I'd be super impressed if the requirement was for symmetric gigabit.
The cable is symmetric, either UTP and fiber are not discriminating. The equipment at each end is not part of the law, if I understand it correctly.
England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
221–230 of 340 posts
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#222UK legislators are really something out of this world. In October I will have 10Gbps for 2 years, I can't even remember when I got 1gbps. The reason you get such services (and in my case for dirt cheap) is because of competition, not because you mandate it. Just a dumb idea to impose this thinking it will somehow improve the situation overnight. Sadly again I'm not surprised given the location in question.
If builders are mandated to make new homes able to access the fastest speed available (usually gigabit), then there is competition to provide that fastest speed for the cheapest price. This mandate enhances competition in the ISP space.
My house was built in England last year and already came with two separate fibre gigabit internet lines, one grainconnect and another BT. I think there are two separate ducts running throughout the entire development.
I'd imagine this is just to make the cheapskates and small developers get on with it too.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a “mystery.” California makes it expensive and difficult to build infrastructure. That’s why Google Fiber started out in places like Kansas City. I live in a historically red county in the Verizon footprint. I have two fiber lines into my house, one from Verizon and one from Comcast. I get 6 gbps service from Comcast. It’s expensive ($300/month, compared to 10 gig for $300 in Chattanooga). But it’s not even…
Is that all over your state? There are places in California, including parts of Silicon Valley, where you can get 10 Gbps fiber Internet service for $40/month.
FiOS is almost everywhere in the state. Comcast 6 gig fiber is anywhere within 1,760 feet of a fiber node that has overhead (rather than buried) utilities.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comcast often isn't FTTP, its is usually coax to the home. There are some services they do with FTTP, such as their 2Gbit service, but most installs are coax.
Speaking of coax -- does anyone know if there's a way to hang multiple wireless access points off of coax run through the home, or would one have to get multiple modems to make this work? I've run into a couple of housing situations for myself and family where wifi does not covers the whole household well (combo of wall composition and local interference). In these conditions repeaters sometimes don't help as much as…
Sounds like you're looking for some MoCA (https://hackaday.com/2022/11/03/moca-networking-is-a-niche-s...) WiFi access points (or just plug some MoCA Ethernet bridges into regular WiFi APs).
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#225Just 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…
Already done.
New building regulations, Part O, which came into effect in June last year, set out rules on overheating. Those regs impact the minimum amount of insulation required in new homes while ensuring they're designed to prevent overheating in summer.
Keep in mind that prior to that, Part L stipulated that loft insulation had to be at least 270mm thick. That's specifically for mineral wool and similar roll style insulation which is the most common option. PIR on the other hand wouldn't have to be as thick to meet the same performance criteria.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps -> 100mbps) I mean, yeah, I guess normally a 10x increase is deemed a good thing and could be considered "vastly higher". Who wouldn't be impressed with a 10x bump in pay? However, 100mbps is still tragically low. Having anything less than full bandwidth up/down on a fiber line is just cheating the user artificially. Being fiber, I could see offering a cheaper m…
It’s not “cheating the user artificially.” Comcast delivers service over shared-medium coaxial cable that was originally designed for one-way service. The available frequencies are split into upload and download portions, and increasing the upload speed decreases the download speed.
The cable companies are incredibly slow to deploy new hardware because of the legacy infrastructure. Example: Where is the DOCSIS 3.1 upstream support? Many of the modems are capable, the cable plant is not.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps -> 100mbps) so long as you rent their modem, which is an additional $25/month, but also comes with unlimited data. Paying for unlimited data separately costs $30/month if you own your own modem, but doesn't yet support higher upload speeds. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but for those who need higher upload speeds, it's at least possible with Comcast now…
>Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps -> 100mbps) I mean, yeah, I guess normally a 10x increase is deemed a good thing and could be considered "vastly higher". Who wouldn't be impressed with a 10x bump in pay? However, 100mbps is still tragically low. Having anything less than full bandwidth up/down on a fiber line is just cheating the user artificially. Being fiber, I could see offering a cheaper m…
Why is 100mbps tragically low? That would be enough for all but a vanishingly small minority of consumers, surely.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#228I 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.
75% download would be fine too. Right now many connections are 90% or 95% or worse, and that is not okay.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
They need to reword the law to keep up with Moore's Law, so that if you built a home in 2023 you'd be required to have 1 gigabit, in 2024 you'd be required to have 1.2 gigabit, in 2025 you'd be required to have 1.44 gigabit, etc. The moment internet connections don't keep up with Moore's Law, the real estate typhoons would then have no choice but to fund bandwidth-related R&D to get internet connections back on track…
But why? How many videos are you going to watch at the same time?
Everyone always thinks the current bandwidth is enough.... it never is.
I have no idea what the future hold but a typical VR movie is ~20gig
I'm not saying VR is going to take off but maybe streamed AR virtual presence might and it will require more bandwidth than today's video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7raHNfPc6A
And even if that doesn't, something always comes up that needs more bandwidth.
Re: England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
75% download would be fine too. Right now many connections are 90% or 95% or worse, and that is not okay.
They are that they way for a reason. Legacy copper infrastructure only offers so much bandwidth, and customers would rather have most of that bandwidth be for download.