back to article British broadband is confusing and speeds are crap, says survey

Four in five Britons has experienced broadband molasses in the past year and most of us are also "bamboozled" by the terms that telcos use to peddle their wares at us, according to a survey. Just one in five, meanwhile, would change network to escape from crap internet speeds, says survey purveyor uSwitch, a price comparison …

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  1. ukgnome

    STILL waiting for BT nosuchReach to work out how to provide FTC when all houses in the village connect direct to exchange.

    As for up to 17Mbps - If you only get 7Mbps and at peak they throttle you to 1.5Mbps then what is your actual speed? I googled the answer and will let you know as soon as the page loads.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sounds like situation my parents-in-law were in ... not sure what speed their ADSL claimed to be "up to" but when I visited it seemed to average at around 300kbs (yes that is a 'k') and occasionally burst upto 1Mbs.

    2. Anonymous IV

      > STILL waiting for BT nosuchReach to work out how to provide FTC when all houses in the village connect direct to exchange.

      Quite straightforward: get Openreach to stick a cabinet outside the exchange, and wire all the EO lines into it.

      Good luck!

    3. AndrueC Silver badge
      Meh

      It's not actually BT's fault. Industry regulations make it illegal to site VDSL equipment inside the same building as ADSL for interference reasons. One solution is of course to install a cabinet just outside the exchange and indeed they've done this in a few places now. Unfortunately local network topography can make this prohibitively expensive.

      Imagine an exchange in the middle of a town surrounded by houses and shops. Now imagine a hundred lines fanning out from it in all directions. Now imagine sticking a cabinet in one place. At most it might be convenient for two or three lines. The rest need to be diverted (in some cases from the opposite side of the exchange) round to the new cabinet then looped back round to their original point. It might not even be possible to bring lines round like that without digging up people's gardens or bulldozing properties. You can't do it inside the exchange because that might mean relocating equipment racks and cable frames for the entire exchange. And even then a lot of EO lines are long lines for remote isolated properties. They won't gain anything from being attached to an FTTC cabinet outside the exchange.

      1. ukgnome

        Cabinet

        Well my property which is EO is a mere 44M away from the exchange. I could kick a ball and hit it (I never said how many times I would kick the ball)

        One of the proposals is a cabinet just outside the exchange - that was proposed 3 years ago now. The real reason it has moved so slowly isn't red tape. The reason is priority.

        Why plumb in a new cabinet when only a small minority will use it.

        We are talking about a small exchange that has no LLU operators present. And it only caters for 511 residential properties and 27 non-residential.

        The annoying thing is that the FTTC status is showing as available in some areas. However upon closer inspection it seems that no cabinets connect to this exchange. So available in some areas is quite misleading.

      2. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

        Which just goes to show that FTTC is just a bodge. It's a practical solution to reusing bits of 19th century technology (copper wire) to provide a 21st century network. They can sweat this old tech as much as they want, but it'll never be as future-proof and as fast and reliable as fibre.

        1. AndrueC Silver badge

          They can sweat this old tech as much as they want, but it'll never be as future-proof and as fast and reliable as fibre.

          True but it might be better than the alternative.Twenty years to roll-out FTTP while everyone waits their turn and suffers an analogue modem. Or ten years to get everyone ADSL and ten more to get most people FTTC.

          There's an interesting perspective here. Also a slightly less rosy view here.

          So it's not all sweetness and light over in Asia. They don't have 100% penetration there either.

        2. dcluley

          I have never understood how they were allowed to get away with this "up to" nonsense. Imagine if the electricity board were allowed to supply you with "up to 240 volts" when in reality only supplying a degraded supply at 120V. Yes - I know it might cost more but I would rather get what I can pay for than pay for something I don't get.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

            Imagine if the electricity board were allowed to supply you with "up to 240 volts" when in reality only supplying a degraded supply at 120V

            Or how about, imagine if the electricity company were supplying you with an "up to 60/80/100A" service ? Well that's exactly what they do - your house (depending on the age, location, and local infrastructure) will have a 60A, 80A, or 100A fuse in the mains supply - ie the fuse that you can't get to, sealed inside the box on the end of the supplier's cable.

