Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 340 posts

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#111

Post by tomalpha »

wmf wrote: post #89
thedaly wrote: post #52

I wish that countries would mandate symmetrical connections as well. This would open up so much more opportunity for self hosting web apps and allow for decentralized sites, such as peertube, to function better.

Almost all gigabit is already symmetric so this is a concern of the past.

Not the bulk of FTTP connections in the UK, to which this article refers, which run over Openreach’s common last-mile or Virgin Media’s DOCSIS cables. They’re the only National operators offering gigabit, or near-gigabit speeds.

There are plenty of smaller ISPs that run their own fibre and do offer symmetric connections, but the bigger players all off asymmetric connections.

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#112

Post by [deleted] »

dahfizz wrote: post #65
thedaly wrote: post #52

I wish that countries would mandate symmetrical connections as well. This would open up so much more opportunity for self hosting web apps and allow for decentralized sites, such as peertube, to function better.

I disagree. The vast majority of people are never going to need or care about hosting a decentralized hoozywhatsit. Mandating technical decisions that cause waste is suboptimal. You get symmetrical speeds with fiber, but if ISPs could use the existing fiber infrastructure and allocate 75% of the bandwidth as download instead of 50%, that would be a win.

[deleted]

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#113

Post by FredPret »

dahfizz wrote: post #65
thedaly wrote: post #52

I wish that countries would mandate symmetrical connections as well. This would open up so much more opportunity for self hosting web apps and allow for decentralized sites, such as peertube, to function better.

I disagree. The vast majority of people are never going to need or care about hosting a decentralized hoozywhatsit. Mandating technical decisions that cause waste is suboptimal. You get symmetrical speeds with fiber, but if ISPs could use the existing fiber infrastructure and allocate 75% of the bandwidth as download instead of 50%, that would be a win.

Maybe John Q Public doesn’t want to host his own hoozywhatsit, but what if he starts making VR calls that require uploading massive amounts of data? Or some mesh technology takes off? Or he takes up vlogging?

I don’t like the command-and-control mentality behind traditional one-way media (not saying that’s your mentality). The further we get from that, the better

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#114

Post by ilyt »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #76

This seems to be targeting areas where one could have gigabit Internet already. Specifically section 1.5.e. > Requirement R1 does not apply to the following types of building or building work: [...] > e. buildings in isolated areas where the prospect of a high-speed connection is considered too remote to justify equipping the building with high-speed-ready in-building physical infrastructure or an access point [...]

> Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home,

not with those prices. I thought that is so high because it has to account for remote areas but if that isn't the case it looks huge.

... or it is a yearly cost and article didn't mention that

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#115

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

thedaly wrote: post #52

I wish that countries would mandate symmetrical connections as well. This would open up so much more opportunity for self hosting web apps and allow for decentralized sites, such as peertube, to function better.

Seems like a really bad idea to mandate that download be no higher than upload. Would just result in few/no plans with high down bandwidth.

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#116

Post by paxys »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #103
habosa wrote: post #90

Some color about buying home internet in London vs San Francisco (in my experience). I recently moved back from London to San Francisco. In my 3 years in central London (N1) I had to use a 5g hotspot (thank you, Vodafone unlimited) to get anything close to fast internet in my flat. If I went with a wired "broadband" connection I could not get more than 10Mbps down. The street next to mine had gigabit fiber though. Th…

Try Monkeybrains.

Monkeybrains is great for the price, but if you want a more premium and reliable service then there are much better options. Google Fiber (Webpass) does symmetric gigabit. AT&T has 5 gigabit. Sonic 10 gigabit. Of course the real problem is that your building likely won't have any of them.

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#119

Post by agilob »

Just more admin fees and paperwork to build a building, making them more expensive. Make 30cm insulation a requirement so we don't pay £2000 per year for electric heating. I asked my property management company if they would, eghm, _consider_ improving external insulation, they responded they have no such legal requirements, so they won't. We pay 4x more for heating and warm water than in 2018, and have it colder and dumper, meanwhile I have 37mbps connection by choice, it's not like I'm going to use more, even when working from home.

In here we literally get NHS money paying for our electricity bills because that's cheap than hospitalisation. Thanks for 4k Netflix tho.

Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

#120

Post by sofixa »

dantheman wrote: post #43
mperham wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it doesn't need to be treated as a utility, there just needs to be competition. Our Xfinity internet was locked at 150 Mbps for years until the local DSL provider (Centurylink) rolled out gigabit fiber. Suddenly Xfinity started offering gigabit also. Capitalism doesn't work if the market is captured by rent-seekers. Unfortunately this describes most American industries these days.

Capitalism doesn't work when the government grants monopolies to local companies.

The monopolies in question are natural monopolies (basically any infrastructure which is physically constrained), so the only way of lessening the damages from them is via government regulations.
Post reply on HN