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UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

wired.co.uk

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Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#91

Post by signal11 »

Lio wrote: post #60
oldcynic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only that were true. The Thatcher Government stopped BT's already running rollout of FTTH in 1990. That gave us cable competition from Blueyonder who did bugger all and a BT regulated against playing in that space any more. Hell Hastings and around Martlesham Heath (OK that doesn't really count) had FTTH in the mid 80s. If BT had been allowed their way it'd be all FTTH by now. Regulation pushed a lot of the subseq…

This. BT didn't ignore FTTH because they thought it was a bad technology. BT invented _alot_ of technology that makes fibre deployments world wide cheap enough to be feasible, including fibre jetting. They didn't role it out because first of all they were barred from selling TV over fibre in the late 80s early 90s in favour of foreign cable companies. Those cable companies eventually merged to form Virgin Media. Late…

> Firms like CityFibre just want to cream off the most profitable areas of the country and kill off cross-subsidising the rest.

That has not been my experience. I live in an urban area where BT has a monopoly (no Virgin). They were not even slightly interested in deploying even FTTC -- the coverage was full of "notspots" where one house in a street had decent broadband and another up the road had none at all. BT have been quite lazy from where I stand, leaving players like CityFibre an opening.

Also, blaming Thatcher towards the end of this decade seems not to be very useful. More recently, Ofcom asked BT to consider FTTH repeatedly in aughties (2000-2010). BT declined to deploy saying "no business case" right up to Dec 2017 when their hand was forced by Ofcom. If BT were better run, they'd recognize the value in FTTH by the end of the aughties surely?

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#92

Post by signal11 »

walshemj wrote: post #89
signal11 wrote: post #6

> The UK’s fibre to the home infrastructure is so poor it’s out-performed by almost every other country in Europe (Latvia, with 50.6 per cent fibre coverage, ranks first in terms of market penetration). The reason the UK is on a mix of copper and fiber is because the entrenched monopoly, BT, didn't think fiber to the home (FTTH) was worth investing in. To protect their investment in their existing copper network, the…

The Usual case of MP's with zero technical knowledge FTC make much more sense economically - if the Govemnet wants it has to give something back other wise why as a share holder should I pay for it. TBH 11 Mbs is fine for a consumer do they realy need more I only get 3.8 or so and I only ever have the odd hang on iplayer every 9 months

11 Mbps down starts out as "fine" for the average home user, but remember needs change. What if that home user gets a Ultra HD TV and starts streaming Netflix in 4K (needs a steady 25 Mbps)? What if they have kids, who can be more voracious users?

Also FTTC is asymmetric, which means 11Mbps down corresponds to something quite horrible up. Which means video conferencing doesn't work well. Which means home-working, Skype, video chat, etc are all hobbled. In fact, I know people with fiber broadband whose children use 4G for video chat at home.

The example I usually give is that with ubiquitous gigabit internet in a city, you could send your kids to school even on a "snow day" because the teacher would be able to assemble the class and do something useful together even if the school was physically inaccessible.

The way medicine and medical care for the elderly/less mobile is provisioned would change with gigabit internet. Telemedicine and remote diagnostic tools would be a lot more popular than they are now.

These are just some thoughts as an average consumer who's not connected to the telecoms business at all (but has spent a lot of time trying to get decent internet service out of ISPs).

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#93

Post by Rjevski »

isostatic wrote: post #85
Rjevski wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New builds in France don't have telephone wires for example, if an alternative is available ( real fibre) they just install that instead.

Assuming they're the same as my home, they come with a battery backup unit which powers the landlines (as landline phones are normally powered from the exchange - and thus work in power cuts) Of course people who still have landlines nowdays probably have cordless ones that require a powered base station, but I assume that at least in the UK, the line must be left powered during power cuts.

Nope, none of that in France - just a standard fibre socket, and the ISP gives you an ONT that turns it into Ethernet, which then goes into a router.

I've never actually seen any ISP there even advertise a battery backup unit, I guess if you need they'll just tell you to buy a standard UPS.

No idea how it works in the UK, haven't had consumer-grade fibre here yet, always just got business-grade stuff where you bring your own hardware & UPS if needed.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#94

Post by signal11 »

JonoW wrote: post #22
arethuza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a house in a rural area is a nightmare as you don't really know in advance what speed you will get and the speeds quoted on sites like Rightmove are for entire postcodes - not the property in question. We bought a house last year in a rural area in Scotland - not far from Edinburgh and were appalled at the broadband options. We get 20Mbps down and 1 up which is enough for most things (barely) but that was one…

It's not even rural areas that suck, I'm in zone 4 London, so pretty suburban, and I get about 7Mbps down/0.5Mbps up! The FTTC roll-out said it was planned for my cabinet, not just says it's not.

