21 ms·

England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new homes

444 points by lbres 4y ago

ac29 4y ago
It should be noted that according to government estimates, 88% of new homes were already built with gigabit access prior to this law (which seems impressive as an American!). The new rule is expected to move that number to 98%.
- adamm255 4y ago
  Yeah my new build had gigabit installed. It has become more of a customer demand thing prior to the law, as long as it’s available. There have been a lot of developments finished in the past 5 years with 1mbps copper, hopefully the law will prevent that travesty happening!
- IMSAI8080 4y ago
  The incumbent cable provider (Virgin Media) offers gigabit to virtually every property they serve, which is something like 15 million homes. That's maybe about 60% of total UK properties. I can already get VM gigabit I just don't want to pay for it. There's a competing fibre cable broadband company currently installing a separate network in my town and the incumbent national telco (British Telecom) is replacing all the last mile copper in town with fibre.
_fat_santa 4y ago
How i understand is is Gigabit is two parts: the first part is your home, router, etc supporting the connection speeds. The other is the infrastructure to deliver the gigabit to your home. I can see a regulation that mandates that you wire any new residences up so they can support gigabit, but how is this going to work if the municipality / ISP does not offer it? Not sure about what Gigabit rollout in the UK looks like but I know in the US, landlords don't always offer it because the ISP doesn't offer it. Seems that it would put the landlord in a catch-22 where they depend on the ISP to provide a service that they are mandated to provide but cannot because the ISP does not offer it.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>I can see a regulation that mandates that you wire any new residences up so they can support gigabit, but how is this going to work if the municipality / ISP does not offer it? If read the article, it says the cap is 2000 pounds, so the developer must do all the make-ready work in the house to support 1G internet, but they only have to actually connect to the fastest option available - and then only if the total cost of that is under the 2000 cap. So it's something, but I suspect many places that are out of luck now, will still be out of luck even with the new rules.
  - criddell 4y ago
    The fastest option available might be 5G cellular modem. From a builder’s perspective, it’s probably also the cheapest.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    What possible steps would a developer take to "make-ready" for 1 gigabit internet? Does the front door need to open and shut faster? Are the toilets going to have 4k flushing? I'm struggling to figure out how a developer could impede internet access if they actually wanted to.
    - komadori 4y ago
      "such as ducts, chambers and termination points"* This sort of thing is much cheaper to put in when you're building the street/house than after the fact. * https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/01/new-uk-laws-boost-gigabit-broadband-into-mdus-and-new-build-homes.html https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/01/new-uk-laws-bo...
      - sidewndr46 4y ago
        But how would they know what to add before service is brought to the residence? Maybe it is different, but even on new construction where I live the way service comes in is very simple: a technician takes a large drill and blindly drills through the outer wall of the house to bring a cable in. At that point the install is complete. In fact, even if you have existing cabling they generally will elect not to use it unless you make a point of requesting it.
cactusplant7374 4y ago
Does this mean fiber or will cable be an option as well?
- BayesianDice 4y ago
  The amended regulations (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/schedule/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/schedule/made) refer to a requirement for connection to a "gigabit-capable public electronic communications network". And a "public electronic communications network" is defined in the Communications Act 2003 as "an electronic communications network provided wholly or mainly for the purpose of making electronic communications services available to members of the public". So I expect that either type of service meeting the requirement on speed would be acceptable.
Spivak 4y ago
Glad they're trying something but this seems silly compared to "we're going to start a public works project where anyone in England can request their home or apartment be upgraded to be 1G capable." This law feels like it was written by someone who wanted to do anything except pay for it. The queue would be massive but that's UK tradition.
- m000 4y ago
  > This law feels like it was written by someone who wanted to do anything except pay for it. This sentences feels like it was written to defend companies that want to reap profits from massively profitable areas, but systematically avoid investing in upgrading service in less profitable areas. Where self-regulation falls short of serving the public interest, government regulation kicks in. Well done UK!
  - sgc 4y ago
    I think you misunderstood the comment the op made. They were saying the legislation does little, and they would rather have seen the government also invest in retrofitting older homes.
andrewstuart 4y ago
I'd be super impressed if the requirement was for symmetric gigabit.
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  The cable is symmetric, either UTP and fiber are not discriminating. The equipment at each end is not part of the law, if I understand it correctly.
amalgamated_inc 4y ago
Price of new houses just went up
- IanCal 4y ago
  Not particularly, there's very little justification for running copper to new houses given we're in a nationwide rollout of fibre and there's a big cost saving to moving entirely to fibre.
  - mhb 4y ago
    So no need for a law then...
    - izzydata 4y ago
      To me it seems like a way to really consider internet to be a public utility such as water and electricity. I'm sure there is a law that says any new construction requires it to be connected to the electricity grid, even though it would be pretty unreasonable to not connect it to the grid. Does that mean there is no need for it to be a law? At least this way you can have a good expectation of a new buildings utilities.
      - mhb 4y ago
        When you set a minimum standard, something that could have been bought for less that didn't meet that standard will no longer be an alternative. So some people will have something better and others will not have an option that they once did.
        IanCal 4y ago
        It can make a maximum difference in cost of about 1% of the final sale price, probably less given the cap and average prices of new build properties. I don't think it'll have a big impact on whether the houses sell, we have a huge undersupply of new housing.
ortusdux 4y ago
Is this symmetric gigabit or just download? I pay for gigabit down, 35 megabit up. My only other options are starlink or a $10k fiber install.
- izzydata 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure all fiber is bi-directional and achieving gigabit without fiber seems silly.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Gigabit over DOCSIS won't be symmetrical any time soon, but it's still gigabit internet. Not all homes are hooked up to fiber, sadly, although especially in new homes you'd really hope they'll be.
- core-utility 4y ago
  Is paying for your own fiber install common? I'm in a mid-90's home in the US and AT&T just recently decided they wanted to enter our market with Fiber and will install free of charge with no contract to whoever wants to switch. Certainly no easy task, but I understand that homes/infrastructure outside of the US can also be significantly older.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Enterprise-grade leased lines typically make you pay at least part of the install cost.
- OJFord 4y ago
  That seems really poor; they clearly thought (probably correctly) that 'gigabit' was an easier sell (to the masses) than '500Mbps symmetric' or some other split. It doesn't help you, but Hyperoptic are an ISP in the UK with all plans except the lowest being symmetric. I used to pay (moved out of the area^) £28pcm for symmetric 100Mbps, or maybe 150 - either way it was fairly consistently 160/180Mbps as measured. A&A are also by all accounts amazing, but only HN-browsing nerds more impressed with 800M symmetric than 1G are their customers anyway. Hyperoptic I like because they're primarily serving 'the masses' but seem the only non-shitty ones. ^I now use a Mikrotik 4G modem & router. It's not as fast but it's enough, (ongoing) costs even less; I think with some tweaking - especially mounting it outside - I can do better, but it's been so fine that I haven't bothered yet, over the course of months. A lot more asymmetric though, I wouldn't build and push images quite as casually as I might have before.
nimzoLarsen 4y ago
And along with that, more tax dollars flowing to ISPs in the form of subsidies.
- Veen 4y ago
  Tax pounds.
xbmcuser 4y ago
I think this comes across as shocking to Americans but the thing is the rest of the world treats internet as a utility so most governments try to get cheap and fast internet for as large a portion of the population as possible. Where as US cities and towns are stuck under its isp corporate monopolies.
- mperham 4y ago
  Yep, it doesn't need to be treated as a utility, there just needs to be competition. Our Xfinity internet was locked at 150 Mbps for years until the local DSL provider (Centurylink) rolled out gigabit fiber. Suddenly Xfinity started offering gigabit also. Capitalism doesn't work if the market is captured by rent-seekers. Unfortunately this describes most American industries these days.
