6 ms·

Wow, are internet speeds in the UK actually that slow? Why are they so far behind the EU?

nicoburns 6y ago
Not in cities where there is cheap fibre available. But in rural areas it can definitely be like this. It's at least partly because the government ordered our national telecom provider to halt their fibre rollout in the 80s/90s because it deemed it anti-competitive. It's still catching up for lost time.
jlouis 6y ago
Probably a complex explanation with many reasons. I dont think there is a single reason.
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  Oh there is. The government.
- aloisdg 6y ago
  Capitalism.
amriksohata 6y ago
The annual 2019 world speeds report from research firm M-Lab and Cable.co.uk has revealed that for 2019 the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) broadband ISP download speed of just 22.37Mbps (up from 18.57Mbps in 2018 and 16.51Mbps in 2017), ranking us 34th fastest in the world (up from 35th last year).
doublerabbit 6y ago
Because we have a government who doesn't give a shite arse about infrastructure. And that of BT Open Reach corruption. I live in the city centre and I don't even have fibre. Meanwhile all the new corrupt housing developments all get "fibre" as a perk for buying a house on land that floods.
- Nexxxeh 6y ago
  Around here at least, the fibre I've seen in new builds isn't OpenReach, it's OFNL. But fellow city dweller here. I'm stuck on Virgin Media coax where I live, despite being about two streets and direct line of site from the BT exchange. 16mb ADSL2 is the best OpenReach can give me as a consumer.
- easytiger 6y ago
  > I live in the city centre and I don't even have fibre. Meanwhile all the new corrupt housing developments all get "fibre" as a perk for buying a house on land that floods. In what fashion do you call this corruption?
  - doublerabbit 6y ago
    Corrupt housing developments in the UK. Look it up. Buying off councils, planning permission. You name it.
    - easytiger 6y ago
      You want me to look up your vague unspecific conspiracy theory?
      - doublerabbit 6y ago
        > You want me to look up your vague unspecific conspiracy theory? Yes I do, doesn't take a genius. Do you even live in the UK? I've been nice and even included the search for you. https://www.google.com/search?q=housing+scandels+2019+uk+flooded+land https://www.google.com/search?q=housing+scandels+2019+uk+flo... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9764140/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9764140/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/profits-from-poverty-britains-housing-scandal-providers-make-millions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/profits-from-p... https://www.councilhousescandal.co.uk/ https://www.councilhousescandal.co.uk/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46279048 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46279048 And for real experience, I lived next to a field that was repurposed for housing development and because the "deed" was lost, ie owner paid off by housing development company, it is now all houses. Not forgetting the case of the local council selling off the library of my town to another housing development.
adamfaliq 6y ago
Anecdotal evidence: Lived in the UK for five years and yes, it was bad. Virgin Media is the worst culprit. It marketed its broadband as 5G but has unreliable bandwidth. Not to mention this predatory behaviour. [0] [0] https://virginmedia-is-evil.com/ https://virginmedia-is-evil.com/
pjc50 6y ago
The UK has adopted the US model of "hollowing out"; services that get used by the small elite fraction of the country that lives in the right bits of London are good, everything else is quietly ignored. It also has a pseudo-market for broadband services through LLU. The network service and billing are done through various providers which compete on price. The ADSL line is monopolized by BT Openreach, who combine the efficiency of a state monopoly with the pricing of a private monopoly. The government periodically gives BT money to improve speeds. BT pay this money to shareholders and then fail to improve speeds. Both parties are apparently happy with this arrangement. One of the candidates at the last election promised free high-speed broadband to the country. Media commentators agreed that this was ludicrous pie-in-the-sky.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Can't have tax-payers money used to improve conditions for normal people - that would be socialism!.
- easytiger 6y ago
  This is a summary entirely tilted by a very questionable political perspective. You'll find the same problems elsewhere in Europe dealing with population density and rolling out the infrastructure for this stuff. I know plenty of people in Sweden, France, Germany who struggle with exactly the same issues, despite better headline average speeds etc. > "hollowing out"; services that get used by the small elite fraction of the country that lives in the right bits of London are good, everything else is quietly ignored. Fundamentally wrong given that central London is in a large proportion (often > 50% by ward) social housing. Or are the millions of people who live there the "small elite" too? Or perhaps it is the case the high population density urban centres are naturally the easiest place to build infrastructure to benefit the most people. > BT pay this money to shareholders and then fail to improve speeds. Both parties are apparently happy with this arrangement. Clearly this isn't true. BT OR has for many years been separated and highly and transparently regulated. Perhaps you would like to explain more your implications of corruption that isn't visible to anyone else? https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/114814/openreach-implementation-report-2018.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/114814/...
formerly_proven 6y ago
UK isn't an outlier for Central Europe, because speeds are universally pretty bad there (Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Italy etc. all have similarly bad or even worse results). Sure, it's not Russia-bad or Australia-bad, but it really ain't good.
- puszczyk 6y ago
