[HN Gopher] England just made gigabit internet a legal requireme...
___________________________________________________________________
 
England just made gigabit internet a legal requirement for new
homes
 
Author : lbres
Score  : 266 points
Date   : 2023-01-09 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
 
web link (www.theverge.com)
w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
 
| jossclimb wrote:
| I am shocked that my country is doing something progressive for a
| change, I don't expect this will keep up for long though.
 
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| 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.
 
| shmerl wrote:
| Good. They should also require fiber optics when cables are used.
 
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| 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.
 
  | imhoguy wrote:
  | 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.
 
  | lazide wrote:
  | 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).
 
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I'd be super impressed if the requirement was for symmetric
| gigabit.
 
| garbagecoder wrote:
| So, will I have to stick coins in the modem before it works or is
| that just for the power?
 
| agilob wrote:
| Just more admin fees and paperwork to build a building, making
| them more expensive. Make 30cm insulation a requirement so we
| don't pay PS2000 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 wrote:
  | 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.
 
  | alias_neo wrote:
  | Insulation is pretty good in new build flats. I bought a new
  | build in London where I lived for 5 years, I used the heating
  | all of about 10 days in 5 years, the gas bill was a rounding
  | error; what they really need it cooling; that place was 38degC
  | in my living room with all windows and doors open in the
  | summer.
  | 
  | To put that into perspective, I just moved to a 1930s house
  | where I'm paying PS600-800 a month for the heating right now.
  | 
  | For the record, I'd rather spend that on heating than live
  | under the absolute racket of London leasehold ever again.
 
  | bpye wrote:
  | 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-...
 
| c294f417-3c8a wrote:
| 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
 
| rayiner wrote:
| > Connection costs will be capped at PS2,000 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....
| 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.
 
| jmcnulty wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| In France with a Freebox Delta I have unlimited 10gbps speed down
| and 700mbps up for less than 50EUR 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 wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
    | Too much people complain about Free here but it's actually
    | amazing what we can get for the price compared to other
    | countries ...
 
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| 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.
 
  | makomk wrote:
  | No, we didn't. I looked up the specs when the topic came up and
  | I think the data part was something like 2Mbps shared by
  | everyone. The big "broadband" content that BT were hoping would
  | fund the whole thing was analog pay TV, basically leveraging
  | their telephone monopoly into a cable TV monopoly as well.
  | Without that extra shared pay TV money it wasn't feasible to
  | install an individual optical network terminal in everyone's
  | house with the tech back then, and that's the big monopoly
  | Thatcher's government balked at. In the end they did end up
  | using another version of the same tech in some areas which used
  | shared optical terminals between multiple houses that was
  | telephony only - and I mean literally telephony only. A bunch
  | of people found out about their high tech fibre optic lines
  | when they couldn't get anything faster than dialup internet
  | whilst all the people with normal copper lines had ADSL.
 
  | coob wrote:
  | > 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.
 
  | OJFord wrote:
  | > 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 - my
  | emphasis.
 
  | ChildOfChaos wrote:
  | If you wanna hack into the verges servers and change the
  | headline of the article go ahead...
 
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| Price of new houses just went up
 
  | jen20 wrote:
  | Are you suggesting that the cost of materials has any impact at
  | all on the inflated price of a house in the UK?
 
    | amalgamated_inc wrote:
    | Not just materials, but materials too, yes. But time and
    | effort is probably more costly.
 
      | jen20 wrote:
      | Land value and inflation driven by supply shortage are the
      | actual drivers of house prices in the UK. Especially with
      | new builds, the BOM is very small, and houses are built
      | typically to an exceptionally poor standard.
 
  | neximo64 wrote:
  | Not really. You still have to buy the internet package from the
  | ISP which is gigabit speed enabled. This only ensures it is
  | available. The law isn't that free gigabit internet is to be
  | offered to all houses.
 
    | amalgamated_inc wrote:
    | But somebody now has to hire a lawyer and check that
    | regulation wasn't violated. Processes have to be changed. If
    | the law makes any difference at all, somebody had to change
    | something, and that cost is being passed on to the consumer
    | (=buyer/renter).
 
      | leoedin wrote:
      | It's building regulations - basically what's called "code"
      | in the US. The building inspector (should) make sure it's
      | followed. No lawyers needed.
 
        | amalgamated_inc wrote:
        | Who pays for the inspector?
 
