back to article Revised 'Broadband 2.0' report: 6.7m Brits suffer 'sub-10Mbps' speeds

MP Grant Shapps has released the final version of his latest report into broadband speeds in the UK, which concludes 6.7 million people may not receive speeds above 10Mbps. In his foreword to the cross-Parliamentary Broadband 2.0 report, signed by 57 MPs, Shapps notes that Ofcom's current connectivity data "fails to …

  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    How many meg?

    > 6.7 million people may not receive speeds above 10Mbps.

    Well, if he wanted to go the "full hysterical" why not yell that 30m brits cannot get more than 30MBit/s?

    I would suspect there are many ISP customers who do not feel the need to stream multiple HD video channels simultaneously and are therefore quite satisfied with < 10MBps.

    Bandwidth costs money. If you are never going to use it, why pay for it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How many meg?

      If you are never going to use it, why pay for it?

      You're missing the point. The argument is that someone else should pay for it.

      1. Ragarath

        Re: How many meg?

        I thought the point was, people are paying for it but not getting it.

        1. Oh Homer
          Childcatcher

          Re: "paying for it but not getting it"

          In my case I was paying BT £53 a month, before call charges, just for the privilege of a (theoretical maximum of) 8Mbit/s "broadband" connection, which on most days was lucky to hit 2.5Mbit/s.

          I've since switched providers, and now pay a far more reasonable £17 a month for exactly the same level of service, but apparently have no hope of ever getting a faster connection, unless I choose to move to some inner-city slum, or pretty much anywhere outside of the UK, including certain Third World countries.

          And yes, I'd happily pay for a better service, were it actually available, which it isn't.

  2. cirby

    Yeah...

    We have the same problem in the US: people who whine about other people not having the fastest, nicest, cheapest broadband - but who can't understand just how many people live waaaaay out in the country, or who just aren't interested in having internet access in the first place.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Yeah...

      I live way out in the country - 6miles from the exchange. Pretty much everyone I know around here wants faster broadband. And no - I cant get 2g let alone better. I've been here 11 years and am chugging away on 2meg - until the pair goes bad and they switch us over to a 'new pair'. I think I'm on my 7th pair since we moved here. It seems openreach would rather spend more time effing about with copper (or possibly aluminium?) than put in some fibre which might be paid for by the government at some time in the future. I reckon they've spend over two hundred man hours maintaining my line since I moved here, and that's not including getting some contractor to dig the road up to put in more copper to get soaked when it rains.

      1. Donn Bly

        Re: Yeah...

        Six miles isn't "way out". That's considered walking distance around here.

  3. wyatt

    What hasn't been confirmed is, is this just Internet supplied via PSTN or does it include other methods (VM etc?). I can only get <1.5Mb from BT but 200Mb from VM. Am I one of the ones unable to get my required speed?

  4. g00se
    Thumb Down

    Leeching

    One way of kicking people onto paying for higher speeds is to leech from people who are content to stick with entry level BB. That's what i suspect BT are doing with me. Fortunately not enough to be a big problem, but it's nonetheless annoying

  5. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    costs

    whether broadband customers should be automatically compensated for consistently failing to receive the speeds that they pay for,

    The problem is that linking cost and performance is non trivial, and may even have a negative correlation. I pay the same for my 4Mb/s as other customers pay to get 20Mb/s, but I'm on the end of 4km of overhead cable which has already been repaired and partially replaced three times in 10 years. You could make the argument that providing my service is more costly for the telco because they have more (and more fragile) plant to maintain for me, and hence I should pay more than the guy in the house next to the exchange who gets 20M.

    Try to play the compensation game and there's a risk that people will pay a smaller internet fee if they get lower speeds, but will be billed more for "line rental" to maintain the longer line.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: costs

      Or they could have saved themselves some money from the start by putting in fibre that doesnt arc over when there is lightning about or worry about the rain filling up the ducts. I dont know how much the hardware is for doing this now but when I worked at BTRL we could have put 2.4Gb both way fibre over 10km for less than £100 if you could somehow put 10km of fibre in one unbroken run. I'm not sure what jointing losses are now but I'd like to think the fibre losses would be a bit less now so it might be possible to put in a dozen joints and still get a decent bandwidth.

