Man of Honour
I mentioned more than just Musk.
Internet in the UK - getting worse (relative to EU + world)
- Thread starter FoxEye
- Start date
I mentioned more than just Musk.
Well I still think it's foolish to forego installing ground-based networks because you're pinning all your hopes on satellite based networks.
I'd rather we just lay fibre.
It's not an astronomical cost. It's a few billion. It's less than CrossRail. It's less than HS2.
And it's available now, not in future. It's proven, it's reliable. And it can't be disabled by a hostile government. If all our comms is provided by satellites owned by foreign govts or corporations, then yeah, we're at their mercy.
A fibre cable in the ground is much better. I just don't see why we aren't going for it.
@Zefan. Would you be happy is Musk (et al) had the power to switch off our comms at the touch of a button?
I'd rather we just lay fibre.
It's not an astronomical cost. It's a few billion. It's less than CrossRail. It's less than HS2.
And it's available now, not in future. It's proven, it's reliable. And it can't be disabled by a hostile government. If all our comms is provided by satellites owned by foreign govts or corporations, then yeah, we're at their mercy.
A fibre cable in the ground is much better. I just don't see why we aren't going for it.
@Zefan. Would you be happy is Musk (et al) had the power to switch off our comms at the touch of a button?
Soldato
OK, do individual households *need* 20Mb internet?
This time last year I'd have said yes, of course you need it. Since then I've moved house, my 60-70Mb FTTC is gone. I still have FTTC, I still pay much the same as I did before but seeing as the cabinet is about a mile away I get a whole 8Mb down. At first I was nervous about how bad it was going to be but in reality I haven't noticed any difference day to day. Sure, on the rare occasion when I need to download a large file it takes a little longer but everything I used to stream still works just as well. It's brought home just how much talk about internet speeds is just about chasing bigger numbers for little real-world improvement in service.
Spare a thought for those of us who work from home and have to upload and download large files quickly.
I guess if you don't work from home or download anything then ...
But the point is we've fallen behind and people seem absolutely fine with that? We pay more than elsewhere in the EU and we get waaaaay less for it. And that's fine?
Do people in this country enjoy being shafted? I'm beginning to think they do.
Some the Broadband usage i can think of at times in my house is
23mb needed for streaming 4K movies on my 4k apple TV
7mb to 15mb needed for each person watching Netflix / Amazon Prime Video's
Mobile phones & ipads updating apps
Xbox one X updating & downloading games
Multi PC's browsing the internet or downloading games/apps etc
My 4x netgear Arlo pro camera's uploading footage whenever they detect any motion
23mb needed for streaming 4K movies on my 4k apple TV
7mb to 15mb needed for each person watching Netflix / Amazon Prime Video's
Mobile phones & ipads updating apps
Xbox one X updating & downloading games
Multi PC's browsing the internet or downloading games/apps etc
My 4x netgear Arlo pro camera's uploading footage whenever they detect any motion
Soldato
What on earth are you jabbering on about? I lived in Germany for 5 years, and broadband was a lot worse than it is here, from price, ease of installation, time of installation, latency an a bandwidth perspective. We are still in "Europe", it's a big place, so which part of "Europe" are you comparing the UK too and that you have experience of? And which part of the UK?
Tell me about it. Sat here in the middle of a city and I don't even have a date for when any sort of fibre will be available and Virgin refuse to install at the property. So currently stuck on 1MB/s ADSL2+ which absolutely sucks when you consider how large games are these days and how you can no longer get hard copies.
Is this a new build? You often get this where the developers skimped on the cabinet.
As the cabinets on that exchange were likely upgraded to fibre already, you will be stuck.
I see you're asking me to limit it to only places I've lived in... I already said it's from what friends and others have described to me, and articles I've read.
I don't believe you should expect me to have lived in every other EU country to be able to read and comprehend statistics compiled and presented by others.
So anyway, Finland, France, Switzerland, to name a few. As said earlier, in the league tables we're behind 25 other EU countries now including Romania. No, I haven't lived in Romania. Is that important?
Soldato
No, house was built around the 1870s. The new build estate literally just down the road, they have full access to all flavours of fibre, we get **** all.
Another reason it may happen is that the cabinet services very few people.
https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm
That's a useful page. See how how many of the cabinets on your exchange are already FTTC.
Switzerland aren't in the EU, I think you're conflating the EU with Europe it's not like there is some EU right to 10Gbit internet that the evil UK government is withholding from all of us. As a huge EU contributor we've probably funded a lot of the internet infrastructure across the EU whilst our own got neglected.
I never said it was a human right.
But we pay more and get less.
There is also the opportunity cost of being in the slow lane compared to everyone else.
If the majority don't care/ are fine with it, then so be it. Perhaps people in this country just don't like to complain, even when they get a bum deal.
But we pay more and get less.
There is also the opportunity cost of being in the slow lane compared to everyone else.
If the majority don't care/ are fine with it, then so be it. Perhaps people in this country just don't like to complain, even when they get a bum deal.
Soldato
Can you give us a comparable offer in somewhere similar, say in Germany, Spain, Italy or France and tell us why we're having a bum deal? It would be nice to see some figures.
Here you go.
https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=387338&cabinets=14718
For some reason they skipped quite a few cabinets.
Does look like quite a few properties there on cabinet 30. So doubt they would lack numbers.
Soldato
Yeah, but BT and OpenReach just are not interested. I've been on to them for ages now trying to get it activated on my cabinet but they just ignore me or fob me off. It's got to the point where I'm considering popping into to see my MP and see if there's anything he can do to grease the wheels.
https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=387338&postcodeloc=14718&cabinet=P30
Most of the roads have Virgin I'm guessing if this is up to date? It might kick it down the priority list.
You can see some of the other cabinets on the exchnage have been upgraded with BDUK funding. Nothing in quite a few years though.
France is way ahead of us, as they had a massive roll-out of fibre in ~2013/14 (continuing).
And a lot of apartments in France (I read this yonks and yonks ago) have full fibre, TV and phone for something crazy like 20 Euros a month.
Apparently the very rural areas are stuck on ADSL. But then so are we.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...untry-ranking-by-average-broadband-speed.html
10 places below Germany; 12 below France; 19 below Spain. We only fared better than Italy from your list of countries.
Wrong, the plan is for FTTP, not FTTC. I agree it is ambitious, due to the difficulties in achieving a complete rollout to all the places that are difficult or uneconomical to reach for one reason or another. Around 20% of the country needs 'bespoke' solutions.
Caporegime
I think most people are a bit naive when it comes to truly comprehending the difficulty in nationwide FTTP rollout. It’s a gargantuan task!
It depends what one means by decent speeds'; if we look at one of the links you posted https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...untry-ranking-by-average-broadband-speed.html we can see that whilst UK may have low average speeds, we are actually 7th in the EU when it comes to meeting the 30Mbps standard, leaving the likes of Germany, Spain, Italy and France trailing in our wake.
Average speeds don't tell the whole story, what we can see is the UK is actually much better than most at ensuring equality with 94% coverage, I think this is more important than average speeds because people not getting 30mbit makes a massive difference to what they can do, whereas whether you get 50mbit or 100mbit or 1000mbit is less significant.