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ICUK's New Broadband Network Released & Version 8 of the Control Panel

icuk

ISP Rep
7th November 2011, Croydon, UK: ICUK Computing Services Ltd, (www.icuknet.co.uk), a leading Internet Service Provider, today announced the release of its new broadband network and version 8 of its in-house developed Web Control Panel. These represent a considerable capital investment which has consumed countless development hours over the past year. The network sits alongside ICUK's existing hosting setup and will be expanded over the next year to feature additional services and added resilience.

As part of this massive investment to the core network, the company's portfolio of products now includes Fibre to the Cabinet and Annex-M services, offering customers download speeds of up to 40Mb.

Leslie Costar, Director of ICUK, said "This investment allows us to make considerable longer term savings and gives us the power to add many new features and exciting products for our resellers, which we will be announcing over the coming months. Backed with over 400Gb of network capacity, our customers can be sure we can meet their needs for speed and resilience that is so often left behind in today's always on environment."

The latest version of ICUK's unique Control Panel has seen changes made across all platform areas including broadband, telecoms and web hosting. Several hundred enhancements have been implemented, many of which are based on feedback received from existing customers.

Paul Barnett, Director of ICUK, said "This has been an exciting development which has seen us re-think our network structure. It has given us the opportunity to re-visit and re-engineer lots of our core network elements whether that be Radius, DNS or the panel interfaces. Our customers will benefit for many years to come from the effort the team has put into this release. This really is the foundation for a new generation of converged services for ICUK."

About ICUK

ICUK was formed in November 2001 and provides web hosting, dedicated servers, domain registration, line rental, phone calls, and broadband connections, direct to end consumers and through its 450+ strong reseller channel. All our of services can be purchased and managed through our in-house developed Control Panel web interface. We are committed to delivering the highest standards in the services and support we provide.

In May 2011, ICUK acquired CIX Online, one of the world's oldest Internet Service Providers and original social network through its unique conferencing discussion service. At its peak, CIX was often cited as the UK's No 1 ISP for speed, reliability and customer service and celebrates its own 25 year anniversary in 2012.
 
Oh good. :)

I'm already with ICUK (and quite happy with them) - can't get FTTC here yet, it's supposed to be available at the end of the year, but...

I see that we have a nicely priced £20 low-use "home" package for those of us who don't want to download fifty-three copies of "War & Peace" every day. 10GB peak and 50GB off-peak will be plenty for me, and although I'm currently paying only £16 (2GB peak, 100GB off-peak) that's really only because the package happened to suit me and I was already with them for the phone so they seemed the most logical ISP for me out of half a dozen or so respectable people to choose from - when looking around after deciding to ditch Namesco, I had budgeted for £20 as a round figure anyway!

Not being a speed merchant, and living very close to the exchange, my present service is basically fine, and with most ISPs evidently assuming that someone who wants better speed must also want massive allowances, putting the price above what I'd be prepared to pay, I'd previously concluded that it was unlikely I'd bother with FTTC. However, a mere £4 extra is fine, I'm not actually bothered about the download speed, but it's worth that for the increased *upload* speed (sending the big patch file for a database on one of my sites can get a bit tedious), so I'll be saving the pennies for the installation cost and a new router and, assuming the 31/12/2011 date is adhered to, going for that some time in January.
:)
 
Just noticed the corresponding news item on ISPr front page, which includes...
"Sadly nobody has been able to compete directly with BT-Infinity and PlusNet UK's low prices"

.. but I did say "they seemed the most logical ISP for me out of half a dozen or so respectable people to choose from".

:laugh: :p
 
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"...assuming the 31/12/2011 date is adhered to, going for that some time in January."

But, of course, we are dealing with BT here, so it didn't happen. The FTTC availability date slipped from 31 December to 31 March, didn't happen yet again, and I'm waiting with not a great deal of optimism to see whether or not the replacement advertised 30 June date is adhered to.

In the meantime, I have done a bit more thinking, and I am a bit better off thanks to my pension starting (and a nice fat lump sum that came with it), so would be prepared to increase my self-imposed limit.

As previously stated, my existing ICUK service is basically fine, and my actual usage is pretty low (especially in peak hours) so their allowances on the bottom end offerings are plenty for me, which helps to keep costs down. I'm very close to the exchange, speeds are as good as anyone could reasonably expect on ADSL2+, and as far as download is concerned, there's actually little point in having more than my existing speed. Most of the sites I use are run by cash-strapped government departments, even more cash-strapped local authorities, avaricious (mostly USA) commercial sites who are more congested than the M25, or amateurs using Uncle Sam's ten cents a month bargain basement hosting. There are a few exceptions, but in most cases it wouldn't make any difference if I had 100Mb broadband, because they don't have the capacity at their end. I don't actually time things that often, but I'd reckon that Essex Record Office (whose "Essex Ancestors" project I have an annual subscription to) are probably the best of a generally none too brilliant bunch. However, I'd guess that they the only one of my regular sites where an increased download speed would actually be of any use. At the other end of the scale we have The National Archives, who evidently believe that the age of their server should match the age of the documents being downloaded - I'm very lucky if I can get even a quarter of the speed from them that I get from a decent site.

It's the upload which is the important thing to me. Not only because of my own website, but also because of sending fairly large stuff to others at times. For example, I recently used my bargain A3 scanner (those with an extremely good memory may remember the purchase of this being discussed a good while ago) to scan an entire well out of copyright book relevant to the family history and sent it to a friend in Australia. At about 1.05 meg, this took a little time.

So, I had decided that rather than go for 40 down and a measly 2 up for £20, I'd go for 40 down and 10 up at £25.

As FTTC is not yet available here, I haven't had an e-mail from ICUK on the subject (they don't leave customers gnashing their teeth by telling them about something that they can't get), but I see from the front page of this site that if and when BT actually install the cabinet that they've desecrated our nice clean graffiti-free road with by marking out its proposed location in white paint, 80 down and 20 up will be available for £30.

Well, I would not give an extra old-fashioned farthing for 80 down instead of 40 down - but 20 up...?

Oh, go on then, twist my arm. :laugh:
 
Ee by gum, you're still using that parallel port scanner? You must have a great deal of patience ... :nod:


Do you use Skype for chatting to any of your contacts? I assume having plenty of upstream bandwidth would also be useful for that(videowise).

For me FTTC is penciled in for September this year, will have to wait and see whether it materialises.:hrmph:
 
You remembered! :laugh:
Yes, it's still going strong, Bob - and you're right, it does indeed need a bit of patience. It produces decent results though, so replacing it is a long way down the wish list, but as I have a bit more cash now, when more important matters are dealt with, I may investigate what the situation is with a modern "ordinary" A3 scanner (not something like the "Bookeye" overhead ones, which I think start at around £17,000 :eek:) that will run under Linux - no point in getting one that's Windows only, because I don't have a modern Windows system at all, only the old box running W98SE.

I don't use Skype (or similar) at all, let alone for video, so that doesn't come into the equation here, but I imagine you're right, and it would be a consideration for most people.

Hope you get enabled in September. :)
(And, on a more selfish basis, hope I get enabled in June as currently predicted, of course!)
 
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