Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 528 posts

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#461

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

I've had FTTC for many years, and it's been like eating grilled turd.

Latency was through the roof, if you try to plau CS Go you will loose to bots. Weired cal dropping issues on skype/teams/etc. But you do a speed test, and it shows solid 50+ mbps

That was Virgin media. Oh, and upload is shit.

The I moved to a newbuilt eith FTTH and I never looked back. It's a world of difference.

If i need to move I literally reject any home without fiber. Estate agents are always surpised - i. the age of working from home!

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#462

Post by Symbiote »

makeitdouble wrote: post #448
Symbiote wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things don't need contracts, just a phone with prepaid service. Top up £5 and be careful to make it last a couple of months, or potentially a lot longer (6+ months) if you can use WiFi and mostly receive calls and texts.

I don't know for the UK, I was expecting contracts to be better value and cheaper than prepaid. Let's say you're phoning 20 min every month and burning through 3G or data, having even a minimal contract is probably worth it.

There are several providers offering something in-between, like spending £5 of pre-pay credit for some data and minutes that lasts 30 days.

I use one when I'm working in/visiting England, as it's usually just a month at a time.

Example: https://www.lycamobile.co.uk/en/sim-only-deals/

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#463

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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 have fiber, 1Gb, in Uk, and wouldnt trade it for anything else.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#464

Post by aaomidi »

lucb1e wrote: post #90
aaomidi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s expensive to maintain. It’s slow. It doesn’t scale. It depends heavily on weather. It can be interfered with by a bad party pretty easily.

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…

You’re paying in euros. Which means you’re probably from a small country which also partially subsidizes infrastructure cost.

You’re also, in the context of the macro population, not using as much bandwidth as you would if people stopped relying on physical connections.

The weather dependency depends on your distance from the tower.

That’s not what I’m talking about? I’m talking about a coordinated jamming attack on cell towers in an area. Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it’s something that the intelligence community is unaware of as a possibility.

If the majority of the population only had cellular comms, the chance of this attack goes up to devastating effects.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#465

Post by aaomidi »

rcarr wrote: post #130
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…

> Expensive to maintain: dunno, but I pay I agree with this and all your other points. Surely it is cheaper to a put up a few mobile masts than to dig and install cables everywhere. In fact, this is the exact reason the government is using this strategy to get internet to rural locations rather than using cables.

Except rural electrification is a thing and putting a fiber cable on the same poles is not expensive.

The reason you’re seeing that happening is because most states ban electric companies from also providing internet.

I live in a rural area. My state doesn’t ban this. My internet comes from my electric company.

Those “radios” you put up are far more likely to fail than glass.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#466

Post by jerojero »

fsckboy wrote: post #413
lesuorac wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't VAT the best way to ensure tax is collected? Somebody can just not pay Sales tax and so the government doesn't collect it. But with VAT the seller is incentive to report so they can recover the VAT they paid. i.e. McDonalds buys 10 burgers and pays 1$ in VAT to their supplier. then McDonalds sells those 10 (now cooked) burgers and can recover 1$ in VAT from the government while the consumers ultimately pay >1$…

when your employer pays your wages, they have an incentive to report that to the govt as a cost so they don't pay tax on it. That gives the govt the information they need to come after you for not paying your income tax on it. So, same thing, income tax and VAT there is more enforceability because he structure of payments and information flow can make a difference to ease of enforcement... but the amount of tax is ba…

I'm not sure I follow your logic to say sales taxes are not regressive. And I don't think a strawman is the right argument for it.

It is regressive and it's clearly so because someone living, for example off minimum wage, will have no money (or very little money left) by the end of the month for savings or investment. Where has all this money go? It's gone to pay for goods and services. This isn't just for minimum wage incomes but it's generally also the case up to the median household though obviously the higher you go the less you need to spend in proportion of your salary in VAT. And that's the key difference, someone that's on top of the earning category will pay little in proportion of their earnings in VAT no matter how you slice it; because they always have money left for savings and investment! It's true that overall they're going to be paying more VAT but not more in proportion to their income. And this gets even worse when it comes to the top wealth as most of their "income" is through capital gains which tend to be taxed much lower.

VAT is however as you say an efficient tax. But I believe we should consider putting exceptions on certain products (such as basic foods and books) to ease the burden on low income earners.

