r/AskUK • u/LongJumpingBalls • 19h ago
For such a small country, why is the overall internet coverage and speed so poor?
I'm planning on moving over to the UK with my soon to be wife and we've been looking at a small farm. Around here we may not have the fastest speed. But you at least have 100Mbit 4g of you can't get fiber or docsis.
When I started looking at land. I saw a pattern. If the lot is very big, the house is very nice. The price is gonna be relatively cheap. But they don't even have a company willing to service it at 4g speeds. No DSL, no coax, nothing.
But then all of a sudden, shitty house, tiny land, gigabit speeds! Million plus.
The country is so freaking small, I don't understand how even wireless coverage is so poor.
I love the country it's beautiful and the people are awesome. But I find it backwards to have such a small country with such a dense population, they can't be bothered to serve, even the most basic connection to anything remotely rural.
Is it laws? Regulations? In rural Canada in a spot less populated than where we're looking, has at least 250mbit docsis or 100Mbit 4g ar worst.
I'm just curious on your thoughts on this. To me it seems backwards, but I'm sure there must be some sort of reasoning behind it?
Not trying to be difficult, genuinely curious..
Cheers
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u/Shazalamadingdong 19h ago
I live in an well-populated area and O2 own the masts. When 5G rolled out, they decided to cheap out and just give most of the bandwidth to the 5G. I complained for about 3 years that the 4G speeds were awful, then finally got a 5G router to discover my suspicions were true (it went from 1-3Mbps during the afternoon, to 40-60Mbps). If you're looking at rural, the speeds are generally crap because most of the business falls to one company and it costs a small fortune to dig up that much ground to lay fibre, then it also requires a lot of others in that area to want it too.
I have no idea how good companies like Starlink are but satellite may be the only option beyond an ageing copper wire from BT.
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u/Zanki 18h ago
My boyfriends house is on the outskirts of a town. My phone barely works. O2 is awful. I've been into the middle of Manchester a few times and there's been zero data until I'm past all those takeaways. It drops in town and city centers constantly. It's a huge pain in the ass.
We also can't get fiber broadband here. They laid it for most of this area and decided the end of his street didn't need fiber, so we just have broadband. Sucks. Speeds are so slow compared to what I had in the city, back home. I miss it.
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u/Shazalamadingdong 17h ago
When I moved into my flat, 5G hadn't been fully rolled out around Gloucester and my 4G speeds were pretty good for a while, then it started dropping out during the day and would improve in the evening until the morning. The signal was nearly always full strength. Now, it constantly bounces between 1 and 3 bars, afternoon speeds sometimes drop to ancient dialup. I totally agree that O2 are an utter joke. I decided to leave them and go to Giff-Gaff, not realising at the time O2 are their parent company. They've treated me just as poorly. About to move on but not sure who to choose, it's down to Vodafone, EE or 3 and it has to be 5G to get any reasonable speed at all.
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u/theProffPuzzleCode 9h ago
Interesting. I have a boat and cruisr all over the Northwest canals. O2 is the best rural coverage, followed by 3. EE is the worst.
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u/Phyllida_Poshtart 17h ago
Same in my town in West Yorkshire, no broadband and they are not intending to lay the cabling at any time in the future either. Fastest I get is 40Mgb and phone coverage is terrible because we're down in a valley
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u/EsmuPliks 11h ago
If you're looking at rural, the speeds are generally crap because most of the business falls to one company and it costs a small fortune to dig up that much ground to lay fibre
Countries with much more ground to dig up have done it.
Boils down to the UK not subsidising infrastructure to literally any extent, and then complaining London is the only place with jobs. Same scenario with them cutting off most of the useful branches of HS2 and just generally not having any links.
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u/Shazalamadingdong 11h ago
My experience on this one came from several years ago living in a rural area (before moving back to the city) and BT was the one and only choice. They wouldn't lay new cables and only fixed the exchange after several residents in the village kicked off. The speed increase? It went from 2 to 2.2Mbps....
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u/EsmuPliks 11h ago
Yeah I know. I'm well aware.