  I don’t know much about Spain or Italy, and I agree that Germany uses a lot of copper cables. But France and Poland? Esp. in Poland it most towns you have fiber, all new buildings have had fiber for ages. I currently pay 15–20€ / month for 1Gbps in a like 5th biggest city in Poland (not center, but not far either). In a couple of places in France I’ve stayed longer the internet was good as well (though I don’t recall the prices or exact speed details) — cities including Paris and towns. Granted this is all anecdotal and my bubble, etc.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    While I think fiber is technically better (if the last mile is passive), results are more important and by that metric Poland doesn't seem to be doing any better than its neighbors: https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-cou... https://www.speedtest.net/global-index https://www.speedtest.net/global-index In both of these Poland ranks similarly badly (31st/43rd) despite entirely different data sources. France ranks slightly better but still pretty bad. Note that the first site lists median speeds, while speedtest.net shows averages.
    - burntoutfire 6y ago
      Poland is still not that urbanized, so relatively large numbers of people living in remote places are for sure bringing the stats down. But, from what I've seen, in the cities getting 150 Mb/s, 300 Mb/s or even 1 Gb/s is common.
poooogles 6y ago
>Wow, are internet speeds in the UK actually that slow? Yes, https://www.speedtest.net/result/10279588044 https://www.speedtest.net/result/10279588044. I share this connection with 5 other people in the evenings, thankfully only 2 of us use it during the day so video conferencing is passable most of the time.
reedf1 6y ago
Having lived in the UK and the US, I think a strong reason is that the copper wire is literally entrenched. There seems to be a strong (legislative? legal? political?) aversion to easily replaceable overhead wires. Underground cable is the strong preference here. At the moment I live in the city centre of Manchester (the second or third biggest city depending on who you ask) and am stuck with VDSL. There are other problems as well - arguably there is no functional market for internet here. The UK is quite a small and centralised but for whatever reason cannot deliver infrastructure to "rural" areas that are only 50 or so miles from the largest cities in the UK, e.g. Wales. I have co-workers who have moved into new builds with only copper to the building.
- ath92 6y ago
  Underground wires are the preferred choice for most of the EU as far as I know (at least in western Europe). There are also much smaller countries in the EU that provide far better internet than what's available in the UK, apparently. There must be some other reason.
- robjan 6y ago
  Those entrenched cables are mostly DOCSIS 3 cables over which broadband speeds can be achieved. BT has traditionally provided telephony through overhead wires and those are where the problems usually lie.
- MagnumOpus 6y ago
  > There seems to be a strong (legislative? legal? political?) aversion to easily replaceable overhead wires I live in the UK with only overhead wires on my street (probably 60-80 years old copper wiring). Those wires are eyesores, and also break regularly since tree branches cut them in storms. Given Openreach's incentives, forget about these wires ever being replaced by fibre.
danpalmer 6y ago
I think this article misrepresents the state of UK internet. Most of the population are wired for fibre and have been for a few years now. This typically starts at ~35Mbps, ~70Mbps is very common, and a few providers will do 200-300Mbps but in more limited areas. Some suppliers do 1Gbps, but these are often limited to apartment blocks in cities or towns that invested heavily in infrastructure. This quote is misleading: > Found some data about internet speed in the UK, wasn’t easy to come across, that puts 45% of UK housesolds have < 8 Mbps connection. The graph below shows that this is a survey of ADSL2+ users where the technical cap is 20Mbps. They obviously can't get any better. Anecdotally this matches my expectations. I think the reality of the current state is that most of the population can get fibre, but many haven't bothered upgrading from their ADSL/ADSL2+ packages. When I've done price comparisons there's typically not a lot of difference in price mid-market, but there are some very low end providers who will do ADSL/2+ for ~£10, where typically home broadband/fibre is £20-40. Lastly, with things like home internet it's not useful to talk about area coverage. > I moved to a newer home earlier this year and like most places in the UK (even in London) it only had broadband internet aka slow ADSL over copper. Yes, most of the UK does not have fibre, but a significant part of that is fields. In reality most of the _population_ have access to fibre, but of course they are not evenly distributed. Area coverage makes a bit more sense when talking about wireless/cellular services because people move about. There are a few areas of London that were wired up in the late 90s/early 00s in such a way that they are very hard to re-wire for fibre. The Surrey Quays area comes to mind as one. Those areas have essentially skipped fibre and are moving straight to 5G.
- d_theorist 6y ago
  I don’t know why this comment is getting downvoted. I agree that the numbers in the article are not representative of the reality in the UK. Entry-level broadband for most people is around 30Mbps minimum. To say that 4.5Mbps is typical is completely incorrect.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  I don't know why the parent was downvoted. It's a reasonably accurate summary of the state of Internet access in much of the UK, and it correctly identifies the misleading emphasis on ADSL-based technologies in the article. In practice, most UK premises now have at least FTTC available, which can give realistic download speeds of up to 80Mbps depending on how close to the cabinet you are. FTTP is the technology currently being worked on in a lot of areas but will obviously take a long time to become the norm if only because existing housing stock will need new cables to be physically installed. If you're willing to have that disruption and to pay the premium, there are also cable companies that will install dedicated lines for you with much higher speeds even if FTTP isn't yet available in your area using BT's network.
raequal 6y ago
Oooh yes. Recently moved to London from Switzerland and it was a shock as if i moved to a third world country. From a widely availably gigabit to at best a 10-20 Mbit so called "broadband". I have to bond all available connections to me (broadband, 4g, bt wifi hotspot; thinking even of adding a high gain directional wifi antenna to a nearby mall) to get some borderline decent speeds here

