Comment by te_chris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by te_chris | Hacker News Reader

The UK is the most frustrating place to live sometimes. The English speaking world has a shining example of how to not fuck this up in NZ, yet they keep doing the opposite. Against all sorts of lobbying, the NZ govt. forcibly separated our telecom monopoly provider into a retail and a wholesale company, then they put a whole bunch of money up for competitive tender to build a national fibre network. And it works, it honestly fucking works.

I've got Virgin in London and it's a piece of shit compared to what I had in NZ. In theory, I have 200mb down, but the uplink is bullshit because they convert to cable for some unknown reason. I also rarely see the performance that a 200mb connection should have. In NZ I had, in the first days of fibre, 30 down 10 up. It was always this speed, the fibre terminated at my house and was more responsive and reliable than what I have now in the UK.

Here, the govt keeps kicking around, getting conned by the industry as they promsie to upgade things, to be better. It's such a joke.

For reference these are real plans, with reliable speeds, with FTTH: https://imgur.com/a/8JeV7 (divide amount by 2 for £, take off 30%ish for USD)

I don't agree. BT have got to 95% 'superfast' (24mbit+ sec) coverage, with minimal govt funding. It will probably get to 98% coverage.

Try switching from Virgin to BT/openreach FTTx and you'll probably see much more reliable speeds.

FWIW I have hyperoptic in London which is ~£45/month for 1gigabit up and down.

edit: keep in mind the NZ project cost NZ$1.5bn subsidy to get to 87% penetration for ~1million premises. The UK has got to 95%+ penetration (>20million premises) for £600m ish subsidy. It's literally 20x the cost.

You're one of the lucky ones. I don't consider the 'fibre' crap they offer, FTTN then vdsl, to be 'fibre', so the comparison you make is misleading. If the UK gov had got 95% FTTH they might have something to be proud of.

But FTTH as opposed to FTTC (Fibre to the cab) a lot more expensive and the "subs" are not keen on paying for FTTH.

Whos going to pay for this extra infrastructure.

That was in my first post: The govt. should pay, or at least subsidise, as it's a national infrastructure investment. The UK is one of the world's leading tech nations, mostly due to London and the research universities, but the broadband is rubbish. If the govt. is prepared to write what looks like a blank cheque for HS2, why not throw a few billion pounds at FTTH?

Why? It's likely to be tens of billions of £ to move from FTTC to FTTH, which very few people would even notice.

There are better uses of tax money than upgrading grans line to FTTH when all she uses it for is to call her daughter and family on the phone.

and why does consumer bb speeds effect th UK's status as a leading tech nation - not treating engineers and scientists as second class citizens would do far more.

I honestly can't tell the difference between 80/20 FTTN and 1gig FTTH for 99% of use cases. Both support HD conferencing and 4K video with ease. WiFi tends to struggle to deliver above 100meg reliably regardless (especially in dense urban environments, or conversely old rural homes with very thick walls).

Keep in mind BT is starting an aggressive Gfast rollout and has a slow and steady FTTH program also running. Personally I don't think it's worth the UK govt spending £30bn+ on FTTH as I believe the commercial sector will get there, especially when FTTC is so widespread.

Wifi struggles hard in British buildings but the difference between 80/20 and 1gbps is huge: worry free multiple streaming or uploads or anything involving more than one person or even 4k streaming for one person

The upload does matter with everyone uploading videos and high resolution pics plus game streaming. It also helps a ton if you have the odd 200GB genome you need to archive somewhere :)

Ok, I don't know if this use case justifies many billions spend on it from government funds. Netflix's top 4K stream uses 25mbit/sec. How many households have multiple 4K TVs in use at once?

...How many families with kids streaming 2 different shows to their ipads/phones/laptops do you know? + Parents streaming video? Maybe one of them streaming a game on twitch?

It adds up. Copper is far less reliable at distance than fiber (the amount of people able to get 80mbps is < 10%).

And government is totally incentivized to spend money on a natural monopoly with an immense RoI. Rural areas are basically disconnected from high end internet activities. If you build a fast national network, it will pay off.

And for the record, the cost to full fiber the UK is less than the government plans to spend on HS2, a single rail link between birmingham and london.

2 different shows to phones/tablets = 2x4mbit/sec = 8mbit

Parents streaming video - assume 4K HDR (even though virtually nil content is in that) = 25mbit/sec

Twitch = 2mbit/sec (upload, but for the sake of argument, assume it was download)

Add in 10mbit/sec for browsing, updates etc and you're still at 45mbit/sec.

More than 55% of the UK can get >100mbit/sec currently - definitely not <10%: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7918-january-update-on-s....

I know coworking spaces that operate with around 100 people on 100/100 internet with little problem.

My grandmas old village in probably the most rural area of NW england can get 80/20mbit broadband (very close to cabinet). If you genuinely think that uncapped 80mbit/sec cuts you off, I don't really understand what you're saying.

HS2 is a very important project and I would much rather that be funded than spending billions on slightly faster internet.

I live in Zone 1 (less than 1/2 mile from an exchange) and still don't have fibre, and get less than 300kbps in the evenings with BT some days (max quoted, 16Mb). Fibre isn't even planned for our cabinet yet, so it strikes me as surprising we're at 95% coverage.

Ironically these super central London locations are often really badly served as they are all on exchange only lines with no PCP in-between.

