You can't take the MVNO price and assume the rest is profit. The marketing, sales and support costs a lot of money, IT, then they have to pay taxes, staffing, buildings, accounting, legal, interest and borrowing costs, banking and point of sale etc all all the other business functions.

I'd be interested to see where the 8p per gig came from, is that really how they charge MVNOs.

I used to work for a broadband company and got to see some pricing to become and MVNO so saw what was offered for the place is was working for. Obviously the more users you had the lower the per GB.

Fair enough, it might be 8p to buy, but when you charge £5 for that 1GB, you've paid for advertising and marketing to get the customer, you've set them up, deal with support, paid you taxes, banking, staffing and building costs you might make £2 out of !

Oh here we go yet AGAIN!!!! More "<name of country> is better than us at this" propaganda!

If you think we are behind so much in this country, then may I suggest you emigrate to a different country that you don't think is "behind"?

Things do move on as technology advances. At the end of the day, Three said they could happily build a national network for 3G on 2100MHz. Whether others are allowed to do it on other frequencies or not is irrelevant. If they didn't think they could do what they signed up for they shouldn't have bid for the licence!

I agree with other posters comments about this helping EE by the back door as they now share the network infrastructure. Surely EE's contribution to MBNL is enough aid to help Three out.

What do you mean 'propaganda'?

It's fact. On a global level, compared to most first-world, and indeed many second-world countries, the UK's communications infrastructure is woefully lacking.

If you don't like people having what are called 'opinions' perhaps you could emigrate to a country where everyone is forced to agree with you.

Otherwise, I'll thank you to keep your counsel.

Will even the third world countries like Libya and Eygpt be getting 4G before us or will they be getting 4G even later than what even we are, ie we get 4G in 2015 and they will get 4G in say 2020?

Hold your fire boys and girls there may be some light on the subject, same website that reported UK might not get 4G till 2015 has now reported three is doing trials on 4G!

http://www.mobile247.co.uk/3-mobile-...-thames-valley

I don't think it's that bad - I'd certainly like to see which countries are offering 100mbps connections as standard to consumers.

Here's the average internet speed by country.

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

We are number 35, even though we're the 5th biggest economy. Ahead of us are Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Belgium, Spain, Norway, France, Japan, USA, Canada, Germany, Greenland, Portugal.

Still at least we're ahead of Iraq hey

Well, here are the countries that I know are definitely NOT offering 100mbps connections as standard to consumers:

United Kingdom (us)
Republic Of Ireland
Australia
New Zealand
India
South Africa
Libya
Egypt
Zimbabwe
Morocco
Indonesia

(and some of the above mentioned countries such as Australia and South Africa have forums equivalent of Digital Spy and they have a lot of "United Kingdom is better than us at this" propaganda threads. The threads don't have that title, but they are along the lines of that! )


And why don't you emmigrate to one of them countries then instead of incessantly moaning and groaning about it on here and starting even more propaganda?

Why should I move from the country I was born in. Is that the answer now, if you're not happy with something you must leave the country?

How about we instead voice our opinions and try and force change.

If you don't like our opinions you could always move to another country you know.

Average upload by the way is...

1
South Korea
27.47 Mbps 2
Lithuania
25.83 Mbps 3
Estonia
17.60 Mbps 4
Latvia
16.24 Mbps 5
Luxembourg
14.67 Mbps 6
Andorra
13.15 Mbps 7
Iceland
12.86 Mbps 8
Bulgaria
12.61 Mbps 9
Romania
12.21 Mbps 10
Macau
11.87 Mbps 11
Japan
10.69 Mbps 12
Denmark
10.54 Mbps 13
Republic of Moldova
10.38 Mbps 14
Sweden
10.07 Mbps 15
Singapore
10.06 Mbps 16
Ukraine
9.68 Mbps 17
Russia
9.20 Mbps 18
Ghana
8.44 Mbps 19
Greenland
8.17 Mbps 20
Norway
7.27 Mbps 21
Netherlands
6.77 Mbps 22
Czech Republic
6.74 Mbps 23
Kyrgyzstan
5.78 Mbps 24
Vietnam
5.33 Mbps 25
Aland Islands
4.90 Mbps 26
Slovenia
4.90 Mbps 27
Slovakia
4.74 Mbps 28
Mongolia
4.73 Mbps 29
Hungary
4.50 Mbps 30
Georgia
4.37 Mbps 31
Finland
4.20 Mbps 32
United Arab Emirates
3.96 Mbps 33
Rwanda
3.93 Mbps 34
Lesotho
3.57 Mbps 35
China
3.22 Mbps 36
Taiwan
3.02 Mbps 37
United States
2.96 Mbps 38
France
2.95 Mbps 39
Switzerland
2.78 Mbps 40
Grenada
2.70 Mbps 41
Malaysia
2.61 Mbps 42
Kazakstan
2.61 Mbps 43
Macedonia
2.59 Mbps 44
Portugal
2.56 Mbps 45
Poland
2.48 Mbps 46
Sudan
2.45 Mbps 47
Nigeria
2.40 Mbps 48
Bermuda
2.38 Mbps 49
Austria
2.37 Mbps 50
Kenya
2.36 Mbps 51
New Zealand
2.34 Mbps 52
Uganda
2.33 Mbps 53
Liechtenstein
2.33 Mbps 54
Ecuador
2.27 Mbps 55
Tajikistan
2.19 Mbps 56
Monaco
2.17 Mbps 57
Cambodia
2.14 Mbps 58
Armenia
2.05 Mbps 59
United Kingdom

