Archive for broadband tag
Battle of Britain, ADSL upgrades, Skype and EU VAT
Battle of Britain
This week is the annual Battle of Britain week here in Guernsey and today sees highlight of the weeks events, the air display. Alas, I missed the a chunk of it but managed to catch the star attraction The Red Arrows. As always it was most impressive, dives banks and turns at low altitude while retaining perfect form in an number of geometric shapes. The weather was less impressed and the low cloud ceiling cancelled out the various cross-overs we are normally treated to.
ADSL upgrades
Today sees the completion of Cable & Wireless Guernsey’s free ADSL upgrade from 512KB to 1MB. My parents and friends got theirs earlier but even mine was enhanced this morning. If yours is still running at 512KB give them a shout.
So how does it stack up against other uncapped residential plans?
- C&W Guernsey 1150/280 £26.99
- Jersey Telecom 512/256 £24.99, 1024/384 £44.95, 2048/384 £84.99
- Manx Telecom 512 £29.23, 1024 £49.99, 2048 £89.99 (all include VAT)
- C&W UK 8192 £29.50 (including VAT)
- UK Online 512 £9.99, 1024 £14.99, 2048 £19.99, 8192 £29.99
- Germany (various) 1024/128 €16.99, 2048/192 €19,99, 6016/576 €24.99 (all include VAT)
- BellSouth USA 256/128 $24.95, 1500/256 $32.95, 3000/384 $42.95
So Guernsey is doing rather well in the island broadband pricing, but still rather abysmal compare to the UK, Europe and USA. I can’t quite figure out why the German providers give you so little upstream bandwidth. Maybe P2P is a big problem there. The US pricing looks poor because most of the providers hide their plans behind registration screens and don’t make it clear what you are getting.
Skype
I tried Skype last night to talk to Clarissa and it worked very well. Only once in an hour did it scramble Clarissa’s voice although mine apparently scrambled a few times. Sounds quality was very acceptable and it was letting me call her land line at €0.02 a minute using the SkypeOut feature.
EU VAT
A problem with Skype the moment is that they insist on charging Guernsey EU VAT mistakenly thinking we are part of the EU, when we are not.
Apple’s iTunes Music Store took a different approach to handling us CI’ers and just barred all GY? and JE? postcodes so we couldn’t buy tunes at all. You can bypass this check by putting your postcode in lower-case and accept the dreaded EU VAT for now – better than no tunes at all.
[)amien
Guernsey news
I’m still feeling a little ill but I guess the worst of it is past, poor Clarissa is still very unwell :(
I thought I’d cover some of the bits and pieces going on in Guernsey at the moment for a refreshing change…
1M ADSL upgrades
Cable & Wireless have announced they will be upgrading everybody’s 512KB to 1MB with no price change any time now.
My take is that they are under pressure to deliver a 1MB service and to also reduce the price of the 512KB. Rather than suffer big income losses with the price reduction of 512KB they first give everybody a “free upgrade” to 1MB and then quietly introduce a “cheaper 512KB service for casual users” a short time later that people will have to actually switch to that most people will never get round to.
C.I. Traders expands
C.I. Traders became Sandpiper CI a couple of years later
Tom Scott’s growing empire seems to be scaring more and more locals in both islands and with it’s acquisition of Safeway in Guernsey the Co-Op has apparently had to take on extra staff to cope with their increase in shoppers. Best Foods are also not part of the group and provide an excellent and often unusual selection. Personally I do most of my shopping there, failing that at Co-Op although I still stroll down to Safeway for their amazing hot roast chickens for £1.60, available in plain, BBQ or garlic varieties. There are other reasons to visit Safeway, after all they have the recycling banks there.
For those not up to speed, C.I. Traders currently controls Le Riche’s, Checkers, Island Shopper, The Wine Warehouse, Stampers, Riche Marques, Technology Store, Channel Publications, Marks & Spencers Jersey, Channel Rentals, Mango Jersey (possible closure due to high rent and poor sales), CI Finance, CIT Estates, Trade Saver, Phoenix Foods, Russell Meats, Warry’s, CI Bakery (Island Gold & Island Bake), Coat to Coast Catering, G Orange (Coca-Cola, Golden Wonder distribution), St. Pierre Park (casino in the works), Dix-Neuf, Green Acres Hotels, La Trelade Country House, Jackson’s Garage (dealer for almost every manufacturer). Lets not forget Admiral Park and the various building work still going on there.
Now, while it’s good to see business flourishing in the Channel Islands most islanders are worrying that it is reaching monopoly status. Besides the usual problems of lack of competition there is also the worry that if things go horribly wrong they’ll be nobody else left to pick up these businesses and we’ll be without a lot of stores. If you are interested head over to their web site and read through some of the shareholder reports to find out what’s going on and the future plans.
In the highly unlikely event this page ever gets to Mr Scott’s hands may I suggest that instead of acquiring any more already successful local brands he considers giving the islanders some things they don’t already have. Three immediate things spring to mind. 1. We don’t have a decent cinema (I keep getting told “plans are under way”) 2. Buying a DVD (If Woolworth’s don’t have it you’re stuffed. Blockbusters selection is tiny and Number 19′s DVD selection is a joke of overpriced unheard-of titles), 3. Fast food consists of Vlad’s lacklustre empire.
News sources
If you want more Guernsey news check out This Is Guernsey (local press) or BBC Guernsey (local branch of national TV & radio), Channel TV (local TV) or even Island FM (local radio) if you can put up with the poorly conceived slow-scrolling news.
No RSS as yet, but I’m thinking of making a scraping tool to aggregate the headlines into a RSS feed from my site. Leave a comment if you’re interested.
[)amien
Guernsey broadband services
I want faster DSL…. 512KB just isn’t cutting it, I used to enjoy 2MB in Jersey… Let’s examine the pricing shall we…
- 512 KB
- Jersey Telecom 24.99
- C&W Guernsey 26.99
- 1 MB
- C&W UK 24.99
- Jersey Telecom 44.99
- C&W Guernsey 149.99
- 2 MB
- C&W UK 29.99
- Jersey Telecome 84.99
- C&W Guernsey 189.99
Yes you could argue the C&W Gsy has better contention ratios but the fact is they don’t even offer a home service for anything above 512KB.
C&W Gsy have announced broadband upgrades… It sounds like they’ll be upping everybody to 1MB “for free”. In fact I think they are cutting the price for 512KB and introducing a 1MB service at the old price… and just upgrading everybody to make sure they don’t loose revenue.
[)amien