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[kitz]

I was looking through some old stuff I had on my back-up drive and happened to come across something I did in 2001/2002 when adsl was first in its infancy.
Anyhow in the report I did, there was a price for BT Openworld adsl

Download speeds of up to 500Kbps for a fixed monthly fee of £99.99 (ex VAT)
Connection Fee £260.00 (ex VAT)

•  'always on' connection - no more time wasted dialling-up, near-instant email
•  download speeds up to 500Kbps* - up to ten times faster than a 56K modem
•  upload speeds up to 250Kbps* - send large files faster
•  multiple connections - connect four computers directly and ten indirectly
•  up to ten email addresses - manage departments' email more easily
•  20MB of web space - save money with your own Web pages on BTopenworld
•  contention ratio of 20:1 - the ratio at which you share this resource
•  dedicated business homepage - your information base on the net

* Speeds may be reduced by: usage during peak times, line quality and exchange distance.

Ahh those were the days - maximum speeds of 500kbps, and when a BT engineer used to install for you....  and contention hadnt even been heard of, although contention ratios were there as a warning.

[Floydoid]

Gordon Bennett 

[HPsauce]

Just for amusement I dug out the invoice for my first ADSL connection, which was in January 2003.
I had looked at getting it earlier, but the price was too high.
1 year of 500k (SOHO - small business service) - £300 + VAT = £352.50 (almost £30 per month).
Alcatel modem, filters, connection & delivery - £200 + VAT = £235.00

Surprising how recent that was - not quite 6 years ago.

I think that was one of the first "self-install" kits.

[guest]

I paid £150 for install and £49.99/month in 2001 for Nildram's 512kbps service. It saved me a fortune on dial-up charges 

[UncleUB]

My first time connecting to the internet (dial up)was with AOl,3 hours for £5.99 a month 

[HPsauce]

It saved me a fortune on dial-up charges 

When I switched to ADSL it was pretty even vs dial-up. But there were 2 main reasons for this:
1. At the time I was largely office-based (except between contracts) so t'internet was mainly for evening & weekends.
2. My ISP was in the same exchange area and had a local number to dial as well as the usual 08xx variety.

[kitz]

Dial up - oooh ouch -
Yes £10.99 per month to the ISP plus phone calls - which I darent say how much those cost me
IIRC it was March 2000 when BT brought out the £10 connect fee which allowed your ISP phone no to be dialled FoC after 6pm to midnight and at w/ends

[guest]

I was on a FRIACO connection immediately prior to ADSL - in fact I was once a Plusnet customer but they couldn't seem to work out the concept of billing people  I don't mean billing them correctly either, I mean billing them at all 

[BritBrat]

I was one of the first to get banned from BT for over use

I was not on ADSL I was on dialup and even though I had two anytime accounts I still got put in the 004 number club.

In case you have no clue what the 004 club is/was.
http://networks.silicon.com/telecoms/0,39024659,11028261,00.htm

[dave.m]

I love the analogy:

Users of the punishment pool get a lower 'contention ratio' than other users, which means that in one sense, they get a three times larger share of network resources per person.
However, they are effectively being invited to a party where, though they have three times as much beer per person, it's impossible to get a drink because all the guests are alcoholics.


Just like the Kitz Forum Christmas Party. 

dave

Edit,
Unc make room for one more in the NC.

[kitz]

I was one of the first to get banned from BT for over use

I was not on ADSL I was on dialup and even though I had two anytime accounts I still got put in the 004 number club.

In case you have no clue what the 004 club is/was.
http://networks.silicon.com/telecoms/0,39024659,11028261,00.htm

Oh I know what that was..  hence why I was chomping at the bit to get adsl in 2002..  I got the warning letters (which most annoyingly always suggested I moved my account to 'broadband' despite it not being available at that time at my own exchange yet).
At the time I was doing a DLC foundation degree in Computing Science, so I was finding it very hard to cope with the time limitations.  Anyone else in the household was only allowed to go online when I dialled up to 'work' and I used to ensure that I would only work later at night when I was less likely to get distracted by anything else so I wouldnt waste what time I had available.


BT were about to turf me off, and I got a final warning a couple of weeks before the exchange was activated.  My friend who was doing the same course had to have ISDN installed about 2 months before adsl went live as this exchange.. which buggered up her then moving over to adsl when the exchange did go live.

[kitz]

Andradi said that some users racked up over 240 hours use per day in this way.

erm... just noticed..  thats not right 

I cant remember now what the limit was that they brought in in 2002, but I'm sure it was something like 140 hours per month.

[UncleUB]

I love the analogy:

Users of the punishment pool get a lower 'contention ratio' than other users, which means that in one sense, they get a three times larger share of network resources per person.
However, they are effectively being invited to a party where, though they have three times as much beer per person, it's impossible to get a drink because all the guests are alcoholics.


Just like the Kitz Forum Christmas Party. 

dave

Edit,
Unc make room for one more in the NC.

Don't forget the candles. 

[kitz]

 

[Ezzer]

That wasn't far off the time when I first came over to the engineering side. Reminds me when i spent a day with an engineer to see what this side of the job was like (used to be in a call centre) the engineer I was with just so happened to be one of the original broadband guys who would do the installation of broad band as stated above.

He had 2 installation jobs that day, first one was in a hi-fi shop run by the brother of one of the managers in the call centre I worked in. She later said how 2 guys turned up and one had Purple hair.  Dyed it bright red for red nose day, it was fading quite a bit by that time.

Second job was in an office suite where a small it company had recently set themselfs up. One guy in the corner was having a full conversation, with his monitor/pc while writting a program.

Not just the sort when some one says "Oh don't do that" but having a full conversation. One of the owners noticed I noticed his behaviour and whisperd to me "I know but he's very good at his job"

3rd job was to provide a new line, we got to the property waiting for the lady to turn up as she was picking her child up from nursery nearby when we arrived. we noticed one of the connection blocks was distorted as if melted. We we were let in we could see the black colour of the kitchen ceiling "Kitchen fire ?" No it turned out she was desperate for somewhere to move in so rather than wait for the council to finish redecorating she moved in earlyer and did the remeinder of the decorating herself, the kitchen was the last ceiling that needed doing.

By this time i noticed very large wall plug fixings running up the stairs except for a patch 2/3 of the way up which had obviously been replastered. Turned out the chap who lived there died in a fire caused by his stair lift. Good god! what a way to go 

Certainly a memorable day