      | _joel wrote:
      | I'd say very minimal compared to the rest of the costs of
      | building a house.
 
        | amalgamated_inc wrote:
        | Sure. Now add the millions of other "tiny" regulations.
 
  | IanCal wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
    | So no need for a law then...
 
      | izzydata wrote:
      | 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 wrote:
        | 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.
 
  | paxys wrote:
  | I bet there was a vocal group of people who had the same
  | complaint back when they mandated electrical circuit breakers
  | and water/sewer hookups.
 
| ortusdux wrote:
| 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.
 
  | OJFord wrote:
  | 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^) PS28pcm 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.
 
  | izzydata wrote:
  | I'm pretty sure all fiber is bi-directional and achieving
  | gigabit without fiber seems silly.
 
    | jeroenhd wrote:
    | 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 wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
    | Enterprise-grade leased lines typically make you pay at least
    | part of the install cost.
 
  | paxys wrote:
  | Your home networking setup (which this law is about) has
  | nothing to do with symmetric/asymmetric bandwidth allotted to
  | you by the ISP.
 
  | cstejerean wrote:
  | I'd pay 10k for a fiber install if that was an option.
 
| sebow wrote:
| 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 wrote:
  | 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.
 
| [deleted]
 
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| 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 wrote:
  | > Connection costs will be capped at PS2,000 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
 
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| 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.
 
  | toast0 wrote:
  | 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.
 
  | renewiltord wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
  | [dead]
 
  | theandrewbailey wrote:
  | 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 PS2,000 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.
 
| xbmcuser wrote:
| 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.
 
  | grammers wrote:
  | Yet, it is a utility by now. Who could live or work without it?
  | A country cripples its economy in the long run if they do not
  | realize that.
 
  | pkaye wrote:
  | Though UK median speed is well below US according to speedtest.
  | 
  | https://www.speedtest.net/global-index
 
    | Nextgrid wrote:
    | UK has their own problems when it comes to ISPs. One of the
    | biggest ones is that it's legal to advertise and sell VDSL or
    | DOCSIS as _fibre_ , so as a result most people have
    | absolutely no way to compare the market and pick _real_ fibre
    | when everything is  "fibre", and there's no market pressure
    | to deliver it when you can simply sell cheaper copper-based
    | tech as "fibre".
    | 
    | Another one is that speeds are always expressed in bullshit
    | terms such as "superfast", "ultrafast", etc and raw numbers
    | are avoided, making shopping around difficult.
 
  | icelancer wrote:
  | Australia and Canada famously have awesome, fast, and cheap
  | Internet access compared to the United States.
 
  | lazide wrote:
  | It isn't shocking to Americans. It's frustrating.
  | 
  | Keep in mind however, we're really talking about 50 different
  | 'countries', when we're talking about laws like this so far.
  | 
  | The EU for instance has no such Europe wide mandate. The
  | populations are roughly equivalent.
 
  | rayiner wrote:
  | Internet infrastructure regulation varies quite dramatically
  | across the developed world. Canada, Germany, Switzerland, etc.,
  | do not "treat the Internet like a utility" for the most part.
  | 
  | Also, "treating Internet like a utility" actually means a
  | "corporate monopoly" nearly everywhere. The situation in the UK
  | is very similar to the situation in much of the northeast US.
  | You have a former monopoly provider (there BT, here Verizon)
  | that is a private company that was incentivized to build out
  | fiber. Its like PG&E in California, not like your municipal
  | water or sewer service.
 
    | simonbarker87 wrote:
    | Not really the same though, we have many options that ride on
    | top of the BT OpenReach network so most urban places get many
    | cheap options for internet. If you want fibre to the home
    | then Virgin Media is still your main option which is a little
    | annoying.
 
      | rayiner wrote:
      | But what are your options for fiber to the home? It seems
      | to me like whether you have FTTP available to me depends on
      | whether BT decides to build fiber to your house.
      | 
      | Yeah, telephone loop unbundling adds some additional
      | competition for the actual internet transit portion. But
      | when people say "like a utility" I think they are thinking
      | about something like sewer/water utilities in the US, where
      | a municipal entity builds and runs the infrastructure with
      | taxes.
 
  | mperham wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
    | 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 wrote:
    | Capitalism doesn't work when the government grants monopolies
    | to local companies.
 
      | sofixa wrote:
      | 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 wrote:
        | 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.
 
