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Comment by pony_sheared | Hacker News Reader

In London, in an apartment block, I tried BT broadband (60Mbps max), then Virgin cable (100Mbps for £55 / month, prices go up for more speed), then EE 4G (£30 / month for 200Mbps +/-50Mbps, unlimited d/l upload is also over 60Mbps, about 6x on Virgin).

I don't game, so don't care about ping.

So, where I am, using 4G for my home internet is faster and cheaper, and I can gift data to my phone. I have not had any issues with reliability.

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I'd be really surprised if you don't have at least one altnet in an apartment building, Hyperoptic is pretty common in London.

I've got access to 4 seperate FTTH providers now in my apartment (all using different infrastructure, not including resellers): VM, Openreach (BT) FTTP, Hyperoptic and now Community fibre.

The limiting factor on speed now is WiFi, which cannot manage 1gig even closer to the router.

In Southampton, there are lots of places around the city where 4G coverage is simply not reliable. Even with a strong signal you can get speeds that vary from literally nothing to 60MBPs. I once lived within half a mile of the centre and could never connect to anything between 5pm and 11pm which rendered the service entirely useless.

We've had 4G for ten years or more now, I'm not ready to put my faith in 5G and don't expect to be any time soon.

I almost signed up for a new office a mile from the centre where the best cable speed on offer was 20Mbps and the thought of relying upon mobile internet was enough to make me think twice.

I'm currently in semi-rural location, no mobile service at all indoors but, 200 metres from the fibre cable cabinet, enjoying cheap and reliable 60Mbps without a hitch.

Mobile signal remains spotty in Southampton, I’m unable to use 5G at home because I’m in the dead zone between the coverage of three masts. That’s less of an issue in recent years though because the terribly named “toob” have rolled out fibre across most of the city, and will sell me a line doing a gigabit up and down for £25 a month, which is less than I was previously paying for DSL over a bit of wet string.

Probably council rejecting new masts if it is like most places in the UK.

3UK have thousands (maybe 10k?) new masts in planning to really improve 5G coverage (and they have the spectrum to actually deliver 2gig/sec to phones in the real world). Annoyingly the (vast in many cases) majority will are being rejected on suprious grounds by the council.

The reality where I live (North of England) is the opposite: cash-strapped (and often greasy-palmed) councils will approve masts willy-nilly, to the annoyance of locals who find out only after they're erected. Very occasionally this generates any actual organised blowback.

I'm curious, what are the actual objections to mobile masts being erected? They don't make a noise, they're not (despite the conspiracy theorists) in any way dangerous. All I can think of is that people don't like the way they look, but I don't really see them as being any uglier than a lamppost or street sign.

Mainly aesthetics, the new 5G masts are much larger and need to be sited in densely populated areas where there is already a significant amount of unwelcome street furniture.

Conspiracy theories regarding harmful radiation can also be a factor.

In Copenhagen I tried 500Mb/s cable for about £30 / month, and didn't need to go any further. They since upgraded it to 1000Mb/s.

Several other companies could provide similar speeds at similar (some lower) costs through a fibre connection, which was installed throughout the building.

5G home broadband seems like a fix for when the market for wired options is broken.

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