  - baq 4y ago
    to be precise: monopoly is peak laissez-faire capitalism; regulation is what makes this local maximum easy to get out of instead of dealing with an East India Company situation.
  - dantheman 4y ago
    Capitalism doesn't work when the government grants monopolies to local companies.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      The monopolies in question are natural monopolies (basically any infrastructure which is physically constrained), so the only way of lessening the damages from them is via government regulations.
      - dantheman 4y ago
        Nope, the monopolies in question are granted by the local towns to specific providers so that they will be unprofitable connections to extremely rural recipients. It's a way to subsidize those who don't want to pay for what it would actually cost by secretly taxing everyone in the community by granting monopolies to certain businesses.
drbeast 4y ago
Wonderful, let's make new homes even more expensive! And to those who are downvoting this, every building code requirement like this jacks up the price further. Not everyone is a SWE with a TC of $250k+ you over privileged ninnies.
- m000 4y ago
  I can sell you a nifty cave, and I'll throw in my top-of-the-line 56k modem for free if you want to avoid the price jackups.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  UK house prices in no way reflect the build cost. The developers do the least they can get away with, which generally means the shittiest fabric with some polish that lasts until the end of the warranty period, just about satisfying the building regs (which are not really checked properly), then they flog the result at whatever the market will bear and pocket the difference. What the market will bear is entirely dictated by where the identikit houses have been built and little else.
  - djbebs 4y ago
    Of course they reflect build costs, as well as regulatory costs...
  - lhnz 4y ago
    Everything you say is correct apart from "house prices in no way reflect the build cost". The build cost is expensive as there aren't many skilled trades people nowadays and there is a market of lemons. The few high quality building contractors that are trusted can charge huge amounts of money -- all of the others charge as much as they can get away with and just hope that you don't check their work...
    - hgomersall 4y ago
      Maybe, but around me, house demand hugely outstrips supply, so everyone buys at the limit of what they can afford. For sure, proper dumps that need significant renovation go for less, but they are super rare. Everything else goes for a price set by the size of the home and increasingly, the size of garden. New builds command a slight premium, but that's mostly a marketing premium, which doesn't hold for resale. It's hugely complicated by the location aspect of course - older houses tend to be in better locations. Basically, my point is that trying to attribute regulatory costs to house prices is essentially impossible, and is very much in the noise.
Nifty3929 4y ago
Instead of what? Everything comes instead of something else. Whatever effort and resources are spent adding gigabit to new homes will mean fewer homes, less food, shoes, medicine, natural gas, cars or whatever. Many people will be celebrating faster internet speeds for those who purchase these new homes, but it's hard to see what goes missing when it's a little here and there from across the economy.
- awestroke 4y ago
  Instead of a slightly slightly cheaper but much worse fiber connection
- pwinnski 4y ago
  It is not at all clear that the size of the metaphorical pie is as fixed as you claim. Ideally gigabit internet will come "instead of" a few extra pounds of profit in the pockets of the builders. More likely, gigabit internet will come "instead of" a few extra pounds remaining in the pockets of the home-buyers. It's also possible that this will just prompt companies already installing equipment for new neighborhoods to install the reasonable piece of kit, rather than the cheapest piece of kit possible, at an added extra expense of nearly zero.
- ledauphin 4y ago
  economies are complex. it may be "instead of spending 3x as much to retrofit all these new houses in 10 years when everyone else has gigabit". Sometimes the "economic" decision right now is just punting significantly higher cost of rework down the road.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    They're still building crappy homes with insufficient insulation and a lack of a proper ventilation strategy. This should have been stopped years ago and saved buyers of new builds the current high energy prices. Well done UK gov, obviously the building industry lobbyists know best.
- tjohns 4y ago
ed25519FUUU 4y ago
It’s extremely challenging advocating for this in the USA because most people have no idea the difference between upload and download, and how data caps play into it. You can get gigabit 5G in many areas but it’s manifestly a different animal than symmetrical gigabit fiber internet without caps.
- lazide 4y ago
  This is in-home/last mile. It's basically a law requiring every home have a minimum degree of ethernet or equivalent done and pulled to somewhere it can be connected to a provider, not a requirement that a provider of a specific speed be available. Which is pretty good, and about time! It's like requiring the house be wired for electricity to a bare minimum (1 outlet per room, 1 switched light per room, that kind of thing).
- imhoguy 4y ago
  Fiber has caps too, although hidden under "Fair Usage Policy". I know as I see some stories on /r/DataHorder, some starting from 1TB/month. Ofc they are much higher than cellular/5G caps.
rayiner 4y ago
> Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home, and developers must still install gigabit-ready infrastructure (including ducts, chambers, and termination points) and the fastest-available connection if they’re unable to secure a gigabit connection within the cost cap. This approach makes a lot of sense. In my county in Maryland, building a new house involves at least $20,000 in fees for sewer and water hookups: https://www.aacounty.org/departments/inspections-and-permits/fees/utility-and-impact-fees https://www.aacounty.org/departments/inspections-and-permits.... Building out fiber to the house is much cheaper in comparison. It seems like a drop in the bucket to integrate a couple of thousand in additional fees for a fiber hookup.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
Can we maybe edit the title to say "UK" instead of "England"? Also, we nearly had gigabit fibre to the home 40 years ago (before anything even needed to run at 1Gbit, or you could afford the transceivers, admittedly) because BT's vision for the future of telephony was to rip out all the copper and run fibre to every single house. Then the right-wing extremist Thatcher government got wind of the idea and decided that this was too big a monopoly to be allowed to stand, so they stole the entire public property that was BT, smashed it to bits, and sold it off to private industry. This put back everything by *decades*. Now it's a battle to work out wayleaves, interoperability, who's responsible for what physical plant, and all sorts of other messes. Thanks, Conservatives, fuck you very much.
- coob 4y ago
  > Can we maybe edit the title to say "UK" instead of "England"? No, because the law only affects England - Building Regs a devolved matter in Wales and Scotland. There is a separate law mentioned in the article which is telecoms related and not devolved in Wales - but that is about landlords not needing to grant access to engineers.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Ah, fair enough then.
- OJFord 4y ago
  > Can we maybe edit the title to say "UK" instead of "England"? I think it's correct actually, housing is devolved. 'The Building etc. (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2022' - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/contents/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/contents/made - my emphasis.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Fair point, okay.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
sebow 4y ago
UK legislators are really something out of this world. In October I will have 10Gbps for 2 years, I can't even remember when I got 1gbps. The reason you get such services (and in my case for dirt cheap) is because of competition, not because you mandate it. Just a dumb idea to impose this thinking it will somehow improve the situation overnight. Sadly again I'm not surprised given the location in question.
- johnday 4y ago
  If builders are mandated to make new homes able to access the fastest speed available (usually gigabit), then there is competition to provide that fastest speed for the cheapest price. This mandate enhances competition in the ISP space.
  - desas 4y ago
    My house was built in England last year and already came with two separate fibre gigabit internet lines, one grainconnect and another BT. I think there are two separate ducts running throughout the entire development. I'd imagine this is just to make the cheapskates and small developers get on with it too.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
