The government has watered down it's commitment to 1gbps nationwide net access from 2025 to 2030

They've watered down everything else, so this comes as no surprise.

The money they've given to BT only to have them continually ***** it on shareholders is bordering on criminal.
 
Eh, Openreach have delivered on the contracts they signed. If local authorities wanted FTTP they could have asked for it and been quoted accordingly. The clawback for take-up is a decent mechanism for ensuring areas aren't just written off as commercially unviable and then subsidised.

If anything, like a lot of UK government projects, it wasn't ambitious enough. It should have mandated FTTP because the money was never really going to be a large enough cost that it would cause problems, and starting FTTP in 2012 rather than a couple of years ago would have kicked a lot of the other networks into gear as well.

Providers other than Openreach could have had BDUK contracts, look at Connecting Devon & Somerset if you want to see an example of how that worked out.

For anybody keeping track, the government promises on broadband were full fibre to everybody by 2025 (unrealistic, everybody said this was mad), then changed to gigabit-capable by 2025 (at which point Virgin Media counts and suddenly you're at 50% coverage having built nothing), and now it's gigabit everywhere by 2030 which I assume is just hoping that 5G can do it. So far government have committed £1bn but keep talking about a £5bn figure.
 
Is there still an argument to say this is low priority in the grand scheme of things? I mean is the lack of gigabit broadband nationwide halting progress or preventing anything from happening? The main thing is to get to the small villages and areas that have very slow basic ADSL lines still running at 1.5mb kind of thing?
 
If you're setting a target 8 years out then you might as well say gigabit which in practise means fibre, because 60Mbps FTTC is going to be insufficient by then. It also rules out fixed wireless which is good because it stops someone just buying a load of Ubiquiti radios and hoovering up public funds to deliver crap.
 
No surprise there then... it what happens when you offer 0 incentive in a pseudo-capitalist socialist market... so as always... the UK falling behind every other developed country when it comes to infrastructure.

When you don't offer free public funding to the companies who profit from the public funds they're taking from and charing the same price they would have anyway... what do you expect?

A monopoly with no financial benefit to improving their product...

I'll sit back and enjoy the 100Gbit FTTP that I can barely utilise... for ~£70/month... and I was excited to get 10gbit when I arrived only a few short months ago...
 
jaybee said:
Is there still an argument to say this is low priority in the grand scheme of things? I mean is the lack of gigabit broadband nationwide halting progress or preventing anything from happening? The main thing is to get to the small villages and areas that have very slow basic ADSL lines still running at 1.5mb kind of thing?
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I swear that anyone who says that is at least 40 years old...
 
Caged said:
If you're setting a target 8 years out then you might as well say gigabit which in practise means fibre, because 60Mbps FTTC is going to be insufficient by then. It also rules out fixed wireless which is good because it stops someone just buying a load of Ubiquiti radios and hoovering up public funds to deliver crap.
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It really doesn't though... in some areas 5g & even 4g wireless crap exceeds fixed lines in the UK already.

Fibre isn't the only avenue... updated DOCSIS is already multi-gigabit as has been for years before Virgin pushed their first gigabit product. Due to conversions and longevity, its growth is only fuelled by ongoing provider avoidance of real fibre deployment.

The viability of a strong wireless network is a far more efficient deployment method... real wireless PTP links have been in the 10g+ range for 5 years or more already at relatively low expense... general bandwidth sharing has long-since opened it up as a much more cost-effective deployment method than laying cable.

Unfortunately I feel the starlink system will deploy such a service to the UK before any local provider unless 1 takes the lead and the others are forced to follow suit... but even then... the providers will file anti-competitive lawsuits before they ever actually provide a competing product.

The public funds have the capability to deploy appropriate connectivity... but of course it's better to create artificially inflated population density hotspots only to allow below-average earners to compete in a growing market.

The UK continues down its slow path of new-market death.

But of course... artificially inflating the GDP to unsustainable levels is the best way to borrow the country into bankruptcy at the expense of its population... ever since Brexit, the UK has been high on my list for the "next" pre-WW2 Germany-like economy... it's only taking longer to get there. Hopefully it avoids it... but Brexit was a strong nail in the coffin. I believe in democracy, but its difficult to vote on an issue of country-level-cooperation when the most powerful group of voters never left their home town, don't intend to and lack the education to tell their arse from their elbow...

In current markets, let alone future... the economy-boosting potential of deploying good connectivity to even remote locations has far outweighed the cost...

All the UK is really doing, is managing its basic tickboxes before a non-local company can deliver a better product from orbit...
 
4/5G and wireless are generally a poor alternative to a fixed line, though better than nothing. Even with decent speeds you generally have so-so latency at best and in many cases quite poor latency, web-pages with a lot of threaded content are often slow compared to a fixed line, even a much slower fixed line, even though downloads can be fast and intermittent drop outs can happen either pages not fully loading or complete drop outs depending on how good your signal quality is. Never mind stuff like online gaming.

We have a couple of WiFi options around here with up to 50mbps products but they aren't any better than 4/5G and in fact seem to be more congested at peak times.

