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Comment by sdfjkl | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, in rural England, people desperate for internet access are bundling four DSL lines at 1.4 MBit/s downstream each. BT has re-established its monopoly with being the only provider of FTTC, a major step back from the LLU days of ADSL. But none of this matters, because even if you have fast internet, the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship to make it useless (just this week folks couldn't download an update to the popular game League of Legends because it contained a file named VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj).

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> Meanwhile, in rural England, people desperate for internet access are bundling four DSL lines at 1.4 MBit/s downstream each.

Then they should move out of rural England. BT, etc, aren't stupid. If people in rural England could pay enough to offset the cost of running cable or fiber out to rural England, then BT would build that infrastructure. But that's clearly not the case.

Rural has a very different meaning in the UK than in the US. Anywhere in the UK that is actually rural would be described as isolated.

We're not talking about small villages nestled in the Welsh hillsides hundres of miles from the nearest city. We're talking about towns of tens of thousands of people, close to major cities, close to major rail and road networks.

It'd be really nice if the UK had strategic plans to increase the amount of fibre in the ground. People building new housing estates or roads or etc should be strongly encouraged to install fibre optic cabling, and more than is needed.

Alas, rural is pretty much anywhere outside a few city centers, and even in London there are parts where you can get stuck with an unstable 4 MBit/s DSL link (from personal experience).

I live in Bethnal Green (just down the road from "Tech City") and our entire apartment block can't get fibre, just a measly 4Mb/s. I don't know if BT is to blame, or the building itself, but it sure makes finding a flat to rent a bit of a lottery...

Meanwhile, 10-15 years ago 1.4 Mbit/s was pretty fast. Infrastructure is very expensive, so economically speaking urban areas will always be a generation or two ahead of rural.

> the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship

That was the result of an ISP's own blocking system.

And there is no government censorship, please stop saying that - customers are given the option to opt-out of content filters -- it's not mandatory. This has always been the case, the only difference now is that ISPs must ask subscribers.

If it is opt-out, it is censorship. This was established through heavy lobbying and threat of legislation. And then there's the one where all major ISPs block an unpublished list of websites that are deemed "illegal". That one was established by court order, and the only way you can opt out of it is by switching to a small ISP.

Here's the blog of one such small ISP, which is well worth reading: http://revk.www.me.uk/search/label/CENSORSHIP

Not quite: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386665/league-of-legend...

Not yet.

I'm ten miles from Adastral Park (one of the end points), and receive a 1.5Mb service. Whilst this is a nice achievement, the country as whole needs a consistent service.

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