[HN Gopher] Thatcher killed the UK's superfast broadband before ... ___________________________________________________________________ Thatcher killed the UK's superfast broadband before it even existed Author : car_analogy Score : 170 points Date : 2022-04-21 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (webreturn.co.uk) (TXT) w3m dump (webreturn.co.uk) | Havoc wrote: | It is getting better. Recently got a flier that says 3gbps fibre | is coming to my hood. (vs current 1gbps FTTB) | | That is in London though - probably not where the problems are on | a national scale | odiroot wrote: | Southern England is also doing quite well, with multiple | competing FTTx operators. But it highly depends where you live | (dense centre vs residential districts). | tikkabhuna wrote: | I've had some problems in London where blocks of flats weren't | kitted out properly. I believe that's why Hyperoptic started. | exikyut wrote: | Coool. That means you can ask for a quote for 1.25Gbps which | they'll likely have to deliver using 10Gig equipment at both | ends and then *synthetically* cap, which will likely have | appreciably lower overhead than running 1 gig through 1 gig | PHYs :D | gambiting wrote: | In my area OpenReach is planning to roll out their ultrafast | fibre "by 2026". Not great. Couple miles out of Newcastle so | not exactly middle of nowhere either. | mnd999 wrote: | The situation in the UK is shockingly bad. Openreach need to | pull their finger out. | philjohn wrote: | It's patchy - I've got FTTP in Warwickshire, and also have | the option of Virgin Cable (I'd rather not). | | But yes, if an area is in a "not spot" you're stuffed - | which is why things like B4RN took off. | madaxe_again wrote: | I live in the absolute arse end of nowhere Portugal - the | nearest city is 60km away, over mountains, and the entire | district (~50x50km) has a population of 3000. | | They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, for | EUR20 a month. | | In my apartment in the U.K., in a city of 300,000, the best I | can get is 0.25/15Mbps - for PS80 a month. It craps out | completely every evening, down to 200kbps or so, as everyone | streams netflix at potato quality. | bfz wrote: | > They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, | for EUR20 a month. | | I often wonder at observations like this whether it's the | result of massive subsidies or massive over-subscription of | the infrastructure. How is actual bandwidth/jitter on that | line? Romania also has bold claims about infrastructure | penetration, it's a fair example of somewhere I'd have good | reason to doubt their credibility. | | A stable loss/jitter-free FTTP connection at 50 GBP/mo. is | very much value for money compared to an equivalent line | featuring loss/latency/jitter at even a tenth of that price | and with 10x the claimed line rate. | | Separately, I have put off gigabit installation numerous | times over 6 years simply because I can't really benefit from | it on contemporary WiFi. | | (Also yes, on re-reading my comment I realize I am a bit | jealous of your setup in Portugal ;) | madaxe_again wrote: | Yeah, it was heavily subsidised - they've been on a big | push over the last several years to get digital | infrastructure into the boondocks. Contention is low, given | the population - and I don't directly use it, as I live | quite a way off grid - but it's the backbone for our LTE | connection, which gets a comfortable and consistent 150 | down and 50 up - plenty good enough. | Havoc wrote: | >whether it's the result of massive subsidies | | I think the key thing here is that probably yes, however it | is essentially once off. Not that expensive to keep | shooting photons down the fibre once its in the ground. | | So from a country perspective that's a pretty grand deal | compared to say farming subsidies that you need to do | annually. | philjohn wrote: | Having worked with a remote dev team in Romania it was | actually pretty solid. Fast to services locally peered, | slower to elsewhere, but still miles better than what I had | in the UK at the time. | | And for telecommunications, which are definitely in the | "utility" category now, subsidies for the up-front capital | costs are warranted IMHO, especially as it can act as an | economic accelerator. | | As for contemporary wifi, that's why I had my house wired | for Cat 6 a few months back - I've got 3 Wifi 6 access | points as well (PoE powered, ceiling mounted) and can | saturate my 500/70 FTTP connection. | ricardobayes wrote: | In Romania you can get for 3EUR a month and you have overpaid | then. I think it's no wonder why so many bright tech talent | comes from the Cental Eastern European region. Accessible | fast connections must have played a huge role. | mhh__ wrote: | Around me in south devon we got fairly fast broadband actually | pretty quickly (faster than my family who lived in the prime | ministers constituency at the time), but then the progress | (certainly for the same price) basically just stopped. | | Luckily there are a few new ISPs popping up now. | poooogles wrote: | I lived on Dartmoor last year. I can testify that the | broadband rollout stopped. We managed to get 5mb which wasn't | so bad, the real problem was the connection would drop 2/3 | times an hour. Fine for casual use but terrible for remote | work. | | The house we stayed in is now in the starlink queue. | multjoy wrote: | We're stuck on 18/1mbs up in the rural north (and that's | with AAISP, so we're getting the most the line can | provide), B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North - which would | have been 1gbs fibre) has stalled because of Politics. | | I've just stuck an external antenna up and we're getting a | decent 4G signal from EE so that will have to do for the | time being. It's peaking at 50mbs with a bit higher | latency, but the upload is 25x faster than the landline | which does make for far more responsive usage. | | Annoyingly, there's a full Fibrus fibre rollout about 10 | miles south, but apparently there's no money in running a | line up the main trunk road between the two major | population centres for this area. | aidos wrote: | AAISP will also do line bonding, but you'll obviously be | paying more and I'd imagine it's not going to be that | much better. | | I switched over to their FTTP offering recently and, | while it's not super fast compared to what others are | claiming, having a router with a weird intermittent | hardware issue reminded me of how good it is to be able | to immediately jump on a call with technical people who | actually care. | newaccount2021 wrote: | it would have ended up dead fiber, like so many failed fiber | rollouts from the era of "smart cable" | | most people don't realize that there is dead fiber all over San | Jose CA (it literally stubbed up out of the ground near the | utility box of a house I used to own there, so its not up for | debate)...part of a failed pilot project from the cable provider. | probably severed or degraded in twenty different mystery places | by now so no one will ever bother trying to do anything with it | michaelhoffman wrote: | (2017) | | > IBM's Watson, the learning super-computer that functions | through the cloud and is able to give evidence-based medical | diagnoses, will fail in the UK because a lack of bandwidth, | according to Dr Cochrane. | | Mmmmm, I don't think that's why it will fail. | gumby wrote: | Brings to mind Thatcher's famous statement: "There's no such | thing as bandwidth." | MrRadar wrote: | Let me tell you a story about the long-term value of fiber. I | live in an area where the incumbent teleco is CenturyLink, though | it was originally AT&T (pre-breakup) and then USWest (post- | breakup) then Qwest (after a merger with a telecommunications | spinoff of Southern Pacific Railroad). In the mid-00s Qwest's | management realized that copper cables were a dead-end technology | so they began rolling out Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN) with VDSL | service across their network. This allowed them to offer speeds | of up to 140 Mbps on their legacy copper network and lay the | seeds for an eventual Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) rollout. | | In the middle of this rollout they got bought out by CenturyLink, | one of the biggest telcos not descended from AT&T at the time. | CenturyLink's management did not invest in rolling out fiber (I | guess this is where they got the buyout money from) and basically | froze the rollout of new fiber for 10 years after the merger. | Fast forward to last year and CenturyLink announced they were | selling off half their customers to a private equity firm. | Coincidentally, the half of the customers they were selling off | were primarily in the areas that CenturyLink owned before they | merged with Qwest, and the areas they kept were mainly the ones | where Qwest rolled out fiber. Apparently their customers on fiber | were where all of their profits were coming from, while the | customers stuck on their legacy copper network were extremely | unprofitable to serve. | | I'm lucky enough to be in an area where they offer gigabit fiber | (from which I can get 800-900 Mbps down and pretty much exactly | 940 up) but I feel very sorry for the customers on their legacy | copper network as I can't imagine a private equity firm will be | any more willing to invest in upgrading them to fiber than | CenturyLink were, and many of those customers are in remote | locations where their only non-satellite Internet option is | CenturyLink DSL. | mnd999 wrote: | Standard Tory. Sell off any national asset to the lowest bidder. | diordiderot wrote: | Don't forget you have to force government ownership of | successful cooperative businesses first! | nostromo wrote: | The article is reposting of an old article whose sole source is a | single person, Peter Cochrane. This same person is presenting a | narrative where he was right about everything, but was ignored by | politicians. He's now a consultant. | | No corroboration from other sources or evidence is presented... | It all just seems extremely self-serving. It's basically, "I was | right about everything in 1979! Here is an alternate history | where everyone listened to me and today things would be great." | rahimnathwani wrote: | ADSL2+ was widely available from the mid-2000s onward. I remember | having an ADSL connection from the now-defunct 'Be' broadband | provider (delivered over BT / Openreach copper). | | It was rated as 'up to' 24Mbit/s down and I got sustained | download rates of 17Mbit/s. | | Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) was great for broadband options. | smilespray wrote: | For me, LLU only meant choosing which company logo was on top | of the invoice for the same, crappy ADSL service in central | London. | | Moved away in '13, hope things have improved. | rahimnathwani wrote: | You can think of the internet connection consisting of two | parts: | | 1. The copper from your home to the exchange. | | 2. Everything from the exchange to the rest of the internet. | | LLU meant that we had options for #2. Not all providers were | the same. Some had better networks, better peering with other | networks etc. than others. Or they had more infrastructure | per customer. | | However, #1 was also a bottleneck. Where I live (in San | Francisco) all the available copper pairs are in such a state | that ADSL will only get me something like 3MBit/s at the best | of times. And there's no way to get that copper upgraded. So | whether I order ADSL from AT&T or Sonic, the connection will | be bad.