News: 1608037268

One of the things I noticed living on mainland Europe, compared to friends and family in the UK is that my broad band speed is pretty consistent 24 hours a day. Whereas it seems the UK is more prone to over sell which means that there are times in the day when my friends in the UK seem to really struggle for bandwidth. I've worked in a few northern European countries and found that by and large they all had fairly consistent bandwidth throughout the day.

I also had the pleasure of holidaying in Cornwall in 2019 and experiencing, what were in effect, dial up speeds :-) Devon wasn't much better, I can only hope things are better in the large towns!

Connecting individual properties is one thing, making the whole chain fast enough (DSLASM, backhaul, interconnects, etc.) quite another. It's the sort of thing that requires relatively expensive investments of the sort that the UK, with its preponderance for short term fixes, generally doesn't like.

My German LTE backup is faster and cheaper than the UK standard, albeit limited in volume.

My German LTE backup is faster and cheaper than the UK standard, albeit limited in volume.

Lucky you. I am on Vodafone Deutschland. It is supposed to be "up to 500mbps"... I get around 0.001mbps at work and 5mbps at home. Switching back to congstar, that is "only" 50mbps, but at least I get 10mbps at work and 45mbps at home.

My ISP at home is Osnatel and I get 50mbps for 39€ a month, including a landline and mobile flat rate. And I get 52mbps most days.

But I can confirm what the OP said, I get the 50mbps all day. I've never seen the speed drop off - apart from the time the builder down in the town dug through the fibre trunk into the town! 2 days of no bandwidth, then 1 week at 2mbps until full service was restored. Given how much damage the builders caused, I was surprised how quickly we got emergency coverage and how quickly full service was restored.

I think it depends who you are with. Im with zen internet and whilst not the cheapest I get what I pay for. We have the up to 80 package and we get just over 70Mb, this doesnt really change when called upon in the real world.

The router will give stats and graphs over time if you want it to, when the whole house is "doing stuff" simultaneously (xbox games, HD netflix, PC games, spotify streaming, work) it ticks over at about 20Mbs, spikes for downloads but unless there is a new game going to steam or xbox then it never hits the top. But at least it can hit the 70Mbs at any time and we havent had many outages of note.

Doesn't help that new housing doesn't seem to automatically get new broadband options when constructed, at least not in all cases.

I live in a new build from ~6 years ago, on a new estate that has about 85 houses. Rather than dropping a new cabinet into the estate, they ran all the copper cables down to a cabinet on the nearby main road, that was apparently undersubscribed. This was an older model cabinet, so not even FTTC, let alone a FTTP options.

My broadband dropped from around 40Mbps in the old house (which also had no FTTC or FTTP options), to ~30Mbps at the new house.

Took another 3 years before they finally updated the old cabinet to the FTTC version, so I can at least get 80Mbps now (the max available).

As far as I can see BT wholesale basically do everything reactively. They didn't automatically upgrade the local cabinet, despite all the new houses being connected to it, but instead waited for enough people connected to the old cabinet, to register their interest in FTTC, and once a threshold is met, it gets added to a list somewhere and eventually gets the upgrade.

In an ideal world, for any new build, Virgin, OpenReach, CommunityFibre and others would have their cables all share the same ducting at the time of being laid, and a suitably competent contractor could be employed to do so, the cost of which would be soaked up by the cost of the houses. There'd be a requirement that it was FTTP at least.

Of course, it would take a government that actually understood technology: Hancock, for example, I deem least likely to be able to set his own house alarm at night. Johnson, well.... And Rhys Mogg is most likely to be still using Quill and Parchment

(I've omitted Patel as she's just plainly as dumb as dry toast)

Hancock is the one most likely to have bought a really expensive alarm system that is completely inappropriate for his needs.

He thinks technology is wonderful, but doesn't know what it is.

The developer only installs ducting if they get paid to do it, they charge Transco and the local water board to run in the utilities. Yes it would make sense to have ducts and a DP for the estate, but in practice the developer is too busy squeezing in another bedroom or parking space.

openreach will install to new builds over 10 properties providing the cabinet can support it. This has been the case for quite some time. It does take the developer giving a damn though.

