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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 start

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.
- jfindley 6y ago
  Likely because the parent said "Most of the population are wired for fibre" which is wildly misleading. FTTC would not fit most people's definition of being "wired for fibre". Describing 80Mbps for FTTC as realistic is also a bit of a stretch. If you live in an area with modern phone lines and happen to be close to the local cabinet, this may be your experience but isn't that representative of the population as a whole. Per https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/ https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/ the mean download speed for FTTC is only 34Mbps, which given that some users are getting speeds of 80Mbps should tell you a lot about how poorly it performs for others.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I live in a very old village, some miles outside the nearest big city, and we routinely see those actual speeds on OpenReach FTTC. I suspect that the lower average figures have more to do with ISPs offering lower prices for a 40Mbps capped service (which does seem to have been quite common as FTTC has spread) and with some ISPs using much higher contention levels than others. In any case, even if 34Mbps is the real world average download speed for the type of fibre connection most homes would be using today, that's still much higher than the figures in the article would have suggested for a typical UK home Internet connection speed.
    - jfindley 6y ago
      34Mbps mean, across a population of ~67 million, suggests that there are substantial amounts of people getting much less than that. The data is broken down in more detail here[0], and while this isn't limited to just FTTC connections it still has some useful data. Some takeaway points: Firstly, median speed is always lower than mean, often significantly so, as the mean speed is inflated by users with very fast connections. Secondly, the bottom 20% get very poor speeds, often in the ranges mentioned by the article. Perhaps the article should have said 20% rather than 40%, but I'm not sure that really changes the sting of the title much? Thirdly, and I think this is in some ways the most important takeaway, some users getting excellent connections appears to have no correlation whatsoever with users overall in that area. For example in the City of London, a very wealthy area generally, the top 20% get 94Mbps and the mean user gets 56Mbps. Howwever the median user only gets 39Mbps, and the bottom 20% get only 6.5Mbps - which is definitely little enough to experience the problems in the article. And for the record, I too live in a very old village, some miles outside the nearest big city, and I pay for the best connection possible to get, which gets me actual speeds far below the "minimum advertised speed" it's supposed to reach. The problem is down to aging aluminium phone lines, which Openreach refuses to replace. 0: https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/councils https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/councils
user5994461 6y ago
The article is correct and you say it yourself, the majority of the population does not have access to fiber. Eventually you have to realize that as a person you either have good internet or you don't. The poor experience for the 40% who have no access to fiber and don't live right next to the DSL cabinet is very real. We could debate whether the proportion is closer to 30% or 40% or 50% but that doesn't help with the issue.
jfindley 6y ago
You appear to be using the term access to fibre a bit loosely. The vast majority[0] of the UK only has access to a product called "fibre to the cabinet" (FTTC), which is a poor substitute for what would pass for a fibre connection in most countries. For those not from the UK, FTTC is a product where they run fibre connections to the local cabinet - however from there it runs over the end users phone line using VDSL2. For historical reasons this line may be aluminium instead of copper, and is often long with lots of splits and joins. As you can expect, this can degrade performance a great deal, and there's basically nothing an end user can do to get this upgraded. For PR reasons, these connections are named "Superfast broadband" and the regulator notes that 95% of the population can get one. However in practice due to old and badly maintained phone lines, real speeds are often much lower than the "minimum 30Mbps" they claim. 0: As per https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/broadband-statistics https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/broadband-statistic... only 8% of the population has access to "real" fibre to their actual premises.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  You're right, I'm using "fibre" loosely here. What I really mean is a connection that is an order of magnitude faster than ADSL/2+ and that solves the problem being complained about in the article.
DanBC 6y ago
> but there are some very low end providers who will do ADSL/2+ for ~£10, Where are you finding those please? I'm currently paying £18 for TalkTalk and I'm looking to switch to something cheaper.

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.

jfindley 6y ago
Likely because the parent said "Most of the population are wired for fibre" which is wildly misleading. FTTC would not fit most people's definition of being "wired for fibre". Describing 80Mbps for FTTC as realistic is also a bit of a stretch. If you live in an area with modern phone lines and happen to be close to the local cabinet, this may be your experience but isn't that representative of the population as a whole. Per https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/ https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/ the mean download speed for FTTC is only 34Mbps, which given that some users are getting speeds of 80Mbps should tell you a lot about how poorly it performs for others.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  I live in a very old village, some miles outside the nearest big city, and we routinely see those actual speeds on OpenReach FTTC. I suspect that the lower average figures have more to do with ISPs offering lower prices for a 40Mbps capped service (which does seem to have been quite common as FTTC has spread) and with some ISPs using much higher contention levels than others. In any case, even if 34Mbps is the real world average download speed for the type of fibre connection most homes would be using today, that's still much higher than the figures in the article would have suggested for a typical UK home Internet connection speed.
  - jfindley 6y ago
    34Mbps mean, across a population of ~67 million, suggests that there are substantial amounts of people getting much less than that. The data is broken down in more detail here[0], and while this isn't limited to just FTTC connections it still has some useful data. Some takeaway points: Firstly, median speed is always lower than mean, often significantly so, as the mean speed is inflated by users with very fast connections. Secondly, the bottom 20% get very poor speeds, often in the ranges mentioned by the article. Perhaps the article should have said 20% rather than 40%, but I'm not sure that really changes the sting of the title much? Thirdly, and I think this is in some ways the most important takeaway, some users getting excellent connections appears to have no correlation whatsoever with users overall in that area. For example in the City of London, a very wealthy area generally, the top 20% get 94Mbps and the mean user gets 56Mbps. Howwever the median user only gets 39Mbps, and the bottom 20% get only 6.5Mbps - which is definitely little enough to experience the problems in the article. And for the record, I too live in a very old village, some miles outside the nearest big city, and I pay for the best connection possible to get, which gets me actual speeds far below the "minimum advertised speed" it's supposed to reach. The problem is down to aging aluminium phone lines, which Openreach refuses to replace. 0: https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/councils https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/councils

user5994461 6y ago

The article is correct and you say it yourself, the majority of the population does not have access to fiber. Eventually you have to realize that as a person you either have good internet or you don't. The poor experience for the 40% who have no access to fiber and don't live right next to the DSL cabinet is very real. We could debate whether the proportion is closer to 30% or 40% or 50% but that doesn't help with the issue.

jfindley 6y ago

You appear to be using the term access to fibre a bit loosely. The vast majority[0] of the UK only has access to a product called "fibre to the cabinet" (FTTC), which is a poor substitute for what would pass for a fibre connection in most countries. For those not from the UK, FTTC is a product where they run fibre connections to the local cabinet - however from there it runs over the end users phone line using VDSL2. For historical reasons this line may be aluminium instead of copper, and is often long with lots of splits and joins. As you can expect, this can degrade performance a great deal, and there's basically nothing an end user can do to get this upgraded. For PR reasons, these connections are named "Superfast broadband" and the regulator notes that 95% of the population can get one. However in practice due to old and badly maintained phone lines, real speeds are often much lower than the "minimum 30Mbps" they claim. 0: As per https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/broadband-statistics https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/broadband-statistic... only 8% of the population has access to "real" fibre to their actual premises.

danpalmer 6y ago
You're right, I'm using "fibre" loosely here. What I really mean is a connection that is an order of magnitude faster than ADSL/2+ and that solves the problem being complained about in the article.

DanBC 6y ago

> but there are some very low end providers who will do ADSL/2+ for ~£10, Where are you finding those please? I'm currently paying £18 for TalkTalk and I'm looking to switch to something cheaper.