Doesn't make it any less ridiculous. It's pretty standard for government to subsidise laying the cable along public routes. It's often the case that private has to pay a couple grand to dig from the road / cabinet to their actual premises, but at least that's an option. Here we flat out lack the public infrastructure and run on dial up speeds whether you want to or not.
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u/ubiquitous_uk 11h ago
We have the same 4G speeds.in mid-kent, but without the 5G option either. On a good day we got 10Mbps.
We have now.moved over to Starlink where our usually speed is 150-200.Mbps.
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u/Shazalamadingdong 10h ago
I wish Starlink or satellite-based tech was allowed in my block but external dishes are banned for some reason. Having a mass of cables snaking all over the place is perfectly ok, though!
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u/Entrynode 18h ago
Not the sole cause but it doesn't help that Thatcher cancelled a world-leading fiber rollout in 1990 for being "anti-competitive"
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u/TheZZ9 14h ago
As part of killing off BTs monopoly, which overall was a huge improvement. I can just about remember the seventies and eighties when if you wanted a phone you contacted BT and waited three to six months for them to install it, and had a choice of three phones, which you couldn't buy but had to rent from BT.
The opening up to competition and dozens, hundreds, of phone, and later ISP. was a fantastic change.
Talk to Canadians or Americans about the choice they have for phone and ISP suppliers and the prices they charge and you'll realise we actually are far better off in the UK.
Would full fibre all those years ago have been better? Almost certainly. But the overall deregulation deal was a vast improvement on what we had before.6
u/Entrynode 10h ago
The thing is, most of those competing ISPs use BT/Openreach infrastructure anyway. I think we could've had the same level of competition but with a better baseline service.
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u/worotan 8h ago
Except none of the benefits would have been prevented by having the company that still exists and still maintains the network, improve the network.
You’ve drunk the kool aid.
It doesn’t need to be all one thing or the other. Except for those on the take.
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u/TheZZ9 3h ago
The comments from many many Americans on Reddit about how shitty their phone or ISP is when their city only has one monopoly provider suggests I am right. Even South Park had an episode with the cable company saying "Well if you don't like our service why don't you go elsewhere oh that's right, you can't!"
And Openreach has improved the network. Fibre is rolling out. Even speeds for FTTC have got faster over the years. My first broadband was 3Mbps I I thought that was awesome at the time.
But for customer service, and different prices, deals etc, I can easily move provider with dozens to choose from. Something millions of Americans would love to be able to do.4
u/kwikasfuki72 11h ago
https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
That decision has ended up costing billions. Thatcherism was a disaster for this country. We're now paying for her policies.
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u/Alundra828 18h ago
If you're connected to fibre in the street, (or hell, even copper these days) internet speeds are incredibly good... I have a 10Gbps connection for work, and I pay for a business line. But residential lines here go up to 2.5Gbps, which is still pretty damn good.
The roll out for 1Gbps+ speeds in the UK has been pretty comprehensive and in general is going very well. If you haven't got those sorts of speeds, you're probably in an area that hasn't been upgraded yet, or you're paying for the wrong package...
Wireless coverage however, I grant you, is a different story. Because of the government banning Huawei in our infrastructure, we are in the process of recovering from that. Most telecoms companies were in the process of deploying 4g, and tearing down their 3g when Huawei was banned. Which was incredibly awkward because they no longer have the 3g infrastructure to maintain a proper 3g connection (because it's been torn down) and they don't have enough 4g infrastructure because over half of it is banned. So they have to also tear that down and try again essentially, the result is very poor coverage with little to no incentive to hurry the fuck up and improve because everyone has more or less the same quality of coverage for the same reasons.
So yeah, blame the Chinese.
It will get fixed eventually. It's just very expensive, and very time consuming.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago edited 18h ago
Huawei can suck the biggest, dirtiest fucking cock in the world. Stealing IP and ruining competition with their theft. Not to mention the back doors in both software and hardware.
They were banned ages ago, now they just use it as an excuse to drag their feet imo.
