Meanwhile, in rural England, people desperate for internet access are bundling four DSL lines at 1.4 MBit/s downstream each. BT has re-established its monopoly with being the only provider of FTTC, a major step back from the LLU days of ADSL. But none of this matters, because even if you have fast internet, the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship to make it useless (just this week folks couldn't download an update to the popular game League of Legends because it contained a file named VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj).
> Meanwhile, in rural England, people desperate for internet access are bundling four DSL lines at 1.4 MBit/s downstream each.
Then they should move out of rural England. BT, etc, aren't stupid. If people in rural England could pay enough to offset the cost of running cable or fiber out to rural England, then BT would build that infrastructure. But that's clearly not the case.
Rural has a very different meaning in the UK than in the US. Anywhere in the UK that is actually rural would be described as isolated.
We're not talking about small villages nestled in the Welsh hillsides hundres of miles from the nearest city. We're talking about towns of tens of thousands of people, close to major cities, close to major rail and road networks.
It'd be really nice if the UK had strategic plans to increase the amount of fibre in the ground. People building new housing estates or roads or etc should be strongly encouraged to install fibre optic cabling, and more than is needed.
Alas, rural is pretty much anywhere outside a few city centers, and even in London there are parts where you can get stuck with an unstable 4 MBit/s DSL link (from personal experience).
I live in Bethnal Green (just down the road from "Tech City") and our entire apartment block can't get fibre, just a measly 4Mb/s. I don't know if BT is to blame, or the building itself, but it sure makes finding a flat to rent a bit of a lottery...
Meanwhile, 10-15 years ago 1.4 Mbit/s was pretty fast. Infrastructure is very expensive, so economically speaking urban areas will always be a generation or two ahead of rural.
> the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship
That was the result of an ISP's own blocking system.
And there is no government censorship, please stop saying that - customers are given the option to opt-out of content filters -- it's not mandatory. This has always been the case, the only difference now is that ISPs must ask subscribers.
If it is opt-out, it is censorship. This was established through heavy lobbying and threat of legislation. And then there's the one where all major ISPs block an unpublished list of websites that are deemed "illegal". That one was established by court order, and the only way you can opt out of it is by switching to a small ISP.
I'm ten miles from Adastral Park (one of the end points), and receive a 1.5Mb service. Whilst this is a nice achievement, the country as whole needs a consistent service.
If I'm not mistaken, the BBC streams to the UK in HD with multicast only, creating pressure from the customers towards the ISPs supporting it properly.
I see your point, me living in Sweden may explain why i never had internet speed problem. Here, almost everyone gets 10mbit if not 100mbit. (And it actually is 10mbit)
But still, with bad infrastructure, you will not gain any more speed with 1tb internet connection either. Im guessing your provider tells you that they are providing 10mbit connection to you, which is a lie according to what you explained, right?
You living in sweden is why you've never complained.
BT is outright shocking (probably infinite is ok, however this is in response to Virgin deploying fiber- and they're directly competing- thus! in area's with fiber coverage you get a choice of BT or Virgin, in the other areas.. well, sucks to be you!)
I get, on average 150KB/s with around 1s latency at all times (when it goes lower than 1s I celebrate)[0].
I live in the tech part of london, seriously confused as to how this is acceptable, but a leased line to bring me up to your speeds would cost me more than I earn in a month (I checked).
I spent some time working for a company that made switches that would do that (Guaranteed minimum, but the sum of the maximum allowed speeds could exceed the link speed). There was no interest from anyone who sold to consumers, but business ISPs liked it.
The perception in residential is that customers don't understand what they want and can't go somewhere else, so you slap the biggest speed number on it that won't get you sued and then provide them crap service.
Yeah I really don't see how you've formed that opinion, My connection isn't even at least 10Mb reliably. Within a couple of years I could put 10Gb ethernet in my house for not insane money. My internet connect would then be 0.0001 the speed of that.
Why would anyone want that? Well would could all move to ipv6, use modern web browsers with webrtc and p2p stream iplayer like a torrent stream. That must substantially reduce the BBC IT costs therefore its licencing requirements.
As a BT Infinity (Fibre) customer I've realised the limiting factor for me is the fact I'm connecting over WiFi. Speed tests top out at around 50Mb and not 76Mb on my laptop.
All my consoles/players are hooked up via cable.
I do wonder how many complaints they get from people complaining they only get 50Mb and not the advertised 76Mb.
