High speed broadband to become a legal right in the UK

[HEXUS]

Homeowners and businesses promised >10Mbps broadband speeds by 2020.

Read more.

[Biscuit]

Sounds like Scotland have the right idea. Utilise the free-market the way it was intended to be utilised.

[adidan]

So that'll be just 10 years behind Finland then.

[Lithuanian]

How do people even survive with this internet speed.

[Corky34]

So that'll be just 10 years behind Finland then.

Going on past government initiatives it will probably be at least 10 years behind schedule.

[LSG501]

So that will be 10Mbit down, 0.1 up...

Honestly it's about time we had 2-3x that as the minimum and same or better upload.

I'm on 80/20 and to be honest I want more upload speed but all ISP's (well BT as I can't even consider virgin etc) is look to make it faster to download stuff (ie new upto 300Mbps g-fast stuff). I'm sure I can wait the current 1-2 minutes to download a gigabyte of data on my 80Mbps compared with the 7-8mins to upload it.... it's not like companies are pushing online storage or anything.

[Lorcaran]

In other news the government are found to be incapable of determining the meaning of high speed.

[adidan]

Give them a chance, they're still learning how not to share passwords.

[Pob255]

I'm still impressed that the current government isn't just using the total mess the US is in as an example like they so often do.

It's funny how I remember back in the early 2000's how I was jealous of some of my US friends for the internet they had and now it's a joke compared to the UK.
As long as we don't go down the defacto monopolies they have things should be ok.

And in all due fairness it's been a while since someone last left an unscured laptop on a train . . .

[badass]

Give them a chance, they're still learning how not to share passwords.

Made me laugh!

[BobF64]

Oh great, means lots of us will have the 'privilege' of subsidising uneconomical and expensive installations.

[badass]

So that will be 10Mbit down, 0.1 up...

Honestly it's about time we had 2-3x that as the minimum and same or better upload.

I'm on 80/20 and to be honest I want more upload speed but all ISP's (well BT as I can't even consider virgin etc) is look to make it faster to download stuff (ie new upto 300Mbps g-fast stuff). I'm sure I can wait the current 1-2 minutes to download a gigabyte of data on my 80Mbps compared with the 7-8mins to upload it.... it's not like companies are pushing online storage or anything.

Whats your use case? Just curious. I love my 20 Mbit upload. Of course more would always be better but I haven't found it restrictive and I'm a very heavy user (think uploading entire Virtual machine images to remote locations on occasion)

[Andi-C]

I wondered if this has anything to do with my speed going up from 8mb to 12mb in the last month at the cost of my ping from 15 to 42.

[LSG501]

Whats your use case? Just curious. I love my 20 Mbit upload. Of course more would always be better but I haven't found it restrictive and I'm a very heavy user (think uploading entire Virtual machine images to remote locations on occasion)

It's not restrictive for me 'yet' but I can see it becoming more restrictive in the near future. My use case is sending files etc to clients (I work from home) and I'm seeing a gradual increase in file sizes with 1GB+ being a very common scenario, purely because of the usual bloat from year to year (thanks software companies) and the extra bits you add in as you learn new tricks etc.

You've also 'everything' going towards 'store and access it all from online storage' (for a monthly fee of course) versus at home so I can only see uploading requirements increasing.

You've also got to look at it from a 'family' perspective, with just one maybe 2 people it's not likely an issue but if you start looking at 3+ people using the upload it can seriously dent it's speed.

[Iota]

Whats your use case? Just curious.

Having a single 40/10 line using the openreach network is pretty awful for even basic things like using a Ring doorbell while doing anything else requiring an internet connection.

I'm struggling to see how our government is so inept at understanding the basic principles of how "fast" or how "superfast" is defined. I cringe every single time I see an OpenReach vehicle with "superfast" plastered all over the side of it, especially when I had a faster connection than I have now over 10 years ago with Virgin Media.

It really is time more investment was put into not only the exchanges and cabinets, but eliminating the copper cabling out of the equation altogether.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

LOL,I managed to survive OKish with a 2MB~3MB down and 0.5MB to 1MB up connection until the earlier part of this year,and I still remember when I was in London in 2004 having Bulldog and their 4MB+ service(IIRC),and was on 40MB~80MB connections elsewhere.

That includes playing games online,downloading theme and even uploading videos to YT including my GTX1080 review which had a few timerun videos,and backing some of my pictures on-line(you know the RAWs not the jpegs). Yes it took time,but I scheduled it during the night or when I was not at home.

Having gone to the extremes of connections at different times,even a "slow" but stable connection with a low ping is sufficient for most purposes.

I have had "fast" connections which were unreliable and they were more annoying than a "slow" but stable one.

I am now on a 40MB/10MB connection which seems to be perfectly fine even if someone is watching HD video on another device.

For most people its more than enough unless you happen to be downloading and uploading 60GB+ HDR Blu-Ray rips all the time.

I would rather the government target 40/10 or even 20/5 TBH as I would rather more people get stable coverage as parts of the country are lucky to even get 2MB,or have incredibly flaky connections with high ping and frequent dropouts,instead of them trying to up speeds for people who have excessive use requirements for the interwebs,which just massively overinflates the cost of what they are doing and will just mean we pay more in taxes.There are parts of country which have flaky landlines for voice calls,let alone internet!!

That is not for the government to care about - its about quality of service for everyone in the country.

Also,some of the Eastern European countries are far smaller,and they have had to rebuild their infrastructure in the last 20 years.

The UK is a much larger country,and the reason why we still have copper lines everywhere since it would be a mammith project to try and rewire the whole of the UK,especially with the fact large parts of the country are riddled with the remnants of mining activity,etc which has lead to a "let sleeping dogs lie" scenario. I think people forget how long it took for the UK to get all those phonelines laid down in the first place - decades.

In fact it would make more sense for the more parts of the UK to use wireless infrastructure for internet services instead of having to plonk goodness knows how much cable into the ground again.