And I bet even when we do get 4G, there will be even more propaganda threads such as "we have rubbish 4G coverage compared to <name of country>"!


And the propaganda never ends does it?

I love the way you keep saying propaganda, it's true! we are 59th in the ranking for upload speeds, that's not propaganda, it's true!

As I said If you don't like our opinions you could always move to another country you know.

And I bet if I was to go into a high street setting such as this one: http://i40.tinypic.com/33nia1g.png and asked people in the street who are passing by if they care about us having the 59th ranking for internet upload speeds and some "poor" ranking when it comes to internet download speeds, 99.9% of those people would most likely say "NO (we don't care)".

Besides, ultra fast upload and download speeds for an internet connection aren't a cure for cancer.

Goodness that looks rough, they'd probably ask if you'd got spare change or some heroin. You wouldn't get that abroad

Shoo, you propaganda machine!

Yes you would: I know somebody who went to some place in Tunisia on holiday and they kept getting asked for spare change and drugs.

The whitepaper by akamai says we are above France and Spain (not really looked at your other ones) - speed tests are not really reliable data, they not only depend on the quality of the consumer connection, but also the server.

You also need to bear in mind that according to your site, we have the 5th cheapest broadband in the world.

You can offer high speeds all you want, but if people don't want to pay for it then it wont be reflected in these figures.

I'm not saying we have a great telecom infrastructure, there is a lot of room for improvement - but it isn't really that bad. I assume you're familiar with the phrase: "the grass is always greener on the other side"?

Also, if the USA are supposedly "ahead of us" in terms of ultra fast broadband, then howcome the United States media have been setting up propaganda news articles and blog articles stating how broadband in the United Kingdom is "lightyears ahead of us"?

Also, there is somebody who came to visit me in September, and they live in a major town in Canada, and they say that the broadband they have is "nowhere near as good as what you get here in the UK, so consider yourself very lucky and don't envy countries like Japan, who needs 1Gbps broadband anyway?!"

yeah, n btw some countries dont have anything higher then 2G, be carefull where you choose to go!

Which countries?

I bet they must moan and groan by saying for example "<name of country (United Kingdom for example)> are years ahead of us, with their internet infrastructure especially with 3G, which we don't even have, and their broaband in general".

Let's just spare a though for those countries before envying other countries for getting 4G first.

Just come back from a holiday in the USA, they are pushing 4G like there in no tomorrow! everything seems to be 4G, also they seemed to a lot of advertising of unlimited data, and contracts of 12 months and less, how come we seem get stitched up all the time ?

Why don't you apply to go back to the United States then, this time permanently, then you can bask in their glorious 4G!

Seriously, I'm not in the mood for "<name of country> is better than us at this" propaganda, especially since 2011 has been a bitter year for me.

I'm sure when 4G is used offically here in the UK, we will be pushing it like there is no tomorrow!

Apples and oranges comparing USA and UK

It's a huge country with a lot of people in it, 312m vs 62m in the UK so you can't compare like for like....it's a totally different setup and different economies of scale.

When I was over visiting family, they couldn't believe I had a £10 a month 500mins/500text/500 mb sim only deal for £10 a month!