Here is the "official" video of 4th Power's appearance on the X Factor's auditions on 29th August 2015 at Wembley
First time I've seen the clip. I heard about them of course but didn't actually see. Mainly due to the poor internet service I get. Well, I thought they were great. Good performance and great vocals. It'll be interesting to see how they progress and how long they'll be allowed to stay. More power t0 4th Power from me
We decided to terminate our contract with Sky Broadband (which subcontracts with Bayantel for internet provision) due to constant outages and non-existant customer service. As of today we're with Globe DSL (5 Mbit supposedly) which we hope will be a bit more reliable. I do wonder what strings Simon Cowell pulled with UKBA to get this girl band and their mum here. As far as I can tell, there are two applicable visas for performers. One with a month's maximum stay and one allowing up to 6 months but the sponsorship requirements are quite strict, especially for the 6 month visa. UKBA's website is unclear in so many areas - it wouldn't win a "Crystal Mark" award for clarity, that's for sure - but I think I read that performers have to pay the 500 quid for NHS if they want a 6 month visa.
Sorry all for the off-topic It's interesting to learn about your Sky Broadband experience. I'm with PLDT and have had an torrid time with them. Not only with their internet service but also with their customer service and their admin teams. So bad was their internet speed, I eventually folded and upgraded. My speed test now show consistently lower speeds and there is a significant increase in signal drop-out. Just recently SKY installed their 'stuff' in our village and I seriously considered to switch to them after my current PLDT contract expires. According to their T&C's they have a minimum service of 40% of advertised speed. Well, PLDT only have a min service at 256Kbps I'll eagerly await your Globe experience if you don't mind
Latest Immigration Rules under Visits do allow professional artists and entertainers (individuals and groups) when are invited, to carry out one, or a short-series of permitted paid engagements relating to their profession for up to 1 month (single entry visit only) under the visa for Visit(Permitted Paid Engagements) For participation in X-Factor I would very much doubt they would have secured this visa. From what we know I believe it's more likely to be the under the visa for Visit(Standard) Here's what UKVI state about the Visit(Standard) for entertainers, artists and musicians:- I hope 4th Power make it all the way to the final, but there's a lot of other acts to beat first
It's very early days but so far, so good. But a caveat: I do suspect that new subscribers may enjoy a short period of good connections and decent speeds before they become subject to traffic shaping. We have a 5 Mbit DSL connection - which includes a landline - as, fortunately, Globe does have a street cabinet nearby. Globe provides a modem-cum-wireless router (made by Prolink). For installations where DSL is not possible, Globe offers 3G and 4G/LTE USB dongles and a 4G/LTE wireless router with mast-mounted transceiver. Globe is following its main rival and is installing Fibre. I've just run a few speed tests with the following results (speeds in megabits per second): Server | Receive | Send Manila | 4.27 | 0.98 Slough | 2.55 | 0.46 New York | 4.22 | 0.60 As I said earlier, our previous supplier was Sky and we contracted with them when we lived in Cebu City; very good they were too and we enjoyed a rock solid 10 megabit connection. But here in Davao, Sky Broadband is bad. This may be down to the fact that here it contracts with Bayantel whereas in Cebu they contract with different supplier for their "main pipe" connection. Interestingly, Bayantel is supposed to be the main broadband supplier for this subdivision but it declined to accept an application to supply us on the grounds that its circuits were overloaded and they couldn't guarantee any quality of service. We did have Globe's LTE offering at our last place but it wasn't nearly as good as advertised. However it may be better now because the telcos have been instructed to stop their "unli" promotions which cause congestion.
Sheer luxury. Here's the test data I just got with Ookla Server PLDT Makati Ping 62ms Download 0.54 Mbps Upload 0.49 Mbps For that I pay P1665 because it's an upgraded service. Someone's having a laugh.
Our PLDT in Manila generally gives us about 2.5 Mb Down and 800 Kb or more up, it is variable but is actually more than we pay for, not that what we pay is cheap.
