As you will know from my previous posts here, my opinion of Tiscali is pretty low. Having worked for ISPs in the past, and specifically for Tiscali’s technical support department at one point, I feel I have a little insight into their business methods. For your average, light-traffic user, they perhaps are slightly higher up than AOL, but not by a great deal.
Anyway, Tiscali has warned UK customers that they had better not start using video on demand (VoD) services a lot, or else the ISP will have to shape their traffic. Check the BBC article for a bit of background info. Well? I’m waiting…. have you read it yet? Right, I will assume you at least skimmed it… I loved the section where Tiscali refers to their current traffic shaping of other Peer To Peer based applications. Whilst they make it sound like no harm is done, many of their customers have reported dial-up like speeds. Combine that with Tiscali’s fair use policies, and you begin to see just how restrictive they are becoming.
You can of course see where the company is coming from - if everyone is using connection at 100% of its capacity 24/7, the whole network will suffer. However, as technologies and applications improve, the usage patterns on the internet will also follow suit. You can not realistically expect customers to not use VoD because their ISP has not got the infrastructure in place to cope with the demand. It simply reeks of Canute ordering the tide to turn back. (Though that is not the best analogy, as the King was merely proving one of his excessively complimenting courtiers that he was not all powerful).
Anyway, enough of my preaching on top of a soap box, I understand Tiscali is a business with a need to profit, they just always seem to rub me up the wrong way…

Ahhhhhhh, the first of the month. Not a reference to a BLACKstreet track, merely a report on our ADSL connection now being back to its awe inspiring 256KBit status. Until I have used 3 Gig of internet traffic, then it is back to 64Kbit download, 32Kbit upload once more. Last month saw 16Gig of downloaded traffic, and I did not even grab any large torrents…
The part that made us giggle is when Ira asked our ISP why the speed had not been reset at the beginning of the month… It turns out they have to go and manually re-assign my speed in their system - there is no automatic reset each month. Which makes me wonder if we can find out whether the same person is responsible for limiting the speed each month. If so, I wonder what his vices are… perhaps a bottle of vodka would enable him to forget to restrict my speed each month… I’d feel a little bad doing that in Britain, but as life is approached differently here, if you can’t beat them, join bribe them Hopefully we will get a 1024Kbit connection soon, unfortunately you need to visit the ISP office in person, and they keep the same hours as Irina does at work.
If we do get the upgrade, it will cost the same, and the limit to 64/32Kbit kicks in at the same point, so I don’t really understand why anyone would ask for a lower speed… (They originally did not mention that prices were the same for an unlimited account at different speeds).

The blog is currently taking minutes to load on my PC. I do not know if there is a problem with my PC, or the server this blog is stored on. If you have had difficulty accessing this site in the last day, my apologies. If you haven’t, then it may be my PC, and I need to get in contact with our ISP down the road again.
I should probably also ask them why my upload is limited to 32Kbit Anyway, if this site is appearing fine to everyone else right now, please ignore this post.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a report on broadband prices & speeds in developed countries. The report states that users are receiving hugely varied standards and price structures, with a very slow take up in the use of fibre optics to replace the copper twisted-pair cabling still used in most country’s telephony systems.
Obviously those countries that had taken up fibre optics had the fastest speeds available, with Japan, Korea, Finland and Sweden offering 100Mbit connections in many areas.
Of the developed countries surveyed, Turkey was the most expensive, with pricing equivalent to $81 per Mbit per second! Compare this to just 22 cents in Japan, and you can start to see the disparity.
I have not yet figured out exactly how to calculate the prices quoted, but for comparison, our ISP here in Kazakhstan charges around $150 per month for a 256Kbit connection, or around $100 if you decide to download than 700Mb (per MONTH!)
When you check this against the Swedish price of $10.79 (the cheapest in the survey), or even the most expensive (Mexico) at just $52.36, which is 4 times quicker anyway, at 1Mbps.

Hopefully, my Dad will find the time soon to look into finding a supplier for his Broadband Internet needs. One of the main reasons I have an interest in this is that I hope when I am next in the UK to sort out a few problems with his PC. Most of the computer is salvaged from parts of my old one, and it is unfortunately mis-behaving. However, as I will not be in the UK for very long, I do not want to spend a lot of my time waiting for updates and other related downloads to complete. It would also be good to be able to show him how the kittens have grown up via our webcams, and live video chatting is slightly painful when one participant is on dial up access still.

Anyway, I have already offered to Compare Broadband services for him, once I know what his priorities are. Some people place more importance on speed than price for example, whilst others would make the decision based more upon their total download allowance in a month than the actual speed at which they can download. The technical support offered can be a deal breaker, as I remember from my days at an ISP in Gloucester.

