Is Broadband Too Expensive?

ChrisD. said:
Have you considered how expensive digging up roads and network kit is? There are certainly some ISPs that take the **** with prices but to lay a fibre to your house and connecting that through infrastructure to an Internet Exchange is not cheap to install or run, let alone maintaining it, support, staff training, billing etc.
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I can imagine there's a fair bit of wastage paying some of the clowns to dig and lay the cable to find out it's not done right. They've made three attempts on our road to dig up and lay some cable, god knows why/how the first two contractors screwed up the install but I bet they'll still get paid for the job.
 
I wouldn't assume that contractors are getting paid where remedials are needed. These ISPs aren't small businesses, they have teams of lawyers.
 
Hyperoptic is doing 150 Mbps for £12 a month right now. Can't really complain with that. As more altnets get their foothold into the UK prices like this will hopefully be standard.

It actually made me look into Opeanreach's books... I'm too stupid but are Openreach on page 18 claiming that they made 0 money this year?: https://www.openreach.com/content/d...ted-Signed-Statutory-Accounts-2023-online.pdf

How can Openreach only be turning over £1.9 million a year?
 
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GregI said:
Hyperoptic is doing 150 Mbps for £12 a month right now. Can't really complain with that. As more altnets get their foothold into the UK prices like this will hopefully be standard.

It actually made me look into Opeanreach's books... I'm too stupid but are Openreach on page 18 claiming that they made 0 money this year?: https://www.openreach.com/content/d...ted-Signed-Statutory-Accounts-2023-online.pdf

How can Openreach only be turning over £1.9 million a year?
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BT retail is the side in which makes the profits.
 
I have looked at isp's on the city fibre network.

I can get 900/900 for around £25 to £30 a month on a contract which is reasonable.

I think isp's on the open reach network charge more then that.
 
Damn you guys are getting ripped off. I pay £22.50 for 900/900 and got a £75 rainforest voucher when I signed up :p
 
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picnic said:
Going to spill the beans and say with who?
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BRSK - seems to be quite limited coverage though at the moment and it was a deal when I signed up so not sure if its still available. Standard price is £45 but I got 50% off for two years without an mid contract price rises :)
If anyone is able to and wants to change to BRSK though use my referal code and we'll both get a £75 rainforest voucher :)
brsk.uk

brsk | Join the BetterNet

Brsk is an independent Full Fibre broadband network provider. 14x faster than average UK broadband speed, using fibre only optic cables. Contact us today.
brsk.uk brsk.uk
 
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If your mobile connection is OK , might be worth a look at mobile routers.
£16 a month with Smarty, and give these speeds compared with 50mb/7mb FTTC.

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Troop said:
If your mobile connection is OK , might be worth a look at mobile routers.
£16 a month with Smarty, and give these speeds compared with 50mb/7mb FTTC.

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Definitely something you need to check though. Unfortunately if you're in a place with limited broadband options, its likely a more out of the way place which doesn't have great mobile options either, lol.

I tried 5G a year or two back briefly because I could only get FTTC up to 40Mb until this year so it sounded like a better alternative, and while the networks map said I should get good indoor 5g coverage, most of the time I got worse speeds than FTTC. The exception was late at night when I assume there wasn't as much congension so I could get around 120Mb, which was better, but not enough to put up with worse speeds during peak hours. The other 5g providers' coverage was even worse on their map, so I didn't bother to try anyone else.

Also probably not recommended if you care a lot about ping.

To answer the topic though. I think if you have access to any of the altnets the prices can be pretty reasonable, as well as many of them offering no in-contract price rises. If you're stuck with Virgin and/or Openreach providers then it gets a lot more tricky, I think you're stuck bouncing around providers taking advantage of new customer offers for the most part, lol.
 
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To answer the OP, absolutely not.

Currently paying £40 for 1000/1000 but the first 6 months of the 2 year contract were free. Works out to £30/month.

I don’t need anything like 1000/1000, I was perfect happy with 150mb BT based FTTP. If they don’t match £30/month price at renewal, I’ll just leave and go back to cheap FTTP.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
To answer the OP, absolutely not.

Currently paying £40 for 1000/1000 but the first 6 months of the 2 year contract were free. Works out to £30/month.

I don’t need anything like 1000/1000, I was perfect happy with 150mb BT based FTTP. If they don’t match £30/month price at renewal, I’ll just leave and go back to cheap FTTP.
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That depends on your use case though. If you have any interest in playing games these days I think at minimum you probably want 500Mb if possible because otherwise you'll be waiting ages before you can play any game you've bought, or even if there's an update to a game. Even physical copies don't have the full install anymore.

I dunno how true it is but I read the other day the new CoD is meant to be a 240gb download... I'm glad I finally got access to FTTP this year, that probably would have taken like 24 hours on my old connection.
 
Of all the things that have gone up in price (food, fuel, gas, electric, car insurance) broadband is seen one of the smallest for increases, but typically with a faster service than a few years ago.
Compare that to Royal Mail who have put their prices up again, while the service is getting worse.
 
Troop said:
If your mobile connection is OK , might be worth a look at mobile routers.
£16 a month with Smarty, and give these speeds compared with 50mb/7mb FTTC.

9649796588.png
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Never even thought about that, currently £20 a month for 76mb fiber. Same as Smarty unlimited data.
5g indoors at home isn't great though.
Terrible ping as well.
 
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I pay about 100 a month for this 8G FTTH





It's the fastest I can get atm though there are trials underway for 25G and trials for 100G is expected to take place in a few years
 
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