Not in cities where there is cheap fibre available. But in rural areas it can definitely be like this. It's at least partly because the government ordered our national telecom provider to halt their fibre rollout in the 80s/90s because it deemed it anti-competitive. It's still catching up for lost time.

jlouis 6y ago

Probably a complex explanation with many reasons. I dont think there is a single reason.

doublerabbit 6y ago
Oh there is. The government.
aloisdg 6y ago
Capitalism.

amriksohata 6y ago

The annual 2019 world speeds report from research firm M-Lab and Cable.co.uk has revealed that for 2019 the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) broadband ISP download speed of just 22.37Mbps (up from 18.57Mbps in 2018 and 16.51Mbps in 2017), ranking us 34th fastest in the world (up from 35th last year).

doublerabbit 6y ago

Because we have a government who doesn't give a shite arse about infrastructure. And that of BT Open Reach corruption. I live in the city centre and I don't even have fibre. Meanwhile all the new corrupt housing developments all get "fibre" as a perk for buying a house on land that floods.

Nexxxeh 6y ago
Around here at least, the fibre I've seen in new builds isn't OpenReach, it's OFNL. But fellow city dweller here. I'm stuck on Virgin Media coax where I live, despite being about two streets and direct line of site from the BT exchange. 16mb ADSL2 is the best OpenReach can give me as a consumer.
easytiger 6y ago
> I live in the city centre and I don't even have fibre. Meanwhile all the new corrupt housing developments all get "fibre" as a perk for buying a house on land that floods. In what fashion do you call this corruption?
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  Corrupt housing developments in the UK. Look it up. Buying off councils, planning permission. You name it.
  - easytiger 6y ago
    You want me to look up your vague unspecific conspiracy theory?
    - doublerabbit 6y ago
      > You want me to look up your vague unspecific conspiracy theory? Yes I do, doesn't take a genius. Do you even live in the UK? I've been nice and even included the search for you. https://www.google.com/search?q=housing+scandels+2019+uk+flooded+land https://www.google.com/search?q=housing+scandels+2019+uk+flo... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9764140/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9764140/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/profits-from-poverty-britains-housing-scandal-providers-make-millions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/profits-from-p... https://www.councilhousescandal.co.uk/ https://www.councilhousescandal.co.uk/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46279048 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46279048 And for real experience, I lived next to a field that was repurposed for housing development and because the "deed" was lost, ie owner paid off by housing development company, it is now all houses. Not forgetting the case of the local council selling off the library of my town to another housing development.

