How fast is your Internet access? Do you need something faster for your business or home?
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-05-29 11:57:31 - Graham EllisWiltshire Council is supporting the rollout of "Superfast Broadband" across Wiltshire for both residents and businesses, and is currently running a survey on their web site - at [here].
But what exactly is "Broadband" and "Superfast Broadband" these days?
I heard about Wiltshire Council's survey while staying at the Saratoga Spring Resort Hotel in Disney, Orlando and duely clicked through to complete the survey. And the first thing it asked me to do was to check my connection speed and tell them what results I got. I tried the tests, but then put off completing the survey until I got home, as I feel that Wiltshire Council probably wanted results from Melksham!. The test results - on a wired connection that was described as "Broadband" - were 1,392 Kbps download and 69 Kbps upload. I was, even before I ran the tests, aware of just how awful the upload was as I put up pictures for my blog; and I was also aware that it varied based on time of day.
Results from the connection at Well House Manor are rather better - 16,608 Kbps download and 3,044 Kbps upload. So that's 12 times faster on download, and no less than 44 times faster on upload. And there's unlikely to be much contention at Well House Manor to cause significant degradation - at these speeds, everything we need goes so quickly that there's rarely lots of people using the bandwidth at the same time. Even our backup system - using 3G mobile broadband - gave me 1,256 Kbps for download and 155 Kbps for upload.
Wiltshire Council is planning to investing 16 million pounds in the next four years (which will generate other grants to make a total pot of 30 million). I have been reminded of the importance of good broadband speeds over the past week, and come to realise how fortunate we are. But I can't find anywhere on Wiltshire Council's site a definition of what they mean by "superfast". And ideas, anyone? How much faster will my connection here get? (email me - graham@wellho.net - with answers!)