Also capital gains taxes tend to be embarassingly low in most countries and the excuses given are, imo, quite speculative. As many economists have calculated people don't actually "fly off" until taxation is rather high, times and times higher what we tax either capital or income.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#467

Post by dukeyukey »

traceroute66 wrote: post #318
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…

To be perfectly frank, most people in the UK (and elsewhere really) just need to learn how to cook ! From a UK perspective, being able to cook achieves: a) The ability to buy raw ingredients in bulk b) You can cook dishes that last you multiple meals (and NO, this does not mean eating the same thing) c) You can make soups and stocks from bones (all you need is bones, cheap vegetables, cheap spicing, and water) d) VAT…

I don't know if you live in the UK or not, but in my experience, almost everyone cooks at home here. It's pretty rare I'll go out and have a sit-down meal any more expensive than McDonalds or a coffee and cake, and I earn _very_ well even for London.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#468

Post by zamnos »

dukeyukey wrote: post #467
traceroute66 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be perfectly frank, most people in the UK (and elsewhere really) just need to learn how to cook ! From a UK perspective, being able to cook achieves: a) The ability to buy raw ingredients in bulk b) You can cook dishes that last you multiple meals (and NO, this does not mean eating the same thing) c) You can make soups and stocks from bones (all you need is bones, cheap vegetables, cheap spicing, and water) d) VAT…

I don't know if you live in the UK or not, but in my experience, almost everyone cooks at home here. It's pretty rare I'll go out and have a sit-down meal any more expensive than McDonalds or a coffee and cake, and I earn _very_ well even for London.

London (which TBF isn't the whole of the UK) sits pretty squarely in the middle of the pack at 201.1 restaurants per capita*. Assuming they're not all fronts for organized crime, somebody must be going to them, even if it's not you and your friends.

* http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/number-of-restau...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#469

Post by dragonwriter »

armitron wrote: post #375
dragonwriter wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day, Americans still pay, and pay more They pay less in taxes, by a wide margin. They also get less for them, by a wide margin, particularly (but not exclusively) in healthcare.

Really? I have top of the line healthcare through my employer in the US, which also covers my wife and teenage daughters, which costs me essentially nothing. NHS in the UK is collapsing, but even if it didn't, qualitatively it's orders of magnitude worse than what one would receive in the US through one's employer: Months to years for an appointment, incompetent doctors and a bureaucracy that puts Kafka to shame. htt…

> Really? I have top of the line healthcare through my employer in the US, which also covers my wife and teenage daughters, which costs me essentially nothing.

Very few people in the US have top of the line healthcare (hence, why its “top of the line” and not “typical”), and if you do it costs a lot per covered person, even if it is less visible because instead of a salary deduction instead a large chunk of money that the company is willing to pay for your labor just goes straight to an insurer without being part of your nominal pay.

(I, too, as I suspect is fairly common for HN readers given the demographic tendencies, have excellent healthcare in the US, abd most of the cost isn’t a salary deeuction, but the cost is nontrivial.)

> NHS in the UK is collapsing, but even if it didn't, qualitatively it's orders of magnitude worse than what one would receive in the US through one's employer:

Over 1/5th of US workers (not residents, people actually employed) aren’t eligible for any employer health insurance, and for many of the rest it is quite bad, with very high out of pocket costs if you actually need any non-preventice care. NHS may be worse than what you or I have through our employers, but “top of the line” isn’t the usual experience.

> Yes US healthcare has issues but it's nowhere near as bad as UK.

...if you are part of the relatively narrow elite in the US with top of the line coverage, and for that the US pays more than a time and a half what the UK does as a share of GDP, and more than double what the UK does per capita...while leaving over 12% of adults and 5% of children uninsured.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#470

Post by Hermitian909 »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #436
xzel wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thats the case for the US as well. The average salary for US software dev, according to glassdoor, is 88,395/year, which iirc is about the same I've seen form other sources. Everyone working in FAAG is an outlier compared to the rest of the US. These conversations are usually pretty poor because context is very important and job + location + circumstance is seemingly pretty much impossible to compare to each oth…

I spent a while when I was trying to find a job trying to comes to terms with that "average dev salary" number, since the vast majority of jobs for an entry level position were at least 80k, with plenty being more (I was looking nationwide, wanted to move out, didn't care where). I think it's heavily biased by the fact that the field is growing at an extremely fast rate relative to others, which means the average sof…

HN's conception of software developer is just very different from the labor bureau. Someone who makes wordpress sites, knows a little html, css, and teensy amount of javascript is a software developer.

These folks do not actually earn a great wage because they know less than what many bootcamp grads come out of a 12 week program with, but they exist in multitudes.

Post reply on HN