UK broadband is ranked 35th in the world

[Flummery]

I don't really understand broadband speed, and Flummery I have heard bad things about Karoo, It is a shame you cannot get another provider do you know why it is like that?

Because they own the telephone lines. Kingston upon Hull has historically run its own telephone system - there's never been BT here. Technically we could use another provider but Kingston would rent them the lines at a ludicrously high cost so no-one's done it.

[Flummery]

Flummery are you trying to watch standard or HD progs? If HD you need a minimum of 3meg down. Have you used their speed tester? It tells you if you can use their services and which ones: BBC iPlayer - Diagnostics

Also what time are you getting the problems?

Standard. My son-in-law, computer code-writer and wizard, has tested the speed. It's pathetic at all times but un-watchable in the evenings.

[Pumpy]

Have you tried getting broadband through Sky?

[HeyWayne]

Have you tried getting broadband through Sky?

Ours is going to come though the ground apparently.

[Flummery]

Have you tried getting broadband through Sky?

Haven't got Sky!

[piskieinboots]

Have you tried getting broadband through Sky?

I did - and when they tested my speed they said they couldn't better it as I was at the mercy of the BT lines.

I just accept that I have to wade through treacle with a 50lb back pack to get to the vine

[HotStuff]

HS again hair colouring is a known quantity provided by the manufacturer. As such an incorrect analogy you can't compare a known quantity to an unknown. It is impossible for an ISP to know the quality of the line at any point. As you said it only takes one week link.

I wasn't aware I was making an analogy, I was just saying how stupid a statement it was to say "up to 100% grey coverage". How could it possibly do more? Did you actually read my post?

[pdblake]

We have a theoretical 8 mb here on Karoo - our local system from Hull which we have no option but to use. Probably is if you live next door to the telephone exchange. Our broadband is hovering around 2 mb - it's useless trying to watch iplayer and I have to be in a patient mood even to watch people's lottie videos here. We spend more time watching the little thing go round saying 'buffering' than watching the vid!

I'm on karoo's cheapo package and usually get around 7-8MB

Back to those figures though, how can they work it out to population figures anyway, surely it must be by household. There's five people in our house all using the same broadband connection but there's no way they know that.

[Brengirl]

All I hear these days is give me more and I want it yesterday. Things are moving quite fast enough for me thank you. If we were number 1 I would have to know what I was asking for before I had time to think why I was asking.

[Bigmallly]

Just got home from work & did a quick speed check, unfortunately it doesn't make sense to me.

url=http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk][/url]

[HotStuff]

Back to those figures though, how can they work it out to population figures anyway, surely it must be by household. There's five people in our house all using the same broadband connection but there's no way they know that.

The two numbers after the ranking in the OP are the number of unique IP addresses detected by the testing software and the number of tests taken, NOT population, adult or otherwise.

[Tomatoking]

Just did mine, I thought France was better than UK, mind you I am stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Not that I undertand it!

[SarzWix]

Being a mere 5 houses away from the exchange, we can get 16Mb/s on average, but generally only get to use that in the middle of the night when the kids have turned off their PCs, Xbox etc etc. As there can be 5 of us hammering the bandwidth at any given time, I'd not like to move much further away

[Bigmallly]

Just got home from work & did a quick speed check, unfortunately it doesn't make sense to me.

url=http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk][/url]

Finally got my head round the numbers:
8 kilobits = 1 kilobyte
8 megabits = 1 megabyte.

So now know why I had 2 readings. Couldn't work out the figures in brackets.

[sarraceniac]

It's gets worse Mally. You (one) would think that 1 megabyte would be 1,000 kilobytes which in turn is 1,000 bytes (kilo=1,000) and 1 kilobit would be 1,000 bits. Oh no, not in computing where everything is based on binary (see Hotstuff's signature), or hexadecimal (working to base 8 not base 10)? So 1,024 bytes are a kilobyte and 1,024 kilobytes are a megabyte. Unless of course you are a hard disk manufacturer in which case, to make the hard disk you are selling seem bigger than it actually is, you base the size on the decimal 1,000 not the hexadecimal 1,024. Or should I be working in millibytes.... or nanobytes......or terrabytes (my latest hard disk is one terrabyte, allegedly)? AAAAAAARGH.