Speed of Broadband?

[Baloki]

ADSL (or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) -- A method for moving data over regular phone lines. An ADSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone connection, and the wires coming into the subscriber's premises are the same (copper) wires used for regular phone service. An ADSL circuit must be configured to connect two specific locations, similar to a leased line. A commonly discussed configuration of ADSL would allow a subscriber to receive data (download) at speeds of up to 1.544 Megabits per second, and to send (upload) data at speeds of 128 kilobits per second. Thus the 'Asymmetric' part of the acronym. Another commonly discussed configuration would be symmetrical: 384 kilobits per second in both directions. In theory ADSL allows download speeds of up to 9 megabits per second and upload speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second. ADSL is often discussed as an alternative to ISDN, allowing higher speeds in cases where the connection is always to the same place.


But recently Tiscali have been try to sell me their £15.99 a month 'Broadband' service. Now (a) I told them to piss off because I already have full speed broadband from BT (although it took them many times to understand this), and (b) It seems as if their definition of Broadband is only half the speed (up and down).

What do you guys think, should they be banned from using the term by the advertising standards authority (who are due to make a ruling soon) or should they be allowed to continue advertising this service as broadband?

[crono_logical]

<div style="text-align: justify;">I don't care :p

If I was interested in looking for an ISP, I'd look to see what was actually being offered rather than the word alone, since a word like broadband can cover a wide range of speeds. I don't actually know what speeds it should officially cover though. If you think some company is offering something inferior to what you already have, ignoring them seems a good option.

As for the advertising, it depends how they're doing it. If it's by phone and they don't get the message after two or three times, then yeah, they deserve to be hung up on. If it's spam mail, then it's no better than AOL advertising really, just use the CDs as coffee mats or something else (http://forums.eyesonff.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43428) :p </div>

[Peegee]

I think this question is too technical to be a general babble. To my understanding broadband is any sort of telecommunications wiring that doesn't run on standard modem technology. ISDN is broadband. 56k isn't. I'm sure cable/dsl/isdn cabling all run on modems, so I'm not sure exactly what it is that distinguishes between copper 56k and copper DSL.

Regradless, broadband is broadband. Whether 384kbps or 1.5Mbps, it's still broadband.

[DeathIsMyFreedom]

Aol pwns all >.> now seriusly...AOL SUCKS -_-, you wanna talk bout y brodband baloki? thatd be aol, all it does is kick me off, and the web pages load 2x faster then 56k, whats worse is that a 3.3mb song takes takes 3mins to download, yet a 2.9mb wc3map takes 20 seconds to download. Yea, but um from what you said, baloki that s gay =p.

Edit by Yamaneko: Refrain from using that language.

[Harmless Pigeon]

AOL even costs more!!! It's £29.99 (I take that we're english here btw) when my Demon UK is only £25.99 (if you pay for a year thats £48 saving). Demon UK (the best ISP I have ever worked with btw) even allow you to buy your own modem, with is more than some ISPs do-you can even up your bandwidth whenever you want. They advertise their broadband as 512k but I seem to get a speed of 576.6k every single time. I've had it for a while and thier tech support is pretty good and I've never had any downtime they haven't informed me about (there has only ever been a single time I've had downtime anyway)

Frankly, I don't like the way that Tiscali promote their low strength broadband-they market a 125k connection as 'broadband' when they know full well that the public assumes broadband to be of at least 512k

[Baloki]

Originally posted by Harmless Pigeon
Frankly, I don't like the way that Tiscali promote their low strength broadband-they market a 125k connection as 'broadband' when they know full well that the public assumes broadband to be of at least 512k

Unluckly I think thats the idea....

[Harmless Pigeon]

Originally posted by Baloki
Unluckly I think thats the idea....

Yeah-I did get that.:mad:

[Rainecloud]

I've heard some bad things about Tiscali, so I guess I don't trust them very much.

And no, I couldn't really call that kind of speed 'Broadband'...