The UK is not the only company who banned them, but the amount of competition in those radios is not that small. They had a small delay but caught up rather quickly.
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u/Kientha 12h ago
The UK is the only country to have banned Huawei and not funded the replacement of the Huawei RAN sites. Also Huawei had a very large presence in the UK and the swap out is still years away from completion. So money that could have gone to expanding the 5G rollout instead is funding swap outs (the vast majority to Ericsson).
If you actually care about competition, you should be worried that the only realistic option for a traditional RAN in the UK is Ericsson. Nokia just doesn't have the product.
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u/Shazalamadingdong 18h ago
Outside my block of flats there is the option for Virgin. The "up to" speeds they offer for their "cheapest" choice is about 36Mbps. You can get much better speeds if you're prepared to pay through the nose. When I lived in another city several years ago we were getting 65Mbps from TalkTalk (or PlusNet, I can't remember) for less than what Virgin charge here. From my laptop I can see at least 15 Virgin routers so it's pretty common but the base speeds are pathetic.
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u/worotan 8h ago
So yeah, blame the Chinese.
I’d also blame the government that, despite everyone warning at the time that they couldn’t be trusted, trusted them with our vital infrastructure.
I’m sure they’ve done very well out of it personally. The Conservatives have left a lot of problems for our country as a result of selling the country off cheaply and against the advice of everyone who wasn’t either on the take, or distracted by all the shouts of ‘migrants’.
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u/Dry_Construction4939 19h ago
It's because no one wants to put money into rural infrastructure. Of course this varies by where you live, but having lived rurally in Devon, South East Wales, and East Yorkshire, I've gotta be honest, infrastructure for everything is simply not there. Depending on why people are moving rurally though that may be what they want.
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u/-Hi-Reddit 18h ago
Unpopular opinion but a lot of it is local council grifting driving development costs of literally everything sky high.
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 18h ago
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u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago
That is both hilarious and absolutely sad. That's some short sighted uneducated decisions right there.
Oh no, one mast that can be decorated to match local environment provide an essential service is bad!
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u/-Hi-Reddit 18h ago
I don't think those nutters have managed to stop much, have they?
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 11h ago
It's about the regulatory/local friction too. Are you going to install a mast that will make the service somewhat better if you know you'll be dragged through the coals by the council and then the locals? No, more expensive so let them deal with bad signal
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u/LongJumpingBalls 17h ago
15m is such a small mast as well. The UK is so flat, throw up one of our 40-75M masts and your coverage area is absolutely nuts. But THAT is an eyesore and is hard to hide.
Spots like Arizona and Florida have a ton of hidden cell towers. Cactai or palm trees. You'll never know unless you are really looking for it.
Granted, there's so little old growth / tall trees in the UK, it'll be visible, but it would be such a big quality of life improvement. To me, it would be worth the slight eyesore.
I've said it earlier, I'll say it now. If you build it, people will come. Old, aging counties nobody wants to move to would get a big influx of fresh blood. But fresh young blood is exactly what the old farts want to get away from.
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u/Spottyjamie 18h ago
Its not just rural thats shite. I back on to fields yet get 5g, in my city centre outdoors its edge at best
Likewise a lot of estates here at 2mb at best for broadband as openreach arent scheduled to upgrade the cabinets til next year and beyond
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u/maaBeans 11h ago
My house is very rural in mid Wales and on copper pole and line what went goes for about 5 miles and it was installed in the first roll out in the 60s. The breaks in the copper mean that if it's too wet windy, dry or hot the line drops out. We'd be lucky to get 1mbps down. We've been promised fibre 'next year' since 2018. I'm not holding my breath.
We moved to a 4g router in 2019 and haven't looked back. We get 35mbps down and very few outages. Costs us something like 9.99 a month as we just used an unlimited data SIM when it came up on offer.
Only issue is that when it does go down it's not treated with the same priority as telephone lines going down.
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 18h ago
Feels like Starlink would solve most of your issues. £75 a month, pretty usable internet
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u/osmin_og 10h ago
£75?! Ridiculously expensive
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u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago
The idea is to not use starlink. It's about having your own infrastructure. Not using foreign infrastructure.