Just in time for wired internet to be obsolete. Especially for apartment buildings, makes much more sense to provide WiFi throughout private and common area than running cables to each unit. Even for individual homes, neighborhood 5g cells can do the trick for most people's needs. Also locking in current technology when constructing a building that could last a century is really dumb. Better to have access panels in the walls that allow easily installing and maintaining any type of cables / pipes / etc that may make sense in future.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Wired to my PS5 still delivers way faster (800 Mbps vs 300 Mbps) than WiFi even with the device being the one WiFi device on and transmitting in the house and situated under 1 m away. It's the default Comcast modem+router+wifi combo, but I imagine most people are using devices like that.
- Eleison23 4y ago
  [dead]
- theandrewbailey 4y ago
  Wifi is unreliable and laggy, and forcing everyone in an apartment building to use it for everything is a recipe for disaster. Same for 5g. As for access panels and pipes, the article reads: > Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home, and developers must still install gigabit-ready infrastructure (including ducts, chambers, and termination points) and the fastest-available connection if they’re unable to secure a gigabit connection within the cost cap.
- toast0 4y ago
  High density living is even more reason to run wired connections. The more fixed stations you can get off the air, the better everything else runs. Your TV probably stays in one spot, so streaming player(s) should be wired. If you do anything real time, having lower base latency and nearly zero jitter is pretty nice too. If you want to save costs, it's really not too expensive to add one or two runs of twisted pair per room to a central location, near the demarcation point, and don't bother to mark or terminate the cables. If someone wants to use them, they're there and it cost a couple bucks in cabling and staples and time to put them in the wall during construction, but would cost a lot more to put the wires in later. For a multiple unit building, include a conduit from the unit to a wiring room, in case someone wants to run something better later.
thedaly 4y ago
I wish that countries would mandate symmetrical connections as well. This would open up so much more opportunity for self hosting web apps and allow for decentralized sites, such as peertube, to function better.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  I disagree. The vast majority of people are never going to need or care about hosting a decentralized hoozywhatsit. Mandating technical decisions that cause waste is suboptimal. You get symmetrical speeds with fiber, but if ISPs could use the existing fiber infrastructure and allocate 75% of the bandwidth as download instead of 50%, that would be a win.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    In what way does it cause waste?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      You are mandating infra that will never be used and isn't needed.
      - ericmay 4y ago
        Well that might be an assumption that it will never be used. Maybe if people had it they would use it? But also I'm interested in if/whether this builds infrastructure resilience as well. Would be interesting to see a well-thought cost/benefit analysis there. In America at least given that every ISP without exception is a giant piece of crap, mandating them to do things I'm going to generally approve of, especially if ISPs would be against it since I don't trust them whatsoever.
        DeusExMachina 4y ago
        Anecdote is not data, but I have a fiber connection and I pretty much never use the upload bandwidth I have.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
This seems to be targeting areas where one could have gigabit Internet already. Specifically section 1.5.e. > Requirement R1 does not apply to the following types of building or building work: [...] > e. buildings in isolated areas where the prospect of a high-speed connection is considered too remote to justify equipping the building with high-speed-ready in-building physical infrastructure or an access point [...]
- ilyt 4y ago
  > Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home, not with those prices. I thought that is so high because it has to account for remote areas but if that isn't the case it looks huge. ... or it is a yearly cost and article didn't mention that
tsujamin 4y ago
laughs in australian
- hnick 4y ago
  And before someone comes in with the old excuse about population density, keep in mind they could mandate it for our dense metropolitan areas and service the great majority of citizens and businesses. If they'd actually built the right NBN in the first place.
habosa 4y ago
Some color about buying home internet in London vs San Francisco (in my experience). I recently moved back from London to San Francisco. In my 3 years in central London (N1) I had to use a 5g hotspot (thank you, Vodafone unlimited) to get anything close to fast internet in my flat. If I went with a wired "broadband" connection I could not get more than 10Mbps down. The street next to mine had gigabit fiber though. The reason? Almost all utility cables in London are underground. So replacing internet infrastructure requires ripping up the street. I lived on the high street near a tube station so I guess they hadn't laid a new line near me in 10+ years. I was really shocked after calling 15+ internet companies and finding out that nobody could offer me higher speeds. Only different prices. Now I moved back to San Francisco and I was excited to get some fast internet in my home. Quickly it became obvious that Comcast was my only real option at my address. They had plans up to 1200MBps down, but nothing over 20Mbps up! And 50%+ of the plans had data caps. I find a 1Gbps plan with a 500GB data cap hilarious ... theoretically you could use the entire data cap in ~75 minutes if you could saturate it. That's a lot less than a month! So basically internet is a disaster in both countries but it sounds like this is a step in the right direction.
- dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
  How was the 5G hotspot though?
  - secondcoming 4y ago
    If you are in the right location it's a viable alternative to fibre. Here's mine, elsewhere in the UK (not in Newcastle): https://www.speedtest.net/result/14185051949 https://www.speedtest.net/result/14185051949 Cheaper than fibre and 30-day rolling contract. Unlimited data.
    - dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
      Thanks for sharing. This seems totally fine, if not more than acceptable? How much does this cost?
dp-hackernews 4y ago
The beginning of the end of privacy. The beginning of the end of freedom of speech. Who will control the conduit to the outside - NOT the individual. This is the beginning of a worldwide MITM attack on all of society! Tyranny comes slowly, like an aid to ones life until you are trapped by it and no longer have the ability to reject it. It gives you just enough riches to allow you to hang yourself, or to force you throw yourself at the feet of the tyrant. Nothing good will come of this if it is allowed to be enforced unchallenged. Just who is looking to the future for the benefit of the masses?
- bool3max 4y ago
  I mean what you are saying is true but how does it relate to mandated gigabit internet?
  - dp-hackernews 4y ago
    It's a hidden "buy-in" to future authoritarian control. Flying under the radar, hearts and minds approach. Spoil you with mandates you believe to be in your interest inthe now, only to be duped into acknowledging those that control what you later become dependent upon. Create a problem, wait for a reaction, then provide a solution that favors the tyrants ability to control. Have a quick search for "problem, reaction, solution" and you'll be able to extrapolate from there. The world is controlled by competition and greed, and the majority participate blindly while those that see the utility of it create the games where their opposition cannot win.
garbagecoder 4y ago
So, will I have to stick coins in the modem before it works or is that just for the power?
- aembleton 4y ago
  Do you still do that for power? I don't think we've had coin meters for at least a decade now. A previous place I rented had a card meter that I topped up at the local shop and they'll still exist, but thats just for power.
c294f417-3c8a 4y ago
Our new build house had this 6 years ago (house wired for gigabit) What it means is there is ducting to the manhole for fibre. That's it. We had to suffer 2.5 megabit asdl for 2 years until openreach finally put fibre into our area. This announcement is meaningless, they should ensure all new build estates are connected to fibre and make the developer pay for the connection. Oh, and the ducting was filled with red stone chips so openreach had to reroute the fibre cabling anyway
jossclimb 4y ago
I am shocked that my country is doing something progressive for a change, I don't expect this will keep up for long though.
shmerl 4y ago
Good. They should also require fiber optics when cables are used.
- aembleton 4y ago
  Why? Surely data rates, latency and jitter are all that matter. Does it really matter what technology is used?
  - shmerl 4y ago
    Because they'll excuse running DSL with something otherwise.
agilob 4y ago
Just more admin fees and paperwork to build a building, making them more expensive. Make 30cm insulation a requirement so we don't pay £2000 per year for electric heating. I asked my property management company if they would, eghm, _consider_ improving external insulation, they responded they have no such legal requirements, so they won't. We pay 4x more for heating and warm water than in 2018, and have it colder and dumper, meanwhile I have 37mbps connection by choice, it's not like I'm going to use more, even when working from home. In here we literally get NHS money paying for our electricity bills because that's cheap than hospitalisation. Thanks for 4k Netflix tho.
- leoedin 4y ago
