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England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

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

#291

Post by defrost »

aembleton wrote: post #284
defrost wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two laws of interest here [1] (in the original authoritive source .gov.uk release) One law applies to both England and Wales (not to Cornwall, Scotland, or Northern Ireland). The other applies to England alone. Neither applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-of-homeowners-an...

They both apply to Cornwall as it is part of England.

It is?

Damn shame, I'm sure there'd be a few that wished otherwise.

My bad, I'm thinking pre Henry VII times when it had more autonomy, not that I have skin in the game being Australian with non Great Britain roots.

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

#292

Post by djhn »

cameronh90 wrote: post #283
djhn wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my impression of London (from living there for a few years in the 2010s) was that it is very much a 6am-11pm city and everything is shut at night. Surely infrastructure work can take place during night shifts? I found the experience of working in the city and living in Westminster frustrating, because shops, public transport and even pubs(!) would effectively have closed by the time you finished work.

It's a bit later nowadays, at least in the normal sorts of places you'd go out (Soho, Shoreditch, etc.). Though, what are you doing working until 11pm? In any case you'll still find the roads can be busy at all hours. The night is used, as you say, for a lot of infrastructure type stuff which means the main roads are still busy, getting the city ready for the next day.

I no longer do - working in the City wasn't for me. And neither was living in England. A week in the summer and over Christmas turned out to be just the right amount of blighty for me.

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

#293

Post by stuaxo »

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…

For a long time in the UK almost all internet providers used BT Openreach's[1] infrastructure, except for Virgin.

[1] BT Openreach - which all the internet providers except Virgin use. - This goes back to BT and before it was privatized, the post office.

[2] Virgin, took over Nynex infrastructure and put in fibre optic cables. Unfortunately, Virgin has some pretty bad caps.

I had pretty bad down speed in London on copper cables, but my provider, Zen Internet uses the FritzBox router - it had good enough diagnostics to tell me there was a problem between the router and the box on the street, eventually got an engineer to come out and I got 70Mbit down and about 20mbit up.

Since I moved to a different road in London, everything is fibre, I could get 1gbit, but I got the 100mbit plan which works out about not so different from my previous plan in practice.

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

#294

Post by alias_neo »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #263
alias_neo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insulation is pretty good in new build flats. I bought a new build in London where I lived for 5 years, I used the heating all of about 10 days in 5 years, the gas bill was a rounding error; what they really need it cooling; that place was 38°C in my living room with all windows and doors open in the summer. To put that into perspective, I just moved to a 1930s house where I'm paying £600-800 a month for the heating…

£800 per month? That seems a lot for a family home, even during these times. And that’s only for gas, electricity excluded? How big is the house and is there zero insulation, eg single pane windows?

It's a 4.5 bed detached; solid walls, suspended floor, large bay windows, some of the double glazing is shot, hard wood floor downstairs, high ceilings, some of the radiators are too small or too oldz some of the piping is too small and not insulated and runs under the house where it's extra cold.

Yes this all needs fixing, yes we working on it, but we only moved in a few months ago, it takes time, and money.

The ~£800 is just for gas and just for heating and that's without having it on enough to be warm most of the time.

When the children aren't home we just use an electric heater in two rooms; we both work from home in our own office spaces.

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

#295

Post by SilverBirch »

agilob wrote: post #119

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…

I think you're way over-estimating the impact of this regulation on costs. Every house today is going to be hooked up to the internet, so the only change this mandates is slightly more expensive equipment. When you compare this to the massive costs of land, the massive costs associated with getting planning permission, and the artificial constraint of supply through planning laws, I think we're pretty far away from this regulation adding any substantial costs. On top of that, it's pretty well understood that fast internet will boost economic activity, so it's probably a benefit in exactly the same way insulation would be.

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

#296

Post by alias_neo »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #279
uxcolumbo wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£800 per month? That seems a lot for a family home, even during these times. And that’s only for gas, electricity excluded? How big is the house and is there zero insulation, eg single pane windows?

Electric heating, man. 800£ is still a lot but I think my 2-person 60m^2 flat is doing about 200£/month in electric with only 3/5 heaters turned on (our bedrooms + lounge). With just these three heaters on it's about 40kWh a day mostly in heating (everything else uses almost nothing). I can imagine a family with kids where you want the house to be heated all over + much more cooking/washing machine use and you could…

That figure doesn't even include our electricity usage, which is fairly conservative; we average about 12kWh/day when we're not using electric heating and we're working from home.

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

#297

Post by alias_neo »

scrlk wrote: post #215
alias_neo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insulation is pretty good in new build flats. I bought a new build in London where I lived for 5 years, I used the heating all of about 10 days in 5 years, the gas bill was a rounding error; what they really need it cooling; that place was 38°C in my living room with all windows and doors open in the summer. To put that into perspective, I just moved to a 1930s house where I'm paying £600-800 a month for the heating…

> that place was 38°C in my living room with all windows and doors open in the summer You want to leave your windows open at night when it's cooler. Close the windows and curtains in the morning before it starts heating up. Managed to get through the heatwave last year by doing this.

We had Venetian blinds but they're inside the windows so all of the heat was already inside by the time it hits them, it didn't help much. We don't live there now so we have different problems.

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

#298

Post by Denatonium »

mattl wrote: post #260
itslennysfault wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this probably doesn't help you currently, but if you move look for places that have Wave-G (apparently it's now called astound). It's available in SF and Seattle and offers symmetric gig up/down with no cap for $80/mo. I had it in Seattle, and I have a good friend with it in SF and we both had nothing but great experiences with them.

Astound is also what RCN in the North East rebranded to. I’m paying $65 for 900mbps/20ish but with HBO Max included.

Enjoy that price while it lasts and get ready to haggle; the non-promotional rate (found on the "Rate Cards" page linked at the bottom of Astound's website) for your speed tier is $161.99 per month in addition to the Network Access and Maintenance Fee.

At least in former RCN areas, there's usually at least a semi-viable competitor, and after being away for 2 months, you generally become eligible for the new customer promotions again.

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

#299

Post by nerdawson »

dexterdog wrote: post #194
leoedin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really adding much cost. They were always going to run some sort of communications cable to new houses - the government is just making sure it's a future proofed one. Providing gigabit internet when there's a fiber running to the property already is trivial.

It's not adding much actual cost, but you know they will use it to claim that it is so they can pass it on.

Property prices are based on whatever the local market will support.

Homebuilders may argue that it’ll increase costs that’ll need to be passed on when they’re lobbying against these sorts of measures but once passed, it’s done. It wouldn’t enter into the discussion with a buyer.

“Hey, we’d have sold you this property for £300k but since the government forced us to give you faster internet we’ve had to bump the price a couple of grand”

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

#300

Post by sirsinsalot »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #161

I get 100Mbps symmetrical (Fiber) in the UK living in a city. Honestly, I'm not sure I could go back. Most residential homes struggle to average anything near that with ADSL. Welcome news. Fast Internet is important to the economy in an increasingly information based society.

Typo: I get 1000Mbps
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