Scheduled Broadband Upgrade
TiGra Networks is having a broadband upgrade this week so we'll be offline for perhaps a day while that happens. We'll be completely off the air for a while and there will be a bit of disruption while we install the new equipment and update our DNS records and stuff like that, so if you visit one of our web sites and get a 'not found' then please bear with us. We'll be back!
We've used Demon Internet for several years and they had always proved reliable and made appropriate investments in new technology. However, since they sold out to Thus plc they have outsourced their customer service to India and seemingly stopped investing in their infrastructure and the competition has left them in the dust. I gave Demon the opportunity to keep my business by upping my bandwidth or dropping their price, but the call centre agent didn't have the authority to make that decision, so I've voted with my bank account and switched to a competitor.
We'll be using Be Broadband (a division of O2), tripling our downstream speed, quintupling our upstream speed and saving a couple of pounds a month compared to Demon's service. The clincher for me was the upstream speed. Be Broadband allows me to sacrifice a little downstream speed and get faster upstream speed instead. So at the cost of getting only (!) 20Mbps downstream we'll get 2.5Mbps upstream speed. This is exactly what I need for the various web sites, mailing lists and blogs I host, and even more important, our VoIP PBX which has remote users that are currently struggling for quality of service. I only wished they allowed me to go further, I would happily take 8Mbps symmetric over 20 down/2.5 up. I asked Be Broadband what their contention ratio was and they replied 1:1 - a figure I find difficult to believe. They've either found a new way to define contention ratio or their service is unbelievably good for the price. I hope it is the latter, but time will tell. Be Broadband is a Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) provider so it is not beyond the realms of possibility.
This should all happen Wednesday if everything goes to plan. See you on the other side.