Is UK broadband too slow?

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Slow internet speeds does grind my gears.

Our home in UK at a semi-rural Oxfordshire location is absolutely **** when it comes to broadband. No fibre though the irony of it is a village 4 miles away has fibre but officially it has a lower population than my village.

Broadband speeds are generally in the range of 1.5mb to 3.5mb though the latter tends to be in the wee hours of the morning. One thing I tend to notice whenever I'm in UK and connect from home, the internet speed for sites that are within UK tend to be at the connection speed but the moment it is a site out of UK then it usually is much slower.

Mobile broadband? Hahahahaha you can only get it if you happen to sit by a window or outside the house. Even then it is slow as molasses.

I've given up complaining on how slow the internet is at home as I've accepted it that I live in a rural area and there simply isn't going to be the numbers to justify the cost of laying fibre cables.

In comparison to internet connection in Norway or Singapore, broadband in UK or even just in the City of London sucks but the upside to it is by comparison to both those countries the tariffs are cheap and I should say very cheap.

Reply 21

username1331498

Mine is fine (usually).

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Reply 22

kimolozen

Original post by UniMastermindBOSS

No, you don't really need super fast internet. You can stream an encoded 1080p Bluray video with about 10mbps, and a normal encoded TV/DVD rip with about 2mbps.

Need is subjective, is it not?

If people want to stream games or online games, they can't do so. Not everybody uses the Internet for use Web or e-mail or other low bandwidth stuff.

My connection is OK, 5mbps and it's all I need since I don't play online games, just Web, Skype, e-mail.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 23

kimolozen

Original post by EatAndRevise

Mine is fine (usually).

i doubt you had much problems playing Halo...

Reply 24

feathered-soul

Pity me and my atrocious internet. It took my nearly 2 days to download a game before and it wasn't an obscenely huge one either.

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Reply 25

DarkWhite

I've said no because I think there's enough choice.

Virgin Media offer 152Mbps; that's over 19MB every second. That's 85 seconds to download a Blu-Ray quality film; it takes me longer to urinate. 19MB is around 6 MP3 tracks every second.

Where cable's not offered, you can normally get up to 24Mbps, which is 3MBps, so an MP3 every second pretty much.

I think where we need to improve though is rural coverage, and this applies to mobile networks as well. We're good at getting cities up-to-speed but terrible at getting some countryside areas connected at all.

The average speed I reckon reflects both the coverage issue and the fact that many people don't need/want superfast broadband. Sky offer free broadband for example, and when we had Sky my mum was happy with that for emails, Facebook, Youtube, websites. The younger generation want faster broadband to download things, and lower latencies for online games, and I'm sure we can keep on top of that.

Reply 26

DiddyDec01

This is not an acceptable internet speed. I live in a village with over 2000 people in it and this is the **** I have to put up with.

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Reply 27

jelly1000

Yes I think it is too slow in places. Both my parents live in London, both have fibre optic broadband yet at my Dads it struggles to even load one live stream at times whilst at my Mums I can have a stream and several tabs up at the same time.

Sounds not too bad but compared to the internet at my Mums and even that at my old uni house in Norwich its slow.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 28

Binary Freak

No it's not too slow, most people just have quite poor packages.

This is what I get on average.

Sadly, when I move I'll be getting 17Mbps. :cry:

(edited 9 years ago)

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Reply 29

username1331498

Original post by kimolozen

i doubt you had much problems playing Halo...

I never played Halo haha. But I guess my internet would have been good for it!

Reply 30

cambo211

Depends entirely where you live. I think ours could do with being a lot faster but I'm using it 24/7 so I would think that.

Reply 31

WelshBluebird

Original post by DarkWhite

Original post by Binary Freak

No it's not too slow, most people just have quite poor packages.

This is what I get on average.

Sadly, when I move I'll be getting 17Mbps. :cry:

Most people who have "poor packages" don't have a choice. Virgin cable isn't available in the majority of the country and many parts of the country have long telephone lines that mean speeds are pretty slow. Granted BT infinity is rolling out but even that has its issues (for example the village my parents live in has just had in enabled, but around a third of the village can't get it because they haven't enabled that cabinet and don't plan to).

Reply 32

The Assassin

think D is a bit harsh. Not really had many problems. But maybe I know nothing

edit: slower than 74% of GB. Welp

Reply 33

Binary Freak

Original post by WelshBluebird

I'm confused. You say there is enough choice and it is fine, but you then say we need to improve in areas and they are terrible etc. Contradiction much?

The reality is most people don't have choice. Its either Virgin Cable or ADSL2+. Maybe BT infinity if you are lucky (although most places that have that also have Virgin Cable). With ADSL2+, yes it is theoretically up to 24Mbps, but in reality few people get that. Hell my parents get 2.5Mbps on an up to 24Mbps line, and my friend gets 1Mbps.

Most people who have "poor packages" don't have a choice. Virgin cable isn't available in the majority of the country and many parts of the country have long telephone lines that mean speeds are pretty slow. Granted BT infinity is rolling out but even that has its issues (for example the village my parents live in has just had in enabled, but around a third of the village can't get it because they haven't enabled that cabinet and don't plan to).

Well yeah of course some packages aren't available in areas with very little population. We've not long had BT Infinity, or Virgin's superhub available in our area. It'd just be counterintuitive to install it in places that aren't populated

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 34

L'Etudiant

It really does depend on the area you live in and prior to moving to a new area I researched the broadband packages available in the area. I now live in Kent and I am on 152mb! :biggrin:

Reply 35

MrEFeynman

Yes when you consider GBPS is available to the public in some other Countries, like South Korea. The only opportunity the UK has to build a more stable economy is through massively boosting the science & technology sector and the low carbon energy sector. Both of these sectors require a solid high spec base to build off, which the UK does not currently have.

Reply 36

DarkWhite

Original post by WelshBluebird

I'm confused. You say there is enough choice and it is fine, but you then say we need to improve in areas and they are terrible etc. Contradiction much?

The reality is most people don't have choice. Its either Virgin Cable or ADSL2+. Maybe BT infinity if you are lucky (although most places that have that also have Virgin Cable). With ADSL2+, yes it is theoretically up to 24Mbps, but in reality few people get that. Hell my parents get 2.5Mbps on an up to 24Mbps line, and my friend gets 1Mbps.

What I mean is, where there is choice, we have the infrastructure in place to deliver superfast as well as budget broadband.

The problem is getting that coverage further spread out.

Reply 37

sam_town1

This is about average for me. Even more annoying is that around 50 meters away the housing estate that has just been put up on what was rural Cheshire will get fibre optic in the next month or so, and our road won't even get it in the next five years, probably meaning that we're the only few in Cheshire that won't have fibre optic.

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Reply 38

AlexHamster

Original post by sam_town1