  6. Ian Tresman

    Unacceptible

    10M may have been acceptable a decade ago, but they government should be looking at making Gigabit broadband available to 100% of the population. Putting fibre-optics into the home is both affordable and future-proofed. It would also provide good competition to satellite and cable TV.

    1. Commswonk
      Happy

      Re: Unacceptible

      As is your spelling of the title.

    2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Unacceptible

      and future-proofed

      Another commentard with a crystal ball. Given the rise of smartphones & tablets, are you sure people will care about hardwired broadband in even 20 years time?

      would also provide good competition to satellite and cable TV

      and there's a problem. Can you see Sky and Virgin allowing the government to spend taxpayers money giving Openreach a network that competes with them? That will only make lawyers rich.

      1. Commswonk

        Re: Unacceptible

        Another commentard with a crystal ball. Given the rise of smartphones & tablets, are you sure people will care about hardwired broadband in even 20 years time?

        I suspect that your "20 years time" is a much longer timescale than will be required for this to show up. If the MNOs get 4G coverage and capacity up to decent levels then demand for fixed line BB is likely to flatten out or even recede.

        Even I (as a non smartphone user) cannot see why anyone would effectively pay twice for the same service.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Unacceptable

          Have a look at the difference in cost between fixed and mobile when the mobile is not providing unlimited data. In the region of 10 x the monthly cost of BT infinity for 300GB of data.

          If the cost for mobile data comes down to match fixed broadband (or fixed price increases), then yes it could kill off fixed, but whilst the cost difference is so high, I doubt we will be giving up on wires just yet.

  7. Paul

    BT Openreach's charge for line rental should be pro-rated on the speed the line can reach for VDSL2+, with only a perfect 80M down/20M up give them 100%.

    If you can only get 20M down on your FTTC service, they should only be able to charge 25% of the normal line rental.

    Once BTOR can't keep milking/bilking customers for lines which are sub-standard, perhaps they will roll out more FTTC cabinets so everybody gets a shorter copper tail, or, makes FTTP affordable?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or they'll just decline to install lines where they can't make a profit.

  8. Digitall
    Happy

    suffer?

    Whatever the neighbours fibre speed is, I'm content with.

  9. Wolfclaw
    FAIL

    Speed is important, but a mute point if your constantly bandwidth capped, video is buffered, latency is so bad gaming is impossible and your area is so oversubscribed that you consider 4G an acceptable upgrade, yes VM I'm talking about you !!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Headline Sync speeds hide underlying throughput issues

      Pay for 38Mbps but only get 2.5Mbps during busy hour? Thanks TalkTalk.

      You could equally be talking about any ADSL/ FTTC ISP.

      BT

      TalkTalk

      Sky

      Demon

      EE

      Plusnet

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AAghhh!!!

    I'm losing the will to live over the political jungle of broadband/fibre speed issues.

    I just wish they printed a leaflet/web page "What to do it you can't get 10mb/s and no ISP can help".

    I would love for our family to have 10mbps - and gladly pay for fibre.

    Just get the usual reply from ISP's.....". er..sorry... it is not availble... You could try getting fibre with us but a rough indication is that you might only get 4mbps max - just like ADSL, however the good news is that with fibre your upload speed will be faster. "

    Round and round in the circle game...

    Aaggghhhh....

  11. DrFrito

    Oh, those poor people not having Gigabit service....

    Eastern US. My 'high speed' access is 7mbps and I pay $63 per month. I have some of the faster access in our area. Some of the tiny towns out here are still on dial-up, not sure what they pay...

    btw, mine is for Up to 10Mbps....as they don't guarantee speeds.... Still much better than nothing, and I honestly don't really want to pay more.

  12. MT Field
    Meh

    I am now officially confused AF.

    And who let that demented chimp do anything important?

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