adamfaliq 6y ago

Anecdotal evidence: Lived in the UK for five years and yes, it was bad. Virgin Media is the worst culprit. It marketed its broadband as 5G but has unreliable bandwidth. Not to mention this predatory behaviour. [0] [0] https://virginmedia-is-evil.com/ https://virginmedia-is-evil.com/

pjc50 6y ago

The UK has adopted the US model of "hollowing out"; services that get used by the small elite fraction of the country that lives in the right bits of London are good, everything else is quietly ignored. It also has a pseudo-market for broadband services through LLU. The network service and billing are done through various providers which compete on price. The ADSL line is monopolized by BT Openreach, who combine the efficiency of a state monopoly with the pricing of a private monopoly. The government periodically gives BT money to improve speeds. BT pay this money to shareholders and then fail to improve speeds. Both parties are apparently happy with this arrangement. One of the candidates at the last election promised free high-speed broadband to the country. Media commentators agreed that this was ludicrous pie-in-the-sky.

arethuza 6y ago
Can't have tax-payers money used to improve conditions for normal people - that would be socialism!.
easytiger 6y ago
This is a summary entirely tilted by a very questionable political perspective. You'll find the same problems elsewhere in Europe dealing with population density and rolling out the infrastructure for this stuff. I know plenty of people in Sweden, France, Germany who struggle with exactly the same issues, despite better headline average speeds etc. > "hollowing out"; services that get used by the small elite fraction of the country that lives in the right bits of London are good, everything else is quietly ignored. Fundamentally wrong given that central London is in a large proportion (often > 50% by ward) social housing. Or are the millions of people who live there the "small elite" too? Or perhaps it is the case the high population density urban centres are naturally the easiest place to build infrastructure to benefit the most people. > BT pay this money to shareholders and then fail to improve speeds. Both parties are apparently happy with this arrangement. Clearly this isn't true. BT OR has for many years been separated and highly and transparently regulated. Perhaps you would like to explain more your implications of corruption that isn't visible to anyone else? https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/114814/openreach-implementation-report-2018.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/114814/...

formerly_proven 6y ago

UK isn't an outlier for Central Europe, because speeds are universally pretty bad there (Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Italy etc. all have similarly bad or even worse results). Sure, it's not Russia-bad or Australia-bad, but it really ain't good.

puszczyk 6y ago
I don’t know much about Spain or Italy, and I agree that Germany uses a lot of copper cables. But France and Poland? Esp. in Poland it most towns you have fiber, all new buildings have had fiber for ages. I currently pay 15–20€ / month for 1Gbps in a like 5th biggest city in Poland (not center, but not far either). In a couple of places in France I’ve stayed longer the internet was good as well (though I don’t recall the prices or exact speed details) — cities including Paris and towns. Granted this is all anecdotal and my bubble, etc.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  While I think fiber is technically better (if the last mile is passive), results are more important and by that metric Poland doesn't seem to be doing any better than its neighbors: https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-cou... https://www.speedtest.net/global-index https://www.speedtest.net/global-index In both of these Poland ranks similarly badly (31st/43rd) despite entirely different data sources. France ranks slightly better but still pretty bad. Note that the first site lists median speeds, while speedtest.net shows averages.
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    Poland is still not that urbanized, so relatively large numbers of people living in remote places are for sure bringing the stats down. But, from what I've seen, in the cities getting 150 Mb/s, 300 Mb/s or even 1 Gb/s is common.

poooogles 6y ago

>Wow, are internet speeds in the UK actually that slow? Yes, https://www.speedtest.net/result/10279588044 https://www.speedtest.net/result/10279588044. I share this connection with 5 other people in the evenings, thankfully only 2 of us use it during the day so video conferencing is passable most of the time.