  | drstewart wrote:
  | Can you list the specific ways the rest of the world treat the
  | internet as a utility using the following examples?
  | 
  | - Canada
  | 
  | - Uganda
  | 
  | - Russia
  | 
  | - Cuba
  | 
  | - Australia
  | 
  | Also feel free to reference this:
  | https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-...
  | as you discuss these country's results, and why the rest of the
  | world fails so bad at beating the US in this list.
 
    | waboremo wrote:
    | Why did you select those countries specifically?
 
      | pb7 wrote:
      | Why not? Are they not part of the rest of the world?
 
      | ketralnis wrote:
      | Because they're trying to make a point without coming out
      | and saying it and they're hoping that you recognise...
      | whatever it is that those have in common
 
    | throw_pm23 wrote:
    | Not sure about the countries you mentioned. The link shows
    | top 5 for broadband speed:
    | 
    | - Monaco
    | 
    | - Singapore
    | 
    | - Hong Kong
    | 
    | - Romania
    | 
    | - Switzerland
 
    | LarryMullins wrote:
    | Come on now, surely you know that when Europeans compare _'
    | the rest of the world'_ to America, _' the rest of the
    | world'_ is a slang term that means "Europe".
 
    | jacquesm wrote:
    | This is a pretty annoying way of commenting. If you have
    | something to say then say it, don't pretend to make a point
    | by asking someone else to do a whole pile of stuff. They're
    | not in your pay.
 
      | pb7 wrote:
      | Less annoying than constantly seeing easily verifiable
      | false statements geared to shit on the US. It reeks of
      | insecurity and narcissism thinking whatever small bubble
      | they're in represents _the rest of the world_.
 
| sofixa wrote:
| 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.
 
| drbeast wrote:
| 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.
 
  | idontpost wrote:
  | [dead]
 
  | hgomersall wrote:
  | 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.
 
    | lhnz wrote:
    | 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...
 
    | djbebs wrote:
    | Of course they reflect build costs, as well as regulatory
    | costs...
 
  | m000 wrote:
  | 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.
 
| tsujamin wrote:
| _laughs in australian_
 
  | hnick wrote:
  | 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.
 
| thedaly wrote:
| 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.
 
  | nomel wrote:
  | All ISPs I've had specifically forbid any kind of servers in
  | the TOS, so symmetric speeds aren't the only problem.
 
    | dylan604 wrote:
    | I don't need to run a server, but in the modern era of work
    | from home and connecting to something like S3 to push large
    | files around, that symmetric upload speed is required not a
    | nicety. when you can download a 65GB mov file in a matter of
    | minutes but to push any changes back requires many hours,
    | something is just wrong
 
  | dahfizz wrote:
  | 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.
 
    | hateful wrote:
    | Don't forget about Security Cameras - if you check in on them
    | remotely, that's all upload.
 
    | yieldcrv wrote:
    | In what way does it cause waste?
 
      | whimsicalism wrote:
      | You are mandating infra that will never be used and isn't
      | needed.
 
        | ericmay wrote:
        | 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 wrote:
        | Anecdote is not data, but I have a fiber connection and I
        | pretty much never use the upload bandwidth I have.
 
        | escapedmoose wrote:
        | Not today you don't, but imagine the technologies that
        | could take hold if we could take for granted that people
        | have decent upload as well as download. More real-time
        | sharing/collaboration tools and decentralized social
        | platforms would suddenly have a viable platform/market.
        | And I'm sure there are other use cases I'm not
        | considering.
 
    | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
    | As the quality of the centralized hoozywhatsits continues to
    | decline, I expect demand for decentralized hoozywhatsits will
    | increase, given that they're harder to parasitize.
    | 
    | I agree that it shouldn't be a mandate though. It would be
    | enough to mandate that the Up/down speeds both appear on the
    | promotional material in the same font size.
 
    | [deleted]
 
    | FredPret wrote:
    | Maybe John Q Public doesn't want to host his own
    | hoozywhatsit, but what if he starts making VR calls that
    | require uploading massive amounts of data? Or some mesh
    | technology takes off? Or he takes up vlogging?
    | 
    | I don't like the command-and-control mentality behind
    | traditional one-way media (not saying that's your mentality).
    | The further we get from that, the better
 
      | diordiderot wrote:
      | I can easily envision a future where live 'lidar' scans of
      | your body and face need to be streamed as part of a VR
      | chatroom
 
    | toast0 wrote:
    | > 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.
    | 
    | That depends on the fiber access mechanism. GPON is usually
    | 2.4 G down / 1.2 G up TDMA over a shared medium. The
    | downstream direction has perfect synchronization because it's
    | a single sender, but upstream synchronization is more
    | difficult across the many terminals, so they use a lower
    | speed to compensate. I don't know what the common fiber
    | connectivity models are in the UK though.
 
