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The UK lives in the dark ages regarding Internet. In Switzerland I already had 150mbit internet (in 2010+) while when I moved to London I couldn't even get more

by wdb 6y ago

The UK lives in the dark ages regarding Internet. In Switzerland I already had 150mbit internet (in 2010+) while when I moved to London I couldn't even get more than 16mbit while living in Zone 1. Still these days I can't get that speed.

secondcoming 6y ago
Weird, I get 100MB consistently not far from zone 1. You may live far from the exchange
- tomfanning 6y ago
  Or, ironically, too close to the exchange. https://www.choose.co.uk/guide/exchange-only-line-fibre-broadband.html https://www.choose.co.uk/guide/exchange-only-line-fibre-broa...
- wdb 6y ago
  I live near Hyde Park ️
- lostlogin 6y ago
  OP was getting that in 2010 elsewhere - it’s fairly amazing that London isn’t getting multiples of that now.
Nextgrid 6y ago
It doesn't help that the UK (and some other countries) have corrupted the definition of fiber by allowing pretty much everything to be called fiber. DSL (running on the shitty, rusty phone lines) is allowed to be sold as fiber because fiber is involved at some point in the transmission (up to the DSLAM). By that standard, even 56k dial-up could be called fiber because there would be fiber somewhere in the datacenter on the other end. HFC (Virgin Media cable) is also called fiber even though it's fiber to a certain point and then you're sharing a coax loop with dozens or even hundreds of people. It's even worse because the shared bandwidth can be saturated and the connection becomes unusable because of packet loss (could technically happen with DSL if the exchange's uplink saturates, but I've never seen it happen compared to cable networks). There's also a naming convention of "superfast", "ultrafast", etc which creates more confusion. If you want to express speeds, how about you just quote the raw numbers?
- wdb 6y ago
  Yeah, if you live in a new building or further out of Central you can get things like g.network or Hyperoptic but even aa new apartment block build by Westminster council doesn't offer fiber. Maybe this all will change when there is more Working From Home to be happening the coming years.
- gnfargbl 6y ago
  Definitely agree. Only a small percentage of the general public here seem to understand the difference between FTTC (which is what we have) and FTTP/FTTH (which is what we need). Perhaps if they did then the Gov would have to work harder on FTTP delivery.

by wdb 6y ago

secondcoming 6y ago

Weird, I get 100MB consistently not far from zone 1. You may live far from the exchange

tomfanning 6y ago
Or, ironically, too close to the exchange. https://www.choose.co.uk/guide/exchange-only-line-fibre-broadband.html https://www.choose.co.uk/guide/exchange-only-line-fibre-broa...
wdb 6y ago
I live near Hyde Park ️
lostlogin 6y ago
OP was getting that in 2010 elsewhere - it’s fairly amazing that London isn’t getting multiples of that now.

Nextgrid 6y ago

It doesn't help that the UK (and some other countries) have corrupted the definition of fiber by allowing pretty much everything to be called fiber. DSL (running on the shitty, rusty phone lines) is allowed to be sold as fiber because fiber is involved at some point in the transmission (up to the DSLAM). By that standard, even 56k dial-up could be called fiber because there would be fiber somewhere in the datacenter on the other end. HFC (Virgin Media cable) is also called fiber even though it's fiber to a certain point and then you're sharing a coax loop with dozens or even hundreds of people. It's even worse because the shared bandwidth can be saturated and the connection becomes unusable because of packet loss (could technically happen with DSL if the exchange's uplink saturates, but I've never seen it happen compared to cable networks). There's also a naming convention of "superfast", "ultrafast", etc which creates more confusion. If you want to express speeds, how about you just quote the raw numbers?

wdb 6y ago
Yeah, if you live in a new building or further out of Central you can get things like g.network or Hyperoptic but even aa new apartment block build by Westminster council doesn't offer fiber. Maybe this all will change when there is more Working From Home to be happening the coming years.
gnfargbl 6y ago
Definitely agree. Only a small percentage of the general public here seem to understand the difference between FTTC (which is what we have) and FTTP/FTTH (which is what we need). Perhaps if they did then the Gov would have to work harder on FTTP delivery.