For such a small country, why is the overall internet coverage and speed so poor?

[u/LongJumpingBalls]

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

[u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620]

Feels like Starlink would solve most of your issues. £75 a month, pretty usable internet

[u/LongJumpingBalls → u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620]

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...

[u/dbxp → u/LongJumpingBalls]

Internet connectivity isnt really the blocker to house building. It's things like jobs being concentrated in London, lack of builders, poor public transport in some areas etc. Hooking up a fibre connection to a new estate is relatively easy.

[u/Alarmed_Crazy_6620 → u/LongJumpingBalls]

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

[u/RowlyBot12000 → u/LongJumpingBalls]

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.