FREE BROADBAND - What does everyone think?

[lynzog]

Hello all!

Firstly.. This is NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT. At the moment, it is gossip because it has not been launched yet. I just want to know what everyone things, if you think GOOD, BAD, or WTF? Either way, I want to know cos I'll be signing up for it.

But, Carphone Warehouse will be (from tommorow) giving away free broadband FOR LIFE if you sign up to their landline package, Talktalk.

It's £9.99 for the landline package, which gives you free local, national and international calls (to 28 countries) then you get Broadband for free. Including the standard line rental, thats just £21, which would normally cost £48 on BT. Its up to 8 Meg Broadband, and unlimited.

Like I said, this isnt an avertisement, I genuinley want to know what everyone thinks.

:)

[sirch]

What speed is the broadband? Does it have a usage limit and is there any hidden parts in the small print?

[lynzog]

Its up to 8 meg... As far as I know it is unlimited with a "fair usage policy" which mainly stops people using P2P software. (As we all know you can only get 8 meg if there's hardly anyone on your changy-thingy on the net)

The only things that could be down sides is that is 30 quid for the modem, and an 18 month contract. However, you are looking at free broadband, so this sort of cost and contract is expected.

Thing is they're due to make a MASSIVE loss on it initially cos of the cost of messing with BTs lines, so at least if there is an 18 month contract and they have to pull it, people on the contract still keep the deal :)

[Lagmeister]

Personally I think it has to be a con in some way, your probably going to end up with dodgy connections and some really harsh fair usage policies imposed within a month of the thing starting. Im going to stay with a paid for service, someone else can be the guinea pig as far as im concerned, besides they are going to be swamped with users before long, meaning shite service for all.

[da-geezer]

This worries me greatly.

LLU is still going through it's teething problems, just have a look at some of the Wanadoo customers who have been without service for three months. Faults are rife with the technology; and I wouldn't sign up to any LLU service right at this very moment. Carphone Warehouse are ploughing megabucks into this venture though, we'll see how it turns out.

Although; with broadband services you tend to get what you pay for. Check out e7even broadband; £240 up front for two years service, and that is truly shocking; just one of the examples out there. If it's free, then the service is going to be capped to dire levels, or the service is going to be swamped with people who are after ADSL for nothing, and the service could well be abysmal, even to the shit levels previously "enjoyed" by the first Bulldog LLU customers. Who remembers the free 0800 x-stream dial-up? 'nuff said.

Be very wary of it I say. I've been following this story for the last month or so on The Register, it doesn't make for optimistic reading. Maybe it's just ahead of it's time... with BT's 21CN being rolled out and the prospect of a "broadband dialtone", perhaps other ISP's are holding fire and waiting to see what mistakes are made by the Carphone Warehouse.

[Martinus]

Fair usage policies are a bit shady. They dictate what's fair after all at their own discretion, would be easy to cap your connection or enforce a monthly quota a few months in.

[Lewiji]

I heard about this on the radio. Apparently they've been allowed access to BT's exchanges without having to pay BT for some reason or another, meaning BT's monopoly over most of the ADSL market is starting to show cracks.

In other words, it should be reliable, at least as reliable as BT ISPs usually are. The only reason we pay through the teeth (relatively speaking, I know NZ have a hard deal, but look at Sweden) for broadband is because of BT. This access to BT exchanges means ISPs are free to charge what they want.

[da-geezer]

...would be easy to cap your connection or enforce a monthly quota a few months in.

Indeed; Plusnet and it's related vISP's have come under a huge amount of criticism of late for introducing traffic shaping plans across their network. The real bitch is, even if you wanted to migrate to another provider, the LLU MAC system is a shambles at the moment. You'd probably be looking at a nice three-to-four week long cease and reprovide :(

[Lewiji]

I've been on a Wanadoo "fair usage" package for 4 years now, and I've never had an email or warning or any sort of limit put on, and I'm a fairly excessive bandwidth user. I guess it depends on the provider but with an 18 month contract I'd rather wait and see than jump on it.