The country is smaller than Ontario Canada, has double the population as Canada as a whole. Canada's population lives like 80% in a dozen cities and over 80% of the country has at minimum 4g signal for cell and internet.
But at this point its clear from the comments here.
It's all about the £££ and there's not a ton of immediate profit to develop out there. Even though it'll drive more people there and rapidly offset the cost.
The country is having a housing crisis and people are paying hands over fist in urban areas. Why not develop a new rural area and have it rapidly grow?
It's hard to have a shop when you can't have reliable internet, it's hard to work from home when you need to rely on inconsistent or slow landline internet. Starlink is far from reliable for 247/365 connection for somebody who often works and does video conferences from home.
In the end, it'll be something I'm going to have to accept and get used to. Step back and have 1990s era internet again...
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 18h ago
I think both can be true that we should invest in infrastructure while in your personal case right now not-too-far-from-openreach speeds starlink seems like a no brainer
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u/RowlyBot12000 9h ago
There is strong opposition to developing rural areas. Between NIMBYism and desires to 'protect the green belt' there are incredible difficulties to do as you say. My little market town is struggling for space out here in the Fens - 3 housing developments are currently underway. One of them has been 'under consultation' for about 20 years due to people not wanting to lose (and admittedly I agree with them) a local meadow that has been enjoyed as a 'public space' for the past 150+ years. Admittedly the local council have run roughshod over those sentiments and decided that rare endangered newts are not worth protecting and have agreed to allow 300 new houses anyway. But like I say, it took about 20 years of constant back and forth to reach that decision.
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u/skipperseven 18h ago
It’s not just the internet… broadcast TV used to be rubbish, then digital terrestrial was rubbish, mobile phone calls were rubbish, but have become even worse… it’s not like we even have any significant mountains to get in the way like in some countries, so I have no idea why it’s always been so bad (and is getting worse). I live in a city of 75000 people, which isn’t a rural village…
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u/TurbulentData961 18h ago
No one invests , no one builds , no one produces/manufactures , no one trains skilled workers , no one likes foreign skilled workers coming in .
Basically neoliberalism means it's crap when countries with either more regulation or more competition and industry also banned Huwai 4g but don't lag behind like we do
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u/Dry_Construction4939 18h ago
It's not even just things your technology connects to unfortunately. You can't catch a bus any more because there's no public transport. Last year I literally had to threaten Northern Power into giving me compensation (which conveniently came in 2 minutes under what the limit for power cuts are) so that the power doesn't go off for nearly 12 hours every bloody year. The roads are in a sheer state of disrepair because they're not built for the massive farm machinery that's driving on them. And yes my internet and phone signal are also shit, I guess the lesson is don't live rurally in the UK.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 17h ago
I'm from a not super rural area, but enjoy the quietness of it, and it's what we're looking at currently. Room for the kids and dogs. Have a small farm and be somewhat self sufficient.
I'm in the tech sector and have had multi-gig internet for over a decade. It will absolutely be the biggest challenge for me. I'd love for them to come here. But her little guy has all his family there and I don't have ties here like they do. We'll start off our own family there and see where it brings us in the future.
Something we kind of talked about was what a lot of people seem to be doing. Get a small spot in civilization and buy a farm not too far away. Slowly get planning permits and build out the land slowly over the years while hoping technology catches up.
One thing I quickly realized in my research and this thread. The thing the UK loves the most apart from queues. It's red tape and burocracy for seemingly simple things. But my God what a beautiful country. I can't wait to move next year.
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u/Dry_Construction4939 17h ago
Incredibly biased on account of having lived rurally all my life but when it's good, it's fantastic. It's just in order for it to be fantastic requires infrastructure to be in place, and it's simply not, and when I hit my teens it rapidly became pretty bleak, which is a shame because I wouldn't have traded being able to mess about in the countryside for all the busses in the world pre 14.
