Tag Archives: internet

100MB broadband available for the first time ever in the UK!

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It’s called Velocity 1, and a very small new building development in the UK has been given fibre optic cabling from the exchange right the way to the ethernet sockets in your living room. Tenants of Wembley City development in London are the first ever people in the UK to be able to get 100mb broadband on demand.

This means that for the first time ever, 100mb is not the theoretical outcome for the speed of broadband because the fibre optic cabling spreads the whole way from your local telephone exchange to the ethernet plug on your computer. No ancient copper cabling whatsoever.

However, there are a few small glitches. The main one being that it isn’t permanent – you pay £1 for 30 minutes worth of 100mb broadband on demand. It isn’t technically possible to provide 100mb broadband 24/7 in this country, yet. The rest of the time you’ll get either 8, 16, or 32mb broadband depending on what you are currently paying.

Still, you can’t get 100mb broadband anywhere else in the UK so it must feel good to be able to say you are one of about 30 people in the UK who can use 100mb broadband on demand. Pretty awesome.

Most of the UK generally gets a theoretical maximum of 8MB (megabit) per second. And most of the time that isn’t the case because of our poor copper cabling and long distances from our exchanges. But for the means of this, I am going to suggest that I did have 8MB (megabit) per second speed. Now think about the fact that a megabit is not a megabyte. 8 megabits translates to approximately 1 megabyte, so if you had perfect 8 megabit download speed, you could download a file at 1 megabyte per second.

Now, think about this – 100 megabits translates to 12.5 megabytes per second. That is pretty amazing. That means that providing the source server is fast enough, people with 100mb broadband could download three 128kbps MP3 songs in just one second!

Now that might seem like absolute gobbletygook to you, but considering the UK’s  current average broadband speed of 3.5 megabit (0.4375 megabyte) per second that is pretty awesome.

So, maybe in 10 years time a lot more of us will be able to indulge on 100mbps broadband. Unlikely, but it would be nice. We’ll have to see what happens.

Mobile Internet on 3 (Three) Mobile – Price Guide & what you get for your money

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I’ve been on Three for quite a while now, and have done a range of posts about them – good and bad. Anyway, I have decided that since Three don’t tell you how much data usage you get for buying Internet Addons on Three, I would ring them up and post it up for the benefit of readers. This is not usage information for the separate USB modem mobile broadband – this is for general Internet addons with Three. I believe this only applies to pay as you go customers, as pay monthly customers have to add an internet bundle to their monthly bill.

Anyway, according to Three’s customer service, the current usage allowances are as follows:

Internet Daily: 120MB allowance to be used in one day.

Internet Weekly: 500MB allowance to be used in one week.

Internet Monthly: 2000MB (2GB) allowance to be used in one month.

At the time of writing, the only way you can find out your current internet usage on an addon is to ring up Three’s customer service on 333 free from a Three mobile (pressing 3 on keypad when you get through, and then 2 to speak to an advisor), and they will quote you if you ask them.

You cannot check your usage on My3 as it will just say ‘Fair Usage’ which really annoys me with companies, as it doesn’t tell you anything.

Anyway, that should solve any queries and save you having to ring them up.

How many browser toolbars do you have?

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Being the sad person I am, I always think every time I look at someones computer is how many toolbars do you have in your internet browser?

Personally, I’m not a fan of web toolbars. I’ve never seemed to understand why you need them? Every one I see on the internet is either some way to get ads to you or just an almost pointless shortcut in my opinion.

Admittedly, there are a few toolbars that are sort of handy. But the ones that just drive me mad are ones like the “smiley” ones that allow you to install “smilies” into IM software such as Windows Live Messenger. All they do is fill up your computer with spyware rubbish that is utterly pointless and just ends up wasting my time.

I’m very proud to say that in all 3 webbrowsers I have installed on my laptop (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome) you won’t find a single toolbar installed. Not one (others than the built in ones, obviously).

Are you a toolbar addict (is there such a thing)? Do you feel the need for toolbars? Why do you use them?

IWF closing in on The Internet Archive Wayback Machine (web.archive.org)…. why?!

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The Internet Watch Foundation in the UK has decided to close in on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, saying that it has made many ISP’s restrict or deny access to the website as http://web.archive.org. Virgin Media, Be and Demon Internet customers are apparently on the list of banned or restricted ISPs.

Personally, I think this is insane. If I haven’t mentioned it already in previous blog posts, I love the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It’s a fantastic resource that I regularly use to see what websites were like several years ago. If you haven’t heard of it already, please have a look (if you haven’t been banned from it) as they have been caching pages from almost every website that existed since 1996.

So why the hell are the IWF restricting access to it? The IWF were under fire when they banned a Wikipedia page for a music album because the uploaded artwork of the album was pornographic, but after many complaints from many users, the IWF removed the page from the blacklist. Maybe there is some sense in this (as it was pornographic), but what on Earth does the Wayback Archive have to do with it? The Wayback Archive is by no means pornographic or dangerous to young children, even if some of the sites cached on it may relate to dangerous content. But, that’s exactly the same problem we have now – there is dangerous content all over the Internet now – and that probably wont change anytime soon.

In effect, changing history won’t necessarily change today.

According to this page, the IWF have said “We’re investigating the issue more fully at the moment and will discuss it with Thus to get a better understanding of what has happened.”

So if you want to know what I think, get the Wayback Machine off the blacklist. I, thankfully, am not currently with any of the ISPs that restrict access, but if it does become restricted on my ISP,  I will be complaining.

Update 15.1.09 – The IWF has now confirmed that a large number of pages from the database of around 85 billion web pages have been blocked due to indecent content. However, the IWF has said that it is only specific pages that have  been blocked so the damage is minimised. I still don’t believe it should be blocked, but feel a little better since they aren’t totally blocking out the site.

Update 17.1.09 – Demon Internet customers now have access to the Wayback Machine again. It has been seen by the company as a technical issue. However, Demon Internet still say they will be working closely with the IWF.

Is internet TV livable?

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Well, after the BBC announced a couple of weeks back that they are to stream BBC1 and BBC2 starting in the next few days, it made me think – could I live with internet TV over conventional TV?

Of course, you still need a TV license to watch live TV; no matter whether its over a transmitter or an internet connection. So its no way of a couple of hundred pounds (don’t get excited). You can watch iPlayer and other on demand services without a license since they are not live, and as long as you don’t have a TV in your house, you are OK. 

But I mean internet does seem to be becoming a little more practical now. We can get a huge proportion of the channels on Freeview over the internet now, and if you are one person in a house and you can cope with watching TV on a monitor, then it might save the cost of a TV and the channels to go with it.

As far as I know, you can get BBC1 and BBC 2 (in the next few days), BBC3, BBC4, ITV 1, 2, and 3, and a few other channels online. And I suspect a huge range of other broadcasters will start online soon. 

As long as you have enough bandwidth in your broadband, you might find it very useful to have TV online, and I think it should be something to look forward to.

What do you think about it?