If your cabinet isn't provisioned for FTTC, make some noise with the council. If possible, get some residents together and write polite but firm letters to your local councillors, MPs, and BT executives. Follow up with further letters.

From personal experience, it does work. You want things to get to the point where some senior executive at BT says "can you sort this cabinet out" because that's easier than dealing with all the noise from residents, councillors and MPs. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#95

Post by kingosticks »

tialaramex wrote: post #67
arethuza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work terribly well for new houses though! Was amazed to see quite expensive new houses (£500K+) with no access to broadband available.

House builders are told (unless they're literally building just one or two homes) to call BT at the start. For any large site, or where it's no trouble anyway, BT will run fibre to the new builds for IIRC free, the builder needs to make sure there are the right ducts etcetera in the ground, then a van shows up and blows fibre. But guess how many people in house building remember to do that? So instead they have the h…

I recently got a new fibre connection (not from Virgin or BT) in my newish flat and I was taking to the chap who installed it about exactly this. He told me that it's actually the builders who pay BT and Virgin to come and connect up their buildings. This is so they can then market them as being almost "plug-and-play" with these services as some buyers look for this. The other smaller providers can then come along and install/connect their stuff but at their expense, and as you say, often afterwards. He said that this is made harder since installing afterwards means dealing with managing agents (in the case of of a block of flats) and this can be painful, which I can 100% believe. Perhaps the situation varies depending on where you are in the country, this was London (where there are no £350k houses!).

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#96

Post by signal11 »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #12

In the UK, the central network is fibre but the "last mile" from the exchange to home is always copper. The "last mile" can turn into 2+ miles if you're unlucky. UK ISPs sell various different speeds including 'fibre' at the high end. However it's never true fibre and you'll have copper cable no matter the package you pick. I had Plusnet 17MPS but in actual fact it was ~6MPS download and 0.5MPS upload. The bad part w…

There's a small number areas (but growing) of the UK with Fiber to the Home. Mostly Virgin (cable), but also new-build properties and areas serviced by niche providers like Hyperoptic, Gigaclear and Cityfibre. Actually, even BT sell Fiber to the Home in very select areas[1].

[1] https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7676-bt-price-offers-now...

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#97

Post by pbhjpbhj »

LeonM wrote: post #20

> or make a Skype call that doesn’t drop out every two minutes. When will people learn that bandwidth has nothing to do with this? You don't need 50mbit for a skype call! It's usually not the 'last mile' problem, but what I'd call the 'last meters' problem: most SOHO/consumer grade network equipment is just total garbage. Replace your ISP supplied equipment with something more reliable (I highly recommend Ubiquiti ge…

So for a small fraction of annual per customer income ISPs could transform their service, but they cheap out to save a few quid ... the difference in wholesale cost on the better router-modem must be c.2-3% of a low cost contract.

Somehow that doesn't make the situation seem better.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#98

Post by merinowool »

oldcynic wrote: post #8

The UK could have had world leading broadband were it not for Mrs T. She decided BT's late 1980s decision to rollout fibre was anti-competitive and killed it in 1990 when we were pretty much leading the world [0]. So the grindingly slow reality of ADSL isn't especially surprising sadly. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost...

Britain has so much potential, but when something becomes huge they either shut it down or only enable cronies to profit from it. Recent example is medicinal cannabis. There is worldwide boom, but it is illegal in the UK to grow except for drugs minister husband (Yes you couldn't make it up) and government says it has no medicinal value. But this has real suffering behind it, as people can't get medicine they need as an effect.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#99

Post by diet_soda_kills »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #78
Rjevski wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it's actually fibre? Or is it their bullshit coax cable (HFC) they mis-sell as "fibre"?

It’s definitley fibre and we get a stable 100Mbit connection all the time.

Sorry, but it's definitely not fibre. I know they told you it is, but it isn't. They're using the old cable TV network. It's a coaxial protocol called DOCSIS.

Like BT, Virgin Media is fibre to the cabinet and then copper for the last mile. It's just that the coaxial copper and the DOCSIS protocol used by Virgin do a better job at speed than the twisted pair copper and the VDSL protocol used by BT.

It's going to be very interesting to see how they advertise real fibre to the public when it arrives, if even on Hacker News there's confusion about it.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#100

Post by antihero »

Rjevski wrote: post #73
antihero wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does DOCSIS3 count as DSL?

Nope, that’s HFC, and while it’s radio-frequencies just like DSL, it’s a shared medium across the entire neighbourhood while DSL is dedicated.

Ah then in that case you might want to add that some people have FTTC DOCSIS which is actually pretty good, 300Mbit down etc
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