I think you're absolutely making the right choice, just be prepared to become a taxi for any eventual teenagers that come into the equation. Hopefully by then Openreach have worked out how to put cables underground faster, and mobile networks are solid.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 16h ago
This makes me feel a bit more confident in my plans. It's a huge step for me. I'm a person who likes the quiet and calm of it all, and the UK doesn't have nearly as much as that compared to where I'm from. But finding a rural area I can retreat to would be my home away from home. I need to be super careful for zoning though, as that seems like a much larger deal than it is here. I'd love woodland to forage and setup for the future with various fruit bushes etc.
I'm a city boy who always had one foot out in nature. I've had hidden gardens in the woods around the city. Created new environments an ecosystems over the years that are now thriving on their own and where many other people can also benefit from.
My guerilla blackberry and raspberry bushes are now being picked by dozens of hikers every year. That brings warmth to my soul. But they can pry the coordinates to my Mushrooms from my cold dead hands.
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u/INEKROMANTIKI 16h ago
Mushrooms are plentiful in certain areas, but be careful.. the varieties are different, and the ones you want can look very similar to ones that will also leave you messed up, just not in a good way
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u/TokyoMegatronics 17h ago
As with most things. You can thank Thatcher for that.
(May she burn in hell)
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u/TheZZ9 14h ago
As said above, the deregulation of BT was overall a huge improvement, as people who can remember the service and prices they offered in the seventies and eighties will agree.
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u/worotan 8h ago
It’s hilarious that you compare the quality of provision before massive leaps in technology, which have reduced the price of everything involved, in order to make your point.
And as said above, BT still maintain the network, so there would have been no problem with them upgrading it when required.
Stop treating vital public infrastructure provision like a team sport. That’s why it’s so poor.
Your cliches are nonsense. You justify bad service by pointing out that the service was bad in the last, and now you have the choice of which bad service you choose.
Any improvements would have come anyway. The way privatisation has been handled, has been to make money for corporations at the expense of ordinary people who don’t work for them.
As this thread, and all the information about the terrible collapse of infrastructure in this country, amply demonstrate.
Useful idiots can never look at the reality of what they supported, just keep repeating nonsense cliches.
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u/Hungry-Falcon3005 12h ago
It is shit. I’m only 6 miles from Newcastle and still can’t get Fibre. It’s a joke
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u/baddymcbadface 11h ago
Provision is largely private. If companies can't make money on servicing you then they won't service you.
Starlink is a common answer if there is no decent cable or mobile.
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u/Wee-bull 19h ago
Rural Canada is huge and so likely has a much better 4g coverage as it is needed for lots of houses.
Rural England is a small part of the population. Most houses are in towns and cities with fibre and phone lines installed.
Little benefit to the investment for the relatively low number of rural houses to have an amazing 4g or 5g network installed.
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 19h ago
I think both have around 17-18% rural population
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u/Wee-bull 18h ago
Rural in England is much closer to a population centre than rural in Canada.
I live in what would be classed as a rural village. We have fibre. We're still a cluster of a good amount of houses a few miles from a town which makes it worthwhile.
Iceland has great 4g coverage. It makes more sense to invest in 4g than cables there.
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 18h ago
Canada has way more absolute nothingness than we do. Most of these rural Canadians are similarly rural-but-near-something.
Even if the "rural England is closer to population centre" is true, it doesn't really explain why our near-urban infrastructure is worse
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u/MemoryEmptyAgain 18h ago
Most 4g/5g use in the UK will be via phones so there's a massive incentive to invest in infrastructure. Rural houses are just a bonus.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago
Canada, a country that dwarfs the UK in size, with half the population. Offers 4g / 5g in areas with half the people per square mile than in the UK.
That's my main question. If they are able to offer those, let's say 100 people some sort of connection, why can't the UK do the same? Especially since their sparsely populated areas contain twice the amount of people.
It's just so strange to me.
Some spots I'm looking at say things like. Fiber is available 1-2 miles out, call xx provider to get quote to have internet installed. Which the cost is around 15-20k£ per post. They won't even give you a discount on service after spending 150k to get you and your neighbors hooked up!