I'm not sure how one measures that. I consider I get VFM because the price I pay is fair enough for the service I get while paying more for higher speed wouldn't really be any gain for me. But I know others who would judge it differently.

It depends. If you get your 30mbps for 38 quid, that maybe the cheapest. But if you get 100mbps for 45 quid, that is "more expensive", but better value for money.

I agree, if it was markedly more expensive, then it isn't necessarily better value for money, if you don't need the extra speed. But the prices, here in Germany aren't generally much higher than in the UK.

1&1 are currently offering 100mbps for 0€ a month for the first 10 months, then 39.99€ a month thereafter (2 year minimum).

If you get your 30mbps for 38 quid, that maybe the cheapest. But if you get 100mbps for 45 quid, that is "more expensive", but better value for money.

That's too close to the major food retailers' "BOGOF" technique for my liking; it may be better VFM but it can result in increased food waste which ultimately can mean the the retail customer doesn't get increased VMF at all.

I (well we actually; there's two of us) get typically 53.1 / 18.6 Mbps (tested 5 minutes ago) and that is more than sufficient for our needs. Any further increase in speed - however it was achieved - would not be "VFM" in our case (assuming that it came with a cost increase) because it would be a speed that we didn't need.

I'm not going to be so silly as to suggest that nobody needs faster speeds, but IMHO comparisons such as those made in the report are too simplistic by far.

we moved from VM to Zen due to service level. VM at 100Mb would fluctuate quite a lot, drop out at random times and need "rebooting" quite a bit. Zen has been rock steady at a slower speed and about £5 more per month.

It's a difficult thing to evaluate. I'm currently on a volcanic rock in the Atlantic (I'd like to think that one day I will be hollowing it out for nefarious purposes), but can get a 100Mbit/sec connection for €27,99 a month - provided I take a contract for 2 years. ADSL has roughly the same monthly price, but because of fixed costs is significantly cheaper for a shorter contract (note that they load significant "installation costs" into the fibre product but not into the ADSL product). However, you can't get any sort of service without going through a person to person sale (in a shop or by telephone) and that of course has to be paid for by vigorous upselling. The great thing about the UK market is the relative ease of sign-up and switching.

I do live in an area where I can get VM up to 516Mb broadband but its more than twice as expensive as my current Plusnet VDSL 36Mb package, and I just don't find myself needing more download speed than what I am currently getting. I have no problem with streaming from BBC Iplayer, Youtube or Amazon and using the internet on my laptop or phone at the same time.

I do hope that the push to get everyone onto FTTP doesn't mean that the low cost packages for sub £20 a month are going to disappear to pay for it, as I am sure I am not the only one who can get by with VDSL or even ASDL speeds

but they should also compare the data cap (ie how many GB/month) you get for the monthly fee.

Is that still a thing for fixed broadband in western countries?

I have never had a domestic broadband contract that has had caps. Not even VM had a limit for us.

I've never had caps applied in Germany. In the mid 2000s, I was using around 250GB a month (I did a lot of testing for SUSE back then and was downloading beta DVDs every few days), now it is over 1TB a month. I've not had my connection throttled and I've never been warned about my data usage.

If we legalised drugs then we could retrain all the young drug dealers sent to rural areas to install fibre.

They don't even need to rename it.

Part of the problem at least lies with the adverts describing broadband as 'Fibre' when it's just FTTC. That's copper, using an electronic signals down a copper wire! It's prone to all the limitations copper always had - namely dropouts, attenuation, high resistance and low resistance faults etc.

It's not just the download speed either, it's increasingly the upload speed. Just this week I spoke to someone who had 5Mbps down / 0.5 Mbps up, which he said was "fine" for his needs. Except it isn't. He's now working more at home and he's wondering why his Word documents and Excel sheets take a long time to sync to sharepoint for the others in his office to see.

It's high time this country entered the 21st century and aimed for full 1Gbps / 1Gbps internet as a default. It might not matter now, but in 20 years it will. And those people who are on ADSL with a 1Mbps upload speed are using the very same tech that was introduced around 20 years ago now!