People around where I live are being left behind - I'm fortunate in that I get 30/6 FTTC and a range of 4G with speeds in excess of FTTC - but go more than a few metres either side of my property (we are 1 of only 4 houses in the village which get FTTC) and people are getting single digit mbps on a good day - maybe if they are really lucky 10-13mbps on 4G at quiet times and many still stuck on ~3mbps ADSL.
 
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Is there are reason why the government should get involved at all? The only reason I say that is because everything they get involved with turns in to a giant white elephant.
 
Rroff said:
4/5G and wireless are generally a poor alternative to a fixed line, though better than nothing. Even with decent speeds you generally have so-so latency at best and in many cases quite poor latency, web-pages with a lot of threaded content are often slow compared to a fixed line, even a much slower fixed line, even though downloads can be fast and intermittent drop outs can happen either pages not fully loading or complete drop outs depending on how good your signal quality is. Never mind stuff like online gaming.
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That's a very sweeping statement. 5G really is an alternative to a fixed line for many already. It really depends where you are. 5G masts are getting built fairly quickly.

I've been on 5G since Jan 2021 and had maybe 3 or 4 drops in that entire time, whilst getting between 100mbps and 800mbps (depending on location/mast etc) and between 8ms - 18ms ping.

Never had any issues with online gaming either. My current speed is 800/50mbps with 9ms ping. FTTC is the only other option here at a speed of around 50/10mbps.
 
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TallPaul_S said:
That's a very sweeping statement. 5G really is an alternative to a fixed line for many already.
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It is a sweeping statement but even on 5G only some people will have an experience close to a fixed line - it isn't an overall alternative to having a fixed line. Never mind 4G (latency all over the place, can be congested at peak times) or your average wireless setup (usually way over-subscribed).

I actually get a really solid ping on 4G - pretty much constant 26ms at the moment - despite being some distance from the mast and with a hill in the way - but for many it will be very variable latency.
 
Rroff said:
It is a sweeping statement but even on 5G only some people will have an experience close to a fixed line - it isn't an overall alternative to having a fixed line. Never mind 4G (latency all over the place, can be congested at peak times) or your average wireless setup (usually way over-subscribed).

I actually get a really solid ping on 4G - pretty much constant 26ms at the moment - despite being some distance from the mast and with a hill in the way - but for many it will be very variable latency.
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True but if the 5G rollout continues at pace it'll be an option for more and more, relieving capacity for the fixed lines.

5G wasn't an option for me 3 years ago, now I can get close to gigabit download speeds.

If the UK is to get anywhere near the target they'll need to make the most of all the technologies available, in 10 years I can see 5G making up a decent portion of home broadband users.
 
I'd rather fixed line relieved capacity on the 5G network so that applications that had to be wireless could benefit from not being constrained by people using it for home broadband.

SpellowHouse said:
Is there are reason why the government should get involved at all? The only reason I say that is because everything they get involved with turns in to a giant white elephant.
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If you have a way to get decent quality connectivity to villages of 20 houses without subsidising it then I'm sure there are lots of network operators who would be grateful to hear from you :)
 
I'm always a proponent of the benefits of fixed line... but I needed an AirBNB in a semi-major city & it came with a 5G router as it's only setup, at my surprise.

Busy enough city, so plenty of options for over-subscription problems. Virgin are useless in that locality, but still offer 1gbit when they can only support 10mbit. But I found no actual drop outs, regular connection speeds exceeding 500mbit & a ping better than most ADSL(1/2+) or FTTC providers. As 5g device saturation increases, it will likely suffer similar problems, but at least the high frequency requires a higher density in connection points, so it leads to the basic infrastructure having a higher basic bandwidth to support it.

My 4g experience, not so good... maybe my little experience was unique and short-lived... but deploying masts to low population density areas is finally seeming like a viable option for high throughput and respectable ping connections to low density areas that are uneconomical to install fixed lines.

In reality, Starlink is the long-term better solution, for low density... but until the initial hardware cost outlay is reduced... users are more likely to adopt even 3g or 4g connections in those areas, despite their reduced throughput and higher ping / over subscription issues.

My ideal option would be to share a starlink connection for a small block or offer a decent P2P wireless connection to an appropriate block. 5-10gbit P2P link can now be deployed easily for only 4 figure sums, as long as the landscape is flat enough.

It's not even about offering an efficient deployment method, I've been in that game for many many years, despite building such infrastructure in Central London where roadwork permits have been troublesome...

The problem is breaking that barrier between offering a good product and having the market awareness to make it a viable project... for new ventures with a promising product, the marketing budget will destroy them. The big guys only really resell infrastructure and the ones with the monopoly to build it are waiting for handouts.

I could easily drop 5-10gbit connections into the centre of small villages for about £40/month per household with whole-village adoption... maybe some obscure exceptions... but I already priced myself out of the market when most end users are still happy enough with 1-5mbit at home for £15-20/month and won't pay the extra. Members of this forum don't have a mass-market perspective, generally.

The likes of Gigaclear are the only ones who have made an effective low-density deployment & I have been lucky enough to have a 1gbit fttp connection since 2016 thanks to them. Then in London I was with Hyperoptic, but their deployment prospect is easy for development projects seeking to entice new buyers... low cost, high uptake, high return, near 0 risk. Simple managed infrastructure with a good enough contention.
 
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