[da-geezer]

I'm with Lewiji on that one; even twelve-month contracts are seriously uncool nowadays, most firms either offer a three-month contract, or a monthly contract where you pay for the modem and/or a MAC code should you want to migrate. I know it's a free broadband service, but being tied into an 18-month contract for a service that could potentially be shite isn't my idea of good foresight.

Funnily enough Lewiji, I'm on the top level Wanadoo ADSL package, shelling out £32/month for the shit router and calls on top. As of sometime in february, they removed their bandwidth caps, so you're free to go nuts now :D

[lynzog]

I agree. It is unlimited, but the same as other responsible providers such as Wannado etc, (If you can call them that) have to monitor P2P. If it is one person downloading a film a day, thats fine. If it is someone from "down the market" downloading 50 films an hour then they tell you you're going to get cut off. Thats only fair because they are dragging down everyone else's maximum speeds in their area.

That is why Carphone Warehouse has been honest saying UP TO 8MG Broadband, not like Bulldog where some of their customers have taken them to court because they said it was 8 Meg broadband, not broadband up to this maximum speed.

A couple of things though, only 70% of the country can get the free broadband becasue they're only doing high user exchanges.

As for MAC codes, they are expecting 14 days intitially but I have heard up to 3 months to transfer across if too many people sign up. (Or you can wait for 30 Meg later on in the year so I heard)

[Timmeh]

hmm, I wonder what the connection ratio would be like. I'm putting my money on not great. They'll no doubt have the same problem that almost all ISPs have, nobody knows about them, a couple of people find them, sign up, think they're absolutely great because. in short nobody else is using them, tell their friends. Suddenly, there are so many people using the ISPs, the connection ratios have to be made worse; everything starts to lag up, pings get higher... it's happened to a lot of ISPs including blueyonder.

I'm not buying it really, I'm sure it'll be great for some people, but I can't help but think that there's a giant catch somewhere.

(Or you can wait for 30 Meg later on in the year so I heard)

Probably up to 24mb ADSL2+. This is the same "upto" that plagues LLU services currently.

/edit

Here we go kids, much sifting of the teeeeeeny font 16 page T&C

- You can't use it for business purposes. - fair enough

- If you cancel the LLU/LR (Line Rental) service, you may have to pay an
"administration fee" - ouch

- Minimum period is 18 months, and the early termination fee is the total of
the remaining minimum payments for the rest of the 18 months. - double ouch

- There's a 40G/month cap - !!! that's worse than NTL

- The service is going to have to be fairly heavily contended, otherwise they're not going to be able to cope with the bandwidth costs. So the pings will get very erratic

So, you sign up for the service.

Pay your £29.99 'activation fee'.
You use the service for 3 months, paying them £20.99 per month.

You decide the service is crap, so you cancel.

You then have to pay them £314.85 cancellation fee, plus whatever administration fee they charge, plus maybe £46 to transfer back to another provider (also hidden in the small print).

Total spend £450 + notes

"free" my fucking arse.

[cutmanmike]

which mainly stops people using P2P software.

Reason enough for me to not try this.

[sirch]

So lynzog it appears that its not such a good idea after all!

[Lewiji]

Reason enough for me to not try this.
Um no, unless they have deep packet inspection set up (which would consume a LOT of cpu power, not feasible for "free" broadband) it's just going to be if you stick out like a sore thumb in your bandwidth usage you'll get a warning: As I say, I'm on a similar policy on Wanadoo and download around 50gb a month if not more and I've never recieved a warning.
So lynzog it appears that its not such a good idea after all!
An amazing contribution, thank you so much for gracing this thread.

[cutmanmike]

Um no, unless they have deep packet inspection set up (which would consume a LOT of cpu power, not feasible for "free" broadband) it's just going to be if you stick out like a sore thumb in your bandwidth usage you'll get a warning: As I say, I'm on a similar policy on Wanadoo and download around 50gb a month if not more and I've never recieved a warning.

Well I suppose, but i'm saying if they had a foolproof way of stopping all p2p activity (which is what they WANT) I would hold back from even considering trying this "free broadband".