      | noodlesUK wrote:
      | It's GPON in most deployments. I think they're rolling out
      | XGS-PON in some places.
 
  | type0 wrote:
  | Unfortunately ISPs not interested in that, too many legal
  | letters because of file sharing users. So instead they they
  | usually consider it a premium feature that they up-sell to
  | gamers. Imagine how different the web would look like with many
  | users with symmetrical connections, Opera Unite envisioned
  | something like this https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-
  | unite.html
 
  | paxys wrote:
  | This law is about home networking, which has nothing do with
  | with symmetrical/asymmetrical bandwidth allotted by your ISP.
 
    | thedaly wrote:
    | > Additionally, a new law has been introduced that requires
    | new properties in England to be built with gigabit broadband
    | connections, sparing tenants from footing the bill for later
    | upgrades.
 
      | nomel wrote:
      | Is this a correction to his statement? Symmetry isn't
      | mentioned here, which could mean they're free to throttle
      | it. Hardware capabilities rarely match service limitations,
      | when money is involved.
 
  | gmadsen wrote:
  | agreed. Fiber is the only option for residential symmetric in
  | the US, and those locations are far and few between
 
  | wmf wrote:
  | Almost all gigabit is already symmetric so this is a concern of
  | the past.
 
    | tomalpha wrote:
    | Not the bulk of FTTP connections in the UK, to which this
    | article refers, which run over Openreach's common last-mile
    | or Virgin Media's DOCSIS cables. They're the only National
    | operators offering gigabit, or near-gigabit speeds.
    | 
    | There are plenty of smaller ISPs that run their own fibre and
    | do offer symmetric connections, but the bigger players all
    | off asymmetric connections.
 
      | jayflux wrote:
      | Your comment contradicts itself. You mention a bulk of FTTP
      | connections then mention virgins DOCSIS. I'm assuming
      | you're talking about their Coaxial cables, if so it's not
      | FTTP in the first place it will be FTTC.
      | 
      | My understanding is their new fibre lays are all "symmetric
      | ready", same with BT. You're right they currently don't
      | operate them in that fashion, but they've laid the
      | groundwork. See below.
      | 
      | https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/11/first-trial-
      | us...
 
        | iMerNibor wrote:
        | I'm a customer of virgin's fttp connection, which is
        | converted from fibre to coax on premise - so yes, actual
        | fiber going to your house, but running docsis in some
        | fashion or other
        | 
        | The article you linked covers this as well:
        | 
        | > while more than 1 million of their premises are also
        | being served by "full fibre" FTTP using the older Radio
        | Frequency over Glass (RFoG) approach to ensure
        | compatibility between both sides of their network.
        | 
        | As for them going symmetric in the future: I'll believe
        | it when they do, not holding my breath
 
      | tokamak-teapot wrote:
      | Do you know what makes them asymmetric? Is it just traffic
      | shaping at the ISP, or is it some hardware limitation?
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | komadori wrote:
        | It's not necessarily a hardware limitation (depending on
        | hardware), but the at the physical layer the frequency
        | plan for a DSL or PON connection typically allocates a
        | narrower band for upstream traffic than downstream
        | traffic. GPON is usually 2.4 Gbit down and 1.2 Gbit up
        | across everyone attached to the same optical splitter.
 
    | nomel wrote:
    | This is a choice, by the ISPs, unrelated to the physical
    | layer. It would be nice if it were a requirement.
 
  | jallen_dot_dev wrote:
  | Seems like a really bad idea to mandate that download be no
  | higher than upload. Would just result in few/no plans with high
  | down bandwidth.
 
    | dylan604 wrote:
    | but how does a fiber connection even get affected by a
    | limited upload? it's just an artificial limit in order to
    | squeeze larger monthly fees from the user. it's not like
    | extra gear/equipment is needed to give full speed in both
    | directions.
 
