Internet in the UK - getting worse (relative to EU + world)

FoxEye

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So we're currently behind (in terms of % population with decent speeds) 25 other EU countries, including places like Romania. And we're slipping down the league tables each year.

The govt is spending up to £80 billion on HS2. To shave 30 mins off a journey from Manchester to London.

Their "ambitious" broadband plan is to invest £3-5 billion to get everyone on "fibre" by 2033. Oh and "fibre" means FTTC. So still copper/aluminium to your house.

So by 2033 you might be able to get 80 Mb/s. In 14 years time, most other "G20" countries will have gigabit speeds virtually universally.

How does the current UK govt understand things so badly, that they still think moving people physically around the country (slightly) faster is 16x more important in terms of money spent, than improving our digital infrastructure?

I just don't get it. Surely someone at the top must understand how bad it is that we're increasingly stuck in the stone age, compared to our neighbours - and our economic rivals.
 

Django x2

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I'm sure most of this is incorrect considering at least 3 cities are trailing Gbit broadband.

You also have to remember that our cellular networks are far better than most European countries, significantly cheaper too and with the advent of 5G, home broadband could almost be a thing of the past.
 

chrcoluk

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Yeah with cityfibre etc things are finally moving, we definitely late to the game but its happening.

I agree 100% on HS2 tho, thats a project thats 20 years too late and too expensive for what it is.
 

paradigm

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robfosters said:
Do individual households even need gigabit broadband though?
Click to expand...
Ask yourself the same question in the late 90s but subtract gigabit for 20Mb.

Things move on, you might not need gigabit this moment in time, but in 5-10 years when more and more of your white goods and home electronics are on IoT, streaming is 8k+ and multiple streams are concurrent...
 

ultralaser

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One of the big problems is that UK was *ahead* of most of the world fitting old school phone lines, and often retrofitting high speed broadband to counties with a extensive copper network is expensive.

In fairness to BT, they are rolling out high speed internet, it's just taking a while, I've just got 300Mbps via GFast (FTTC), my last place got Infinity (even though it was in the butt end of nowhere) and >40Mbps broadband adoption is definitely spreading. BT and the VM and co are trialing >1Gbps in certain cities, and with 5G due to hit soonish we can expect high speeds via mobile networks. Also it's great to see some communities going the DIY route (https://b4rn.org.uk/). I think brining HS2 into the conversation is mixing up things, if you're in commuter distance of one of the target cities (Manchester, Leeds, York etc) you'll find that those are well catered for in terms of >40Mbps internet already (and growing).

(This post was not sponsored by BT).

UL
 

mmj_uk

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TBH I'm not sure why anyone needs over 80Mb/s? most stuff is streamed these days so it's not like you have to sit around waiting for it to arrive, compression technology is much better also. I remember when downloading a 20MB file took around 2 hours and downloading was more of a necessity back then due to a lack of streaming services.

It's far more important to get those without internet connected because the high street is dying and everything seems to be going online.
 
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jpaul

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let's get the priorities right - fix the 3rd world problem first - 3G - the government needs to improve coverage, as discussed this morning, roaming will help a bit.

... netflix etc don't provide a better quality 4K stream even if you have more than 15Mb/s yet either.
 

Jokester

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jpaul said:
... netflix etc don't provide a better quality 4K stream even if you have more than 15Mb/s yet either.
Click to expand...
Was just going to ask what you need for 4K streaming, the only thing I can see a real need for more bandwidth is just having the capacity for multiple 4K streams to a single household, for the various family members. Beyond that I just don't see a pressing need for it beyond 100Mb.

TV is reaching it's "peak smarthphone" moment as well, there's no real benefit for the consumer beyond 4K so I'm struggling to see a demand for super-fast broadband from consumers. 5G being on the horizon will shake things up as well.
 

jsmoke

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Remember the days when you were downloading at 4.3kb/s and using a download accelerator would get you up to 4.7kb/s. Painful stuff.
 

esmozz

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I live abroad, I have an 800mb fibre connection to my apartment which costs me 20 euro a month. It's rock solid, has never failed and never seems to slow down. Comparably my father in the UK pays a lot more for a 300mb connection with Virgin Media but it feels a lot slower at peak times.

Also, genuine question, will 5G have suitable latency times for gaming?
 

HEADRAT

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BT has stagnated the broadband market, Openreach has a virtual monopoly on the network, only recently having to open up their ducts etc. to competition. I think as has been said above that all the investment will now go into 5G, putting fiber into every house in the UK would be massively expensive and now a bit redundant
 
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