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One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

communityfibre.co.uk

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Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#2
FWIW I used to be a Community Fibre customer (I left them because I moved somewhere outside of their network) and their service was great. It was cheaper than the competition, and worked. Customer support was great too.

Their only con is that they're not available in more places (they run their own infrastructure), but I guess you can't expand at the speed of light.

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#3
post #2

FWIW I used to be a Community Fibre customer (I left them because I moved somewhere outside of their network) and their service was great. It was cheaper than the competition, and worked. Customer support was great too. Their only con is that they're not available in more places (they run their own infrastructure), but I guess you can't expand at the speed of light.

I was also a community fibre customer and had to leave when I moved. I also liked the decent service at a good price.

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#4
> Thee in ten (29%) will have no choice but to cut back on data to save money

What is the marginal cost of 1 MB of cellular data?

If the government outlawed usurious data caps/excess fees/throttling, I think that would go a long way to helping more people stay online.

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#6

> Thee in ten (29%) will have no choice but to cut back on data to save money What is the marginal cost of 1 MB of cellular data? If the government outlawed usurious data caps/excess fees/throttling, I think that would go a long way to helping more people stay online.

Why is the marginal cost important?

Cellular networks have enormous upfront costs.

They also aren't particularly profitable (at least by GAAP standards with how they do depreciation).

It's almost like asking what the marginal cost of wind power is, and asking why poor people don't get free electricity.

It doesn't matter. You're mostly paying for the windmill...

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#7

> Thee in ten (29%) will have no choice but to cut back on data to save money What is the marginal cost of 1 MB of cellular data? If the government outlawed usurious data caps/excess fees/throttling, I think that would go a long way to helping more people stay online.

Here in Chile the government forced carriers to allow easy switching between them and banned selling phones locked to one carrier. This was really effective at bringing the prices down. Now I can get 200GB a month for ~15USD including 5G from almost any carrier.

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#8
This surprised me, but it really shouldn't have, given the figures look similar for other essentials (food, energy, school supplies…). The cutting back of the welfare state has had a horrifying impact on the number of people in the UK living in poverty.

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#9
Is there a term from economics where a portion of the population do less and less because they can't afford to travel, properly eat or heat their homes? And who have no chance of educating themselves due to their circumstances?

People talk about the UK productivity gap and I wonder when society realises that people who can't afford to eat are not going make great workers.

Re: One in five UK households cannot afford to be online

#10

> Thee in ten (29%) will have no choice but to cut back on data to save money What is the marginal cost of 1 MB of cellular data? If the government outlawed usurious data caps/excess fees/throttling, I think that would go a long way to helping more people stay online.

1MB is really too small a unit to be useful today. 1GB/month might be enough for some things. No video though.
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