  This isn't really adding much cost. They were always going to run some sort of communications cable to new houses - the government is just making sure it's a future proofed one. Providing gigabit internet when there's a fiber running to the property already is trivial.
  - dexterdog 4y ago
    It's not adding much actual cost, but you know they will use it to claim that it is so they can pass it on.
    - nerdawson 4y ago
      Property prices are based on whatever the local market will support. Homebuilders may argue that it’ll increase costs that’ll need to be passed on when they’re lobbying against these sorts of measures but once passed, it’s done. It wouldn’t enter into the discussion with a buyer. “Hey, we’d have sold you this property for £300k but since the government forced us to give you faster internet we’ve had to bump the price a couple of grand”
- bpye 4y ago
  Most new builds are a B on the EPC scale [0]. I guess they could require that all new builds meet A? 0 - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-performance-of-building-certificates-in-england-and-wales-july-to-september-2022/energy-performance-of-building-certificates-in-england-and-wales-july-to-september-2022#england-and-wales-1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-performance-...
sofixa 4y ago
Cool, great news for England. In France the building regulations include RJ45 in every non-wet room (including kitchens!) on a weird electrical standard that basically allows cat7 speeds but also TV frequencies. So every newly built house or appartament is internally wired for 10Gbps, which should be fine for the foreseeable future.
jmcnulty 4y ago
I live in Northern Ireland (also part of the UK) and we're very well served here too. I switched from copper to fibre about a month back. Could have gone 1Gb but chose a cheaper 500Gb DOWN / 75Mb UP package (no data limits) as I didn't think I'd notice the difference. Speed tests show I get very close to both. Very happy.
shinycode 4y ago
In France with a Freebox Delta I have unlimited 10gbps speed down and 700mbps up for less than 50€ a month. Netflix and Amazon prime are included and I live in a 15000 people town. The subscription can be canceled any time. Plus the box has a built in NAS, Wifi 6E, and a 4K HDR player among other things
- stunami 4y ago
  Yes... I have the same just moved here from Australia. Im in an old building but close to Paris. I've been blown away by what I can get with a "bargain provider".
  - shinycode 4y ago
    Too much people complain about Free here but it’s actually amazing what we can get for the price compared to other countries …
sirsinsalot 4y ago
I get 100Mbps symmetrical (Fiber) in the UK living in a city. Honestly, I'm not sure I could go back. Most residential homes struggle to average anything near that with ADSL. Welcome news. Fast Internet is important to the economy in an increasingly information based society.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Typo: I get 1000Mbps
sammalloy 4y ago
This is hilarious to me, because it took 25 years from proposal to standard. That’s a long ass time to standardize gigabit Internet. I remember reading a trade magazine in 1998 proposing it as the new standard for infrastructure.
userbinator 4y ago
Unintentional side-effect of faster internet speeds: even more bloated app-sites. One wonders if average page sizes are going to start reaching hundreds of MB or even exceed 1GB more quickly.
- EthicalSimilar 4y ago
  What’s the issue with that if the infrastructure and devices support it? You could have made the same argument 20 years ago.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  I had 10Gbps (real-world numbers were about 6Gbps down and 2Gbps up) internet, on so-called unsaturated "dark fibre" for several years in Tokyo and while it was incredibly fast for downloading games from steam, streaming movies and synching to/from cloud services, it really wasn't noticeably faster than 100Mbps services for general web browsing. There was also no noticeable difference for general web browsing when I connected to my 10Gbps modem with 10Gbps wired, 1Gbps wired or wifi. The bottleneck is definitely on having a million connections open to serve a typical commercial app-site including ads, and the latency of each, than just datarate. So although it's for a bad reason, I don't expect that higher average datarates will automatically lead to more bloat, at least not right away. Hopefully it highlights where internet browsing bloat actually comes from (although I doubt it).
tialaramex 4y ago
Most of England has last mile connectivity from BT, the historical monopoly telco. BT is required by the regulator to sell access over their "last mile" of copper, fibre, or whatever, at a fixed tariff, plus to sell routing over their long distance networks for a fair price, so that ISPs, even relatively small ones, can serve anybody with those last mile lines, from anywhere in the country. So maybe you pay Jim's Tiny ISP £29 pcm, Jim's pays BT say £8.26 pcm to reach your home, and they've got £20.74 to buy upstream bandwidth, pay staff, taxes etc. The box in your house either belongs to you or was sent out by Jim's, the fibre or copper between your house and some big building belongs to BT, fibre between the building and Jim's Tiny ISP is either owned by BT or a rival huge corporation. Anyway for a good many years now, BT offered to basically do fibre rather than copper for the same install price on new homes so long as the builders actually had their people come in early and put the trenches where they need to be etc. on a multi-home site during construction. If you wait until the house is finished, BT wants $$$ to dig everything up and lay fibre. This meant if the house builders understand why owners would want Internet, or if they at least understand market forces, they would pull their finger out and arrange this, because it's basically free money. Some fraction of buyers will actually remember to ask if the new house has decent broadband, and at some point vague non-committal answers either become specific (and actionable if you were lying) or the buyer walks away. But if the house market is booming, and you don't get into the habit of having BT do their work early in development, you're going to keep building houses which don't have fibre, they'll sell anyway. This government rule tells builders nope, either show why that it'd be crazy expensive to run fibre up a mountain or whatever - or else pay up and get it done, whereupon of course that's pressure on builders to do it properly. I expect the net price will be almost zero, because of scale.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
If legislation is going to get involved, wouldn't better mobile coverage at faster speeds be the thing to go for? Wouldn't that have broader impact? I'm not saying the last mile doesn't count. Only that given the choice it feels like they went for the fax machine.
- aembleton 4y ago
  > wouldn't better mobile coverage at faster speeds be the thing to go for? Maybe, but you'd still need to have fibre run to any new builds to put a transceiver there to get the high speeds and to not saturate the bands that the transceivers are operating in. You might as well run the fibre into the house and let the home owner choose what to do with it.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    Perhaps, but new construction homes tend to be more expensive, and (anecdotally) in nicer areas. Regardless, the benefits are limited to the household (of two to five?). On the otherhand, better mobile is for all.
Tempest1981 4y ago
I wonder if the developers will use coax or fiber? I assume coax is cheaper... ? Oh, or CAT-6? Question: for fiber, I assume it's easy to later upgrade from 1Gbps to 10Gbps? Is the same true for coax?
kaapipo 4y ago
England is different from the UK. Original title says "the UK", so why not use that?
- defrost 4y ago
  There are two laws of interest here [1] (in the original authoritive source .gov.uk release) One law applies to both England and Wales (not to Cornwall, Scotland, or Northern Ireland). The other applies to England alone. Neither applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-of-homeowners-and-tenants-to-get-better-access-to-faster-broadband https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-of-homeowners-an...
  - aembleton 4y ago
    They both apply to Cornwall as it is part of England.
    - defrost 4y ago
      It is? Damn shame, I'm sure there'd be a few that wished otherwise. My bad, I'm thinking pre Henry VII times when it had more autonomy, not that I have skin in the game being Australian with non Great Britain roots.
jakeogh 4y ago
How long until it's illegal to disconnect? Why come you have...
fennecfoxy 4y ago
Used to live in NZ where I believe we had one of the world's most organised, fairest fiber rollouts. I moved from 1Gbps to 5Mbps connection (in central London!!) when I first got here. This is just gonna be one more thing to tack onto the artificial price of new houses (and old ones). The property market here is so incredibly boned, houses often aren't properly modernised, construction methods used are from the 60's a lot of the time bc rather than knock down & rebuilt to modern standards, they just keep repairing the old - plus a lot of "new builds" are built super cheaply/crappily as well. And all of these problems for the low, low price of half a million £ for a three bedroom terraced house, not even detached.
spants 4y ago
I live in a tiny village in SE England with fibre 900/300 provided by Trooli. Friends in London have 2-20mb adsl!
bobcattz 4y ago
In sweden you get a discount for drawing fiber to your house wherever this house might be on in the country side for a cost between 1500-2000 EUR. This has lead to all that all houses all over sweden now has high gigabit fiber or more to their houses because this increases the value of the property and no one can afford not to take the deal

