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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

#61

Post by ttlsa »

zpeti wrote: post #53
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…

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,…

Regarding your point about migration,

> * Net migration was unusually high in 2022, as several factors came together at the same time, including the war in Ukraine"[1]. *

Even so, the net migration numbers were nowhere close to 1 million. From the same source as above,

> * With this caveat in mind, estimates from the Office of National Statistics suggest that total net migration was 504,000 in the year ending June 2022. *

You suggested that the UK adds 500k-1m migrants every year, but the actual number seems to be pretty much at the bottom of that range. The number of students coming to the UK has also increased significantly (it does contribute to increase in net migration stats).

The ONS still predicts (with a considerable amount of uncertainty I'll admit) that the net migration numbers will fall significantly in the next 5 or so years.

1. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#62

Post by zpeti »

ttlsa wrote: post #61
zpeti wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Regarding your point about migration, > * Net migration was unusually high in 2022, as several factors came together at the same time, including the war in Ukraine"[1]. * Even so, the net migration numbers were nowhere close to 1 million. From the same source as above, > * With this caveat in mind, estimates from the Office of National Statistics suggest that total net migration was 504,000 in the year ending June 20…

I don’t think it matters really whether it’s 500k or 1m, if you have a massive housing shortage and a failing health service.

That’s still almost 1% addition to the population every year.

Even if that means 100k families, you still need an extra 100k houses or flats ideally per year. That is impossible, even with super efficient planning laws.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#63

Post by Gordonjcp »

Nextgrid wrote: post #3
Anonasty wrote: post #2

Seems like counterintuitive but then again the article does not mention cellphones which is quite enough for many people.

Not to mention that a lot of connections are still DSL (misrepresented as "fibre" which is apparently perfectly legal) so in practice a cellular connection may very well be an upgrade.

I used to live in a house that was about 1.6km from the nearest FTTC cab and 8km from the exchange, just about 20 minutes drive from Glasgow. I could get very intermittent ADSL (2Mbps on a good day, typically down about 1Mbps if it was windy or rainy because of all the splices in the cable).

I switched to 4G and got 40Mbps symmetric using a Mikrotik SXT-LTE on a pole at about eaves height aiming at a mast about 5km away. It was cheaper than ADSL, too!

I think a lot of people on here are in the US where you get absolutely fucking *rinsed* for mobile data. Here in the UK it's cheap as tap water.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#64

Post by leoedin »

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's interesting - I follow various UK and Canadian subreddits, and you get almost the same rhetoric in both.

"This country is much worse than it used to be, I'm going to emigrate soon"

Except in the UK, they're going to emigrate to Canada.

The UK does have some uniquely local problems to deal with, but they're overlayed with a global downturn as well. It's easy to attribute the whole thing to local problems, when in fact a big chunk of it is global. The issues seem to mostly be the same - the massive house price inflation that's sucking the joy out of life for everyone under 40.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#65

Post by bnastic »

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.

UK government bodies are not known for speedy infrastructure installations/upgrades, which is why the UK has always been at the arse end of broadband speeds in Europe (let alone compared to the rest of world).

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#66

Post by Gordonjcp »

mobiuscog wrote: post #9

There will be a whole lot more cancelling, when (if) they actually remove landlines in 2025.

They're not removing landlines.

BT are no longer providing PSTN service. The existing copper infra will still be used for DSL services. Gradually these will get phased out and replaced by FTTP, but there's no real rush to do that.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#67

Post by monk_e_boy »

tpmx wrote: post #47
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…

"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.)

I don't know those people. I think averages that include London and other cities don't represent most of the country. Average salary for where I live is £10,000 less than the UK average (I just looked it up)

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#68

Post by Symbiote »

zpeti wrote: post #53
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…

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,…

I found the same link as the other reply, and I notice the UK's net migration is broadly in line with other wealthier European countries and the USA.

You absolutely can have this level of migration, but you need to build the infrastructure to support it (homes, schools, hospitals etc).

Relevant statistics on number of dwellings are here [1], and they seem to fit the population increase, but I don't have time to find similar statistics on school places, hospitals etc.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#69

Post by indy »

Nextgrid wrote: post #46
indy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think you've just described 95% of the companies that Hacker News readers work in.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#70

Post by Symbiote »

zpeti wrote: post #62
ttlsa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your point about migration, > * Net migration was unusually high in 2022, as several factors came together at the same time, including the war in Ukraine"[1]. * Even so, the net migration numbers were nowhere close to 1 million. From the same source as above, > * With this caveat in mind, estimates from the Office of National Statistics suggest that total net migration was 504,000 in the year ending June 20…

I don’t think it matters really whether it’s 500k or 1m, if you have a massive housing shortage and a failing health service. That’s still almost 1% addition to the population every year. Even if that means 100k families, you still need an extra 100k houses or flats ideally per year. That is impossible, even with super efficient planning laws.

The UK completed 177810 houses last year, and 174940 the year before that.

Table 244: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tab...

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