* | | Perhaps your situation was similar? | | * Thankfully both Monkey Brains and Xfinity have good service | at the same address. | smilespray wrote: | Yep, very similar. It was the same when I lived in LA in | the early 2000s, but that was at the beginning of DSL | rollout, so I'm going to cut Verizon et al a nanometre of | slack. | rootusrootus wrote: | > 1. The copper from your home to the exchange. | | > 2. Everything from the exchange to the rest of the | internet. | | Also, 1A - the equipment at each end of the copper. The | CLEC owned the CPE and the DSLAM, the only thing which is | the same for any provider would be the copper itself. | | Source: Worked at a CLEC for more than a decade. | philjohn wrote: | LLU, and now the successor to it with FTTX where OpenReach | manages the last mile and has a capped fee they can charge | ISP's has done wonders for competition in the broadband space. | | You have "pack em in and sell it cheap" providers like PlusNet, | super techy focussed providers like AAISP (and to a lesser | extend Zen) and those in the middle. | rahimnathwani wrote: | > AAISP | | I used Andrew & Arnold for a while when they offered bonded | ADSL, i.e. a single virtual internet connection carried over | two pairs of copper. It was plenty for our office of 10-15 | people. | | ISTR having to use a PC as a router, with a special ADSL | whose chipset was supported by some special 'bonded adsl' | linux or *bsd distribution. | doener wrote: | Very much similar to Helmut Kohl in Germany: | https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe... | mrlonglong wrote: | It's a great pity Thatcher chose to be cremated otherwise there'd | be a huge queue the length of the UK lining up to take a leak on | her grave. | blibble wrote: | ah yes, the "tolerant" left | philjohn wrote: | You might want to read up on some of the things she did | whilst in power. | | Supported the Pinochet regime for starters, as well as the | behind the scenes behaviour in the miners strike. Right to | buy leading to a shortage of council houses which persists to | this day, etc. etc. | | But no, people saying mean things is the REAL problem. | blibble wrote: | > You might want to read up on some of the things she did | whilst in power. | | I know what she did | | compared to say, Tony Blair, in terms of foreign policy she | was a saint | | > But no, people saying mean things is the REAL problem. | | nice straw man | | > Right to buy leading to a shortage of council houses | which persists to this day, etc. etc. | | it's not as if we've had 10 or so subsequent governments | that could have abolished right to buy, is it? | | quite why some adult's behaviour becomes worse than average | 12 year old playing xbox every time Margaret Thatcher is | mentioned I really don't understand | | (I know why really... it's the the ultimate virtue signal | for the tolerant left) | philjohn wrote: | Abolishing right to buy once it had happened was bolting | the stable door after the horse had bolted. The council | housing stock was already gone. | | And we're not talking about her foreign policy per se | (Pinochet excluded) but the toll she, and the party, | inflicted on a large proportion of the population. | | LGBTQ+ people in particular were affected by Section 28. | | But no, you've glibly responded to what is obviously a | retelling of an OLD joke to paint anyone left of her as | evil, adding nothing at all to the conversation other | than more political point scoring. | blibble wrote: | > Abolishing right to buy once it had happened was | bolting the stable door after the horse had bolted. The | council housing stock was already gone. | | the next 32 years of governments were more than capable | of building more | | they fact they didn't... is Thatcher's fault? | | > And we're not talking about her foreign policy per se | (Pinochet excluded) | | you brought it up | | > LGBTQ+ people in particular were affected by Section | 28. | | yes, agreed | | > But no, you've glibly responded to what is obviously a | retelling of an OLD joke to paint anyone left of her as | evil, adding nothing at all to the conversation other | than more political point scoring. | | the sad part is it's not a joke | LAC-Tech wrote: | She's hated by certain segments of the UK population - | particularly the media class - but that does not seem to | translate broadly: | | - She won three general elections, the last two of which were | landslides | | - She was the longest serving prime minister of the 20th | century | | - In 2008 a BBC poll for favourite post WW2 prime minister put | her at number 1 | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | The 1983 election saw a 1.5% swing of the vote _away_ from | the Conservative party; the Conservatives gained 58 seats | largely due to the splitting of the vote between the Labour | and Alliance parties - taking 61% of the seats with only | about 42% of the vote. The 1987 election was along the same | lines. | | That these victories were landslides says more about the | vagaries of the first-past-the-post electoral system than it | does about the popularity of the Conservative party from | 1979-1987. | mrlonglong wrote: | She was why so many of us can't afford to buy a house on what | we earn. This is where the anger comes from. And currently | we're very angry with the Tories over many things, energy | costs, cost of living and the outbreak of Pinocchio's disease | at Number 10. