Kitz - DSL Broadband Information Site

And just like that, it's 2025! Happy New Year to contributors and readers of the Kitz site.

2024 has seen record growth of FTTP with 69% of the UK having access to full fibre broadband. According to OFCOM  news dated 5thDec 2024:
Ofcom’s Connected Nations report finds that 69% (20.7 million) of UK homes now have access to full-fibre broadband. Using fibre optic cables all the way to the home instead of copper lines, full-fibre broadband is faster and more reliable. Full-fibre networks, as well as cable, can potentially deliver speeds of 1 Gbit/s or higher, which means a better experience when doing activities like streaming, gaming and making video calls.

Taking full-fibre and cable networks together, 25 million homes (83%) now have access to a gigabit-capable broadband connection. This suggests the Government’s target of 85% coverage by 2025 is likely to be reached.

I can't ignore that web hosting for the site has been a heck of a bumpy ride during 2024. The GoDaddy takeover of TSOHost turned into a disastrous move.  Legacy Vidahost/TSOHost customers were given little choice.  You either move away with zero support and they shut the server off..  or were backed into a corner to take out one of their specific managed packages at a vastly increased cost.  Unfortunately, the so called premium support was at times has been anything but. It would take far too long to list all the issues in this post, suffice to say that it has been a very expensive move not just monetary, but also in terms of time spent fixing errors, server downtime and huge amounts of stress.  I simply can not afford to continue on the current plan for another year, so hopefully when Ive managed to clean up some of the mess caused during the GoDaddy migration I will be looking at moving to better hosts. Thank you for your patience and understanding during what became a heinous time.

As is customary, I take this time of year to say a massive thanks to all our regs and other contributors who make this site what it grew to be.  I could not have done it without you. Wishing everyone a prosperous new year.

Wishing a Merry Christmas to members of the Kitz Community.

Its a time of year that can be stressful and chaotic for many.  There seems to be high expectations about how we need to do this, that or the other to make a perfect Christmas day.  In reality, the trimmings don't really matter and I'm sure no one really cares if your serviettes don't match the tablecloth.  The main thing is that we try to take some time out and enjoy presence of friends and family. On the flip side of chaotic, Christmas can be lonely for others.  I've reached that stage of life when far too many loved ones have passed away and Christmas is a time when it hits quite hard if certain people are no longer here. With my own health being fragile, getting out isn't so easy,  but I'm fortunate to have family who I love and care about with whom I shall be spending the next few days.  It's my wish that you too have friends and/or family to spend time with.  What ever it is that you are doing, I hope that you have an enjoyable day.

I do apologise for all the recent and ongoing down time.  I was basically backed in a corner by my hosts to upgrading to a new server.  As you have probably noticed,, things do not appear to have gone well resulting in many hours of down time. 

Right now it seems that there iare so many things I need to fix.  The list seems endless and I'm completely overwhelmed.  There are so many areas I need to sort its hard trying to know what to do next, or even where to ask for help.  It is mostly cosmetic although the forum does keep crashing.  I'm not getting help from my hosts into finding a solution so Im trying to work through certain things myself.   I havent even had time to transfer my own mail over or do anything personal.  I literally have been sat here glued to the PC for the past 3 weeks not making much progress but please do bear with me as I try to sort what I can.

Ironically the upgrade was supposed to have more disk space and premium support, it seems to have been anything but with tickets sat unanswered for days/weeks and them not carrying out what should for them be simple tasks.

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Update 10th July

During the migration they appear to have changed the character set from UTF8 to Latin.  This is causing a problem with certain characters.  Please bear with me until I can sort this out.  Unfortunately there are several things I need to do before I can attempt to change this back.  More info in this thread here .

A heads up that over the next week the site will have various maintenance work that could cause downtime.

There's quite a few changes involved  which have been time consuming for me and although I have tried done a dry run, there are still parts of the site that need work.. and its a blind process as I dont have sufficient room on this server to do replica.. so having to keep editing my host file is a PITA when my browser ignores the host host file and serves me cached page.    
The forum and main site look ok, but I still need to do work on the wiki.  I think its the skin so dont be surprised if I stick with one of the default wiki skins until everything has moved over.   There will be unavoidable downtime for DNS propagation and I will try and inform you nearer the time for that as I will be putting the forum into maintenance mode to transfer the database.  As usual, I will use the Facebook page for Service Status. 

I do apologise for not having exact info right now, but I wanted to ensure you were fore-warned before this server is switched off.

The kitz team would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the regs for their contributions to the forum.   We are fortunate to have some very knowledgeable persons prepared to share their knowledge and assist others.  You guys help make this forum the great place it is. Cheers!