Alpha Release date speculation thread

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Fibre took 2 years after the 1st estimate to be brought into my village. we eventually got FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) which is approx 500 feet away I'm on a 74mb down tariff and I'm currently on 60mb so at the moment I'm pretty happy after switching from 2mb broadband I was on.
You're one of the lucky ones then! BT may have received government funding to subsidise the installation of FTTC, but as part of the contract were only obliged to provide access to 90% of homes. So they were allowed to pick and choose which cabinets to upgrade. There was a recent review which heavily criticised the government's processes in awarding the contracts to BT (it effectively cemented BT's monopoly on broadband infrastructure in the UK rather than encouraging competition) and it's likely to rumble on for a long time.

My best bet for high-speed internet is to wait a few years for 4G to be rolled out fully, as it has higher target coverage requirements than the fibre rollout.

Edit: The most frustrating thing for me is that the cabinet I'm connected to isn't the nearest one to my house. The nearest one is FTTC enabled!
 
The UK does have its problems with broadband infrastructure (mainly that it's privately owned with public funding -- never going to work). My town's exchange is FTTC enabled, and pretty much all the cabinets have been upgraded other than ours. Ours was deemed not economically viable to upgrade by BT, presumably because they'd actually have to spend some of their own money on upgrading it. There's such a lack of transparency that I can't find out exactly why they didn't upgrade it, nor when they may reconsider. So we're stuck with middling ADSL speeds (which I'm at least reasonably grateful for).

Wow, it's almost like you live near me in Midlothian. Gheesh. The botched cabinet rollout leaves the cable running infront of my house up the road to a cabinet that I can't even connect to. BT and the government need a right kick up the ****. At the coming Scottish independence votingthing I intend to give them both one. BT will have to rebrand for a start. I'm furious with the botched roll out of FTTC in the UK. Can't believe we would get in to such a mess.
 
most internet company's in the Uk have download limits as well some of them are pretty low and they use traffic shaping/fair usage policy which can really limit your download speeds for certain things as well, so even if you are paying for a set speed depending on what you are doing online even if you are nowhere near your download limit for that month you wont be getting anywhere near your max download or upload speeds.

Best away around download limits in the UK with out paying more is to start downloading after midnight as most internet company's relax there download rules after midnight so you will tend to get a few hours where it isn't eating in to your limits for the month.

Not sure if this works the same way for other country's as well.
 
I can't tell you how much I hate bandwidth limits from ISP's. Thankfully my Fibre-Optic link is uncapped, and it's only occasionally I get gigabytes out of it each month, but it's nice to know it's there when I need it (such as playing games and downloading updates).

There are some games that require a complete client download every time there's an update (Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect, Cobalt, to name a few off the top of my head), but for a game like ED they'll probably already have a decent patching system in place already.
 
It is really amazing for a modern country like Australia, really

Yeah I have several Aussie friends - who live in major cities- and they all complain about it. You'd think given how wealthy Australia has become in the last decade they would invest more in their communications infrastructure.

I wonder if the problem is with the capacity of the underwater cables or the reliance of copper cables between exchanges.
 
Yeah I have several Aussie friends - who live in major cities- and they all complain about it. You'd think given how wealthy Australia has become in the last decade they would invest more in their communications infrastructure.

I wonder if the problem is with the capacity of the underwater cables or the reliance of copper cables between exchanges.

The aging copper network (about 25-30 years in most areas) is a big problem. The previous government implemented a very ambitious and expensive national broadband fibre optic project, but it has only been completed in a few areas. Compromising the project in the name of economic rationalism was a key platform for the opposition at the last federal election. Now they are in power but I don't think there has been any change to the project so far, but I may be out of date regarding this.

Anyway, such a network will most likely still not change the download quota system - just improve speed.
 
P2P download is fine. Server download is fine. I really, REALLY hope they aren't cheeky and use some tiny installer that then P2P's your own download to others.

Pando Media Booster - I'm looking at you. Through a gunsight....
 
P2P download is fine. Server download is fine. I really, REALLY hope they aren't cheeky and use some tiny installer that then P2P's your own download to others.

Pando Media Booster - I'm looking at you. Through a gunsight....

that thing is real nasty , to the point i personly class it as malware. tho i think a few missiles would serve their offices better than gunsights, after the planet landings as a mission of coures ;)
 
The absolute worst thing about Pando Media Booster, even worse than it running in the background and eating up your bandwidth without your consent or knowledge, was just how horrifically badly it was deployed.

It ate CPU and RAM like nobody's business, it altered networking configuration, added it's own rules to Windows Firewall, all without giving the user any idea it was even installing anything that would exist as a persistent program and was not merely an installer.

Malware? definitely yes - just one imposed upon unsuspecting users by publishers looking to save some money.

Scum, absolute scum.
 
Yeah, our government we somehow just elected doesn't seem to think our infrastructure needs to come into the modern age http://abbottsinternet.com.au/

People are still pushing for the previous governments NBN to be completed, though I'm not sure if that will be to avail. It seems a lot of people are in the dark on technology issues in Australia and perhaps in large part to Murdochs bias media.
 
People are still pushing for the previous governments NBN to be completed, though I'm not sure if that will be to avail. It seems a lot of people are in the dark on technology issues in Australia and perhaps in large part to Murdochs bias media.

Well, he clearly got loudest megaphone down there for sure.
 
Yeah, our government we somehow just elected doesn't seem to think our infrastructure needs to come into the modern age http://abbottsinternet.com.au/

People are still pushing for the previous governments NBN to be completed, though I'm not sure if that will be to avail. It seems a lot of people are in the dark on technology issues in Australia and perhaps in large part to Murdochs bias media.

rant follows
that's poor attempts at copies of republics for you (aka self declaired democracys) next they will be hiding information and blocking sites where you might be able to break the law . . . . personly i think they should bring back public exicution of senate members who lie (poly-tête-ion) pay them state benifit level wages and stop the gratis directorships that come with the job (that has to be a conflict of interest)but keep the money those companies pay as a tax , in the uk that's directly over a £2billion a year (but i cant see them agreeing , public servants bah) that way you would have some extra funds to do things the majority want done like proper (non-monopoly) infrastructure.
rant ends.

i have dodged the cap system myself. moved next to an independent exchange and had 1 meg ASDL in 1999, cost an arm and a leg tho (£100/month) as it was ment to be for buisnesses. dispite the fact that a fiber network was laid in southampton in the 1980's and available to 100% houses it cant be used, something to do with "BT have to do it" and the polyteteions.


note to self dont type during first coffee after waking up
 
Alpha is even more tempting now

The minimum alpha specs are out and they're surprising low.

Join the alpha, you know you want to. ;)
 
The minimum alpha specs are out and they're surprising low.

Join the alpha, you know you want to. ;)

Bear in mind it's for first build, next ones could require more powerful machines :p However, it's for alpha (all debugging infrastructure probably turned on) and I wouldn't be surprised if for actual game they will only up memory and GPU requirements a little bit. Nice work FD :)
 
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