      | zokier wrote:
      | Passive optical networks are usually assymetric at hardware
      | level
 
    | jen20 wrote:
    | Which is fine if you're also regulating the minimum download
    | bandwidth?
 
| ac29 wrote:
| 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%.
 
  | IMSAI8080 wrote:
  | 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.
 
  | adamm255 wrote:
  | 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!
 
| sammalloy wrote:
| 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.
 
| nimzoLarsen wrote:
| And along with that, more tax dollars flowing to ISPs in the form
| of subsidies.
 
  | Veen wrote:
  | Tax pounds.
 
| _fat_santa wrote:
| 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.
 
  | paxys wrote:
  | Yeah, this fixes 1% of the problem (wiring up your house) while
  | the other 99% (getting the service till your house) remains
  | unaddressed. Still a good step, but not cause for too much
  | celebration. And as the article notes 9 out of 10 new houses
  | were already adding gigabit wiring even without this law.
 
  | weego wrote:
  | We don't have region/geo locked or infrastructure locked
  | providers. If you have fibre to your home then any supplier in
  | the UK that supports it can be your ISP.
  | 
  | Caveat: fibre is telco infrastructure and is not limited, cable
  | can still be limited ie only virgin media on virgin cable infra
 
    | vidarh wrote:
    | Not quite true. Openreach (BT) is regulated and required to
    | let anyone offer service over their network.
    | 
    | Any other provider that lays their own fibre is free to offer
    | only their own ISP service. I don't have access to FTTP via
    | OpenReach, but can get it from one other provider
    | (CommunityFibre).
    | 
    | If another fibre provider ever becomes dominant enough they
    | might well also end up regulated more tightly, but that's not
    | the case for the time being
 
  | AstixAndBelix wrote:
  | Simple: let's say your house is fitted with a gigabit
  | connection but the infrastructure sill isn't there. this means
  | that when the infrastructure comes you will have to do zero
  | work on your house. no changing of wires, no breaking the
  | walls, no wasting everyone's time.
  | 
  | I don't have a 10Gb/s switch at home, but I still use Cat6 so
  | when I upgrade I won't have to crawl around my house to change
  | everything
 
  | ejb999 wrote:
  | >>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.
 
    | sidewndr46 wrote:
    | 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 wrote:
      | "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-bo...
 
    | criddell wrote:
    | The fastest option available might be 5G cellular modem. From
    | a builder's perspective, it's probably also the cheapest.
 
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Does this mean fiber or will cable be an option as well?
 
  | BayesianDice wrote:
  | The amended regulations
  | (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.
 
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| 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.
 
  | pwinnski wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
  | 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 wrote:
    | 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 wrote:
  | > Everything comes instead of something else.
  | 
  | Not everything is zero-sum.
  | 
  | Sure, it takes effort to wire up every home for Gigabit, but on
  | the other hand you're employing more telco workers to run the
  | cables, creating more jobs. Gigabit costs more, but economy of
  | scale means that average prices will be lower. Increased
  | bandwidth opens up space for new technology innovation, and
  | letting more people effectively work remotely (so less cars on
  | the road).
  | 
  | In practice, from what I've seen in the US, I'd guess this work
  | was probably going to happen anyway. AT&T has been busy running
  | fiber-to-the-home for every major neighborhood in the bay area.
  | (I've gotten 10x the bandwidth, for roughly half the price I
  | was paying for DOCSIS cable internet before.) It wouldn't
  | surprise me if telcos in Europe are on a similar roadmap.
  | 
  | Once the neighborhood fiber line in place on the poles, running
  | a line to an individual house has negligible cost - especially
  | if it's new construction and you're already pulling copper for
  | power/telephone/TV. It took AT&T 30 minutes to do it at my last
  | two houses.
 
    | Nifty3929 wrote:
    | "Not everything is zero-sum."
    | 
    | I didn't say it was zero sum - in fact it's definitely NOT
    | zero sum. Adding gigabit to new homes will certainly - almost
    | tautologically - come instead of something else.
    | 
    | The question is whether it's worth what you give up or not.
    | Maybe it is, and maybe it's not. But it's hard to make the
    | correct judgement when you focus only on the gains of the
    | gigabit, but it's very hard to count all the things you DON'T
    | do instead. There's no great solution to this, but we must at
    | the very least be aware that we are giving up other things
    | that we might also want.
    | 
    | As far as "creating jobs" - People are already working hard.
    | "Creating a job" in one area really means (implicitly) re-
    | purposing someone from a different activity of different
    | value. This may or may not be a net win. The person could
    | have been cutting hair, doing accounting, playing football,
    | or simply running a fiber cable in a different area of town -
    | but they aren't, they are running this cable right here where
    | we "created a job."
 
