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The UK is the most frustrating place to live sometimes. The English speaking world has a shining example of how to not fuck this up in NZ, yet they keep doing t

The UK is the most frustrating place to live sometimes. The English speaking world has a shining example of how to not fuck this up in NZ, yet they keep doing the opposite. Against all sorts of lobbying, the NZ govt. forcibly separated our telecom monopoly provider into a retail and a wholesale company, then they put a whole bunch of money up for competitive tender to build a national fibre network. And it works, it honestly fucking works. I've got Virgin in London and it's a piece of shit compared to what I had in NZ. In theory, I have 200mb down, but the uplink is bullshit because they convert to cable for some unknown reason. I also rarely see the performance that a 200mb connection should have. In NZ I had, in the first days of fibre, 30 down 10 up. It was always this speed, the fibre terminated at my house and was more responsive and reliable than what I have now in the UK. Here, the govt keeps kicking around, getting conned by the industry as they promsie to upgade things, to be better. It's such a joke. For reference these are real plans, with reliable speeds, with FTTH: https://imgur.com/a/8JeV7 https://imgur.com/a/8JeV7 (divide amount by 2 for £, take off 30%ish for USD)

fyfy18 9y ago
> the NZ govt. forcibly separated our telecom monopoly provider into a retail and a wholesale company, then they put a whole bunch of money up for competitive tender to build a national fibre network Isn’t that effectively what happened with BT and Openreach? In a large town or city you are usually ok, but any further out you have a lack of choice and pretty poor (for 2018) speeds.
- te_chris 9y ago
  Nope, they copped out and kept the two together but with separate boards.
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    In practice they operate separately, and IME BT's ISP side takes this seriously. Really, OpenReach is the old Postmaster General's department, after a privatisation and a couple of renames. Except they now take three weeks instead of six months. The engineers are great, too - people who see their job as keeping things working.
martinald 9y ago
I don't agree. BT have got to 95% 'superfast' (24mbit+ sec) coverage, with minimal govt funding. It will probably get to 98% coverage. Try switching from Virgin to BT/openreach FTTx and you'll probably see much more reliable speeds. FWIW I have hyperoptic in London which is ~£45/month for 1gigabit up and down. edit: keep in mind the NZ project cost NZ$1.5bn subsidy to get to 87% penetration for ~1million premises. The UK has got to 95%+ penetration (>20million premises) for £600m ish subsidy. It's literally 20x the cost.
- te_chris 9y ago
  You're one of the lucky ones. I don't consider the 'fibre' crap they offer, FTTN then vdsl, to be 'fibre', so the comparison you make is misleading. If the UK gov had got 95% FTTH they might have something to be proud of.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    But FTTH as opposed to FTTC (Fibre to the cab) a lot more expensive and the "subs" are not keen on paying for FTTH. Whos going to pay for this extra infrastructure.
    - te_chris 9y ago
      That was in my first post: The govt. should pay, or at least subsidise, as it's a national infrastructure investment. The UK is one of the world's leading tech nations, mostly due to London and the research universities, but the broadband is rubbish. If the govt. is prepared to write what looks like a blank cheque for HS2, why not throw a few billion pounds at FTTH?
      - martinald 9y ago
        Why? It's likely to be tens of billions of £ to move from FTTC to FTTH, which very few people would even notice.
      - walshemj 9y ago
matthewmacleod 9y ago
In contrast, I have Virgin in London and it's pretty astonishingly good. Solid 200Mbps+ down even at peak times, uplink is limited but that's not much of a concern for a residential plan, and it costs £40 a month.
- TeamMCS 9y ago
  Same here @300. My problem with VM is their constant bumping of prices. Until recently I was paying MORE than a new customer (by quite a margin). You have to keep an eye on your bills
  - maxehmookau 9y ago
    Every time they put the price up, I threaten to leave, and they put it back down again.
  - grosun 9y ago
    I'm in the same situation. How did you go about getting it reduced?
walshemj 9y ago
well that is because Virgin's plant is mostly based around buying up cable tv companies on the cheap. so their infrastructure is really a cable tv companies and no an isp/telco
andyjohnson0 9y ago
I've used Virgin broadband for 15+ years and (minus a couple of very short outages) it has been rock solid. Contrast this with BT, who apparently can't offer anything better than basic adsl in my street, despite my living about 100m from a large BT exchange.

fyfy18 9y ago

> the NZ govt. forcibly separated our telecom monopoly provider into a retail and a wholesale company, then they put a whole bunch of money up for competitive tender to build a national fibre network Isn’t that effectively what happened with BT and Openreach? In a large town or city you are usually ok, but any further out you have a lack of choice and pretty poor (for 2018) speeds.

te_chris 9y ago
Nope, they copped out and kept the two together but with separate boards.
- davidgerard 9y ago
  In practice they operate separately, and IME BT's ISP side takes this seriously. Really, OpenReach is the old Postmaster General's department, after a privatisation and a couple of renames. Except they now take three weeks instead of six months. The engineers are great, too - people who see their job as keeping things working.

martinald 9y ago

I don't agree. BT have got to 95% 'superfast' (24mbit+ sec) coverage, with minimal govt funding. It will probably get to 98% coverage. Try switching from Virgin to BT/openreach FTTx and you'll probably see much more reliable speeds. FWIW I have hyperoptic in London which is ~£45/month for 1gigabit up and down. edit: keep in mind the NZ project cost NZ$1.5bn subsidy to get to 87% penetration for ~1million premises. The UK has got to 95%+ penetration (>20million premises) for £600m ish subsidy. It's literally 20x the cost.

te_chris 9y ago
You're one of the lucky ones. I don't consider the 'fibre' crap they offer, FTTN then vdsl, to be 'fibre', so the comparison you make is misleading. If the UK gov had got 95% FTTH they might have something to be proud of.
- walshemj 9y ago
  But FTTH as opposed to FTTC (Fibre to the cab) a lot more expensive and the "subs" are not keen on paying for FTTH. Whos going to pay for this extra infrastructure.
  - te_chris 9y ago
    That was in my first post: The govt. should pay, or at least subsidise, as it's a national infrastructure investment. The UK is one of the world's leading tech nations, mostly due to London and the research universities, but the broadband is rubbish. If the govt. is prepared to write what looks like a blank cheque for HS2, why not throw a few billion pounds at FTTH?
    - martinald 9y ago
      Why? It's likely to be tens of billions of £ to move from FTTC to FTTH, which very few people would even notice.
    - walshemj 9y ago

matthewmacleod 9y ago

In contrast, I have Virgin in London and it's pretty astonishingly good. Solid 200Mbps+ down even at peak times, uplink is limited but that's not much of a concern for a residential plan, and it costs £40 a month.

TeamMCS 9y ago
Same here @300. My problem with VM is their constant bumping of prices. Until recently I was paying MORE than a new customer (by quite a margin). You have to keep an eye on your bills
- maxehmookau 9y ago
  Every time they put the price up, I threaten to leave, and they put it back down again.
- grosun 9y ago
  I'm in the same situation. How did you go about getting it reduced?

walshemj 9y ago

well that is because Virgin's plant is mostly based around buying up cable tv companies on the cheap. so their infrastructure is really a cable tv companies and no an isp/telco

andyjohnson0 9y ago

I've used Virgin broadband for 15+ years and (minus a couple of very short outages) it has been rock solid. Contrast this with BT, who apparently can't offer anything better than basic adsl in my street, despite my living about 100m from a large BT exchange.