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Labour also helped make housing unaffordable the average | cost tripling under their watch. While they were in power I | saw my ability to buy a house erode, outstripping my | ability to borrow on my salary, even as a fresh graduate. | tragomaskhalos wrote: | Frankie Boyle on the subject: "Three Million for the funeral of | Margaret Thatcher? For 3 Million you could give everyone in | Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could | hand her over to Satan in person." | blibble wrote: | I think at the point you're quoting Frankie Boyle you've | already lost the argument | smilespray wrote: | Frankie Boyle on Thatcher's funeral procession: "She hasn't | brought central London to a standstill like this since the | Poll Tax riots." | mrsuprawsm wrote: | The problem with pissing on Thatcher's grave is eventually you | run out of piss. | mrlonglong wrote: | Hence the queue. By the time you need to go again ... | Twirrim wrote: | It's easy to look back with the benefits of what we know now and | realise that this was a monumental mistake. But that's an unreal, | and unfair, bias. | | Back in 1990 the internet wasn't significant, and the bandwidth | requirements for it fairly meagre, even for those using it. The | first release of an HTML spec was 3 years away. It was a novelty | more than something fairly fundamental to modern life and | businesses like it is now. | | Fibre optic had a number of interesting advantages, but it wasn't | a fundamental boost for Joe Average consumer. On top of the | monopoly concerns, it was also going to take some significant | amounts of disruption to daily life, digging up roads, replacing | cables etc. | | Before you could make phone calls, send faxes etc. After you | could... make phone calls, send faxes. Maybe slightly higher | fidelity.. but so what? Things were a little better and nicer in | the distribution centres, but again, so what? | martinald wrote: | Also keep in mind that any 1980s fibre network would have been | totally antiquated now. It already caused massive problems | (TPON) when they ran fibre loops to push normal PTSN lines | further. | | No doubt it would have have to be all ripped out at giant | expense, and would have ensured that there was no normal DOCSIS | cable competitors. | AdamJacobMuller wrote: | That's not true. | | Single mode fiber installed decades ago (for sure the early | 90s) can still trivially be used to drive 10G and even 100G | over reasonable distances. | | It's a question of how the fiber network is laid out and | designed. If you're doing things with any kind of PON | components in "the field" you're limiting yourself to a | lifetime measured in a decade or two. If you're doing things | with active components in the field you're limiting yourself | to a lifetime of a decade at most. | | If you do things with just fiber to each house to a central | location with each run under the optical budget of a 40/80k | optic that infrastructure will probably last for 100 years. | | I do agree however that to decide to do this in the 1980s | would have been an impossible leap in logic for any | government and judging them for not doing it based on what we | know now is entirely unfair. Technically however, it would | have been very very possible. | martinald wrote: | But assuming it wasn't a PON back then and was direct fibre | to each house, the cost of the CPE would have been | absolutely enormous back in the 90s and 2000s. The copper | network would have been ripped out. | | Instead of ADSL in the early 2000s (which was "fine") you'd | have had catastrophically expensive active fibre equipment | which would have made broadband completely unaffordable for | the masses. I can guarantee everyone would be saying what a | complete mistake this white elephant fibre network was when | ADSL would have been a fraction of the price. | | If you'd had a PON network there is no way that they would | have planned the network in the 80s like you do now for | FTTH. The segments would have been enormous and completely | overcontended in the 2000s bandwidth boom. It would have | required extremely expensive network reconfiguration to | split the PONs down - the fibres would be going to the | wrong place. | throw0101a wrote: | > _Also keep in mind that any 1980s fibre network would have | been totally antiquated now._ | | G.652 was developed in 1984 and is still in use today (with | newer revisions improving performance): | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.652 | | * https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.652 | | * https://community.fs.com/blog/single-mode-fiber- | comparison-g... | | There's no reason why the fibre couldn't continue to be used | today with updated equipment on both ends. | | Further _even if_ it would be antiquated today, it would | still have given many decades ' worth of value, and we'd be | replacing it with new fibre--as opposed to the lacklustre, | half-hearted FTTN and other non-sense that seems to be going | on today. | martinald wrote: | I don't mean the physical fibre. I mean the network layout. | Common layout today is (X)GPON with a splitter with 32 | nodes off it. | | I