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One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

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Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#51

Post by Accacin »

gumballindie wrote: post #14

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

Of course we do. However, other people have mentioned people might just be using their phones instead.

As an example:

https://www.voxi.co.uk/for-now - £10/month unlimited calls, texts, data for 6months - then you go onto a £10/month plan but without the unlimited data.

We also have social tariffs for broadband too:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/compare-broadband-deals/br...

Seems like a bigger issue is people not knowing about these tariffs.

I'd like to add, I firmly believe everyone should have government provided "basic" internet that's at least 38Mbps or something similar. I really do hate what the government has done to the UK over the last decade so I'm not on their side or anything.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#52

Post by rlpb »

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.

What you have is already the case - that's "OpenReach", owned by the incumbent and required to provide wholesale access to ISPs for the "last mile". Independent ISPs then provide the Internet connectivity.

But they have to provide nationwide coverage at uniform pricing. So private companies can provide parallel service in dense urban areas for less.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#53

Post by zpeti »

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…

I think you are right on the symptoms, and some of the causes, but let me add some from the other side, as I think left and right both make good points and you have to be intellectually honest if you want to move forward.

There are some multinationals who escape taxation, but even if that were perfectly addressed it wouldn't solve the UK's issues. Tax receipts are already close to 40% of GDP, these are record highs, frankly there are few countries where going over 40% is both possible or sustainable. (The US is at 25% for reference).

House prices are high because for 15 years mortgages were basically at 0% interest. This didn't actually make housing more affordable through cheap mortgages, if just inflated house prices. The endless schemes to help young people buy property just makes this worse, as the schemes are just built into the price.

Lastly, and this is usually hard to hear for people of your persuasion, you just can't add 500k-1m NET people to a country and expect housing to be just as available, and the health service to not be under massive strain. It's a physical impossibility. YES, I know many immigrants work in the NHS. That is not a valid rebuke to the problem. 1m net immigrants last year is 1m more people who need health services. The NHS has received massively more funding since covid and just can't cope. I'm not against migration, but the sheer numbers need to be talked about. You can't keep a sustainable country at these levels.

Finally, the UK has relied on financial and advisory services for decades as the core of its economy. This seems to be working less and less, tech is taking over. the 80-90s were about finance, since then it's been about tech. Slowly the country is falling behind.

This is a chronic issue in almost all of europe, but at least there there is high end manufacturing, and eastern europe has tonnes of catching up to do which grows the economy.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#54

Post by ttlsa »

drumhead wrote: post #20
gumballindie wrote: post #14

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

They're not that bad at all. There's a lot of fud. The whole world is struggling at the moment, you won't find a single country that isn't affected by high interest rates or inflation or some other crisis or issue. We're real doomers in the UK so everything is the end of the world.

I think the rise in food bank usage over the last decade and a half has been quite alarming[0]. You can find supporting statistics elsewhere too[2][3].

I know that plenty of people are doing alright and, in my opinion, this group is vastly over-represented on HN. The food bank usage stats suggest that the living conditions of people across this country have been getting worse for a while now, and while the pandemic and inflation have exacerbated this problem, they did not create it.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/uk-foodbank-users...

2. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/food-bank-demand-and-th...

3. https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#55

Post by HlessClaudesman »

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…

UK was already creaking at the seems in the 2000's. I left in 2011 and have spent the last 5 years crawling up a sewer pipe of regulations trying to get my post brexit immigration sorted.

Brexit was just a fantasy of better days to come that was actually pretext for a right wing power grab. And what do right wingers ultimately want? A world of red in tooth and claw capitalism with themselves as the permanent winners, right up until they are hit with one of life's unexpected curve balls then they come crying to the state to save them.

Fuck the tories.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#56

Post by blitzar »

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…

> £80k about 20 years ago - asking for £300k.

7% a year assuming they spent £0 (hint: they didnt)

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#57

Post by foldr »

samwillis wrote: post #49
Nextgrid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds oddly like the early days of the London Underground. So many weird station layouts in the modern system are the result of multiple separate systems run by private companies later being combined. There's an excellent YouTube channel about it: https://www.youtube.com/@JagoHazzard

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#58

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

I'm surprised more people aren't doing the opposite. There are pay as you go phone plans that cost hardly anything. Meanwhile there is free WiFi almost everywhere, including at home. If you have broadband. So pay the cable company for fast internet and pay half that or less for mobile service, then connect your mobile to WiFi 97% of the time so you hardly use any mobile data.

The math gets even more dramatic if you have multiple people living in the same place. Broadband price gets divided by however many people you have there, higher cost of an unlimited phone plan get multiplied by the same number.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#59

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

I'm not sure why this pose was downvoted, apart from mentioning brexit.

I used to live in the countryside, the 90s had a background of rapid improvements in schools and hospitals. 2000s full of out of town megashops killing the high street. 2010s public service cuts. 2020 stuff just not working.

The scale of the housing price problem is difficult to behold.

https://www.plumplot.co.uk/Norfolk-house-prices.html has the house prices

https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/salaries/norfolk is the average wage. The average house price is 10x the average wage. but thats not evenly distributed. if you live up in the northern part, the average house price is 100x times wage.

The UK was already extraordinarily unequal in the 2000s, however inflation, benefit "adjustment" and general failure in policy.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#60

Post by KaiserPro »

drumhead wrote: post #20
gumballindie wrote: post #14

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

They're not that bad at all. There's a lot of fud. The whole world is struggling at the moment, you won't find a single country that isn't affected by high interest rates or inflation or some other crisis or issue. We're real doomers in the UK so everything is the end of the world.

it is not normal that house prices are 10x the average wage (at best)
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