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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

#131

Post by syntaxing »

omginternets wrote: post #122
toomuchtodo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is $50/month. They’re using spare 5G capacity because they overbuilt their network. You’ll see congestion during peak usage times, but it’s fine otherwise.

>You’ll see congestion during peak usage times Yeah, that's kind of the issue. That, and latency.

Not OP, but I used tmobile ISP for over two years during the whole Covid era. Worked pretty good for what it is, managed to get about 200 Mbps down and 20 up. I hit 500 Mbps but moved away from that area at one point. I only just switched to fiber recently because a 1G fiber line was installed and only cost $60 a month.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#132

Post by syntaxing »

pitaj wrote: post #124
toomuchtodo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is $50/month. They’re using spare 5G capacity because they overbuilt their network. You’ll see congestion during peak usage times, but it’s fine otherwise.

How is the latency for these 5G home internet services?

Over 100ms most of the time, it worked fine for WFH when I had meetings. Terrible if you want to game.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#133

Post by rcarr »

bscphil wrote: post #111
lucb1e wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive to maintain: dunno, but I pay Slow: you can watch HD video ever since 3G came out, and 4G reduced latency a lot Doesn't scale: that's also a thing 4G apparently addressed. I've never run into capacity issues, just range issues Depends heavily on weather: never noticed it depending even slightly on weather. I've tested this in heavy rain because I indeed heard that 'straalverbindingen' have issues with this…

> I pay > you can watch HD video I wonder... do you primarily watch HD video over this wireless connection, or are you watching it via a more traditional broadband connection? In the US, I pay ~$10 a month for wireless data (across two phones), but these phones are on WiFi 90% of the time and we never watch video on wireless. Even if you have an unusual plan that allows unlimited streaming at that price (without limi…

Data is ridiculously overpriced in the US. In the UK, I'm currently on a 12GB plan which costs £7.99 month. But you can get completely unlimited data including tethering for £20/month or less from lots of different providers. Never heard of unlimited for less than £15 though (unless its a temporary offer).

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#134

Post by SuoDuanDao »

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.

Canada's internet companies are basically crown corporations. Squashing competition doesn't help the consumer as much as you might imagine.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#135

Post by politelemon »

sega_sai wrote: post #88

Also because just this year broadband companies raised the prices by inflation + several percents. I.e. my monthly bill increased by > 10 quid. And in the same time I'm in a contract (till the end of the year), so I can't even switch. It's not surprising that people cancel their contracts if they can.

In the case of Virgin Media, they said each year it will increase by RPI plus 3.9%. It's ridiculous and I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish, cynically in thinking they're anticipating a vicious cycle of rising prices, people cancelling, so upping prices on whoever is left.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#136

Post by hammyhavoc »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #99
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'm a lecturer (5 yrs) and I'm struggling to pay my bills. We've been out on strike and nothing happened Why would not working result in higher pay? Especially in a field where the product is increasingly seen as a luxury that costs as much as a downpayment for a house and ultimately not a essential requirement for employment.

A lot of people get student loans. A lot of people never end up making enough to even begin repaying their student loans if they've taken a degree that's not in demand, or they never end up paying it back before it is just eventually written off. The student loans aren't like a normal loan. Yes, it may be to the sum of what you could put towards a downpayment on a house, but it isn't the same as that's something someone would have to repay, regardless of how much they were making.

As a lot of people can access further education, they take the opportunity even if it isn't necessary for employment. Most students work whilst studying, even with a student loan, because the loan almost certainly doesn't cover their rent, food, transport and textbooks for example. Most young people you see working in hospitality are probably in university studying.

What's the alternative to make ends meet for students? OnlyFans?

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#137

Post by bradfa »

omginternets wrote: post #126
rcme wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADSL is too slow for most modern internet usage.

I emphatically disagree. If you live in a city, it's quite sufficient for IPTV, a bit of youtube, spotify, etc.

YouTube, Netflix, music streaming, most video conferencing, and general web browsing all work fine on a 1.5Mb/s link in my experience. It's certainly not fast, but it's fast enough to do the basics.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#138

Post by swimorsinka »

pitaj wrote: post #124
toomuchtodo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is $50/month. They’re using spare 5G capacity because they overbuilt their network. You’ll see congestion during peak usage times, but it’s fine otherwise.

How is the latency for these 5G home internet services?

Some of the people on my team had to switch back to Comcast after trying it for a few months. Video calls were laggy and would drop packets constantly. This was in Colorado fwiw.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#139

Post by andy_ppp »

jarym wrote: post #96

And 3 million depend on food banks. Things are getting tough for lots of people and that's with extremely high levels of employment. Not sure this will go well if there is a recession that causes the jobless rate to increase.

Don’t worry, everyone is suffering - we’re all in this together… For example we’re set to have the highest private jet sales on record this year https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/private-jet-sa...

Almost as if COVID caused a huge redistribution of money from the poor to the wealthy.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#140

Post by bombcar »

Applejinx wrote: post #114
cudgy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new 5G wireless providers are changing this some, at least in urban areas. I’m currently using one and get around 500mbits download rate. Cost is about $25 per month.

I pay seven times that. Because I'm on a creaking old DSL line the provider doesn't want to maintain, at 12mbits or so. Consistent. SYMMETRICAL. I don't give a crap about download. I work publically and support my work using YouTube. Every week I'm uploading 20 gigs or so of video, MINIMUM, and if it dropped I'd have to start over. I'm uploading 4k ProRes because my competition is at that quality level or better, and…

A local phone company just rolled out some fiber near me, and it's honestly amusing to watch their poor marketing people try to describe the differences between 500/500, 1000/1000, and 5000/5000.

Did you know you should get 5000/5000 if you have a lot of smart home devices? hahaha

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