            Can you use all 60/80/100A ? Well, sort of - as long as your neighbours don't also try it ! The supply industry works on an averaged demand of only 2kW (that's about 8A) per household - if every house decided to try and use it all at the same time then it would blow the fuses (possibly as small as 300A) at your local substation !

            In our office building I happen to know that most of the offices have a 63A fuse protecting the submain from the meter room to the office. Down in the meter room, there are rows of meters (one per office), fed from a distribution box containing the suppliers fuses. There are 10 units fed from each phase in the box, and a 315A fuse upstream. So 10 units, if they all pulled 63A would be trying to pull 630A through a 315A fuse.

            In general this isn't a problem - diversity of loads means that people don't all try and use all the supply capacity at the same time. There is massive variation in demand, and some correlation (eg most offices use power during 9-5 and little outside of that), but overall there is nothing like the capacity needed to be able to supply everyone with what they thing they are buying.

            Elsewhere, there are some countries where your electricity supply has a much lower rated current - and you pay according to that limit which may be as low as 5A in some places, enforced by a circuit breaker provided by the lecky company. Mismanage your loads (eg forget that the washing machine is on when you try and boil the kettle) and the lights go out.

            The internet is the same. There is massive diversity of demand (bandwidth usage), and no ISP could afford to buy enough bandwidth for the theoretical possibility of satisfying every user trying to use their "full amount" at the same time. The main difference is that (historically, it's changing these days) the electrical distribution system was designed by competent engineers, with a view to providing a reliable network. The internet is largely run under the control of beancounters with money the primary motive - ie not looking at "what bandwidth is needed to provide a decent service most of the time" but "how cheap can we go before the complaints get too bad".

            Clearly different ISPs have a different view on what's acceptable.

            meanwhile, in the UK lecky business, there's a lot of push now to cut costs - and that includes a significant shift from having spare distribution capacity to having disconnectable customers. ie if there's a major fault, instead of being able to route around it, they pick up the phone and tell some commercial customers to cut their demand - a facility for which the customer gets a discount on their bills, and a further discount when/if it's actually used.

            And finally - "Smart Meters" are primarily about bringing this to the domestic market. Think 1970s style rolling blackouts when there's not enough lecky, but done on a house by house basis rather than block by block.

  2. fobobob

    Yank here

    We've got a good old boy you can borrow (indefinitely, preferably) who'll help you redefine what broadband truly is. Comes with a complementary smugness and a genuinely punchable mug.

  3. ma1010
    Flame

    And..

    British and American broadband is confusing and speeds are crap

    FTFY

    It's not just the Brits who have this sort of problem. In both countries, the "broadband" providers give us promises that are as trustworthy as a politician's. At the same time, the politicians are in their pockets (especially in America, where I live) so do nothing to discommode them in any way like demand that they stop lying, charge reasonable rates, etc. Their service terms are a "confusopoly" (to use Scott Adams' term), an oligopoly that uses intentionally confusing language to obfuscate how they are going to rip you off once you sign up, charging premium rates for service that would be unacceptable in many third world countries. Here in America, our government's next move will likely be to guarantee 100% broadband access to the masses by the simple method of redefining "broadband" to be at least 8 bits per second down and 1 up.

    Welcome to the first world with its cutting-edge telecomms infrastructure.

  4. Howard Hanek
    Happy

    Huge Overhead

    Think of your packets as hurtle jumpers having to leap over all those eavesdropping, spying, snooping hurtles before they reach you or their finish line. The hurtle makers are working overtime but can't keep up with the demand.

    1. Fink-Nottle

      Re: Huge Overhead

      Talking of huge things overhead - it'll all seem unimportant when those North Korean nukes start hurdling towards us.

  5. Zmodem

    its all bollocks anyway, ISP's can hide their rubbish speeds when G.FAST rolls out soon with speeds upto 350MB/s

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