444 points by lbres 4y ago

ac29 4y ago

It should be noted that according to government estimates, 88% of new homes were already built with gigabit access prior to this law (which seems impressive as an American!). The new rule is expected to move that number to 98%.

adamm255 4y ago
Yeah my new build had gigabit installed. It has become more of a customer demand thing prior to the law, as long as it’s available. There have been a lot of developments finished in the past 5 years with 1mbps copper, hopefully the law will prevent that travesty happening!
IMSAI8080 4y ago
The incumbent cable provider (Virgin Media) offers gigabit to virtually every property they serve, which is something like 15 million homes. That's maybe about 60% of total UK properties. I can already get VM gigabit I just don't want to pay for it. There's a competing fibre cable broadband company currently installing a separate network in my town and the incumbent national telco (British Telecom) is replacing all the last mile copper in town with fibre.

_fat_santa 4y ago

How i understand is is Gigabit is two parts: the first part is your home, router, etc supporting the connection speeds. The other is the infrastructure to deliver the gigabit to your home. I can see a regulation that mandates that you wire any new residences up so they can support gigabit, but how is this going to work if the municipality / ISP does not offer it? Not sure about what Gigabit rollout in the UK looks like but I know in the US, landlords don't always offer it because the ISP doesn't offer it. Seems that it would put the landlord in a catch-22 where they depend on the ISP to provide a service that they are mandated to provide but cannot because the ISP does not offer it.

ejb999 4y ago
>>I can see a regulation that mandates that you wire any new residences up so they can support gigabit, but how is this going to work if the municipality / ISP does not offer it? If read the article, it says the cap is 2000 pounds, so the developer must do all the make-ready work in the house to support 1G internet, but they only have to actually connect to the fastest option available - and then only if the total cost of that is under the 2000 cap. So it's something, but I suspect many places that are out of luck now, will still be out of luck even with the new rules.
- criddell 4y ago
  The fastest option available might be 5G cellular modem. From a builder’s perspective, it’s probably also the cheapest.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  What possible steps would a developer take to "make-ready" for 1 gigabit internet? Does the front door need to open and shut faster? Are the toilets going to have 4k flushing? I'm struggling to figure out how a developer could impede internet access if they actually wanted to.
  - komadori 4y ago
    "such as ducts, chambers and termination points"* This sort of thing is much cheaper to put in when you're building the street/house than after the fact. * https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/01/new-uk-laws-boost-gigabit-broadband-into-mdus-and-new-build-homes.html https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/01/new-uk-laws-bo...
    - sidewndr46 4y ago
      But how would they know what to add before service is brought to the residence? Maybe it is different, but even on new construction where I live the way service comes in is very simple: a technician takes a large drill and blindly drills through the outer wall of the house to bring a cable in. At that point the install is complete. In fact, even if you have existing cabling they generally will elect not to use it unless you make a point of requesting it.

cactusplant7374 4y ago

Does this mean fiber or will cable be an option as well?

BayesianDice 4y ago
The amended regulations (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/schedule/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/schedule/made) refer to a requirement for connection to a "gigabit-capable public electronic communications network". And a "public electronic communications network" is defined in the Communications Act 2003 as "an electronic communications network provided wholly or mainly for the purpose of making electronic communications services available to members of the public". So I expect that either type of service meeting the requirement on speed would be acceptable.

Spivak 4y ago

Glad they're trying something but this seems silly compared to "we're going to start a public works project where anyone in England can request their home or apartment be upgraded to be 1G capable." This law feels like it was written by someone who wanted to do anything except pay for it. The queue would be massive but that's UK tradition.

m000 4y ago
> This law feels like it was written by someone who wanted to do anything except pay for it. This sentences feels like it was written to defend companies that want to reap profits from massively profitable areas, but systematically avoid investing in upgrading service in less profitable areas. Where self-regulation falls short of serving the public interest, government regulation kicks in. Well done UK!
- sgc 4y ago
  I think you misunderstood the comment the op made. They were saying the legislation does little, and they would rather have seen the government also invest in retrofitting older homes.

andrewstuart 4y ago

I'd be super impressed if the requirement was for symmetric gigabit.

AdrianB1 4y ago
The cable is symmetric, either UTP and fiber are not discriminating. The equipment at each end is not part of the law, if I understand it correctly.

amalgamated_inc 4y ago

Price of new houses just went up

IanCal 4y ago
Not particularly, there's very little justification for running copper to new houses given we're in a nationwide rollout of fibre and there's a big cost saving to moving entirely to fibre.
- mhb 4y ago
  So no need for a law then...
  - izzydata 4y ago
    To me it seems like a way to really consider internet to be a public utility such as water and electricity. I'm sure there is a law that says any new construction requires it to be connected to the electricity grid, even though it would be pretty unreasonable to not connect it to the grid. Does that mean there is no need for it to be a law? At least this way you can have a good expectation of a new buildings utilities.
    - mhb 4y ago
      When you set a minimum standard, something that could have been bought for less that didn't meet that standard will no longer be an alternative. So some people will have something better and others will not have an option that they once did.
      - IanCal 4y ago
        It can make a maximum difference in cost of about 1% of the final sale price, probably less given the cap and average prices of new build properties. I don't think it'll have a big impact on whether the houses sell, we have a huge undersupply of new housing.

ortusdux 4y ago

Is this symmetric gigabit or just download? I pay for gigabit down, 35 megabit up. My only other options are starlink or a $10k fiber install.

izzydata 4y ago
I'm pretty sure all fiber is bi-directional and achieving gigabit without fiber seems silly.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Gigabit over DOCSIS won't be symmetrical any time soon, but it's still gigabit internet. Not all homes are hooked up to fiber, sadly, although especially in new homes you'd really hope they'll be.
core-utility 4y ago
Is paying for your own fiber install common? I'm in a mid-90's home in the US and AT&T just recently decided they wanted to enter our market with Fiber and will install free of charge with no contract to whoever wants to switch. Certainly no easy task, but I understand that homes/infrastructure outside of the US can also be significantly older.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Enterprise-grade leased lines typically make you pay at least part of the install cost.
OJFord 4y ago
That seems really poor; they clearly thought (probably correctly) that 'gigabit' was an easier sell (to the masses) than '500Mbps symmetric' or some other split. It doesn't help you, but Hyperoptic are an ISP in the UK with all plans except the lowest being symmetric. I used to pay (moved out of the area^) £28pcm for symmetric 100Mbps, or maybe 150 - either way it was fairly consistently 160/180Mbps as measured. A&A are also by all accounts amazing, but only HN-browsing nerds more impressed with 800M symmetric than 1G are their customers anyway. Hyperoptic I like because they're primarily serving 'the masses' but seem the only non-shitty ones. ^I now use a Mikrotik 4G modem & router. It's not as fast but it's enough, (ongoing) costs even less; I think with some tweaking - especially mounting it outside - I can do better, but it's been so fine that I haven't bothered yet, over the course of months. A lot more asymmetric though, I wouldn't build and push images quite as casually as I might have before.

nimzoLarsen 4y ago

And along with that, more tax dollars flowing to ISPs in the form of subsidies.