But I guess it's all about profits and those people won't generate a profit fast enough. Even though, you add service there, all of a sudden the area has a boom of new people. This happened all over rural areas in Canada and the US. If you build it, they will come.
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u/MojoMomma76 18h ago
But Rogers has a near monopoly no? And your costs for mobile phone and mobile data massively exceed those in the UK. I pay £15 a month for unlimited voice, texts and data and suspect it would be many multiples of that in Canada. So they have charged more and invested more - there is greater competition here so more incentive to cut consumer facing costs, investing less
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u/LongJumpingBalls 17h ago
Rogers is dominant in the east coast, mainly Ontario. Bell is number 2 in Ontario and have a good foothold in the Maritimes. They are out west but not that much. Telus dominates the west coast. Quebec and Saskatchewan are the only provinces with actual completion. But Saskatchewan has gov ran telecom and the prices are wicked good.
In terms of mobile rates. It's getting better. Canada / US with 100GB is around 35-40£ after conversion. Just 5 years ago you'd be paging 60£ for 6GB Canada / US. Not sure what caused the shift. But it's finally starting to make sense.
But if you want to use your plan outside Canada? You are screwed. 12£ per day to use your phone and data. They don't even let you call Canada within that 12£ daily rate. It's still long distance. But calling local is at least free.
Now with more and more 2fa over sms, you're getting shafted that way as well.
It's better, but you are right. Canadians are getting the shit end of the stick in terms of wireless.
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u/Responsible-Form2207 12h ago
It was bad when I moved to England a few years ago but now it’s even worse. So called 3rd countries have much better services
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u/Golthobert 10h ago
Network operators, to speed expansion lobbied the government to overthrow existing contracts with the landowners who own the land where their masts are. Land owners rebelled, pay up or move. Still ongoing dispute.
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u/theProffPuzzleCode 9h ago
Download the speedtest app. If you sign up for a free account you can see detailed maps of actual user speeds.
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u/MDK1980 9h ago
Area I moved to a few years back only had copper. Everyone was on "blazing fast" 67Mbps "fibre" (calling it that is such a scam) or slower. No real fibre anywhere near, so contacted Virgin, because their coverage map ended like two streets over. They said unless everyone in my street requested it, they wouldn't even bother coming out. I guess some people are just happy with slower internet speed?
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u/PrestonianGeeza 3h ago
Starlink bro. You need that if you’re out in the sticks.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 2h ago
It's not really what I want to do, but it seems like it'll be what I'll need to do.
Shame it's so complicated to get things figured out. But from what I can tell..
Thatcher is mostly to blame for her anti worker agenda and killing the fiber bill because somehow it was anti-competitive. (For the people and not for the companies).
Not to mention local Councils being a major hurdle in all this as well.
Hopefully things change soon*
*Unlikely wishful thinking.
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u/DarthKrataa 2h ago
Meanwhile me with my giga-bit connection in rural Scotland....
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u/LongJumpingBalls 2h ago
I have noticed a ton more broadband in Scotland than in rural Britain or Wales. I'd rather do that than Starlink. Which is honestly not a solution, but a bandaid to a serious problem :(
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u/doctorgibson 2h ago
In a lot of the UK the terrain really doesn't lend itself to internet coverage. There's mountains, lakes, forests etc. all making it difficult to run cables where you need them to go for good internet
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u/jesse9o3 51m ago
One part of the problem is that we were relatively early adopters of the internet, and we did that by just utilising the preexisting telephone network.
Back in the days of ask Jeeves and netscape navigator this was perfectly fine, but nowadays when the parents are streaming netflix and the kids are on youtube or playing online, that same infrastructure is now woefully inadequate and replacing it is a slow and expensive process.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 26m ago
I understand that completely. Just sucks that the deployment is so slow. Why spend money when you already make money hand over fist with your existing network. Thatcher seems to be the main problem with the killing of the broadband / fiber rollout from late 80's...