To help Dad select the right Broadband Provider, we need to look at all the factors I mentioned above, and then select the company that ticks the most amount of important boxes. Simply choosing an ISP because their installation discs are included with your newspaper is rarely a sound move.

Big thanks to ChrisD, who despite still not having written his post on last year’s trip over here, has mostly redeemed himself by donating a portable hard drive to my storage collection. AlexC kindly bought it over in her luggage, which with all the other things for us in there (more to come on that later), did not leave a lot of room for her own stuff.
Not only does this now bring the total space available to just over 1 Tb (1024 Gb), he also filled the hard drive with the downloads I requested from him (we originally only had a 700Mb per month allowance from our ISP). I should of course point out that I own all the original media for these files, but they are in the UK, and to heavy to transport out here…
Anyway, all the tunes and movies have made a very welcome return to this flat, so thank you both

I remember many years ago, when phones had to have a little green triangle on the packaging, to show they had been officially approved. You could buy cheaper phones and modems, but if they didn’t have the sticker, you were officially breaking the law! All the interesting hardware was often imported from Asia, with no approval having been paid for. One of the get out clauses used by an ISP I worked at, was that if a customer’s phones and modems did not have the BT approved triangle, that was the reason their internet connection was slow (back in the days of 56k dial up). Obviously some customers actually believed this and went and bought new hardware. Sadly, in the majority of cases, the internet connection did not improve. Having said that, I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone questioning the REN (ringer equivalency number) of a person with telecommunications difficulties. Anyone know if the limit has been raised from 4?

Anyway, since the time of green triangles and grey imports, having a phone actually branded as BT (British Telecom) has often been seen as a mark of quality.
However, thanks to PMC Telecom, you can have the best of both worlds - high quality BT phones, at prices that all can afford.

The site itself is well laid out, with all the major brands/types of telecommunications equipment stocked and linked to.
If there was one thing I would like to be considered, re. the design of the site, it would be sub-categories. Given that PMC have a wide range of phone related hardware for sale, the ability to filter, for example, the BT phones further down into BT cordless phones would save a little time.
Overall, it seems to be worth spending a few minutes checking through the whole list, to see if they have what you need, as the price often beats other retailers.

Today is a good day - our (highly localised & monopolistic) ISP has finally added a data unlimited package to their ADSL deals.
Previously, we were paying $110 for just 700 megabytes per month. We still only have a 256Kbit/sec connection, and the cost for this new package is more than before, but now there is no limit on how much I can download. Before the change over, every 10 megs I downloaded over the 700Mb limit cost another dollar seventy five!

Why the long winded explanation? Well I decided to check out a few random clips on YouTube during a break today, and came across this gem.

First time you watch it, the accuracy of the throwing is amazing. Then you start to notice a few things, that indicate the video was edited, however, even so the quality is pretty impressive and realistic. Check it out for yourself…

Way back when, I worked for an ISP (Affinity - the first company to go bankrupt and owe me wages) that fronted the technical support, customer service, and in some cases, network hardware for many ISPs in Britain. For a while, we provided support for Tiscali customers. You often found them to be a little less eloquent that other ISP’s customers - they would get very annoyed if we asked for more information than simply stating “it don’t work”. That said, I’d never wish their current levels of service on anyone, not even the worst of the moaners we had.

According to the Register, Tiscali have clarified their provided e-mail service to customers - It is free, so stop moaning if it doesn’t work!!! Even during the worst days at Affinity we didn’t use that sort of line on customers…
With the company attempting to ensure customers stay with them for the minimum length of their contract, and not use e-mails disappearing as an ‘excuse’ to leave, and their public relations approach on forums, I’m glad I never recommended them to anyone.

Dad recently moved into a new house in Evesham, and has admitted that ADSL might be a good idea sometime soon. I’ve asked him to consider what aspects of a connection will be most important to him - the price, the speed, the amount he is limited to each month etc. Whilst I can then take this informaiton, and do a little research for him, I’ve been out of the loop, ISP-wise in Britain for more than a year.

This is where a Broadband Internet Service Provider comparison site can be SO handy. Now I can just ask him to visit the site, and easily select from the comprehensive listings, whichever ISP seems most appropriate. Whilst the front page has the site’s pick of the month, you can also find a Compare Broadband suppliers table, which lists all the different offers a fair selection of major UK ISPs currently offer.

I’m also pretty sure Dad will want to understand more before deciding. He could either ask me, or to save some time, he can check the articles listed on this site, the most useful of which, for newcomers to ADSL especially, is the one on how to compare Broadband Providers.

So, if you’re reading this Dad, check out the links and let me know what you think. If you’re not my Dad, don’t be shy, feel free to tell me what you think of the site anyway