reedf1 6y ago

Having lived in the UK and the US, I think a strong reason is that the copper wire is literally entrenched. There seems to be a strong (legislative? legal? political?) aversion to easily replaceable overhead wires. Underground cable is the strong preference here. At the moment I live in the city centre of Manchester (the second or third biggest city depending on who you ask) and am stuck with VDSL. There are other problems as well - arguably there is no functional market for internet here. The UK is quite a small and centralised but for whatever reason cannot deliver infrastructure to "rural" areas that are only 50 or so miles from the largest cities in the UK, e.g. Wales. I have co-workers who have moved into new builds with only copper to the building.

ath92 6y ago
Underground wires are the preferred choice for most of the EU as far as I know (at least in western Europe). There are also much smaller countries in the EU that provide far better internet than what's available in the UK, apparently. There must be some other reason.
robjan 6y ago
Those entrenched cables are mostly DOCSIS 3 cables over which broadband speeds can be achieved. BT has traditionally provided telephony through overhead wires and those are where the problems usually lie.
MagnumOpus 6y ago
> There seems to be a strong (legislative? legal? political?) aversion to easily replaceable overhead wires I live in the UK with only overhead wires on my street (probably 60-80 years old copper wiring). Those wires are eyesores, and also break regularly since tree branches cut them in storms. Given Openreach's incentives, forget about these wires ever being replaced by fibre.

danpalmer 6y ago

I think this article misrepresents the state of UK internet. Most of the population are wired for fibre and have been for a few years now. This typically starts at ~35Mbps, ~70Mbps is very common, and a few providers will do 200-300Mbps but in more limited areas. Some suppliers do 1Gbps, but these are often limited to apartment blocks in cities or towns that invested heavily in infrastructure. This quote is misleading: > Found some data about internet speed in the UK, wasn’t easy to come across, that puts 45% of UK housesolds have < 8 Mbps connection. The graph below shows that this is a survey of ADSL2+ users where the technical cap is 20Mbps. They obviously can't get any better. Anecdotally this matches my expectations. I think the reality of the current state is that most of the population can get fibre, but many haven't bothered upgrading from their ADSL/ADSL2+ packages. When I've done price comparisons there's typically not a lot of difference in price mid-market, but there are some very low end providers who will do ADSL/2+ for ~£10, where typically home broadband/fibre is £20-40. Lastly, with things like home internet it's not useful to talk about area coverage. > I moved to a newer home earlier this year and like most places in the UK (even in London) it only had broadband internet aka slow ADSL over copper. Yes, most of the UK does not have fibre, but a significant part of that is fields. In reality most of the _population_ have access to fibre, but of course they are not evenly distributed. Area coverage makes a bit more sense when talking about wireless/cellular services because people move about. There are a few areas of London that were wired up in the late 90s/early 00s in such a way that they are very hard to re-wire for fibre. The Surrey Quays area comes to mind as one. Those areas have essentially skipped fibre and are moving straight to 5G.

d_theorist 6y ago
I don’t know why this comment is getting downvoted. I agree that the numbers in the article are not representative of the reality in the UK. Entry-level broadband for most people is around 30Mbps minimum. To say that 4.5Mbps is typical is completely incorrect.
Silhouette 6y ago
I don't know why the parent was downvoted. It's a reasonably accurate summary of the state of Internet access in much of the UK, and it correctly identifies the misleading emphasis on ADSL-based technologies in the article. In practice, most UK premises now have at least FTTC available, which can give realistic download speeds of up to 80Mbps depending on how close to the cabinet you are. FTTP is the technology currently being worked on in a lot of areas but will obviously take a long time to become the norm if only because existing housing stock will need new cables to be physically installed. If you're willing to have that disruption and to pay the premium, there are also cable companies that will install dedicated lines for you with much higher speeds even if FTTP isn't yet available in your area using BT's network.

raequal 6y ago

Oooh yes. Recently moved to London from Switzerland and it was a shock as if i moved to a third world country. From a widely availably gigabit to at best a 10-20 Mbit so called "broadband". I have to bond all available connections to me (broadband, 4g, bt wifi hotspot; thinking even of adding a high gain directional wifi antenna to a nearby mall) to get some borderline decent speeds here