imagine a 1980s network would be much closer to a DOCSIS | style RFoG layout, but with far less node density than | cable because of the much better reach of fibre. You'd | probably have (tens?) of thousands of homes connected to | one segment - primarily for TV. This would have completely | collapsed in the 2000s as bandwidth use exploded, and would | have required enormous work to split it into smaller higher | capacity networks (this is exactly what happened with coax | cable internet). | danielovichdk wrote: | Oleg Gordieskey | makomk wrote: | Some of BT's early fibre rollouts were... interesting. In | particular, there were various unlucky people who ended up not | being able to get broadband at all because they were on BT fibre | - as in, not even 512kbps ADSL, just nothing. That's because BT | rolled out an ancient ancestor of current fibre technology called | TPON that worked almost the same way as current fibre-to-the-home | but was literally telephony only. They eventually ended up | replacing a bunch of this with new copper runs just so they could | offer basic ADSL. | odiroot wrote: | I currently live in England, in a (city) area, where it's | pretty much impossible to get ADSL. Openreach doesn't go that | far. I assume it used to be a TPON zone. | | Fortunately, there's a new separate, private operator FTTC | network but it requires laying copper under our pavements and | gardens for the last 10 or so meters. This also means | absolutely no competition -- I either go with this company or I | can forget about cable Internet. | martinald wrote: | Not sure you've got this right? There are no private FTTC | networks in the UK. They all use openreach. | | There are many private FTTH networks, but they'd be laying | fibre not copper. | | Also if you are in a city, you surely will have many good 5G | options. You can get unlimited 5G broadband for PS20-60/month | depending on operator. Speeds are generally very good. | some-human wrote: | Virgin Media does not use Openreach, and they lay FTTC and | then uses multi-core copper (coax) from the cabinet to the | home. Although they're the only FTTC that roll their own as | far as I know. The other non openreach are Hyperoptic and | Gigaclear and they provide FTTH. | martinald wrote: | Ok, correct, I was thinking of FTTC as in VDSL. I haven't | heard of VM being "FTTC" before. Though even most of VMs | new rollout is actually FTTH, albeit RFoG (for now). | odiroot wrote: | Bingo! I didn't want to name them, to give them free | publicity. | waxyalan wrote: | Hull doesn't use Openreach all the cabinets are private | KCOM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCOM_Group | martinald wrote: | Ok, fine apart from Hull then. | blakesterz wrote: | I've never heard this part either: | | "What is quite astonishing is that a very similar thing happened | in the United States. The US, UK and Japan were leading the | world. In the US, a judge was appointed by Congress to break up | AT&T. And so AT&T became things like BellSouth and at that point, | political decisions were made that crippled the roll out of | optical fibre across the rest of the western world, because the | rest of the countries just followed like sheep." | slyall wrote: | Not strictly accurate. Plenty of countries where the Telco | monopoly didn't get broken up (NZ and Australia specifically) | and those monopolies were in no hurry to spend billions rolling | out home fibre. | veb wrote: | at least we have super good fibre now. I'm on a 2GBps plan! I | hear Chorus is even testing 10Gbps... If I'm honest, | hyperfibre isn't really that much more useful than just | normal 1Gbps. | | what NZ did well with their fibre roll out was connecting up | all the smaller rural towns (in otago/southland anyway) :D | ricardobayes wrote: | Once we got a quote for getting fibre at an address that is | about 500 meters away from the Googleplex in Mountain View. | Ultimately it was more cost effective to set up a FedEx | schedule to mail SSD's across the globe. | 30944836 wrote: | Your quote might have been "fake" and intended to convince | you that they offer fiber to your address when they actually | don't. I went through this with Comcast in San Jose. | Requested the service, weeks of run arounds and "we lost your | ticket I'll make a new one" followed by increasingly | ludicrous quotes starting at $500 and then going up to | $20000(!). All when the map on their site showed a trunk in | my neighborhood. Eventually I started playing along just for | a laugh, until they finally fessed up and said they don't | offer fiber in my neighborhood at all. | | Some sort of fraud? I dunno. | bombcar wrote: | The telcos do all sorts of funny business and it can take | them months to figure out if they can offer service to a | particular building. Sometimes they need to send out people | to actually poke around, sometimes they have to see if | anyone else has access, etc. | | If you're a big enough building or throw money at it, they | can usually figure out a way to make it work - but it's | unlikely to be something an individual wants to spend. | tialaramex wrote: | This 2017 article, as is usual for the genre, makes several | predictions that, even this short time later, are hilariously | wrong. | | > IBM's Watson, the learning super-computer that functions | through the cloud and is able to give evidence-based medical | diagnoses, will fail in the UK because a lack of bandwidth | | Not actually very useful? Few commercial applications? Massively | over-hyped? No, the problem was, according to this article, "lack | of bandwidth". Huh. | | > It's going to change everything, from investment banking to the | legal industry. That sort of service, being able to get remote | diagnostics, can only occur if you've got bandwidth. | | This sounds like something where you'd really be missing out. | Maybe some Korean readers can chime in about the amazing remote | diagnostics they have there now thanks to the universal free | symmetric Internet access and IBM Watson? | | > The UK will be frozen out of cloud computing because we don't | have bandwidth | | The biggest cloud providers are US companies, but they have UK | data centres as you'd expect. Most people I know use some cloud | services (especially cloud data storage) and "we don't have | bandwidth" doesn't tend to show up as a problem beyond, as in | this article, people who just won't pay to go any faster... | | ... and that's the important twist in this. | | Providers will charge you more for the better service, and some | people expected that to be free _even though providing it costs | more_. The vast majority of the UK (more than 97% of UK | households) could get >30Mbps Internet. But that would cost | money, and many of them would rather not. This wasn't done by | Margaret Thatcher (unless you have it in your head that a famous | Capitalist suddenly wanted to give away a valuable service free) | it's our friend the Free Market. | | You can buy 1Gbps symmetric in my street (and most of the city). | Few people do, most of the people I know who've bought that | service did so because the 40Mbps or 80Mbps vDSL they were used | to isn't available at a new property they bought. Obviously | Internet is a must-have, so the 1Gbps symmetric fixes that, but | if the offer had been 100Mbps symmetric they'd have cheerfully | paid the same price, which gets to my main thrust in all these | discussions: | | Always On is what matters. The most important quality of life | change for me was getting Always On, _not_ getting broadband | Internet. For most people who experienced the upgrade they were | simultaneous but I lived with Always On at 56kbps for many years | so I know what mattered. From about 1996 I lived in a house with | _shared_ 56kbps Always On. Obviously we didn 't video conference | at that bandwidth, but most of daily life was the same as now. | Got a question? Web search. After not very long that means | Google. Downloads take a little longer, you watch TV still | instead of Youtube or Netflix, but mostly it's the same. I would | check my work in after a day or evening writing C, to a CVS | server because even Subversion didn't exist yet. | | In about 2000 we got DSL at 512kbps and that was nicer, but the | basic shape of life did not change. Whereas in households where | DSL was their first taste of Always On it made a huge difference | and too many of them mistook that for a difference caused by | _bandwidth_ which it isn 't. | simlan wrote: | I must agree. Above 10Mbps quite honestly even in the current | time and age it does not make a difference for my use cases. As | long as it is consistent it does not change my life if it where | 200Mbps or 1Gbps. We currently have 50 Mbps down which is very | consistent and even during Corona has not failed more than once | a month for a couple minutes. All that at a rate of sub 30EUR. | | Comparing that to the fiber offerings starting at 80EUR and up | i do not see the use case right now. | | Does it make sense to deploy fiber in new construction and when | upgrades are due anyway... Of course! But blaming governments | to not magically forseeing which standard of technology would | have great utility in a technology coming to life later is | ludicrous. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | What's interesting about this article is that it lays the blame | with anti-Trust actions. | | The article argues that BT and AT&T if they were allowed to keep | their monopolies would have allowed the UK and US to have far | greater internet speeds via massive fiber deployments. | | I have always seen monopolies as harming consumers and more | competition as being beneficial, but this is an interesting | observation. | dangerlibrary wrote: | s/interesting observation/unsubstantiated claim about a | counterfactual/ | projektfu wrote: | Monopolies have the option of using their excess profit to | enrich a few people at the expense of the customer. But it is | not a requirement and that is also a good way to have the | monopoly destroyed. Another option is to use the market power | paternalistically, giving people services they didn't know they | needed, planning for the future, performing basic research and | R&D outside their current scope. Arguably there was a time when | AT&T and its subsidiaries Western Electric and Bell Labs were | doing this sort of thing. But they were also charging people an | arm and a leg to rent a durable but low-functionality handset | and preventing third party devices from connecting directly to | the lines. | pstrateman wrote: | They monopolies were never broken up, just made local. | | It's extremely rare to have more than one choice for cable or | copper phone service in the US. | makomk wrote: | It looks like there's some more contemporary context here: | https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12817403-300-technolo... | | Basically, in order to take full advantage of this system every | house would need their own ONT to convert the fibre optic into | something useable. This would be very expensive with 1990s | tech, and internet access wasn't a selling