VM are going to launch their 50mbit service soon, after years of trials, but predictably it’s all just hype. The service itself is completely pointless. There is no-one whom this service will benefit.
A TV show (350MB) takes about 3 minutes to download on the current 20 meg service. Say about 8-9 for HD. You would have to be pretty impatient to need 50 meg.
What about if you download a hell of a lot of stuff? Well, 50 meg will have throttling anyway so after 15 minutes you drop down to 7.5 meg, unless you do all your downloading overnight in which case you need to be pulling over 75GB/night for 20 meg to be insufficient. That is, assuming you can’t just wait an extra day.
The upload speed is even worse, limited to a pathetic 1.5mb which means it will be virtually impossible to max out your download speed anyway. On any P2P system, with an upload speed like that it isn’t going to happen.
What about the family who all want to share a connection? This is VM’s favourite example, but it’s not going to work. With only 1.5 meg upload and cheap routers without any traffic shaping, if someone sends a large email your VOIP phone call is going to stutter or drop. Don’t expect to play games while someone uploads their photos to Facebook either. If it’s a family connection they were aiming for, then a 10 meg upload and 20 meg down would have been a lot more realistic.
On top of that, it will apparently cost £52/month. What a joke.