  | bobsmooth wrote:
  | "Everything comes instead of something else. Whatever effort
  | and resources are spent adding fireproofing/structural
  | stability/longevity to new homes will mean fewer homes, less
  | food, shoes, medicine, natural gas, cars or whatever."
  | 
  | I'm honestly surprised to see this kind of narrow thinking on
  | HN.
 
    | deadbunny wrote:
    | Everything is zero sum to a lot of people on here.
 
  | awestroke wrote:
  | Instead of a slightly slightly cheaper but much worse fiber
  | connection
 
| Spivak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
  | > 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 wrote:
    | 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.
 
| habosa wrote:
| 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.
 
  | Xcelerate wrote:
  | I moved from the Bay Area to a rural place in the southeast. It
  | is a mystery how I am able to get 10Gbps fiber here from not
  | only AT&T but also the local utility company, whereas in
  | Redwood City my option was basically only Comcast with a slow
  | upload cap.
 
    | rayiner wrote:
    | It's not a "mystery." California makes it expensive and
    | difficult to build infrastructure. That's why Google Fiber
    | started out in places like Kansas City. I live in a
    | historically red county in the Verizon footprint. I have two
    | fiber lines into my house, one from Verizon and one from
    | Comcast. I get 6 gbps service from Comcast. It's expensive
    | ($300/month, compared to 10 gig for $300 in Chattanooga). But
    | it's not even an option in most of Silicon Valley.
 
  | donatj wrote:
  | > I find a 1Gbps plan with a 500GB data cap hilarious
  | 
  | This is how I ended up paying the extra $20 a month for
  | unlimited data. I had 1TB cap on a 1Gbps connection. My wifes
  | friend who was unemployed and staying us would put Netflix
  | shows on for ambiance all day as she wandered about the house
  | (not even watching it!) - streaming 4k Netflix ate up serious
  | data pretty quickly and I got quite a few overage charges.
  | 
  | It's just bizarre to me that we live in an age where "turn off
  | the TV, it's costing me actual measurable amounts of money" is
  | a real thing.
 
  | kccqzy wrote:
  | The underground utility is a big reason why, where I live, an
  | older house from the baby boom period (1950s) might have fiber
  | and gigabit internet but a newer home from the 1980s might not.
 
    | dylan604 wrote:
    | yet another example of how they just built things better/to
    | last in the 50s! /s
 
  | dmitryminkovsky wrote:
  | How was the 5G hotspot though?
 
    | secondcoming wrote:
    | 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
    | 
    | Cheaper than fibre and 30-day rolling contract. Unlimited
    | data.
 
      | dmitryminkovsky wrote:
      | Thanks for sharing. This seems totally fine, if not more
      | than acceptable? How much does this cost?
 
        | secondcoming wrote:
        | PS28pm. It's great, I originally intended to use it
        | temporarily while potentially waiting for fibre to be
        | connected, but it was so good I didn't bother with fibre
        | in the end.
 
  | itslennysfault wrote:
  | I know this probably doesn't help you currently, but if you
  | move look for places that have Wave-G (apparently it's now
  | called astound). It's available in SF and Seattle and offers
  | symmetric gig up/down with no cap for $80/mo. I had it in
  | Seattle, and I have a good friend with it in SF and we both had
  | nothing but great experiences with them.
 
  | simonebrunozzi wrote:
  | Try Monkeybrains.
 
    | paxys wrote:
    | Monkeybrains is great for the price, but if you want a more
    | premium and reliable service then there are much better
    | options. Google Fiber (Webpass) does symmetric gigabit. AT&T
    | has 5 gigabit. Sonic 10 gigabit. Of course the real problem
    | is that your building likely won't have any of them.
 
    | everdrive wrote:
    | That seems more likely to give me a prion disease, so no
    | thank you.
 
    | mikeyouse wrote:
    | If you live in the Avenues in SF or in certain parts of the
    | East Bay (Oakland, Richmond, some parts of Berkeley) - Sonic
    | has started rolling out 10gbps Fiber as well. All of those
    | places have 1gbps on offer, but people are playing with the
    | 10gbps too;
    | 
    | https://dongknows.com/10gbps-internet-unlocking-super-
    | broadb...
 
