I was first on the Internet (such as it was) in the mid 90s.
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@emsquared people hating on virgin when I have personally had nothing but great results....
968 meg down and 110 meg up here -
@3dcandy they were always reliable except for that last 2 years we were with them) . Just never trusted them. Too postcode variable for me sadly. Awful customer service if ever required. Tried to chase us for non existent debt when we left. Had to get legal advice. Main issue was always trust.
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@3dcandy each to their own but was fed up with having to haggle the price too often to stop subsidising new users. As I say they were reliable in the right postcode areas but rubbish in others and that's just been our experience. I'm sure they please enough people. Just not for me.
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curmudgeonafreplied to Em-squared last edited by [email protected]
@emsquared A lot depends on the level of competition. Typically, in North America, there are regional monopolies or duopolies (perhaps one cable and one fibre company). Also, if you live in a rural or remote area, your choice will be limited, and you may have to take what you can get. Also only have 1 power company here.
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@curmudgeonaf I'm sure it's complicated. The energy market here (UK) is mostly a kind of mock competition of middlemen and chancers & too dependent on buying on the global market whilst the broadband market did seem to inject some real competition and the small distances meant that speeds did increase though the original infrastructure was a previous state owned monopoly that was privatised & forced to share capacity.
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@curmudgeonaf Where we used to live we had little choice until BT fibre came along as cable was the only option for decent speeds. No ADSL could get above 1mb due to distance to the cabinet (and we didn't live in woop woop, just the edge of a normal town)
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curmudgeonafreplied to Em-squared last edited by [email protected]
@emsquared Oh, I should mention we do have-third party reseller companies, that you can get your service from, but they are using the big companies lines. So I don’t really count them, because they are still dependent on the whims of the main companies.
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@emsquared Yeah, as you may know, Canada is kind of large. So it takes a while for things to spread everywhere. Last year, I moved to a rural area that only recently got access to fibre optic. Before last year, you could only get DSL out here.
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@emsquared wild to think when I started working in IT 30 years ago, 10 Mbps was the standard for a LAN and 100 was just coming and state of the art super fast
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@bobthomson70 Yep. Didn't think I'd need peripherals over a 100 until the recent full fubte upgrade. Daft.
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@emsquared
I remember the buzz if being on Demon.Did you ever use CiX?
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@curmudgeonaf pretty similar here. Only the big 6 have enough clout to but energy on the open market. We are paying for the collapse of 20 or so small chancers during the pandemic due not having g enough cash reserves. Broadband wise the infrastructure is probably owned by max 3 companies now. It's rural users who mostly lost out.
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@omnicaritas I believe I did prior to the whole newsgroups and usenet thing. Had only a brief work related experience of BBS prior to the Internet.
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@omnicaritas I remember being sent the Demon magazine each month (that the printed word was not just a website, in retrospect is deeply ironic but hey modem speeds and early days).
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@emsquared oh I know they are a postcode lottery - but round here so are BT (ie everyone else). We have had full fibre laid but as we live in a flat we can't have it!
Broadband in the UK is totally dependent on area and a few other factors since forever. We also have Virgin 360 tv and that is also excellent but we pay a large amount of £90 a month for it. Still a lot less than equivalent Sky but not cheap -
@3dcandy Yep. Count yourself lucky that it all works for you. No bones with that. Yeah never had Sky. Had freesat for a while.
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@emsquared we had 3 choices when moving here. BT at 4 meg or Virgin with tv and 350 meg, or Sky with tv and 4 meg. Sky would have been £100. BT no tv and there isn't an aerial here. Virgin was £50 a month and includes home phone and 2 x tb boxes. Really was a no-brainer
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@emsquared
I could easily enter nostalgia mode here.Fond memories.
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@omnicaritas Ha. Easily done. I can remember our first Tesco online shop on dialup. You had to download the latest shop database and prices, go offline, put your shop together then go back online again to process and pay for the order.It felt like magic.
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@emsquared
I can remember Green Shield Stamps and the delighted at seeing a full book of them.Is it time for Horlicks / Ovaltine yet? The nights are drawing in, etc. etc.