All the acronyms refer to the latter...

Since the providers seem unanimously to have agreed that it's better to provide cramped services rather than continuous bandwidth. For some reason, I'm expected to pay for (say) 8Mb/s but (a) the ISPs won't guarantee delivery at that rate, and if I should chance to exceed, say, a kubuntu CD or two of an evening, they'll chop my speed in half.

'Fair Usage' for whom? Doesn't look like it's for the customer.

Neil

The report is absolutely worthless because it simply does not take into account how usable those connections are. Two years ago, broadband was a little more expensive and 2MBit, but there were far less highly restrictive bandwidth limits, traffic slowing (sorry, "shaping" - invest in kit which doesn't add 200ms to ALL your packets already!) measures, "FUP" and so on.

So to say it's cheaper today is blatantly misleading and the report is worthless.

~£2/MB/s?

Cheapest I've seen is ~£10/MB/s

Like to know what sort of service is offering such cheap connections. Do they have download limits (2MB given the way most ISPs go I'm guessing)?

Let me guess, it's an up to 160Mb/s connection. However, download is shaped so you can't achieve more than 100kb/s, and you can't download more than 1GB pcm. But you can get up to 160Mb/s, honest.

Sweden has 100mbit with no restrictions for 20-25 pounds a month. You only got download limits (500GB on the company I tried) if you go up to 1000mbit, which is about 55 pounds/month.

Yes, you won't max out that connection often, but at least you're getting as fast as possible. Here with 17mbit (Bulldog) I often max out the connection, so could use more speed.

I get 6Mb down, 720 Kb up. For $45 a month. I know a guy in Tampa who has just had FiOS installed and Verizon is claiming that he will get 54. I don't know if that's bidirectional. And I haven't asked him if there's a limit. So far RR hasn't told me about any download limits. I've been told by techs (but never officially by RR) that the upload limit is to make it harder to do P2P or serve up websites.

AT&T is installing fiber to the house in our neighborhood right now. TW is supposed to do it "some time soon". Of course, the right of way goes through our herb garden in back. I wish they could both do it at the same time and not tear things up twice.

Cheapest I've seen in a datacentre in $7mbps (£3.50), as the costs get higher for broadband and the actual download usage on FUPs goes down I've decided to colo an old machine in a datacentre and just go and replace a drive every month rather than bother trying to use my "broadband" connection, I remember being on the original BT ADSL trial and having truely unlimited 2mbps (600GB a month) for £30, it's such a shame uk.gov/BT/OFCOM/ISPs are such a corrupt and useless cartel.

For starters, Japan. Where a 10Mb connection is about the equivalent of a 56K connection in terms of availability.

Dillon: Many ISPs in the US (and I'm guessing abroad) claim that you're getting so much speed, but they can never back it up unless you're using some BS "premium" package. My ISP, Cox, claims I should be getting about 5Mb/s, but it's more like 2-2.5 from my own testings.

Almost certainly a mixup - because that is either unbelievable cheap or unbelievably expensive depending on how you view it.

I you're saying you can get an 8Mbit connection for $3-10 a month then I'm changing my service provider as soon as I get home.

If you're saying you pay $3 for every second you download at 8Mbits then I'd have to say the researchers were well and truly had.

But if you're assuming there was a typo and saying you pay $3+change for every megabit per month, then $30 / month for an 8Mbit connection sounds about right for the US - as long as you also get long distance telephone service from the same company (local service in the US is a fixed price for unlimited calls at around the $16-$24 mark, and can be provided by a different company).

Almost no one gets good broadband pricing in the US unless they have some sort of bundle - the minimum of which is broadband + long distance telephone service.

I'm out in the sticks in upstate NY. We had our local hole-in-the-wall cable co string cable up to our business / homes (on a former farm) in 2000. At that point we got 500kbits, and we got 500kbits down. The next year, unannounced, it was 1mbit; in 2003 it went to 2mbit, in 2004 3mbit, in 2005 4mbit, and last year 5mbit. And to the right sites I get the expected max - about 80% of the rated capacity. Sometimes I get more.

Through the whole thing, bandwidth caps were around 10gb/month, now 15gb, and upload speeds went from 64k to 256k. No cost increases, no shaping, no throttling. I can get 550kbytes/sec steady from some news servers.

The cable co is this tiny little place; their office is smaller than ours. It's called Haefele TV, and if you call them up you can talk to Mr. Haefele.

It rocks. :)

I like to think about comparing like with like.... it is fine to say Japan is installing Fibre to the house but is this in densely populated cities with the remote towns being served on good old Cu? It is time to change the debate from more bang for your buck to service. I personaly think that Broad Band is too cheap.... because we are not recieving the service we require for what we are proposing to use it for. How many of you have had a problem only to be faced with a expensive (premium rate call to India) to a never ending call centre queue?

When we start to run our phone, Business Comms and Entertainment down the same lines we really start to need 3 nines (at least) reliability or that few pound we save on the monthly bill will be completely out weighed by the loss in productivity. No Free Lunch.... free Broadband is a cost to the company that provides is and is serviced accordingly... right/wrong?

if companies like BT intend on offering services like BT vision then they are going to have to pull there fingers ount on this one.

Bear in mind, I aint gonna pay to get tv near my home! its TO my home or not at all!

On my land line I get 100Mbits download/10Mbits upload at home for 15 Euro per month including VAT, with no limit to download or upload, and the quoted bandwidth is there for real. My provider is no exception: even the big guys dropped their prices last year.

On my wireless connection I get 100KBytes for upload + download for 39 Euro per month, and I can get them in the sticks too, not only in the city.

I wonder how did the OECD research that report ?