Television in Trouble

Richard Taylor's "Build and Break" makes some very good points. Although he writes about the US, I have no doubt that we are likely to see big changes in the near future in the UK as well. The biggest barrier to the revolution is the lack of broadband in many area of the UK; this needs fixing. Oh, and by broadband, I mean something fast - we should be aiming for 100 Mbit/s in to and out of the home at least. (Why so much upload? I'll addresses that in a blog post some other time).

Be Broadband update

Progress report.

Be have been very efficient in supplying the wireless router and setting up ADSL-2 on my phone line. I had to squeeze in a quick test before I jetted off on business for a few days and boys was I disappointed. The ADLS modem told me I was getting a bit over 6 MBit/s - not the 16 Mbit/s I'd been expecting. A call to Be's technical services ensued. They got me to disconnect my home wiring and to try again - a bit over 12 Mbit/s.

Back from my trip and taking advice from various websites, forums and wikis, I bought an ADSL filtered faceplate from ADSL Nation. It was easy fit - I already had the necessary punchdown tool - and has had the desired effect - I'm getting 12.4 Mbit/s.

I've reconfigured a few settings and I'm now trying running my network on Be. So far so good. Some things fell very snappy compared to Virgin, other things seem similar. I still haven't tried any proper speed tests but so far so acceptable.