point back then | (even the BBC didn't have a proper internet presence until like | 1994) so the way they hoped to make that money back was by | bundling in premium TV channels - leveraging their existing | telecoms monopoly into becoming a US-style cable TV provider | except over fibre. Like, I've found a paper from the BT | Research Laboratories about it and it has a lot of stuff about | "broadband signals", but what they mostly mean by that in the | short term is analogue TV (which is indeed broadband by the | 1990-era usage of the term). This was not popular with the | government, who'd prefer to break that monopoly instead due to | them doing such a poor job of basic things like actually | connecting people to to the telephone network in a timely | fashion. | | All the wider-scale rollouts I'm aware of used the cheaper | Street TPON option mentioned in the article, where the ONT is | in the street and shared between multiple customers, who only | get traditional copper POTS service from it - and I mean that's | literally all it can support. Telecom-grade audio at presumably | the usual 8-bits, 8ksps, u-law. No ADSL, no ISDN, no digital | data on the customer end of any kind, just POTS only with no | direct upgrade path to anything else. Some of these continued | operating and being a millstone around the neck of their | customers until well into the 21st century, in fact it's | possible some are still in use now. | sofixa wrote: | > I have always seen monopolies as harming consumers and more | competition as being beneficial, but this is an interesting | observation. | | They mostly do, and infrastructure tends to converge to natural | monopolies. The trick is to regulate the hell out of them. For | instance in France the former government owned telephony | monopoly was forced to provide access to competitors to their | physical network, at regulated prices. And to follow up on | that, today an ISP can create new lines to link a new city or | neighborhood, and they have exclusivity for a fixed period of | time - afterwards they're forced to provide regulated access to | their competitors. As a result, we have a healthy competition | with good prices (usually between 30-50 euros depending on | package, max speed, TV options) and good speeds ( multi-hundred | Mbit, up to 1Gbit is the norm in most places - there are even | villages with hundreds of inhabitants with fiber deployed | everywhere, and proud signs "Commune fibree" on entering them). | imtringued wrote: | Wow, time limited monopolies! How did they come up with that | idea! We should implement this for copyright and patents. Oh | wait, patents already work the way they should. It's | copyright that is broken... | MichaelIt wrote: | The article isn't just revisionist history, it is pure fantasy. | | Fiber technology was prohibitively expensive in the 70's and | was far from ready to be used in residential homes. You would | have to wait until the mid-90's for the "killer app" (the world | wide web). | tyrfing wrote: | If you're interested in thinking more about it, Peter Thiel's | _Zero to One_ is a very interesting book. It 's certainly not | necessarily true that a monopoly ends up providing value like | that, but with Google as an example, it's very unlikely they | would provide so much open source code if they were in a | vicious fight for survival. | | > [T]he history of progress is a history of better monopoly | businesses replacing incumbents. Monopolies drive progress | because the promise of years or even decades of monopoly | profits provides a powerful incentive to innovate. Then | monopolies can keep innovating because profits enable them to | make the long-term plans and finance the ambitious research | projects that firms locked in competition can't dream of. | | https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-... | nemothekid wrote: | It's not a good counter-argument because telecoms arguably | have a monopoly power in the US and were dragging their feet | in offering fiber up until Google announced they were | becoming an ISP. | tyrfing wrote: | > telecoms arguably have a monopoly power in the US and | were dragging their feet in offering fiber up until Google | announced they were becoming an ISP. | | One of those is extracting monopoly profits, and it's not | the telecoms. | smilespray wrote: | I am staunchly against book burning on principles, but I | suddenly find myself wondering whether Peter Thiel is | flammable. | | Jokes aside, I'm not going to take anything that man says on | face value -- even if I'm reading the article as I speak. | munk-a wrote: | Oh, monopolies definitely harm consumers - but even a wrong | clock can be right twice a day. | | The US still has a plethora of local cable monopolies and we | haven't seen incredible internet offerings come out of those. | whatshisface wrote: | A plethora of multiple local monopolies combines all of the | internal service (accounting, legal, compliance) duplication | and inefficient fixed-cost overheads of multi-seller markets | with all of the seller-biased non-equilibrium pricing of | giant monopolies. Somehow, we got the worst of all worlds. | quickthrower2 wrote: | I always thought the UK was pretty ahead in the early 2000s | because we dug up all the streets to install cable and got | reasonable speeds for the time that way. Virgin was like 10 quid | a month back then IIRC. And that was pretty much nation wide but | some odd places didn't get it. | giobox wrote: | This will _hugely_ vary based on where you were living at that | time - I worked