
UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds - ohjeez
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-broadband-speeds-fibre-to-the-home
======
signal11
> The UK’s fibre to the home infrastructure is so poor it’s out-performed by
> almost every other country in Europe (Latvia, with 50.6 per cent fibre
> coverage, ranks first in terms of market penetration).

The reason the UK is on a mix of copper and fiber is because the entrenched
monopoly, BT, didn't think fiber to the home (FTTH) was worth investing in. To
protect their investment in their existing copper network, they pushed tech
like VDSL/FTTC (up to 80Mbps) and now G.Fast (up to 500Mbps), which are "fiber
to the cabinet" but the last mile is copper. The problem is, speeds fall off
depending on how far your home is from the cabinet. I've seen many non-
technical consumers be disappointed and say "the ISP said I can only get
11Mbps but they advertise up to 80Mbps".

BT have now been told by the telecoms regulator to prioritize deploying fiber
to the home. Also, serious money is now pouring into alternative network
providers. CityFibre, which is installing its own gigabit-grade fiber network
in about 30 UK cities (so home users in all these cities can be offered FTTH),
was recently acquired by a consortium with fairly deep pockets. BT, which
historically was the entrenched monopoly, is no longer the sole arbiter of the
UK's broadband future.

~~~
arethuza
Buying a house in a rural area is a nightmare as you don't really know in
advance what speed you will get and the speeds quoted on sites like Rightmove
are for entire postcodes - _not_ the property in question.

We bought a house last year in a rural area in Scotland - not far from
Edinburgh and were appalled at the broadband options. We get 20Mbps down and 1
up which is enough for most things (barely) but that was one of the fastest
speeds we saw (apart from one house in the wilds of Perthshire that had
400Mpbs....).

~~~
JonoW
It's not even rural areas that suck, I'm in zone 4 London, so pretty suburban,
and I get about 7Mbps down/0.5Mbps up! The FTTC roll-out said it was planned
for my cabinet, not just says it's not.

~~~
shocks
I'm in zone 4 too and I get 200Mbps. I could pay for more, and I'd probably
get it, but 200Mbps is fine.

I guess it's just a dice roll. /shrug

~~~
mf2hd
I'm in zone 2, I have 76 Mbit vdsl, in reality it's 40-50 Mbit on good days.
Virgin is not available in the building.

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oldcynic
The UK _could_ have had world leading broadband were it not for Mrs T. She
decided BT's late 1980s decision to rollout fibre was anti-competitive and
killed it in 1990 when we were pretty much leading the world [0].

So the grindingly slow reality of ADSL isn't especially surprising sadly.

[0] [https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-
lost...](https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-
broadband-race-in-1990-1224784)

~~~
wjoe
And yet BT is pretty much the definition of anti-competitive now anyway, and
it's that monopoly which is killing progress today.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Is that really true? What's stopping alternative companies from rolling out
fibre services, beyond the cost barriers?

~~~
PaulKeeble
The contract that BT signed with the government for all the funding granting
it a duopoly with Virgin, where Virgin isn't going to increase the cable
network at all. That combined with the wayleave issues at a local council
level being waved just for them means that the preferred rollout partner in BT
gets all the money, all the profits from it and has all the access.

About the only nationwide competition that is even remotely happening is from
Hyperoptic and they are being blocked all over the place and they are also
really laser focussed only on high-density buildings.

~~~
matthewmacleod
That totally sucks. Someone should really force a lawsuit on the issue.

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LeonM
> or make a Skype call that doesn’t drop out every two minutes.

When will people learn that bandwidth has nothing to do with this? You don't
need 50mbit for a skype call!

It's usually not the 'last mile' problem, but what I'd call the 'last meters'
problem: most SOHO/consumer grade network equipment is just total garbage.

Replace your ISP supplied equipment with something more reliable (I highly
recommend Ubiquiti gear) and you'd be surprised how much more usable your
internet connection becomes.

~~~
LiquidFlux
Could you recommend modem / router equivalents ( whichever applies to
replacing ISP supplied equivalent, I'm assuming both? ) at a few different
price brackets?

