Internet
16 January 2009Overlord of the broadband
Stephen Fry is an utter gadget geek. Who knew? Not me – but this awesomely eloquent individual owns seven iPhones, at last count. Even better, his website is host to a series of entertaining blog posts and podcasts. I’m particularly interested in his take on the BlackBerry Storm, one of many so-called “iPhone killers”, because I have one of them lying on my desk as I type – look out for my detailed impressions of it soon.
Stephen Fry is in New Zealand at the moment – or perhaps was, by the time this reaches you. He’s hanging out with kakapo for a BBC documentary (when he’s not trudging up hills in the pouring rain looking for stores that sell Apple products).
All this talk of kakapo and Stephen Fry brings me neatly to the subject of broadband. Those who’ve had the audacity to want a fast internet connection over the last few years know that we’re lagging just a tiny bit behind in this country. Blame is generally placed at the feet of the almighty behemoth, Telecom. But recently the effects of Telecom’s enforced operational separation have become noticeable.
The problem has always been, of course, that Telecom simply has too great a share in the market. According to the latest telecommunications sector report by the Commerce Commission, Telecom holds 66% of the DSL (broadband) market. By comparison the biggest market share enjoyed by any one broadband company in the United Kingdom is only 25%. When you’re well in the lead (and control most of the infrastructure), it’s easy to slow things down.
However, there are a couple of important factors that change how these numbers are viewed. In June 2006, Telecom’s share of the market was 76%. Two years later, it’s down 10%. Why? Well according to the report, Telecom has only managed to snag roughly 10% of market growth in the last quarter, whereas the competition has taken more than 80%. It seems new broadband customers have finally decided there are decent alternatives to Telecom.
It’s an encouraging shift away from the virtual monopoly of the last few years – here’s hoping the trend continues and we start to see much more competition in the broadband sector.
Read more – see our first look at the BlackBerry Storm, our ISP satisfaction survey and take the broadband speed test.
Tristan Clark – Technical Writer
Comments
Is that commerce commission report on DSL marketshare publicly availalble, if so what' the link?
Good point, I forgot to link it. I have added it in the body of the blog now.
Things could be worse - I was in Australia last year and the internet there was completely awful.
is a wireless version worth getting? We have broadband at home but will get a laptop soon so is it a useable version for around the house with a few computers? We're on telecom
HDMI cable test: Hi Tristan, I couldn't find another place to respond to your latest report so thought I'd try here. I needed a longer HDMI cable for my PS3- which I bought primarily to play Bluray- so I could put it further away from the TV in the AV cupboard and wondered why the picture/signal would cut out regularly when playing Bluray discs. The AV 'specialist' at JB HiFi (where I'd bought the unit and the cables) straight away told me that I probably had a cheap HDMI cable- which was correct in as much as I'd bought the cheapest 2nd time after already spending a fair bit on the shortest one. To his credit he not only gave me a discount off the the shelf price of the "higher quality"/more expensive longer cable but also credit me when I returned the first two. But I've never had a problem since. You don't state in the test conditions whether you were sending Bluray- which has a lot more data to send as I understand it- in the test. Or is that all rubbish too and the signal dropouts with the cheaper cable were due to something else?- Steve
Hi Steve - yes, Bluray was part of the test. The maximum amount of data currently feasible today was pushed through the cables (eg. high-def signals at 1080p).
How long was/is your cable? And do you know whether it was 1.3a compliant? It should have been, but you never know.
I'm not too sure what could have caused the dropout beyond that, sorry - our own tests with the cheaper cables revealed practically no difference, at a variety of lengths.
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