    | dylan604 wrote:
    | Are they chilled? Also, does it come after the eyeball soup
    | course?
 
  | gpderetta wrote:
  | My previous home in London was a purpose built flat. I could
  | chose between two different fibre-to-the-home providers that
  | had each run their own wire to each apartment in the block.
  | They were both quite cheap.
  | 
  | Recently I moved to a terraced house about 300m from my
  | previous flat. The only internet option is expensive and slow
  | fibre-to-the-cabinet-down-the-street.
  | 
  | Yes, coverage in London is uneven!
 
  | dheera wrote:
  | They need to reword the law to keep up with Moore's Law, so
  | that if you built a home in 2023 you'd be required to have 1
  | gigabit, in 2024 you'd be required to have 1.2 gigabit, in 2025
  | you'd be required to have 1.44 gigabit, etc.
  | 
  | The moment internet connections don't keep up with Moore's Law,
  | the real estate typhoons would then have no choice but to fund
  | bandwidth-related R&D to get internet connections back on track
  | with the requirement before they could sell more homes.
 
    | skybrian wrote:
    | But why? How many videos are you going to watch at the same
    | time?
 
      | barnabee wrote:
      | Not sure about the answer to that exact question but I'd
      | like to turn my PC on and be able to update any game I feel
      | like playing in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes there are
      | many 10s of gigabytes of updates.
 
  | whitepoplar wrote:
  | Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps ->
  | 100mbps) so long as you rent their modem, which is an
  | additional $25/month, but also comes with unlimited data.
  | Paying for unlimited data separately costs $30/month if you own
  | your own modem, but doesn't yet support higher upload speeds.
  | It's unfortunate that this is the case, but for those who need
  | higher upload speeds, it's at least _possible_ with Comcast
  | now.
  | 
  | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/want-faster-comc...
 
    | dylan604 wrote:
    | >Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps ->
    | 100mbps)
    | 
    | I mean, yeah, I guess normally a 10x increase is deemed a
    | good thing and could be considered "vastly higher". Who
    | wouldn't be impressed with a 10x bump in pay?
    | 
    | However, 100mbps is still tragically low. Having anything
    | less than full bandwidth up/down on a fiber line is just
    | cheating the user artificially. Being fiber, I could see
    | offering a cheaper modem because it has a cheaper SFP in it,
    | but even those are dirt cheap now for lowly 1Gbps
 
      | vel0city wrote:
      | Comcast often isn't FTTP, its is usually coax to the home.
      | There are some services they do with FTTP, such as their
      | 2Gbit service, but _most_ installs are coax.
 
        | dylan604 wrote:
        | >but most installs are coax.
        | 
        | Good gawd! It's like cable is in their DNA and they
        | invested heavily in a cable manufacturing company and are
        | trying to keep it alive /s
        | 
        | also, is it pushing the limits of marketing to say you
        | have a fiber connection if the cable coming into your
        | home is actually coax?
 
      | rayiner wrote:
      | It's not "cheating the user artificially." Comcast delivers
      | service over shared-medium coaxial cable that was
      | originally designed for one-way service. The available
      | frequencies are split into upload and download portions,
      | and increasing the upload speed decreases the download
      | speed.
 
    | dexterdog wrote:
    | Comcast offers higher upload speeds in the markets where
    | there is competition. In the markets where they have bribed
    | their way to a monopoly they have limited uploads and data
    | caps. Fortunately I don't live in one of those so I can avoid
    | them and wish the unholy demise of them as a company.
 
    | Vrondi wrote:
    | From the article you link: "Comcast told Ars that faster
    | upload speeds will come to customer-owned modems "later next
    | year" but did not provide a more specific timeline."
    | 
    | So, no. Do not rent their modem/router crap.
 
      | whitepoplar wrote:
      | It's still cheaper than owning your own (if you already
      | have the unlimited data add-on).
 