@anthonyhegedus

"Just this week I spoke to someone who had 5Mbps down / 0.5 Mbps up, which he said was "fine" for his needs."

It probably is fine for his needs. This lockdown for an unexpected and rare occurrence will catch people off guard, but what is the point of billing everyone in tax or subscription costs for faster speeds people either dont want or dont care about. I would care and I am sure you would, but a lot of people are happy with slow connections or look for fast areas and move/pay for it.

"It's high time this country entered the 21st century and aimed for full 1Gbps / 1Gbps internet as a default."

Why? For who? Why are the people who want it not paying for it? What about people living in the middle of nowhere? Or with so few customers it is wildly uneconomical? Who coughs up for it? Those who dont use a computer? Those who dont need nor wish to pay for such speeds?

Moving into the 21st century it would be nice if people stopped asking for their toys to be paid for by others, and thats the only way such huge expense would be made.

We don't all have to use broadband, but those that want it should be able to have it, and those that don't have it will see all the disadvantages and upgrade. The problem is having it. When I can get 80/20 (sometimes) but a customer of mine ten minutes away can literally get 0.5/0.2 if he's lucky, but people up the road can get 330/30 (and not 1000/1000 because BT's equipment can't deal with it), it literally makes no sense at all.

I said 'aim' - there will always be properties that just aren't worth connecting. The point is that to prepare for the next 20 years, there's no point in leaving people on slow ADSL connections. We'll all pay for it, because we all will need a connection.

@anthonyhegedus

"We don't all have to use broadband, but those that want it should be able to have it"

And they can. They just have to pay for it. Via a cable or data contract or whatever. But the cost is on the person and where they choose to be.

"When I can get 80/20 (sometimes) but a customer of mine ten minutes away can literally get 0.5/0.2 if he's lucky, but people up the road can get 330/30 (and not 1000/1000 because BT's equipment can't deal with it), it literally makes no sense at all."

I get that. But it doesnt need to make sense. We can check how fast the internet is before we move somewhere and have to be responsible in our choices.

"I said 'aim' - there will always be properties that just aren't worth connecting."

But how do we aim for it? I know governments approach is to make 'aim' the target and throw money at it (missing the target and throwing more money) but how do we do it if not through customer demand?

"The point is that to prepare for the next 20 years, there's no point in leaving people on slow ADSL connections"

With the speed of technological change why would it last 20 years and in some places wont even pay for itself in that amount of time. Hell we may all be on some 10G wireless data connections by then.

"We'll all pay for it, because we all will need a connection."

And this is where I have an issue with it. Me and you might need a connection, maybe even a fast connection. But I worked with people who never owned a computer and didnt have one at home. One friend I still have uses an old capped out computer (makes me wanna cry) and I am not sure if he uses a modem still.

Some people have no interest in it whatsoever and have no need nor desire a connection. Even more people will be happy with the connection speed they have as it does what they want. And of course a few will want faster. So those few should cough up for what they want. As I said-

"Moving into the 21st century it would be nice if people stopped asking for their toys to be paid for by others, and thats the only way such huge expense would be made."

*no idea who downvoted you. I can see the reason of your argument even if I am not convinced

I moved into this house with a 512Mb ADSL with Claranet. Since then ive had speeds of 2Mb ADSL, 6Mb ADSL Max, VM 10Mb/20Mb/30Mb FttC 38Mb, VM 100Mb, FttC 70Mb

My parents had no option other than 512Mb then 1Mb then 4Mb and its stayed there with no VM nor FttC. They have lived there for over 20 years. No 4G but they do get 3G at least. The village has enough people to probably get together and get an openreach cable in but there are not enough people to care about getting the parish council galvanised.

codejunky>And they can. They just have to pay for it. Via a cable or data contract or whatever. But the cost is on the person and where they choose to be.

Really? You were cheering on N.I.'s UK government backed, Magic Money Forest financed fibre just the other day. Changed your tune? (Again.)

UK broadband broadly sucks compared to continental Europe. I wonder why that is ... ?

