200Mb/s

Have you ever figured out when your house is capable of receiving 200Mb/s downlink? Have you thought about it before? Well, I have thought about it though. Virgin is already rolling out their 50Mb/s downlink in an area in Kent but that is about it! What can you have more from that? Guess what? 50Mb/s is no joke though. Well, the next question is: Do we need 50Mb/s?

When I started taking up a contract with Virgin Broadband, it was just 1Mb/s, After a few years, they started rolling out their slowest fibre optics cable broadband to 2MB/s. As of this year, the slowest cable broadband to be offered by Virgin is actually 10Mb/s! Well, do you think it is good? I think it is great! Think about it. The amount of money which one would have to pay is almost the same when Virgin upgraded their cable broadband service. I have no doubts in Virgin. They are the greatest!

Well, there is a small problem though. As for those people who are living in remote areas, they can't really get cable networks from any companies including Virgin. They could, however, get ADSL services (broadband using existing copper telephone line). Often than not, many companies will boost that their broadband service is up to 8Mb/s. Just a word of caution - You will not really get 8Mb/s all the time. I am not saying that there will be no problems if you are using a cable network because companies like Virgin will throttle the downlink from time to time so customers will not get the full downlink speed which they have subscribed. However, this is a small price to pay for better broadband speed.

There is another problem though. According to a recent research, there are over three million notspots in the UK and the government is trying to fit broadband into each and every single home by 2012. I think the government will have to do more to promote 2Mb/s broadband to every home in the UK by 2012. The very first thing which they need to do is to close the gap on those three million notspots. the question is whether they have sufficient resources to do it?

As for the need for speed up to 200Mb/s, I think it is highly unecessary unless companies who caters for web servers will require such fast speed. Apart from that, I think it is better for existing broadband companies to increase their uplink to be on par with the downlink - That will be very efficient. However, there is no guarantee that companies will do so due to the high cost of implementing them.

I have to argue that 200Mb/s is good but it is not everybody's cup of tea taking into the price which a consumer has to bear... Just forget about it unless there is a reduction in price, then...It will be good. We will just have to see about it. Taking into account that countries like Hong Kong and Japan offering broadband speed up to 500Mb/s, I don't see the reason why UK cannot promote their 200Mb/s broadband speed to UK customers. Kudos!!!