Veen 4y ago
Tax pounds.

xbmcuser 4y ago

I think this comes across as shocking to Americans but the thing is the rest of the world treats internet as a utility so most governments try to get cheap and fast internet for as large a portion of the population as possible. Where as US cities and towns are stuck under its isp corporate monopolies.

mperham 4y ago
Yep, it doesn't need to be treated as a utility, there just needs to be competition. Our Xfinity internet was locked at 150 Mbps for years until the local DSL provider (Centurylink) rolled out gigabit fiber. Suddenly Xfinity started offering gigabit also. Capitalism doesn't work if the market is captured by rent-seekers. Unfortunately this describes most American industries these days.
- baq 4y ago
  to be precise: monopoly is peak laissez-faire capitalism; regulation is what makes this local maximum easy to get out of instead of dealing with an East India Company situation.
- dantheman 4y ago
  Capitalism doesn't work when the government grants monopolies to local companies.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    The monopolies in question are natural monopolies (basically any infrastructure which is physically constrained), so the only way of lessening the damages from them is via government regulations.
    - dantheman 4y ago
      Nope, the monopolies in question are granted by the local towns to specific providers so that they will be unprofitable connections to extremely rural recipients. It's a way to subsidize those who don't want to pay for what it would actually cost by secretly taxing everyone in the community by granting monopolies to certain businesses.

drbeast 4y ago

Wonderful, let's make new homes even more expensive! And to those who are downvoting this, every building code requirement like this jacks up the price further. Not everyone is a SWE with a TC of $250k+ you over privileged ninnies.

m000 4y ago
I can sell you a nifty cave, and I'll throw in my top-of-the-line 56k modem for free if you want to avoid the price jackups.
hgomersall 4y ago
UK house prices in no way reflect the build cost. The developers do the least they can get away with, which generally means the shittiest fabric with some polish that lasts until the end of the warranty period, just about satisfying the building regs (which are not really checked properly), then they flog the result at whatever the market will bear and pocket the difference. What the market will bear is entirely dictated by where the identikit houses have been built and little else.
- djbebs 4y ago
  Of course they reflect build costs, as well as regulatory costs...
- lhnz 4y ago
  Everything you say is correct apart from "house prices in no way reflect the build cost". The build cost is expensive as there aren't many skilled trades people nowadays and there is a market of lemons. The few high quality building contractors that are trusted can charge huge amounts of money -- all of the others charge as much as they can get away with and just hope that you don't check their work...
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    Maybe, but around me, house demand hugely outstrips supply, so everyone buys at the limit of what they can afford. For sure, proper dumps that need significant renovation go for less, but they are super rare. Everything else goes for a price set by the size of the home and increasingly, the size of garden. New builds command a slight premium, but that's mostly a marketing premium, which doesn't hold for resale. It's hugely complicated by the location aspect of course - older houses tend to be in better locations. Basically, my point is that trying to attribute regulatory costs to house prices is essentially impossible, and is very much in the noise.

Nifty3929 4y ago

Instead of what? Everything comes instead of something else. Whatever effort and resources are spent adding gigabit to new homes will mean fewer homes, less food, shoes, medicine, natural gas, cars or whatever. Many people will be celebrating faster internet speeds for those who purchase these new homes, but it's hard to see what goes missing when it's a little here and there from across the economy.

awestroke 4y ago
Instead of a slightly slightly cheaper but much worse fiber connection
pwinnski 4y ago
It is not at all clear that the size of the metaphorical pie is as fixed as you claim. Ideally gigabit internet will come "instead of" a few extra pounds of profit in the pockets of the builders. More likely, gigabit internet will come "instead of" a few extra pounds remaining in the pockets of the home-buyers. It's also possible that this will just prompt companies already installing equipment for new neighborhoods to install the reasonable piece of kit, rather than the cheapest piece of kit possible, at an added extra expense of nearly zero.
ledauphin 4y ago
economies are complex. it may be "instead of spending 3x as much to retrofit all these new houses in 10 years when everyone else has gigabit". Sometimes the "economic" decision right now is just punting significantly higher cost of rework down the road.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  They're still building crappy homes with insufficient insulation and a lack of a proper ventilation strategy. This should have been stopped years ago and saved buyers of new builds the current high energy prices. Well done UK gov, obviously the building industry lobbyists know best.
tjohns 4y ago

ed25519FUUU 4y ago

It’s extremely challenging advocating for this in the USA because most people have no idea the difference between upload and download, and how data caps play into it. You can get gigabit 5G in many areas but it’s manifestly a different animal than symmetrical gigabit fiber internet without caps.

lazide 4y ago
This is in-home/last mile. It's basically a law requiring every home have a minimum degree of ethernet or equivalent done and pulled to somewhere it can be connected to a provider, not a requirement that a provider of a specific speed be available. Which is pretty good, and about time! It's like requiring the house be wired for electricity to a bare minimum (1 outlet per room, 1 switched light per room, that kind of thing).
imhoguy 4y ago
Fiber has caps too, although hidden under "Fair Usage Policy". I know as I see some stories on /r/DataHorder, some starting from 1TB/month. Ofc they are much higher than cellular/5G caps.

rayiner 4y ago

> Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home, and developers must still install gigabit-ready infrastructure (including ducts, chambers, and termination points) and the fastest-available connection if they’re unable to secure a gigabit connection within the cost cap. This approach makes a lot of sense. In my county in Maryland, building a new house involves at least $20,000 in fees for sewer and water hookups: https://www.aacounty.org/departments/inspections-and-permits/fees/utility-and-impact-fees https://www.aacounty.org/departments/inspections-and-permits.... Building out fiber to the house is much cheaper in comparison. It seems like a drop in the bucket to integrate a couple of thousand in additional fees for a fiber hookup.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

Can we maybe edit the title to say "UK" instead of "England"? Also, we nearly had gigabit fibre to the home 40 years ago (before anything even needed to run at 1Gbit, or you could afford the transceivers, admittedly) because BT's vision for the future of telephony was to rip out all the copper and run fibre to every single house. Then the right-wing extremist Thatcher government got wind of the idea and decided that this was too big a monopoly to be allowed to stand, so they stole the entire public property that was BT, smashed it to bits, and sold it off to private industry. This put back everything by *decades*. Now it's a battle to work out wayleaves, interoperability, who's responsible for what physical plant, and all sorts of other messes. Thanks, Conservatives, fuck you very much.

coob 4y ago
> Can we maybe edit the title to say "UK" instead of "England"? No, because the law only affects England - Building Regs a devolved matter in Wales and Scotland. There is a separate law mentioned in the article which is telecoms related and not devolved in Wales - but that is about landlords not needing to grant access to engineers.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Ah, fair enough then.
OJFord 4y ago
> Can we maybe edit the title to say "UK" instead of "England"? I think it's correct actually, housing is devolved. 'The Building etc. (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2022' - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/contents/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/984/contents/made - my emphasis.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Fair point, okay.
ChildOfChaos 4y ago

sebow 4y ago

UK legislators are really something out of this world. In October I will have 10Gbps for 2 years, I can't even remember when I got 1gbps. The reason you get such services (and in my case for dirt cheap) is because of competition, not because you mandate it. Just a dumb idea to impose this thinking it will somehow improve the situation overnight. Sadly again I'm not surprised given the location in question.

johnday 4y ago
If builders are mandated to make new homes able to access the fastest speed available (usually gigabit), then there is competition to provide that fastest speed for the cheapest price. This mandate enhances competition in the ISP space.
- desas 4y ago
  My house was built in England last year and already came with two separate fibre gigabit internet lines, one grainconnect and another BT. I think there are two separate ducts running throughout the entire development. I'd imagine this is just to make the cheapskates and small developers get on with it too.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

Just in time for wired internet to be obsolete. Especially for apartment buildings, makes much more sense to provide WiFi throughout private and common area than running cables to each unit. Even for individual homes, neighborhood 5g cells can do the trick for most people's needs. Also locking in current technology when constructing a building that could last a century is really dumb. Better to have access panels in the walls that allow easily installing and maintaining any type of cables / pipes / etc that may make sense in future.

