Speeding towards a new connection

By Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter, BBC News

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Jo Beardsmore and her husband, Tony, appreciate having extra bandwidth to surf while their son, Alex, enjoys gaming with a fast web connection

We are entering a new era of broadband connectivity where superfast speeds are becoming a reality in the UK.

As different networks roll out offering speeds of 50Mbps (megabits per second) to 100Mbps, the BBC will be monitoring the families at the end of the lines to see if fibre really is improving their broadband diets.

The Beardsmores are a family of three based in the West Midlands and were the first family to be connected to Virgin Media's 50Mbps broadband package.

"We were the first ones to ring up for it. I was nagged to death as my son wanted it for gaming," explains mum Jo.

Each member of the family uses the connection in very different ways and has different needs.

Jo represents a fairly typical type of broadband user, for whom the technology remains non-essential and somewhat confusing.

She is slowly coming around to the potential of the new connection, largely because the fast speeds mean all three of members of the family can be using it at the same time.

Now she can download recipes via a laptop in the kitchen and it does not affect the quality of the connection for her gamer son.

"Before I was bottom of the pile when it came to using the net but now I've been looking things up, using maps, downloading books and I have booked holidays online," she said.

The Beardsmore family had their 50Mbps connection installed just before Christmas.

"I did more shopping online this Christmas than I've ever done before," she says.

Downloading delays

The Beardsmore family all want different things from their connnection

But, she admits, she is not a full convert yet. "I usually just shout my orders from the sofa. I recently bid on a handbag on eBay which I got for £1.50."

Husband Tony, who secured the bargain handbag for his wife, represents a growing band of older users, who did not grow up with computers but have a natural tech-savvy bent.

Building computers for friends and family is now his hobby and half-repaired machines sit alongside the five PCs, three laptops and Xbox which the family uses.

He makes use of the new speeds to download drivers for the PCs via a laptop in his shed.

He also uses the connection for catching up with his favourite programmes on the Discovery channel and via the BBC's iPlayer.

Catch-up TV and high-definition content are going to be key drivers for superfast broadband, thinks Michael Phillips, head of broadband comparison site, broadbandchoices.

"The big year is going to be 2010. The World Cup is on and I'm sure the BBC will be showcasing all kinds of broadband ways of watching it, including HD live streaming," he says.

Bringing iPlayer and other catch-up services to the TV will also be a big driver.

"This year we will see a whole bunch of set-top boxes to pull iPlayer content on to the TV. Initially they will come with a heavy premium but they will become the norm," says Mr Phillips.

Virgin Media already has iPlayer available via its TV red button but, ironically, Tony tends to watch it via his PC in the corner of the living room.

iPlayer swarms

CURRENT USES FOR BROADBAND Checking emails - 98.9% Surf, shop and bank - 98.4% Watch TV - 27.9% Watch video clips - 38.8% Download music and films - 24.6% Listen to radio - 30.4% Play online games - 38.6% Source: Broadbandchoices

To demonstrate the speeds Tony attempts to download an episode of the Jonathan Ross show. The download bar indicates that it will take 22 minutes to pull the show onto his PC.

According to Virgin Media's guidelines the optimal time to download an episode of Strictly Come Dancing - which is of a comparable size to Jonathan Ross - is "as little as one minute".

"Although we've got fast broadband some sites are slower than others," says Tony.

"It relies very much on the people you are downloading from," he adds.

See what applications work at different speeds

A Virgin Media spokesman explains why there is such a huge difference between the advertised speed and Tony's attempt.

"With iPlayer it is more complex as it uses peer-to-peer technology. It depends on the number of people currently connected to a file, known as the swarm. It is reliant on the combined upload speed of other members in the swarm and if there aren't enough people it will be slower," he explains.

The fact that Tony is downloading the file in the middle of the day is likely to be a factor. While the evening has traditionally been the worst time to download files due to the amount of traffic on the network, it is the time the largest number will be using the iPlayer, therefore making it quicker.

Shooting ghosts

As a keen gamer a fast connection is not a luxury but a necessity for Alex

The issue of lag was the main reason that son Alex wanted a 50Mbps connection, more for its 1.5Mbps upload speed than for the download speed.

As a keen gamer, made keener since he was diagnosed with a kidney condition which meant he had to spend large chunks of the day hooked up to a dialysis machine, he wanted the best possible gaming experience.

Now he has both a fast connection and a huge 37-inch screen to indulge in his favourite game, Halo.

The biggest boon of having a good connection is that Alex can host games.

Hosting a game means acting as a kind of surrogate server as few games firms are prepared to host games on dedicated servers due to the costs.

Hosting falls to the person with the best upload speed among a group of gamers playing the same game. As many are based in the US the host is also often based there and the sheer physical distance means there is lag which puts European gamers at a disadvantage, said Alex.

"If you are the host everybody's data is sent via you. The better your upload speed the better host you can be and you know that there won't be signal interference or lag," he says.

This is crucial for a smooth gaming experience as lag can suggest players are in a completely different location to where they actually are.

"I want my bullets to hit the target rather than trying to shoot at a ghost image," he said.

He also uses the connection to watch live gaming tournaments broadcast in HD and to download big games files.

Here he faces the same issue as his father. One game demo of 1.3 gigabytes takes over 20 minutes to download. An equivalent game straight from Virgin Media's servers takes less than five minutes.

"It is quite a problem. There are not that many places offering that level of service," he says.

Early adopters

What will deliver next-generation broadband?

The Beardsmore family is one of just a handful of users able to benefit from superfast broadband in the UK.

Virgin Media has not released the number of customers using its 50Mb service, suggesting it could still be a fairly niche service. Price is likely to be a factor - it costs £46 a month, which includes phone rental and free UK weekend calls.

A few housing developers are running high-speed connection to tenants, such as those at Wembley City. In Bournemouth H2O Networks has connected the first 50 homes to its fibre via the sewers service and BT will soon commence its fibre-to-the-kerb trial to add to the handful of homes connected to fibre to the home technology at a newbuild site in Ebbsfleet, Kent.

Adrian Crook, the business development director of H20, believes the benefit of its fibre to the home technology is the fact that it offers the same upload speed as download - both 100Mbps.

"People's behaviour is changing and having a symmetrical fibre to the home is setting the standard," he said.

Virgin Media says it is trialling a series of "other upstream combinations" but that at the moment the majority of its users are interested more in download speeds.

But some question whether the majority of users need the kinds of sped offered by Virgin, H20 and BT, in the future.

"If you are an avid gamer like Alex then maybe 50 megabits is a requirement but as the other members of the family demonstrate, most things can currently be done just as well on 20Mb or even slower," said Alex Salter, co-founder of broadband measurement site SamKnows.

"Eventually there will be content specifically for 50 megabits but in the current credit crunch it is probably going to remain more about value for money and service levels," he says.

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Graphic showing speeds for applications