that almost 35 % of internet users have ADSL, for instance, where one hears that in the worst nations like the UK, for example, they are still as low as 10 or 15%.

One also sees a great divergance in prices and line speeds from country to country. The cheapest prices here in Euros is the same number as the UK price in GBP, only they get a 256kbps link instead of a 3mbits.

I like this speedometer.
http://specials.zdnet.co.uk/misc/band-test/

Jooles,
Is that in a Residential installation?.
Also, could that be put down to the final cost of the actual install, where like it is in New Zealand here, you are tied to one ISP for real Broadband Access?.
Or will we stay in the 1980's for ever here?.

Don't get me wrong, but there are still some branches of Treasury that have the old Telex machine and they want to keep it!.
Dumb-A--es!.
And a few of them people have a say on how TeleCON NZ works.
It's not right!.


[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-06-2004).]

Hello Mike,

Yes, that's the residential tariff. If you pay for the business tarriff you get a static IP address and a faster uplink, so that you can host your own web servers etc.

The ADSL provision here is always by the phone company, Belgacom, but one can choose to which ISP they patch through the other end of your line. I went with Skynet, which is also a part of Belgacom, because they have always been pretty reliable, but I've heard others say good things about wanadoo and easynet.

There was no installation fee, just fill in a form in the phone shop and wait two days for them to turn it on. No drama, as I they say where you are :-) I just had to pay for the Alcatel modem, and as I signed up on a special offer they threw in the line filters for free also. Running costs are about 27 euros pcm.

There are also alternative services that are provided by the cable TV company, and those seem to be popular up in Flanders (Dutch speaking cities like Antwerp have broadband provision by a company called Telenet), but in Brussels and I believe throughout most of Wallonia (the French speaking region south of Brux) I believe the ADSL package is more popular. There is another cable TV provider in Brussels called coditel; I don't know how much that costs but it seems not to be very popular.

You may chuckle about TELEX, but it's on my CV -- designing and implementing interfaces to a TELEX server from various mainframe systems in banks. And it is still used *extensively* in finance, for sending money transfer and trade or settlement instructions from participating banks to clearing houses. The international S.W.I.F.T. network, which is based at La Hulpe just south of Brussels, has only just this year switched off its old 9600 bps X-25 packet switched network, and they thought that was an almost dangerously radical step to be taking :-)

Yes Jooles,
I can't believe the old Telex system is still around.
But only in banking and accounting circles would it be keep alive.
If the Abacus could have been kept alive, the banking "profession" would have tried it on!.




[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-25-2004).]

Y'all might find this website of interest:

North American Data Communications Museum