[Lewiji]

There's no way to stop p2p activity. They could lock down every port except for 80, and you'd still be able to configure most p2p clients to work.

[Timmeh]

They could do it, but it'd have to be via remote software; for example, installing a connection client to use their service. Not foolproof, but it'd stop average Joe e-mails his mother three times a week. Then, of course they'd be turning into AOL... >: (

[lynzog]

They can't stop p2p, they can only monitor it. However, it will be the case in a couple of years time that ISPs have to report P2P sites and those that use it. (Which is about 90% of those who regularly use the internets)

But another point, at 9:00 this morning it was a 14 day "move over period". It is currently going to 22 and the website has been down for ages today. So... more popular than even they thought!

As with cancelling the BB etc and paying a fee, I didn't realise it was that much, however if you're getting free BB and are unlikely to reach a 40GB cap, then why would you want to cancel it? If they aren't providing the service, then they are breaking the terms of their contract so you can cancel without a fee. That is the only reason as to why I would cancel it.

[Timmeh]

How about slow service? Poor ping? I wouldn't want a broadband internet connection with latency like dialup.

[lynzog]

I think we'll have to see how it catches on to see if those are going to be problems. There's enough people signing up already to see if thats the case. Only problem is, the time it takes to get connected up will be longer. I don't really use the net for downloading loads, and my laptop takes ages to load up anyway. So free is good enough for me. :)

[Pie-X-]

Be broadband was supposed to be a godsend, offering low cost high speed broadband. Check the reviews now,, My point being, in order to make it low cost they have to/or want to decrease the quality of the product.

[da-geezer]

Aye but fair play, Be's ADSL2+ is a different tier of broadband technology again. It's a little iffy comparing an ADSL2 service to a LLU-style ADSL service.

It's a cracking idea put forward by the Carphone Warehouse and I really does hope it takes off, but I fear it's a few years ahead of it's time; new and inexperienced staff dealing with potentially high levels of call volumes from customers who probably only want a broadband connection because it's free even though they don't know the first thing about the internet... it's a recipe for disaster.

Timmeh's TOS skimming was an interesting read; I couldn't get over the size of that cancellation fee. You raise a clever observation around contention ratios too; a decent common residential contention ratio on a BT IPStream ADSL product is around 50:1; and ISP's are already whinging about bandwidth usage and network capacity, even though it's not quite fair to throw all those terms in the same sentence. It'll be interesting to see how the Carphone Warehouse's own network shapes up too.


On a slightly offtopic noet, another key player Sly - is planning to offer a low-cost broadband service piggybacked onto their newly acquired Easynet SP. Should be different!

[lynzog]

The quality of the product is the same, they don't want to bring the quality or costs down, only BT. They don't even forecast a profit until 2008, as it will be a £50m loss until then.

However, I do agree with Geez RE: inexperienced sales staff and the sheer amounts of sales volumes. That has been proven today.

The thing is with Carphone Warehouse (as quoted by their CEO) They are rebelious teens bringing town the old fogies who are too tight to make things better for everyone else.

[da-geezer]

Indeed. BT Openreach aren't helping much (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/11/llu_ota/).

I won't kick off too much seeing as I'm employed by BT atm :D

[lynzog]

Hmmm... This was funny (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/11/carphone_soaking/) But trust me it wasnt water...

It was rumoured that BT "Did it" :)

[StupidCatOfDoom]

Total spend £450 + notes

"free" my fucking arse.

Nothing's ever properly free :(

I think i'll stick to Zen then. I don't think 40g/month is that bad, though. But then I bet running a CSS/ GMod dedicated server and listening to a lot of internet radio would use that up.

Yeah, i'll stick to Zen. What is it with home broadband and bandwidth limits??? Must the lowly internet-owner who happens to like running their own home server go to pains to get overly expensive but no faster buisness internet just to free themselves from bandwidth restrictions??

Mind you, at this rate, if the whole country gets LLU, there might be proper free 1mb broadband with no special setup, like the free dialup services like ADial.