renewiltord 4y ago
Wired to my PS5 still delivers way faster (800 Mbps vs 300 Mbps) than WiFi even with the device being the one WiFi device on and transmitting in the house and situated under 1 m away. It's the default Comcast modem+router+wifi combo, but I imagine most people are using devices like that.
Eleison23 4y ago
[dead]
theandrewbailey 4y ago
Wifi is unreliable and laggy, and forcing everyone in an apartment building to use it for everything is a recipe for disaster. Same for 5g. As for access panels and pipes, the article reads: > Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home, and developers must still install gigabit-ready infrastructure (including ducts, chambers, and termination points) and the fastest-available connection if they’re unable to secure a gigabit connection within the cost cap.
toast0 4y ago
High density living is even more reason to run wired connections. The more fixed stations you can get off the air, the better everything else runs. Your TV probably stays in one spot, so streaming player(s) should be wired. If you do anything real time, having lower base latency and nearly zero jitter is pretty nice too. If you want to save costs, it's really not too expensive to add one or two runs of twisted pair per room to a central location, near the demarcation point, and don't bother to mark or terminate the cables. If someone wants to use them, they're there and it cost a couple bucks in cabling and staples and time to put them in the wall during construction, but would cost a lot more to put the wires in later. For a multiple unit building, include a conduit from the unit to a wiring room, in case someone wants to run something better later.

thedaly 4y ago

I wish that countries would mandate symmetrical connections as well. This would open up so much more opportunity for self hosting web apps and allow for decentralized sites, such as peertube, to function better.

dahfizz 4y ago
I disagree. The vast majority of people are never going to need or care about hosting a decentralized hoozywhatsit. Mandating technical decisions that cause waste is suboptimal. You get symmetrical speeds with fiber, but if ISPs could use the existing fiber infrastructure and allocate 75% of the bandwidth as download instead of 50%, that would be a win.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  In what way does it cause waste?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    You are mandating infra that will never be used and isn't needed.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Well that might be an assumption that it will never be used. Maybe if people had it they would use it? But also I'm interested in if/whether this builds infrastructure resilience as well. Would be interesting to see a well-thought cost/benefit analysis there. In America at least given that every ISP without exception is a giant piece of crap, mandating them to do things I'm going to generally approve of, especially if ISPs would be against it since I don't trust them whatsoever.
      - DeusExMachina 4y ago
        Anecdote is not data, but I have a fiber connection and I pretty much never use the upload bandwidth I have.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

This seems to be targeting areas where one could have gigabit Internet already. Specifically section 1.5.e. > Requirement R1 does not apply to the following types of building or building work: [...] > e. buildings in isolated areas where the prospect of a high-speed connection is considered too remote to justify equipping the building with high-speed-ready in-building physical infrastructure or an access point [...]

ilyt 4y ago
> Connection costs will be capped at £2,000 per home, not with those prices. I thought that is so high because it has to account for remote areas but if that isn't the case it looks huge. ... or it is a yearly cost and article didn't mention that

tsujamin 4y ago

laughs in australian

hnick 4y ago
And before someone comes in with the old excuse about population density, keep in mind they could mandate it for our dense metropolitan areas and service the great majority of citizens and businesses. If they'd actually built the right NBN in the first place.

habosa 4y ago

Some color about buying home internet in London vs San Francisco (in my experience). I recently moved back from London to San Francisco. In my 3 years in central London (N1) I had to use a 5g hotspot (thank you, Vodafone unlimited) to get anything close to fast internet in my flat. If I went with a wired "broadband" connection I could not get more than 10Mbps down. The street next to mine had gigabit fiber though. The reason? Almost all utility cables in London are underground. So replacing internet infrastructure requires ripping up the street. I lived on the high street near a tube station so I guess they hadn't laid a new line near me in 10+ years. I was really shocked after calling 15+ internet companies and finding out that nobody could offer me higher speeds. Only different prices. Now I moved back to San Francisco and I was excited to get some fast internet in my home. Quickly it became obvious that Comcast was my only real option at my address. They had plans up to 1200MBps down, but nothing over 20Mbps up! And 50%+ of the plans had data caps. I find a 1Gbps plan with a 500GB data cap hilarious ... theoretically you could use the entire data cap in ~75 minutes if you could saturate it. That's a lot less than a month! So basically internet is a disaster in both countries but it sounds like this is a step in the right direction.

dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
How was the 5G hotspot though?
- secondcoming 4y ago
  If you are in the right location it's a viable alternative to fibre. Here's mine, elsewhere in the UK (not in Newcastle): https://www.speedtest.net/result/14185051949 https://www.speedtest.net/result/14185051949 Cheaper than fibre and 30-day rolling contract. Unlimited data.
  - dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing. This seems totally fine, if not more than acceptable? How much does this cost?

dp-hackernews 4y ago

The beginning of the end of privacy. The beginning of the end of freedom of speech. Who will control the conduit to the outside - NOT the individual. This is the beginning of a worldwide MITM attack on all of society! Tyranny comes slowly, like an aid to ones life until you are trapped by it and no longer have the ability to reject it. It gives you just enough riches to allow you to hang yourself, or to force you throw yourself at the feet of the tyrant. Nothing good will come of this if it is allowed to be enforced unchallenged. Just who is looking to the future for the benefit of the masses?

bool3max 4y ago
I mean what you are saying is true but how does it relate to mandated gigabit internet?
- dp-hackernews 4y ago
  It's a hidden "buy-in" to future authoritarian control. Flying under the radar, hearts and minds approach. Spoil you with mandates you believe to be in your interest inthe now, only to be duped into acknowledging those that control what you later become dependent upon. Create a problem, wait for a reaction, then provide a solution that favors the tyrants ability to control. Have a quick search for "problem, reaction, solution" and you'll be able to extrapolate from there. The world is controlled by competition and greed, and the majority participate blindly while those that see the utility of it create the games where their opposition cannot win.

garbagecoder 4y ago

So, will I have to stick coins in the modem before it works or is that just for the power?

aembleton 4y ago
Do you still do that for power? I don't think we've had coin meters for at least a decade now. A previous place I rented had a card meter that I topped up at the local shop and they'll still exist, but thats just for power.

c294f417-3c8a 4y ago

Our new build house had this 6 years ago (house wired for gigabit) What it means is there is ducting to the manhole for fibre. That's it. We had to suffer 2.5 megabit asdl for 2 years until openreach finally put fibre into our area. This announcement is meaningless, they should ensure all new build estates are connected to fibre and make the developer pay for the connection. Oh, and the ducting was filled with red stone chips so openreach had to reroute the fibre cabling anyway

jossclimb 4y ago

I am shocked that my country is doing something progressive for a change, I don't expect this will keep up for long though.

shmerl 4y ago

Good. They should also require fiber optics when cables are used.

aembleton 4y ago
Why? Surely data rates, latency and jitter are all that matter. Does it really matter what technology is used?
- shmerl 4y ago
  Because they'll excuse running DSL with something otherwise.

agilob 4y ago

Just more admin fees and paperwork to build a building, making them more expensive. Make 30cm insulation a requirement so we don't pay £2000 per year for electric heating. I asked my property management company if they would, eghm, _consider_ improving external insulation, they responded they have no such legal requirements, so they won't. We pay 4x more for heating and warm water than in 2018, and have it colder and dumper, meanwhile I have 37mbps connection by choice, it's not like I'm going to use more, even when working from home. In here we literally get NHS money paying for our electricity bills because that's cheap than hospitalisation. Thanks for 4k Netflix tho.

