Fibre Optic Broadband

Posted by Kev Atkinson

I just thought I’d write a quick post about fibre optic broadband. I’ve finally got it. This is a good thing.

I’ve wanted to upgrade to FTTC for a while now as I do a lot of work online and commonly have a need to download 300/400/500 mb from one place, and upload them to the other. As such doing that on a 13MB ADSL connection with a 1MB upload was a little painful. I’d often queue the work up till late on an evening when I didn’t need to use the connection, or do it through the day when the house was empty.

I looked at Virgin Media. They do a 100 (possibly 120) MB connection but with a limited upload. It’s £30 a month. They also traffic shape badly, and have bad reviews for doing so. Peak times slow you right down and they block certain features. I decided in 2011 that I wouldn’t entertain Virgin anyway as they are awful (see previous posts on my bad customer service).

So I waited for fibre optic broadband to come along. I started looking in January 2012 and it had by exchange down to be done in the summer. So I waited, and the summer passed. Then Autumn came and the date for enabling my exchange came and passed. The date was changed on the BT Openreach page and I slowly started to give up hope.

These are the steps I took to keep check on FTTC enabling in my area;

  1. You can see when your exchange will be enabled by visiting http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when.
  2. Once you have a date – follow @Openreach_news on Twitter. That service tweets when exchanges are active. If you’re really sad subscribe and you’ll be alerted everytime they tweet.
  3. Wait around 4-6 weeks following your exchange activation date. This is how long it took for BT Openreach to replace the cabinet near my house with a new fibre cabinet.
    Click here to see a fibre cabinet. 
  4. Place your order with an ISP. I opted to stay with Sky. Sky charge £50 for the activation and installation whilst BT Infinity is free. However BT Infinity have caps and also traffic shape so I opted to remain with Sky. It took a week from order to installation.

So I now have Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro. I opted to pay £10 a month more to have a 20MB upload. This means I can do my work a lot quicker, and not bother the partner when she is playing on Xbox live.

Check before you buy!

Posted by Kev Atkinson

I’ve been buying products & services online for probably close to 10 years, and one thing I always do before I buy is to shop around to compare pricing, to find out if the price is fair, or to see if I’m being ripped off. Now I don’t do this for every single thing – but if I’m buying electrical items or services online I’ll always look around for reviews and pricing.

I recently received some unsolicited email from a hosting company which was a little odd because their website domain was nothing like their company name. They were offering web hosting and had emailed me most likely via my listing on MediaUK.

To cut a long story short, they were selling a variety of ‘unlimited’ hosting packages, very very underpriced streaming packages, and to top it off, they were even selling stuff I could get for free if I spent 2.36548 seconds Googling what they were selling.

The point of this small blog is to point a few things out.

  1. If a company promises ‘unlimited’ – they can’t deliver it, so what else are they lying about?
  2. They haven’t invented the unlimited hard-drive yet.
  3. Google what you want, you might be able to get it for free.
  4. They still haven’t invented the unlimited hard-drive yet.

 

Some Podcasts I Like

Posted by Kev Atkinson

If you know me, you’ll know I like podcasting. However I like to be the person behind the podcast, and my podcasting hosting company does just that.

So I thought I’d recommend a couple of podcasts who are customers of mine, and that I like listening to!

DJ Play’s 52 Ways Podcast

 

 

 

 

 

DJ City USA POdcast

 

 

 

 

 

Milkshake Nights Podcast

 

 

 

 

 

Paradisco Podcast

 

 

 

 

 

Let me know what you think!

I’ve launched KA Distribution Services!

Posted by Kev Atkinson

Last time I wrote here I was talking about distribution services and how had created a distribution server network for hosting most things audio!

Well, fast forward a little while and you can now view and sign up to services at a dedicated website. http://www.ka-distribution.co.uk manages all things hosting/podcasting and comes with a pretty snazzy Customer Relationship Manager and integrated billing system – nice!

So, if you need something, I can probably help!

Podcasting & Audio Delivery

Posted by Kev Atkinson

This year I started looking at services I could help with via my website, and how I could branch out to further provide services around audio and IT. One thing that I looked into was podcasting.

Podcasting has been around for a few years now, but I never really picked up on it or how good it can be. I needed to learn how to podcast, how it works, how it’s powered – and stuff like that. So, working away in Hull and stuck in a lonely hotel room at night I set about reading about podcasting, the background to it, why people do it, and most importantly, how you do it.

A few nights later, I’d launched the Kev and Nixxi podcast so listeners to the radio should could easily listen back to the radio show during the week. But how could I make it better? I looked into ways people get podcasts, and more and more I read that people use their iPods and iPhones to listen to podcasts. Naturally, the progressive route from there was to get Kev and Nixxi onto iTunes listed as a podcast. Again, I had no idea how to do this, so another night of research and it was done.

The podcast took off quickly, reaching around 1000 subscribers within a few months, it was at this point the new service was offered via my website for me to help others, and it didn’t take long.

Working in radio and as a DJ, I’m regularly chatting with ‘fellow deejays’ – and they had the same issue. They wanted a podcast, they want it on iTunes, they want people to listen on iPhones, iPods, and now iPads. It’s a centralised way to deliver podcasts, it integrates with some of the most popular devices out at the moment – so after some networking, some late nights, and more late nights, the first podcast was supplied and hosted via kevatkinson.co.uk.

Fast forward 6 months, and demand is increasing tenfold. A network of audio distribution servers now exist with extremely fast links to the internet and unrestricted bandwidth for fast downloading and distribution of audio. With some extremely influential music promoters and DJ’s on board the future looks bright as demand spreads literally internationally for the services I provide.

If you require help with podcasting, podcast hosting, audio hosting for distribution and most other audio services, do get in touch with me, you’ll find the information you need here.