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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

#301

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

> they had to cut back on turning on their heating at night during the winter

There is this little inconvenient thing called the Russian Invasion of Ukraine that is still ongoing since 1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks and 4 days.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/mar/06/soaring-gas-pr...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#302

Post by Symbiote »

cudgy wrote: post #83
Symbiote wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> you need to build the infrastructure to support it (homes, schools, hospitals etc). Isn’t that the point the above poster was making? If you don’t build the support, then you cannot handle the influx of people. Immigration without augmentation results in lamentation.

It was a typical blame-the-immigrants comment with no evidence.

I don't mind what arguments people make when they provide some evidence to support them, but the commenter wrote "physical impossibility" when it took me 2 minutes to find statistics to the contrary for their first point.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#303

Post by larksimian »

koolba wrote: post #218
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't believe prices are so high...goes to Five Guys which is at least 3x any other burger chain. I still can't believe how cheap the UK is. Big Mac meal near me is £6, cheeseburger is £1, 1kg of potatoes was 20p the other week, two-portion microwavable rice 20p, even a nice matured ribeye steak is only £5, it is genuinely incredible. In particular, the price of stuff that comes from farmers is really too low in the…

With a 45% tax rate and a 20% VAT, something that costs $1 would require an income of $2.18.

He's not taxed at 45% he just doesn't understand progressive taxation. You'd need to make like 1 million a year or more for the effective rate to be 45% i think.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#304

Post by vidarh »

cameronh90 wrote: post #154
vidarh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend rents relatively centrally in London, and her rent has gone up ~40%. I have no idea how people on average salaries - even average London salaries - can afford to stay much longer.

On the other hand, housing occupancy rates are still high, arguably too high, despite the high cost of housing. For whatever reason, people deem it worth it to pay such high rents to remain living in London. London's population is still growing, albeit slower than before the pandemic.

I'm guessing part of the challenge is that rental demand is fairly elastic in that people who might well want a house might be ok with a flat and put up with a flat share for the sake of a location they want or feel they need (e.g. due to work; family commitments etc.), and so even as people get squeezed out of the housing they want it might well take a lot before they move elsewhere.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#305

Post by monkeynotes »

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…

Exactly, are these people entirely cut off from the internet or do they just use their ridiculously cheap mobile data? Imagine this article 10 years ago talking about UK people ditching their land line and surmising those people are being left behind.

The reality is mobile data can cover your minimal internet requirements in the UK.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#306

Post by rektide »

cudgy wrote: post #82
rektide wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US, the courts piece by piece courts took apart Section 271 of Telecommunications Act of 1996 that guarantees unbundled network elements (UNE)/local loop unbundling (LLU). By 2003, the FCC basically gave up. They ignored Congress & said, yeah, fine, broadband is exempt, because it's kind of expensive. Their Trienniel review dismantled UNE/LLU. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-03-36A1.pdf So now…

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.

Most seem to soft cap you after ~20GB traffic, here in the US.

Last I checked Comcast Xfinity Mobile was one of the kindest soft caps, offering 1.5/.75Mbps down/up.

I think maybe there has been some shift recently around these incredible limits (5.3 minutes/month of full speed use is 0.0001% utilization). Xfinity went up to 50Gbps. I think some plans now "deprioritize" rather than outright limit, which is interesting, but there's such utterly non-existsnt data, such inability to shop & see what to expect.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#307

Post by schwoll »

omginternets wrote: post #117

Just yesterday I was trying to sign up with Verizon for my new address. Fiber is not available in my building, so they offer "5G Home Internet" for $60-$80/mo, which is crazy expensive for what it is. I asked whether there were ADSL lines available, since these were recently available for as cheap as $15/mo. It seems this is no longer the case. Maybe there's a market here? EDIT: I am in the US, and I've just realized…

Ask them for a landline phone. They'll either have to run new copper or choose to install fiber. Once they run copper then get a DSL company to run through that. Generally they won't want to run copper and don't want competition so they'll go ahead and run fiber. In either case I believe the law they're constrained by is local ordinances giving them a region based monopoly for traditional landline access in exchange for ensuring everyone has a phone. If you force the issue they'll run SOMETHING to your door. And through that something you'll have more options.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#308

Post by Nextgrid »

amiga386 wrote: post #237
Nextgrid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homes should be connected with permanent, reliable, high capacity fiber optic networks. UK solved that problem by allowing DSL to be sold as "fiber".

FTTC are FTTH are both fibre. I'd rather they _did_ upgrade everything to to FTTC, which they can afford, and let those that can fund FTTH pay for it, than leave it as copper wire all the way to the exchange because someone said "FTTH or nothing!" With full FTTC coverage, you're 90% of the way there for a tiny fraction of the cost of full FTTH coverage. DSL is not being sold as "fiber". People are being sold FTTC wit…

> FTTC are FTTH are both fibre.

If FTTC is fibre then so is a 56k dial-up or public Wi-Fi. Both have fibre at some point in the path. I think it would be good to give the benefit of the doubt and brand it based on what is likely to be the bottleneck which in this case will be the DSL.

> I'd rather they _did_ upgrade everything to to FTTC, which they can afford, and let those that can fund FTTH pay for it, than leave it as copper wire all the way to the exchange because someone said "FTTH or nothing!"

Fair enough, but in that case call it by what it really is - DSL and not fibre. This allows consumers to make an informed decision and competition to work effectively (so only actual FTTP providers can call their offer fibre and people will instantly tell the difference between that and DSL without reading the fine print).

> DSL is not being sold as "fiber"

It is. They should not be calling DSL "fiber" unless you are also happy with 56k dial-up being sold as fiber, along with pretty much any other means of internet access since there's always going to be fibre somewhere along the path.

> The result is strong, reliable, superfast broadband, with average speeds up to 80Mb.

It is nowhere near as reliable nor fast as true fibre. Also 80Mbps is the theoretical maximum speed - the actual average is much lower, especially on upload speeds despite those becoming even more critical since both remote work and cloud-based services are becoming more relevant every day. There's also no way to tell what your actual speed is going to be without signing up for a contract at which point it will be too late to cancel.

I just re-read the sentence and I find the inclusion of "average" speed redundant and can't help but think it is only there to trick you into thinking the average is 80Mbps, as opposed to it simply being the theoretical maximum. Really scummy.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#309

Post by dukeyukey »

dragonwriter wrote: post #230
vkou wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, someone earning $155,000 USD (Equivalent to 125k GBP) will also be paying 6.2% in social security taxes, 1.45% in medicare taxes, and then another 6.2% in social security taxes (employer's portion)[1], and 1.45% in medicare taxes (employer's portion). Added to the rest of their marginal tax rate, they'd be seeing a rate of 22 + 15.3 = 37.3%. Of course, they won't actually get health insurance for it, which…

> In the US, someone earning $155,000 USD (Equivalent to 125 GBP) will also be paying 6.2% in social security taxes, 1.45% in medicare taxes, and then another 6.2% in social security taxes (employer’s portion), and 1.45% in medicare taxes (employer’s portion). In the UK, there is also National Insurance tax on top of income tax, which works similarly (but is a bit more complicated.) The employer share is 13.8%, which…

> And there is also a 20% VAT impacting the cost of pretty much anything you might use your after-tax income to

Except stuff like food, rent, utilities, small stuff like that.

I'll give you the rest though. The UK is a low-tax country by European standards, and even by developed-world standards, but is above the US quite significantly.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#310

Post by mhb »

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

What's the definition over there of a "drink" and a "pop"?
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