Ubiquiti gear appears to be quite dear, alternatively are they worth the
expense? Are there any benchmarks etc which demonstrate this, or further
reading?

~~~
LeonM
Well, in my case, I use a Edgerouter-X with an SFP module that connects
directly to my fiber line. Remember, a fibre lines does not even require a
modem. I don't have experience with DSL equipment. The equipment my ISP send
me (it's still in the box) came with a 'fiber modem', which is a fiber-to-
ethernet converter, and a no-name brand router with build-in wifi. The
firmware on it is a custom branded build of 3 years old, and I don't expect
they ever released a security update for it (KRACK attack, anyone?).

For wireless connectivity I use a Unify AC pro, which has proved highly
reliable. See [0]

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/review-ubiquiti-
unif...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/review-ubiquiti-unifi-made-
me-realize-how-terrible-consumer-wi-fi-gear-is/)

------
Rjevski
Not sure if that's going to change something. The main problem was never peak-
time congestion (I've never experienced it personally), it's just the fact
that 1) the infrastructure is shit and 2) everyone sells DSL as "fibre".

The infrastructure is a mess. Unless you've got actual fibre to the home,
you're stuck with DSL, aka rust. The problem is that it's impossible to tell
just how rusty it is without subscribing to service and running a speed test
(at which point you've either entered into a year-long contract or paid
install fees). Even the ISP can't know. What Openreach (company mandated by
the government to manage the actual phone lines) should do is leave a DSLAM
connected to _all_ lines, to allow people to connect a modem and see the sync
speeds (and possibly run a speedtest from a server provided by Openreach)
_before_ they sign up to anything.

The second issue is that everyone is falsely advertising DSL (and other
garbage like coax cable, also called HFC) as "fibre" and consumers are
confused as to which "fibre" is the better one. This also makes it much harder
for companies that sell _real_ fibre.

As it stands, this change will just make telco scammers sell "fibre" "up to
11mbps" instead of "up to 30mbps" or whatever they were selling before. As far
as the consumer is concerned it's still a lottery whether you'll actually get
the advertised speeds, with no way to know beforehand.

~~~
antihero
Does DOCSIS3 count as DSL?

~~~
Rjevski
Nope, that’s HFC, and while it’s radio-frequencies just like DSL, it’s a
shared medium across the entire neighbourhood while DSL is dedicated.

~~~
antihero
Ah then in that case you might want to add that some people have FTTC DOCSIS
which is actually pretty good, 300Mbit down etc

~~~
Rjevski
FTTC DOCSIS is what most DOCSIS users get I believe. It’s still got most of
the issues of DOCSIS, mainly being a shared medium within the entire building,
leading to potential congestion issues.

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gmac
This doesn't appear to address the two main issues I encounter when choosing
UK broadband, which are that (a) advertising of upload speeds seems entirely
unregulated, so that some providers offer ridiculous deals (e.g. 38Mbps down,
but 1Mbps up, with the latter figure hidden in small print on another page),
and (b) unless I choose Virgin, I will have sporadic disconnections sometimes
for hours at a time depending on the interaction of decades-old copper,
weather conditions, and random chance.

~~~
Blackstone4
Completely agree on the upload speeds...I had Plusnet 17MPS but in actual fact
it was ~6MPS download and 0.5MPS upload. The bad part was if I did an upload
of say ~20MB it would throttle my download speed thereby slowing everything to
a halt.

~~~
dspillett
_> upload of say ~20MB it would throttle my download speed_

This is not directly due to the technology involved, it is due to congestion
on the upstream side slowing down IP control packets (ACKs and such) as they
are queued with the rest. When you have a slow upstream pipe it is very easy
to see this effect. It is even worse when there are multiple upstream
connections trying to use as much as they can (as seen in torrent transfers
and similar), and it affects interactive traffic like SSH connections
significantly too.

You can work around this by shaping your upstream traffic to reserve a little
bandwidth for small interactive/control packets. If your router runs Linux
there are a number of simple scripts to setup the basics (wondershaper is one
I've used successfully in the past) or you can be more specific to your needs
by setting up your own config with the appropriate tools.

If you usually only use one PC then you can run the shaper there instead, of
course, but running shaping on one individual machine on a crowded network
will have no useful effect.

(see [http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can-
dramatically-...](http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can-dramatically-
improve-internet-responsiveness.html) for an example of using wondershaper)

~~~
Blackstone4
Thank you for this. Super interesting to hear about what's happening. At one
point they told me there was a problem with the copper which meant my packets
where getting dropped.

