“BTopenworld — the new Internet division of British
Telecommunications plc — finally unveiled its pricing for its
broadband ADSL services yesterday. In effect, it was the pre-launch
of mass market broadband access in Britain. The service — for both
business and domestic customers — will go live in July 2000.”
“Except there are some worries that it may not be as fast as
everyone makes out. You see, BTopenworld has confirmed that the
retail service will be served with a contention ratio of 50:1, with
20:1 for business users. That means, for every available line of
bandwidth, you could have as many as 50 people all sharing the same
connection. The result, is that at peak times, the service could
slow down…”
“There appears to be a lack of support for systems other
than x86 boxes (Apples are to be welcomed, just heard) with USB
slots running Windows. It seems Linux workstation will be unable to
use this ADSL service…”