leoedin 4y ago
This isn't really adding much cost. They were always going to run some sort of communications cable to new houses - the government is just making sure it's a future proofed one. Providing gigabit internet when there's a fiber running to the property already is trivial.
- dexterdog 4y ago
  It's not adding much actual cost, but you know they will use it to claim that it is so they can pass it on.
  - nerdawson 4y ago
    Property prices are based on whatever the local market will support. Homebuilders may argue that it’ll increase costs that’ll need to be passed on when they’re lobbying against these sorts of measures but once passed, it’s done. It wouldn’t enter into the discussion with a buyer. “Hey, we’d have sold you this property for £300k but since the government forced us to give you faster internet we’ve had to bump the price a couple of grand”
bpye 4y ago
Most new builds are a B on the EPC scale [0]. I guess they could require that all new builds meet A? 0 - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-performance-of-building-certificates-in-england-and-wales-july-to-september-2022/energy-performance-of-building-certificates-in-england-and-wales-july-to-september-2022#england-and-wales-1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-performance-...

sofixa 4y ago

Cool, great news for England. In France the building regulations include RJ45 in every non-wet room (including kitchens!) on a weird electrical standard that basically allows cat7 speeds but also TV frequencies. So every newly built house or appartament is internally wired for 10Gbps, which should be fine for the foreseeable future.

jmcnulty 4y ago

I live in Northern Ireland (also part of the UK) and we're very well served here too. I switched from copper to fibre about a month back. Could have gone 1Gb but chose a cheaper 500Gb DOWN / 75Mb UP package (no data limits) as I didn't think I'd notice the difference. Speed tests show I get very close to both. Very happy.

shinycode 4y ago

In France with a Freebox Delta I have unlimited 10gbps speed down and 700mbps up for less than 50€ a month. Netflix and Amazon prime are included and I live in a 15000 people town. The subscription can be canceled any time. Plus the box has a built in NAS, Wifi 6E, and a 4K HDR player among other things

stunami 4y ago
Yes... I have the same just moved here from Australia. Im in an old building but close to Paris. I've been blown away by what I can get with a "bargain provider".
- shinycode 4y ago
  Too much people complain about Free here but it’s actually amazing what we can get for the price compared to other countries …

sirsinsalot 4y ago

I get 100Mbps symmetrical (Fiber) in the UK living in a city. Honestly, I'm not sure I could go back. Most residential homes struggle to average anything near that with ADSL. Welcome news. Fast Internet is important to the economy in an increasingly information based society.

sirsinsalot 4y ago
Typo: I get 1000Mbps

sammalloy 4y ago

This is hilarious to me, because it took 25 years from proposal to standard. That’s a long ass time to standardize gigabit Internet. I remember reading a trade magazine in 1998 proposing it as the new standard for infrastructure.

userbinator 4y ago

Unintentional side-effect of faster internet speeds: even more bloated app-sites. One wonders if average page sizes are going to start reaching hundreds of MB or even exceed 1GB more quickly.

EthicalSimilar 4y ago
What’s the issue with that if the infrastructure and devices support it? You could have made the same argument 20 years ago.
johnwalkr 4y ago
I had 10Gbps (real-world numbers were about 6Gbps down and 2Gbps up) internet, on so-called unsaturated "dark fibre" for several years in Tokyo and while it was incredibly fast for downloading games from steam, streaming movies and synching to/from cloud services, it really wasn't noticeably faster than 100Mbps services for general web browsing. There was also no noticeable difference for general web browsing when I connected to my 10Gbps modem with 10Gbps wired, 1Gbps wired or wifi. The bottleneck is definitely on having a million connections open to serve a typical commercial app-site including ads, and the latency of each, than just datarate. So although it's for a bad reason, I don't expect that higher average datarates will automatically lead to more bloat, at least not right away. Hopefully it highlights where internet browsing bloat actually comes from (although I doubt it).

tialaramex 4y ago

Most of England has last mile connectivity from BT, the historical monopoly telco. BT is required by the regulator to sell access over their "last mile" of copper, fibre, or whatever, at a fixed tariff, plus to sell routing over their long distance networks for a fair price, so that ISPs, even relatively small ones, can serve anybody with those last mile lines, from anywhere in the country. So maybe you pay Jim's Tiny ISP £29 pcm, Jim's pays BT say £8.26 pcm to reach your home, and they've got £20.74 to buy upstream bandwidth, pay staff, taxes etc. The box in your house either belongs to you or was sent out by Jim's, the fibre or copper between your house and some big building belongs to BT, fibre between the building and Jim's Tiny ISP is either owned by BT or a rival huge corporation. Anyway for a good many years now, BT offered to basically do fibre rather than copper for the same install price on new homes so long as the builders actually had their people come in early and put the trenches where they need to be etc. on a multi-home site during construction. If you wait until the house is finished, BT wants $$$ to dig everything up and lay fibre. This meant if the house builders understand why owners would want Internet, or if they at least understand market forces, they would pull their finger out and arrange this, because it's basically free money. Some fraction of buyers will actually remember to ask if the new house has decent broadband, and at some point vague non-committal answers either become specific (and actionable if you were lying) or the buyer walks away. But if the house market is booming, and you don't get into the habit of having BT do their work early in development, you're going to keep building houses which don't have fibre, they'll sell anyway. This government rule tells builders nope, either show why that it'd be crazy expensive to run fibre up a mountain or whatever - or else pay up and get it done, whereupon of course that's pressure on builders to do it properly. I expect the net price will be almost zero, because of scale.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

If legislation is going to get involved, wouldn't better mobile coverage at faster speeds be the thing to go for? Wouldn't that have broader impact? I'm not saying the last mile doesn't count. Only that given the choice it feels like they went for the fax machine.

aembleton 4y ago
> wouldn't better mobile coverage at faster speeds be the thing to go for? Maybe, but you'd still need to have fibre run to any new builds to put a transceiver there to get the high speeds and to not saturate the bands that the transceivers are operating in. You might as well run the fibre into the house and let the home owner choose what to do with it.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  Perhaps, but new construction homes tend to be more expensive, and (anecdotally) in nicer areas. Regardless, the benefits are limited to the household (of two to five?). On the otherhand, better mobile is for all.

Tempest1981 4y ago

I wonder if the developers will use coax or fiber? I assume coax is cheaper... ? Oh, or CAT-6? Question: for fiber, I assume it's easy to later upgrade from 1Gbps to 10Gbps? Is the same true for coax?

kaapipo 4y ago

England is different from the UK. Original title says "the UK", so why not use that?

defrost 4y ago
There are two laws of interest here [1] (in the original authoritive source .gov.uk release) One law applies to both England and Wales (not to Cornwall, Scotland, or Northern Ireland). The other applies to England alone. Neither applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-of-homeowners-and-tenants-to-get-better-access-to-faster-broadband https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-of-homeowners-an...
- aembleton 4y ago
  They both apply to Cornwall as it is part of England.
  - defrost 4y ago
    It is? Damn shame, I'm sure there'd be a few that wished otherwise. My bad, I'm thinking pre Henry VII times when it had more autonomy, not that I have skin in the game being Australian with non Great Britain roots.

jakeogh 4y ago

How long until it's illegal to disconnect? Why come you have...

fennecfoxy 4y ago

Used to live in NZ where I believe we had one of the world's most organised, fairest fiber rollouts. I moved from 1Gbps to 5Mbps connection (in central London!!) when I first got here. This is just gonna be one more thing to tack onto the artificial price of new houses (and old ones). The property market here is so incredibly boned, houses often aren't properly modernised, construction methods used are from the 60's a lot of the time bc rather than knock down & rebuilt to modern standards, they just keep repairing the old - plus a lot of "new builds" are built super cheaply/crappily as well. And all of these problems for the low, low price of half a million £ for a three bedroom terraced house, not even detached.

spants 4y ago

I live in a tiny village in SE England with fibre 900/300 provided by Trooli. Friends in London have 2-20mb adsl!

bobcattz 4y ago

In sweden you get a discount for drawing fiber to your house wherever this house might be on in the country side for a cost between 1500-2000 EUR. This has lead to all that all houses all over sweden now has high gigabit fiber or more to their houses because this increases the value of the property and no one can afford not to take the deal