In the end, Plusnet increased their prices by £1 and in the small print of the
email, they said I could cancel my contract within 30 days...I was 3 months in
so I cancelled. Now I'm using my phone (tethered + 20GB of data for £20 a
month from BT) and BT-FON free wifi for Youtube videos.

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kingosticks
Hyperoptic is another niche fibre provider that are only present in parts of
major UK cities (30ish apparently). They offer 1Gbps over their own daisy-
chained network. Their pricing is good and the performance is great (so far)
compared to Virgin. As always, it's just the availability that's lacking.

------
Blackstone4
In the UK, the central network is fibre but the "last mile" from the exchange
to home is always copper. The "last mile" can turn into 2+ miles if you're
unlucky.

UK ISPs sell various different speeds including 'fibre' at the high end.
However it's never true fibre and you'll have copper cable no matter the
package you pick.

I had Plusnet 17MPS but in actual fact it was ~6MPS download and 0.5MPS
upload. The bad part was if I did an upload of say ~20MB it would throttle my
download speed thereby slowing everything to a halt.

I tethered my phone to my laptop and got 16MPS upload speeds....

~~~
rndmio
As the other commenter said the move from ADSL to "fibre" meant that rather
than being copper from your house to the exchange it's now copper from your
house to the cabinet on a street nearby (hopefully) and fibre from there back
to the exchange. The "last mile" of copper is now a lot, lot, shorter which is
how they're able to run the faster speeds over it. Sure FTTC is not FTTP but
it's dramatic improvement over ADSL/2

~~~
dingaling
Absolutely, FTTC for us made using high-throughout Internet services feasible.
We're not far from an exchange but the copper overhead cables pass several RF-
noisy facilities and ADSL was constantly dropping-out. Even Andrews & Arnold
couldn't do anything to improve it and we changed ISP after they lost interest
( no point paying their hefty charges for a flakey service ).

With the change to FTTC all that interference is gone and dropouts are very
rare. FTTH doesn't really tempt us for any reasons.

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matthewmacleod
It would definitely be really nice if the UK rolled out comprehensive fibre
connections – it seems like a good long-term investment for as many homes as
possible to have a direct FTTP service.

At present domestic internet connections using DSL top out at 76MBps – and
that's if you live on top of the cabinet. Aside from niche providers, the only
other high-speed network is Virgin, which runs a HFC network at up to 350MBps
(which, to be fair, is pretty cost-effective and widely available).

~~~
PaulKeeble
There are still quite a lot of people in cities who don't have VDSL yet and
are still stuck on maximum 20 Mbps ADSL2. Worse than that is that due to the
length and age of the lines they can be getting unstable connections around
1.5Mbit/s.

This is one of those areas where the suburbs and countryside have done
significantly better from government funding of BT to roll out Fibre.
Wayleaves and Councils and landlords and management agencies across the cities
have repeatedly blocked rollout, the situation for many is still much worse
than 76 Mbps VDSL, that is a good outcome for someone in a UK city.

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wjoe
Interestingly, Virgin Media now advertises slightly faster speeds than it did
before this came into effect. Where it's fastest package was previously
350Mbps, it now advertises the same package as giving "Average download speeds
of 362Mbps". "Average" still leaves a wide range of speeds, and as far as I
can tell they don't quote different speeds for different locations.

I don't think quoting the average speed of all users in the country for each
package is going to give much more of an accurate picture than maximum speeds.
Especially since the abundance of FTTC here means your speeds are much more
dependant on local infrastructure.

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jsmith99
UK Internet is actually not that bad. I pay under £25/month for unlimited
80/20 and most households can achieve almost that speed.

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swsieber
Wow, we should totally pass a law like that in the U.S.

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ISL
What fraction of the US has fiber to the home? It must be far, far smaller
than Lativa's 50%!

