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One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

bbc.com

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Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#21

Post by Popcorn3865 »

onion2k wrote: post #8

Another reason to develop mobile first websites and apps, and focus perf testing on both overall page weight and high latency connections.

Although if "cost of living" continues to rise, cancelling mobile contracts may be next.

Many less well off folk have annual or multiyear deals (which include handsets) so the cancellations would come at end of term for most.

I suspect the issue at hand is that a fast growing number of people simply can't afford non-essentials, and in the process of deciding what's absolutely necessary and optional, access to the Internet may not be a necessity when rent, food and energy (including fuel) consume every penny you earn (or, more than you earn, there's a increasing trend of short term loans being taken out to pay bills, which will come home to roost).

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#22

Post by monk_e_boy »

chrisbolt wrote: post #15
gumballindie wrote: post #14

I dont think people comprehend how deep the economic issues of britain are.

Can you elaborate? I would like to comprehend.

Other than london and a couple of other cities, most of the country was already ranked as most deprived in Europe.

Throw in Brexit, cost of living and most normal people are fucked.

I'm a lecturer (5 yrs) and I'm struggling to pay my bills. We've been out on strike and nothing happened. NHS is struggling. Pay rises are around 0% for most people I know. Food inflation is around 16%. Foodbanks are struggling to feed families.

Companies are making record profits, these are distributed as dividends to shareholders (the rich) who then go on to buy more shares or other assets (e.g. houses)

Where I live most houses are Air B&B for a lot of the year, this has destroyed most villages by the coast. House prices have doubled or more. So a lot of those families have moved into towns, forced to rent rather than buy. Tons of money that used to go into mortgages (investments) is now funnelled to rich people who own the housing stock.

There's a lot of crazy stuff going on. The UK has a shrinking middle class. The middle class used to drive the economy. The rich poor divide is breaking the country.

A better TAX system would fix most of the problems. But our government is not interested.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#23

Post by StringyBob »

0xDEF wrote: post #19
gumballindie wrote: post #14

I dont think people comprehend how deep the economic issues of britain are.

The uncompetitiveness of Britain has been obvious for decades. For a highly developed English-speaking country it is very underrepresented in software tech. Britain should unironically learn to code.

> For a highly developed English-speaking country it is very underrepresented in software tech.

We’re here quietly - all working for American / multi-national companies. Just little of the Silicon Valley startup culture here in the UK.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#24

Post by kazinator »

kmlx wrote: post #13

> One million cancel broadband as living costs rise > Citizens Advice said its survey of 6,000 people suggested big difference between the title and a survey of 6000 charity customers.

If that survey were properly randomly sampled across the UK population, the 95% confidence interval for that sample size would be around +/- 200,000 people: i.e. we are 95% sure that between 800,000 and 1.2M people canceled broadband (or whatever the question is in the survey).

Even if the 6000 people surveyed are selected from those who seek help from Citizens Advice, there are ways to make reasonable inferences from that.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#25

Post by helsinkiandrew »

kmlx wrote: post #13

> One million cancel broadband as living costs rise > Citizens Advice said its survey of 6,000 people suggested big difference between the title and a survey of 6000 charity customers.

This wasn't a survey of CA customers, it was a survey funded by CA:

> Walnut Unlimited surveyed 6,000 UK adults online including a total of 1,215 people in receipt of universal credit between January 9 and February 8.

https://perspectivemag.co.uk/one-million-cut-broadband-acces...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#26

Post by tonyedgecombe »

kmlx wrote: post #13

> One million cancel broadband as living costs rise > Citizens Advice said its survey of 6,000 people suggested big difference between the title and a survey of 6000 charity customers.

From the horses mouth:

Citizens Advice data from an online survey of 6,000 UK adults plus a boost of 243 respondents in receipt of Universal Credit to make a total of 1,215 respondents in receipt of Universal Credit. Fieldwork was conducted by Walnut Unlimited on behalf of Citizens Advice. Fieldwork was undertaken between 9 January - 8 February 2023. The figures have been weighted and are nationally representative. The figures for the Universal Credit boost are weighted to be representative of the demographics of those receiving Universal Credit.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/about-us1/media/p...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#29

Post by indy »

0xDEF wrote: post #19
gumballindie wrote: post #14

I dont think people comprehend how deep the economic issues of britain are.

The uncompetitiveness of Britain has been obvious for decades. For a highly developed English-speaking country it is very underrepresented in software tech. Britain should unironically learn to code.

I'd strongly disagree with every sentence in your post. Britain does very well in lots of software engineering fields: games, fin-tech, web.

We also have good Computer Science courses at universities. Research at these universities is also decent.

And in Silicon Valley you don't have to go too far before you hear a British accent.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#30

Post by quickthrower2 »

No mention of mobile phones? If you have a good data plan, and can tether your phone, ditching your broadband makes sense. Especially when the uptime of 4G/5G is much better in my experience, at least in populated areas.

In addition, I might come up on a 'quit broadband' stat, as I sit here with my 5G hub. I am just using a different medium.

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