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It's not that easy to get a contract either... First they said "health and safety", they can't get a man to bring the cable up to 2nd floor. I said fine, how a

It's not that easy to get a contract either... First they said "health and safety", they can't get a man to bring the cable up to 2nd floor. I said fine, how about I buy that cable, I drill my own walls, and bring you the cable down to the ground, can you connect that? "Sure, let's set up a date for engineer visit". All is ready, engineer comes carrying a modem... wtf... you are supposed to connect this to your box outside the property. He goes back, they cancel my request for service outright. I call them, and an utterly rude person tells me that the cancellation is final, there is no one to complain to, I can't talk to his manager, goodbye. The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation by Virgin Media who hold near monopoly over fast (for UK, anyway) lines as BT/Openreach are utterly disinterested in being part of the 21st century. The day this ridiculous duopoly is broken up will be the day to rejoice! But I'm not holding my breath, this is a 3rd world country is so many ways that matter. (Actually, that's an insult to "3rd world" - there I got an actual 100/100Mbit ethernet connection installed in a matter of days for half the money Virgin is asking for their slowest service).

Nextgrid 6y ago
> The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation Agreed, it is terrible. I ended up going with an enterprise-grade leased line that costs ~400£/month because that was the only choice besides Virgin, but honestly I'd rather be paying that much and know it pays fair wages to honest people then pay less but having it go in scammers' pockets. Thankfully in London there is Hyperoptic and G.Network who offer real fibre (none of this fake fibre DSL or cable bullshit) at an affordable price (~50/month) so I'll switch to them as soon as they become available.
- bnastic 6y ago
  Paying the equivalent of someone’s mortgage just to be able to get a decent internet connection in 2020 is infuriating. I would switch to Hyperoptic in a heartbeat but they are not rolling out to north London any time soon. Funny how in Scotland even Vodafone is rolling out a gig network, while in bloody London I still can’t get better than adsl speeds.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    If you own your property (or are able to install an antenna), I wonder if you can find someone in a serviced area to which you have line-of-sight that's willing to set up a point-to-point wireless link?
stordoff 6y ago
> First they said "health and safety", they can't get a man to bring the cable up to 2nd floor. I suspect this depends a lot on the installer. When my grandparents had it installed, they ran it up the drive, straight over the top of the house, then down the back wall and into the house there without an issue. Contrast this with when my parents had it installed (after my grandparents, so we assumed it would be fine) - we had about four weeks of back and forth saying "Hey, you've buried the cable on someone else's land and they're about to dig it up" (instead of following the edge of the property, they just cut diagonally across, and the neighbours had planning permission to build there). They eventually sorted it, but it must have taken a double digit number of calls and threats not to pay. IIRC, they were the only option for >38Mbps service, so we didn't have a great deal of choice.
- bnastic 6y ago
  > I suspect this depends a lot on the installer. This is London, all installers of everything suffer from vertigo

Nextgrid 6y ago

> The UK broadband is in such an appalling state, that if you want better than ADSL you have to subject yourself to humiliation Agreed, it is terrible. I ended up going with an enterprise-grade leased line that costs ~400£/month because that was the only choice besides Virgin, but honestly I'd rather be paying that much and know it pays fair wages to honest people then pay less but having it go in scammers' pockets. Thankfully in London there is Hyperoptic and G.Network who offer real fibre (none of this fake fibre DSL or cable bullshit) at an affordable price (~50/month) so I'll switch to them as soon as they become available.

bnastic 6y ago
Paying the equivalent of someone’s mortgage just to be able to get a decent internet connection in 2020 is infuriating. I would switch to Hyperoptic in a heartbeat but they are not rolling out to north London any time soon. Funny how in Scotland even Vodafone is rolling out a gig network, while in bloody London I still can’t get better than adsl speeds.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  If you own your property (or are able to install an antenna), I wonder if you can find someone in a serviced area to which you have line-of-sight that's willing to set up a point-to-point wireless link?

stordoff 6y ago

> First they said "health and safety", they can't get a man to bring the cable up to 2nd floor. I suspect this depends a lot on the installer. When my grandparents had it installed, they ran it up the drive, straight over the top of the house, then down the back wall and into the house there without an issue. Contrast this with when my parents had it installed (after my grandparents, so we assumed it would be fine) - we had about four weeks of back and forth saying "Hey, you've buried the cable on someone else's land and they're about to dig it up" (instead of following the edge of the property, they just cut diagonally across, and the neighbours had planning permission to build there). They eventually sorted it, but it must have taken a double digit number of calls and threats not to pay. IIRC, they were the only option for >38Mbps service, so we didn't have a great deal of choice.

bnastic 6y ago
> I suspect this depends a lot on the installer. This is London, all installers of everything suffer from vertigo