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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

#41

Post by Nextgrid »

samwillis wrote: post #38

An interesting thing to note in contrast to this is the massive amount of PE cash being pumped into privet regional FTTP broadband companies. Affluent areas, such as where I live, are even seeing multiple competing companies pulling fibre through the OpenReach ducts. We have two along with BT to chose from in a town of only 30k people in the midlands. As others commenters have noted, the rich/poor divide is getting w…

The fact that you have multiple companies each running their own physical network (through the same ducts, no less!) is absolutely wasteful - imagine if we did the same for the electric grid, water or gas.

The physical network should be government-managed and any providers can pay for layer-2 access between any 2 points. This will prevent wasteful, redundant infrastructure.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#42

Post by nologic01 »

Exactly the opposite of what should be happening. Homes should be connected with permanent, reliable, high capacity fiber optic networks.

Mobile connectivity plays an important role but it should be complementary, an add-on to the backbone not a substitute.

Given how the costs of digital technology are generally on a collapsing trend this suggests significant dysfunction. Reducing the computing experience of the entire population to mobile phones is a severe downgrade, a sort of digital precariat.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#43

Post by el_oni »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #22
chrisbolt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

House prices are awful, and with the current mortgage rates it makes it even harder. Last July when we first started looking at what sort of deposit we would need and how much mortgage payments would be it looked like we would be spending an additional £400 a month (which is fine, I wouldn't have to save for a house after all). But since the catastrophic economic policies of our shortest term prime minisiter we would be paying an extra £1000 a month over our current rent.

The house 2 doors down was last sold for £80k about 20 years ago. The house over the road that has just gone up for sale is asking for £300k. I'm lucky that my salary is over the median, but a 3-bed semi detached is like 10x the median salary (£26k). The same sort of property that my parents generation bought for 5x the median salary back in the 90s.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#44

Post by 2b3a51 »

jonathantf2 wrote: post #31
drumhead wrote: post #16

If you only ever use your phone then there's no point in paying for broadband. I think a lot of people have been taking a look at their subscriptions and cancelling things which they seldom use. Do you really need a sub for a 500mbit connection when you use you phone? You can always cancel it and switch to a much cheaper slower connection or just use you allowance. I had a Disney+ sub which I hardly used so I cancell…

Most connections in the UK are max 80mbps so if you live in a city you’re probably getting quicker speeds in 4G anyway

I'm on 'mobile broadband' in a city of 1 million in the UK midlands. That's where you pay a monthly fee and get a mains powered router pod that connects itself to the vendor's G4 mobile network. Several companies offer this.

I ditched my landline phone and pay just under £15 a month. Works fine. Easily saturates the wifi card on my old Thinkpad at the same time as her indoors is watching Emmerdale over the same connection.

Happy customer (at the moment, mergers in the pipeline).

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#45

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

Nextgrid wrote: post #39
chrisbolt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I would like to comprehend.

Recently had to look at the property market again and the rents have increased significantly, in addition to the usual high cost of living increase and inflation/shrinkflation which doesn't show any signs of slowing down. I very much wonder how they expect "normal" people to survive. It looks like you need to fall quite far into the highest tax brackets just to be able to rent something decent in London, and buying i…

> There is no reason to pay the money I am paying here if I can get better food, climate and general quality of life for the same (or even less!) money elsewhere in Europe.

We very much shot ourselves in the foot in that regard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfMGDFIossU

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#46

Post by Nextgrid »

indy wrote: post #29
0xDEF wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Britain does very well in lots of software engineering fields: games, fin-tech, web.

How much of this is VC-funded "growth & engagement" crap that has no sustainable business model and will go out of business very soon, if it hasn't already?

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#47

Post by tpmx »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #22
chrisbolt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

"Pay rises are around 0% for most people I know."

Some data:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

Growth in employees' average total pay (including bonuses) was 5.8% and growth in regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 6.7% in January to March 2023.

(That appears to be on an annual basis.)

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#48

Post by Nextgrid »

nologic01 wrote: post #42

Exactly the opposite of what should be happening. Homes should be connected with permanent, reliable, high capacity fiber optic networks. Mobile connectivity plays an important role but it should be complementary, an add-on to the backbone not a substitute. Given how the costs of digital technology are generally on a collapsing trend this suggests significant dysfunction. Reducing the computing experience of the enti…

> Homes should be connected with permanent, reliable, high capacity fiber optic networks.

UK solved that problem by allowing DSL to be sold as "fiber".

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#49

Post by samwillis »

Nextgrid wrote: post #41
samwillis wrote: post #38

An interesting thing to note in contrast to this is the massive amount of PE cash being pumped into privet regional FTTP broadband companies. Affluent areas, such as where I live, are even seeing multiple competing companies pulling fibre through the OpenReach ducts. We have two along with BT to chose from in a town of only 30k people in the midlands. As others commenters have noted, the rich/poor divide is getting w…

The fact that you have multiple companies each running their own physical network (through the same ducts, no less!) is absolutely wasteful - imagine if we did the same for the electric grid, water or gas. The physical network should be government-managed and any providers can pay for layer-2 access between any 2 points. This will prevent wasteful, redundant infrastructure.

Exactly, it's absurd. For a little more detail, this is Stamford Lincs. As well as BT installing FTTP we also have Upp Broadband and LightSpeed Broadband installing their own infrastructure.

https://www.upp.com/

https://www.lightspeed.co.uk/

They have had to make some of the underground junction boxes bigger to fit all the kit in.

My only thought is that they hoped to get their kit in quicker than BT and get brought out. Clearly the aim of these regional companies is to eventually be acquired by larger national ISPs.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#50

Post by monk_e_boy »

el_oni wrote: post #43
monk_e_boy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

House prices are awful, and with the current mortgage rates it makes it even harder. Last July when we first started looking at what sort of deposit we would need and how much mortgage payments would be it looked like we would be spending an additional £400 a month (which is fine, I wouldn't have to save for a house after all). But since the catastrophic economic policies of our shortest term prime minisiter we would…

And who is hoovering up those expensive houses? Not the middle class.

Rich folk are investing in housing and renting it out. It's crazy.

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