My iMac broke a few months ago. Nothing too serious, but annoying nonetheless. The Superdrive decided that it would eat any disc that you put in the slot, and would not eject it. You could hear the mechanism whirring away, but then a nice stressful ‘clunk’, as the disc was eaten again. The disc never even making a minor appearance. So I decided to finally get it fixed while my AppleCare is still valid.

But what’s this got to do with UK Broadband, I hear you – imaginary guy that I’ve borrowed from Wil Wheaton – asking? Shh…I’m getting there…

As I have a lot of personal files on my iMac, I wasnt going to trust it as-is in the hands of my local Apple reseller, so I backed it up with SuperDuper!, formatted it and installed a fresh copy of OS X 10.4 Tiger (via a USB DVD drive). The iMac went off for repair, came back fixed, and then came the time for installing OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Still not seeing what this has to do with UK Broadband… Shhhhh!! I’m getting there!…

After installing Leopard, I went straight for the software update to get the latest patches. The Mac OS X 10.5.6 update alone weighed in at a monstrous 675MB. This was without the Airport, Java and other updates, which took the total way over 1GB. At this point, I havent even installed the iLife suite, or Microsoft Office, which will also require some hefty updates.

I also wanted to upgrade my laptop running Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, to 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. The amount needed to be downloaded for this upgrade came in at a hefty 607MB.

Anyway, the point of all this, is that I have recently had a new phone line fitted, with O2′s home broadband service. I was considering going with Sky for their ‘free’ broadband, but with a monthly download limit of 2GB, I would have punched through that in one evening alone. God forbid I even consider watching something on the BBC iPlayer service! HD? Don’t be silly! Luckily, the O2 package that I have (which is their lowest package), comes with ‘unlimited’ downloads. Fair use policy aside, this is how all broadband providers should be offering their services.

A quick look at the moneysupermarket.com comparison site, shows that there are still lots of broadband suppliers offering monthly download limits. They’re not even decent limits either. Going back to the ‘free’ Sky broadband. You get a 2Mbps line, with a 2GB download limit. This immediately takes you out of the running if you want to watch BBC iPlayer HD. Even if your 2Mbps line could stream the video to you (which it cant), you’d almost hit your monthly limit from watching one hour-long programme.

I suppose the purpose of this post rant, is just to highlight my frustration at how progress of digital services in the UK, is being desperately hindered by the greed of our lacklustre communications companies. Get it sorted!