Hi folks.

I've noticed myself :uhh: and others bitch about UK bandwidth pricing for a long time, it is true that on average it is very expensive. I myself have been quoted £600+ per megabit by some of the major tier 1 providers on London dockyards.

However I've just came across something that could be the start of a fall in bandwidth pricing in the UK. A very interesting offer from UK2.NET with bandwidth pricing at £200 per megabit on their colocation pricing. Okay, I know many will jump of UK2 for their low domain registration fees with "transfer" charges but overall they do seem honest, the fact they bitch about NT :D and you can actually call into the data center 24/7 at no extra charge seem very tempting.
UK2 Colo Pricing (http://colo2.com/colosignup.htm)

Some mention they can get this bandwidth so cheap because they buy from Band-X (http://www.band-x.com), does anyone have any further information on them?

Also I've noticed Demon Internet, a major UK internet provider, have extremely good bandwidth pricing on the rental of Cobalt RaQ 3 with pricing as low as £180 per megabit when you buy 10megabits. I would presume if you're nice with the sales person they would allow you to colocate any 1U server instead of renting their RaQs, it would make sense wouldn't it?.
See here for more info on Demon's Pricing (http://www.demon.net/products/hosting/demonserverhosting/pricing.shtml)

Hopefully we'll see more large UK isps drop the price of bandwidth shortly :)

I had a look at this uk2 colo page. At the bottom of this page there's a link to the TOS and in the TOS a link to what they call the UK2 server access regulations (http://amail.co.uk/access.htm).

They say that, from time to time, they look into all the servers to see if there isn't any illegal content (at least that's what I understand)

How is it possible that UK2 would even have access to a colocated server? Does the rack space provider have a password for all the boxes?

This is from the colo space signup page (at the bottom):

PLEASE NOTE THAT TELEPHONE
SUPPORT IS NOT INCLUDED. YOU
WILL BE ABLE TO CALL THE DATA
SPACE PROVIDER AND REBOOT
YOUR EQUIPMENT 24 HOURS A DAY
What does it mean? You cannot call a support guy but only a "data space provider" guy. That sounds like the one you get on the phone cannot do more than press a reset button... :)

this might interest you.

Accorind to Internet Magazine www.uk2.net 74.26% availability

I dont know if that is because of there network or the particular server the test was done on.

Yep, I did notice it was down for a few minutes earlier today as well. Not a good sign.

What I'm more interested is if a trend is to follow? Especially considering Demon (once the largest ISP in the UK) offering prices at below £200 per megabit.

Also interested in Band-X.com this is where UK2.net is sourcing their bandwidth from. Someone else has stated they get it for £380 per 2mbit and they don't use UK2.Net.

Apparently, one of two other have competitive pricing as well now, Telia and Nildram are £400 per megabit, which is still good.

Matt,

Prices definatly are coming down, especially if you're doing in in the london (Inside the M25) area, Some of the prices we've been quoted for uk internal bandwidth only are crazy (as in stupidly cheap) (transatlantic bandwidth of course costs a bomb)

Regards,

Tony Lucas