        | [deleted]
 
  | thomseddon wrote:
  | For clarity - whilst most connectivity infrastructure in London
  | is underground, it's almost always within a primary duct, so
  | running new infrastructure is usually a case of pulling in a
  | new cable as opposed to "ripping up the street".
  | 
  | In fact, anyone approved can use BTs own ducts and poles via
  | their PIA product[1], which has created a resurgent and
  | incredibly active market of "alternative" network providers
  | ("alt nets"). London for example is now well served for
  | broadband by Community Fibre, g.network, Hyperoptic and others
  | alongside the incumbents.
  | 
  | [1] https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/passive-
  | produc...
 
    | alias_neo wrote:
    | Hyperoptic we're great. I could pay PS5/month for a static
    | IPv4 so I wasn't stuck behind CGNAT, their IPv6 worked great
    | and I could use my own network equipment and they're provide
    | the configs; though I hear they're less forthcoming with that
    | info for people running not-ISP hardware these days.
    | 
    | First monthly contract I've parted ways with reluctantly (I
    | moved home).
    | 
    | I got the first year free from one-month discounts by
    | referring all my neighbours.
 
      | cm2187 wrote:
      | I still haven't figure out how to get IPv6 with hyperoptic
      | with my own router. Other than that, I second, good
      | service.
 
        | avianlyric wrote:
        | Don't bother. Their IPv6 setup is notoriously broken.
        | They have a number of IPv6 misconfiguration in their core
        | switches which makes using IPv6 with your own hardware
        | almost impossible.
        | 
        | Unfortunately it seems they've also let go of all their
        | good network admin. It used to be possible to find
        | someone at Hyperoptic capable of investigating and fixing
        | these issues, but no more.
 
        | alias_neo wrote:
        | Something definitely changed around COVID time, they
        | stopped providing the info to set up your own kit freely,
        | they wouldn't put you in touch with L3+ tech anymore and
        | you couldn't connect your own kit without cloning IDs.
        | 
        | I had an issue one time, around 2020 and I couldn't fit
        | the life of me get past a zero-knowledge L1.
        | 
        | Back in 2017-18 when I joined they put me in touch with
        | one of their network engineers who helped me configure my
        | EdgeRouter.
 
        | alias_neo wrote:
        | I was using a Uniquiti EdgeRouter and it was fairly
        | trivial, then I switched to a pfSense box and it was a
        | little harder but not much.
        | 
        | The hard part is that you have to clone the UDID (I think
        | that was the value, sorry don't quite remember now), they
        | used to allow any hardware to join the network but that's
        | no longer the case; so you have the clone the value from
        | the hardware they provide you with.
 
    | cameronh90 wrote:
    | It may be in a duct, but occasionally the manholes are in
    | really awkward locations - like in the middle of an extremely
    | busy road.
    | 
    | I've been waiting for symmetric fibre for a year, and they're
    | trying to install it, but getting the permission to close the
    | road to lift up the manhole is proving to be a challenge.
 
      | thomseddon wrote:
      | Yeah it's certainly not without issue, the network is full
      | of blockages, collapsed ducts etc.
      | 
      | Traffic management and road closures can be hard work,
      | we've had to wait over a year before for a road closure as
      | it would affect multiple bus routes. (And as an aside,
      | lockdown was extremely productive for network build like
      | this!)
 
  | jnathsf wrote:
  | try Sonic - I live in SF and have a dedicated fiber connection
 
  | acchow wrote:
  | Comcast has a 500GB data cap in SF? Isn't it 1.2TB?
 
  | alias_neo wrote:
  | I moved from a village in Cheshire where I had 500Mb/500Mb to
  | London Zone 3 where the best I could get was 3Mb/0.2Mb, then I
  | bought a new build in Zone 6 where I could get 1.2Gb/1.2Gb, now
  | I moved to Liverpool into a 1930s house where I can get
  | 1.2Gb/100Mb (FttP) which isn't great uoload (I work remote),
  | but is because it's GPON.
  | 
  | I got a letter through the door a week or two ago saying
  | they're building out 10Gb/10Gb on my road over the next few
  | years, so I've got a bit of time to start upgrading my kit to
  | handle 10Gb symmetric, which I'm hoping will push the price
  | down of the sub-10Gb speeds, because let's he honest, I don't
  | need 10/10.
 
  | spacedcowboy wrote:
  | My brother has Gig ethernet in London, 1G in both directions.
  | Lives south of the river, even... :)
  | 
  | I've got AT&T GigE here in San Jose, but he's had it for longer
  | than I have.
 
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| 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 wrote:
  | I mean what you are saying is true but how does it relate to
  | mandated gigabit internet?
 
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