BT also has a massive leased line base in these areas they want to maintain.

I agree this is really poor and BT should resolve this ASAP.

The lack of a plan for EO lines is definitely becoming quite the problem.

There is a plan, Openreach are either building new cabinets or doing full FTTP. The problem in Central London is that there is often very few residential connections to justify it (though I agree that a lot of people could switch from expensive leased lines if it was available).

I guess the problem is that so few people live in the city that it compares for BT to a small village. Businesses usually will have dedicated lines so it's not really worth going after the few people living there (esp as many use it as a second home which shortens average contract duration).

"Zone 1" is not the same thing as the City -- it has a population probably close to half a million people.

I'm aware of that, but most parts of Zone 1 are still not very densely populated. And where they do, more apartments tend to be empty or only used for a few days per week. Residential areas in WC and EC postcodes can appear like a ghost town on some days.

That is true. And I can see the argument that the population density doesn't really make up for the awkwardness of the territory, especially in older streets with peculiar exchange configurations.

Yes, also keep in mind that central london boroughs/tfl hate allowing roadworks as they want to keep congestion down, which makes it even more a pain in the ass, AFIAK they charge pretty ridiculous rates per day per m^2 you block the road Especially if you have complex duct blockages that can take many days to fix.

I'm also in London on the edge of Zone 1, so far unable to get FTTC, living in a building not served by Hyperoptic, on a street not served by Virgin Media, in a flat with a poor mobile signal.

This sort of conversation can get a bit depressing.

I tried BT's "fibre" for a year, and I probably never will again. When it was connected, the speed was as advertised. But it disconnected several times a day, sometimes for half an hour at a time, and they didn't seem able to fix it. Relying on decades old copper wire seems like it will never work.

You should try AAISP. They are very technically savvy and will bully openreach relentlessly to get it fixed. They offer to refund all costs if they can't. They almost certainly can, with time.

Yeah. I have thought about it. They're just a lot more expensive than the big guys, at least when you factor in cashback etc, and with data caps.

I agree, switching to BT makes a big difference. With virgin, I rarely got the advertised speed (certainly not on the weekend or evenings), with BT it's stable 24/7 (~60mbit). In addition to that, peering appears much better. Downloading files from US west coast works generally at very good speed, any connections to servers in the US from Virgin Media was often <10mbit.

Apart from downloading backups, I never find myself constrained by 70mbit download speed.

> I don't agree. BT have got to 95% 'superfast' (24mbit+ sec) coverage, with minimal govt funding. It will probably get to 98% coverage.

Is BT still have awful bandwidth limits? Because like 3-4 years ago they capped you at like 300GB and then cut your speed next month or something like that.

I don't think so. I regularly download >1TByte/month and never got capped.

Thanks. Probably they no longer practice that.

I just got letters from them telling they'll decrease my level of service since I got over 300GB this month, but that was 4 years ago and on xSDL (many areas fairly close to London city still had only xDSL then).

Keep in mind there are many other providers for Openreach FTTx (though BT retail don't cap anymore). I'm refering to BT fibre as really openreach fibre. Sky, Vodafone, etc etc all provide the service also.

Once did a couple of Terabytes in a month on BT, didn't have an issue.

my own experiences of BT have made me leery of using them. their customer service is utterly appalling. just consistently, every single time i've had to deal with them, help a friend or family member sort out their bs, it's a horror. we even had to move our business away from their service because we just couldn't have meetings and do screenshares consistently.

even if i wanted bt fibre, i live in the center of a large city in the uk, and i cant get fttc because im on the wrong street. one street over they can get fibre, mine, not a chance - and no plans to according to openreach either. similar issue with where our office is located. wrong street. no fibre. a few streets over, fibre.

virgin on the other hand, i have their 200/20 package. consistently max out the connection no problem. had them for years and they've consistently performed above expectations - i even remember when they were called blue yonder.

In contrast, I have Virgin in London and it's pretty astonishingly good. Solid 200Mbps+ down even at peak times, uplink is limited but that's not much of a concern for a residential plan, and it costs £40 a month.

Same here @300.

My problem with VM is their constant bumping of prices. Until recently I was paying MORE than a new customer (by quite a margin).

You have to keep an eye on your bills

Every time they put the price up, I threaten to leave, and they put it back down again.

I'm in the same situation. How did you go about getting it reduced?

> the NZ govt. forcibly separated our telecom monopoly provider into a retail and a wholesale company, then they put a whole bunch of money up for competitive tender to build a national fibre network

Isn’t that effectively what happened with BT and Openreach? In a large town or city you are usually ok, but any further out you have a lack of choice and pretty poor (for 2018) speeds.

Nope, they copped out and kept the two together but with separate boards.

In practice they operate separately, and IME BT's ISP side takes this seriously.

Really, OpenReach is the old Postmaster General's department, after a privatisation and a couple of renames. Except they now take three weeks instead of six months. The engineers are great, too - people who see their job as keeping things working.

well that is because Virgin's plant is mostly based around buying up cable tv companies on the cheap. so their infrastructure is really a cable tv companies and no an isp/telco

I've used Virgin broadband for 15+ years and (minus a couple of very short outages) it has been rock solid. Contrast this with BT, who apparently can't offer anything better than basic adsl in my street, despite my living about 100m from a large BT exchange.

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