Currently on a Virgin Media 200/20Mb package - I could upgrade to the 500/35Mb but really don't see the point.

Early lockdown with both me and my wife working from home and the sprogs doing their schoolwork didn't tax it too much, so don't see the point in anything faster for me at the moment. I'm sure that will change in the future, but for now I'm not doing my best to help the overall average speed increase.

I've got the 500/35 ( well, they upgraded it for free to 600/41 ).

I can barely tell the difference from when I had 80mb with Sky.

The upload will be just as much a castration for home working. With a low amount you will be just as hamstrung as a business on a 50/50 anyway.

"more than 96 per cent of the UK can access superfast broadband services but more than 40 per cent currently choose not to"

Maybe things would change if you actually sent the engineers out when you made a sodding appointment.

(I could add more, but you get the gist)

>> the US remained one of the most expensive Western nations for broadband and stood at 131st place. The average package price of $59.99 was "a 20 per cent increase over prices measured at the end of 2019," observed Cable.

Clearly it is because of too much regulation in an extremely competitive market. The Boeing thing was an exception, mistakes happen.

FCC lobbying is a long-standing American tradition that isn't cheap. We know it's called bribing elsewhere, but we do it legally you see.

And top talent like Ajit Pai ain't cheap.

signed "We the people"

With ADSL wherer I live the best I could get was 2Mbps, along with having to get BT out approx once a month when my line went crackly and boradband became unusable.

I have been using a Three Mobile 4G (previously what do you call the 3.5g - HDSPA or whatever) for more than 4 years I think now. Am currently getting

Ping ms

70

Download Mbps

58.75

Upload Mbps

18.80

for £16/month. (Unlimited data).

As the other poster stated tough in common with most broadband in the UK - it is not consitent. Somteimes you'll be watching netflix or whatver with no one else in the house using the connection and the quality of the video will drop off to barely wacthable for short periods (a much larger cace would be nice Netflix and other streaming service but that's another story).

Also the last few months when they have been working (scheduled and unscheduled) on my local mast it has been up and down like a yo-yo. Toally unrealiable. I spent ages complaing and they gave me (wait for it) a £2.50 rebate! To be fair, before this it has been pretty reliable.

I pay £31/month here in France's answer to silicon valley. For 3.5Mbit/s down, 800kbit/s up ADSL. 4G on my phone is faster (but very variable, might be 16Mbit/s one minute, and 0.5Mbit/s the next) and capped. I can see the fibre exchange from my window, and could probably install the fibre myself over a weekend, but "sometime after 2021" is the current schedule. That is at least in part because they put a moratorium on all new sales at the beginning of the year, and ordered the installation company to redo all the lines installed between 2018 and 2019 to make them work properly, before they are allowed to sell any more. So far they've restored 48,000 out of 90,000. Out of the 280,000 potentially-available lines, 100,000 lines are supposedly ready, and they've only sold 14,000.

It's bad when I wish I had Openreach doing the work...

Jersey and Litchenstein don't have the Yorkshire Moors with 40 miles of emptyness before you get to a telephone exchange.

you could be living in a town and get bad internet, our town has aluminium cable so FttC is still shit even when the green box is at the end of the street. Luckily the green box is literally over the road from our house and I still only get 70Mb not the full 80Mb! Im not complaining about that though as its better than many others.

I don't see why broadband connections aren't 'metered' like other connections. You should pay for what you receive, not for some notional package which is unattainable. If I'm on a 300Mbps contract, but only get 100Mbps then I should pay the rate for 100Mbps.

The ISP's get let off on the basis their service is "up to 300Mbps", but a gas supplier wouldn't get away with a service offering gas "up to 100 kWhs a month" at a fixed price and then only giving you half that. If we got charged on a consumption basis suppliers might then make more effort to see their connections were actually capable of delivering what they promised.

We just "upgraded" to FTTC in the UK and get a quite consistent 400kb/s average. Yes, that's kilobits . Judging by the number of TCP CRC errors and retries, it looks like there's massive noise on the copper last leg, but despite two visits by "engineers" the provider can't seem to find out why or get it fixed.