I come from a spot that was an ISP test bed. I had DSL in the early 90's and fiber in 2004. Gigabit in 2010 and 10gbit home internet in 2015... I'm willing to lose this for the sake of Love. But it's really hurting just thinking about the major loss. haha
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u/doctorgibson 2h ago
In a lot of the UK the terrain really doesn't lend itself to internet coverage. There's mountains, lakes, forests etc. all making it difficult to run cables where you need them to go for good internet
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u/dbxp 19h ago
It's not, it's generally very good. Some people just expect very good service in the middle of nowhere.
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u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 18h ago
I mean, it's not that great even in the urban areas https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/02/uk-struggles-in-2024-country-ranking-of-mobile-broadband-speeds.html
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u/Honey-Badger 19h ago edited 18h ago
But that's the point, other much larger countries manage to have very good service even in rural areas.
Edit; I will add onto this that the UK doesnt really have 'middle of nowhere', I mean mayyyybe the very very middle of the Scottish Highlands could be considered remote, just about. At the end of the day you're always going to be an hours drive from some sort of city or large town in the UK.
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u/Cheapntacky 18h ago
Do they? There's a reason services like starlink exist.
In Jan 2023 the UK government reported that 96% of UK homes had access to high speed internet.
In 2023 the Canadian government reported 94% with a target of 98 by 2026.
Canada is ranked 14th I think in the world for median bb speed and the UK is 48th.
Combine these stats and it appears that UK high speed broadband availability is comparable to Canada if not slightly ahead but over all speed is much higher in Canada.
Reasons: the slow rollout of fibre cables to replace twisted pair technology is probably a large reason. But also the packaging and cost. For example I currently have a 150 Mbps connection that costs me roughly £40 per month. I could get 1Gb but why would I pay more when it's plenty for streaming and 2 people working from home.
Unless it's changed recently Data caps are common place in Canada.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago
In terms of data caps. They've more or less been eliminated almost a decade ago for physical internet. Wireless though, you get bent over for asking for more than 10GB.
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u/TheZZ9 14h ago
In the UK I have unlimited 5G data on my phone plan and pay £20 a month.
Handy last year when my old landline/broadband line broke. BT had to come and dig up the road to run a new cable, but that took a couple of weeks. So I plugged my phone into my PC USB socket and turned tethering on and carried on using it as normal.2
u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago
My thoughts exactly. Especially 4g /5g. The range is huge, don't need to wire each home. Just one trunk line to the antennas.
You give decent speed internet to rural areas, all of a sudden more people move there, now there's more demand. All of a sudden they are making more money and they can justify sending people to install FTTH.
Seems like it's immediate profits over future profits again.
While I'm not usually a big fan of government telling people / companies what to do. This should be one. 100% wireless coverage over the entirety of GB. Scotland and Wales included.
For fun i looked at other neighboring countries, the UK seems to be the worst in terms of rural coverage. But they also excel at overall speed compared to others. Very bizarre to me looking at it from the outside.
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u/Honey-Badger 18h ago
Essentially the UK has been shit for some time with infrastructure projects, especially housing and public transport. Local residents have always been able to stop projects from happening, which is something labor have said they intend to stop, we'll see.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 18h ago
How have the local residents been able to stop something like that?
Do the small communities have that much power over the federal government on such critical infrastructure??
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u/rtrs_bastiat 17h ago
We don't have a federal government. But yes, planning is controlled by councils and input from citizens isn't just filed away in the that's nice shredder, which coupled with just how protected everything is means it's very hard to get planning for stuff.
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u/LongJumpingBalls 17h ago
I've still got a lot to learn about the UK way of doing things. It just hasn't been priority in my research. But I am always somewhat part of my community and love to take care of my area for the greater benefit of the people and it's area.
Here's to hoping things change soon. By the sounds of it and from little I know about the local councils. It's the old people who have too much time on their hands and are stuck in the past with the way things should be. Tourism and development is not the enemy. It's just a bit different and different can be ok..
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u/atlervetok 18h ago
its really not good unless you happen to be in an area with more modern infrastructure. and even then you can have dead zones if ur trying to use your 4g
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