for a UK ISP in the early to late 2000s and can | 't agree with this description of the UK as a whole. | | Virgin's coverage has never really been close to "nation wide" | either. Even today, Virgin Media's DOCIS network only reaches | about half the premises in the country. It was far less in the | early 2000s! Virgin also only acquired the Telewest cable | network in 2006 and didn't rebrand it Virgin Media till 2007. | legitster wrote: | The explanation provided is actually counter to one we are often | told: | | > But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided | that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband | was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and | service that no other telecom company could do. | | > In the US, a judge was appointed by Congress to break up AT&T. | And so AT&T became things like BellSouth and at that point, | political decisions were made that crippled the roll out of | optical fibre across the rest of the western world, because the | rest of the countries just followed like sheep. | | > This created a very stop-start roll-out which doesn't work with | fibre optic - it needs to be done en masse. You needed economy of | scale. You could not roll out fibre to the home for 1% of Europe | and make it economic, you had to go whole hog. | | It probably didn't help that the companies in question all | thought of the internet as a information medium (the next | television or radio!) and not like a grid (a la a utility). So it | wasn't clear that there is innately a natural monopoly. | makomk wrote: | For the most part, I don't think the companies in question were | really thinking about the internet at all in this era. Typical | intended services would be voice, analog cable TV and Videotex | in the short term, with the intention to upgrade to digital | cable and video on demand and eventually circuit-switched | broadband ISDN that would allow you to effectively call up | another computer and transfer data at relatively high speed. | Remember, these are telephone companies - they were strongly | biased towards thinking in telephone-centric metaphors and | coming up with designs based on how the telephone network | worked. There was a whole ecosystem of telecom-designed | networking like ATM that was effectively rendered obsolete by | the Internet and packet switching. (Even BT's internal systems | and phone switching mostly run over their own slightly oddball | version of IP-based networking these days.) | mrsuprawsm wrote: | Another one of the many modern problems in the dysfunctional UK | that can be traced back to Thatcher. | youngtaff wrote: | Surely they can be traced back to the mess of the 70's which | Thatcher was very much a reaction to | johndoe0815 wrote: | Kohl did the same in Germany by pushing copper cables instead of | fibre in the 1980s since the former minister for post and | telecommunication, Schwarz-Schilling, was the owner of a company | manufacturing copper cable. Typical example for corrupt | politicians of Kohl's CDU party. | | https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe... | (in German) | DoingIsLearning wrote: | > Typical example for corrupt politicians of Kohl's CDU party. | | Schroder is SPD and he seems to be shoulders deep in Nord | Stream controversy and Gazprom money. So it kind of looks like | a German political class issue rather than a CDU issue. | johndoe0815 wrote: | CDU/CSU politicians are at least caught more often than SPD- | related politicians. But Schroder and also Scholz certainly | also have some skeletons in the closet (and don't get me | started on the FDP or AfD...). | | There's another Wikipedia article listing known corruption | affairs: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Korruptionsa | ffaren_u... | coob wrote: | Scholz has also consistently lied about not blocking | getting heavy weapons to Ukraine. | WalterBright wrote: | All politicians are corrupt like that. Another reason why | socialism is inefficient and uncompetitive. | formerly_proven wrote: | The problem with old fiber is that active networks are even | more of a dead-end than copper. Active fiber networks leave you | with whatever tech you buried and put up on every corner; | upgrading is basically as expensive as laying new line. It | seems to me like in the 80s and 90s active networks were | favored (see e.g. OPAL) - which would be far more useless today | than copper, as copper's capabilities expanded hugely over time | as more sophisticated modulation techniques became possible. | radicaldreamer wrote: | Copper is still trash though compared to passive fiber... and | expensive to run. Loads of electricity and amps required to | use it and a lot of fine tuning and interference management | and maintenance. | | A ton of costly, endless work when you can bypass all of that | by laying some passive fiber... | quink wrote: | > upgrading is basically as expensive as laying new line | | That assertion is highly dependent on too many factors and | even recent developments to be of much use. | | That general assertion needs to be backed up with everything | around the soil type, the copper diameter, labour costs, | protocols and type of fibre, etc., etc. | | And if you're going down the route of having VDSL ISAMs in | the field anyway then you're certainly going to have the | infrastructure there already anyway to support GPON over | whatever fibre is in the ground anyway. | | And are you sure that by "copper's capabilities" you're not | actually referring to progressively closer deployment of | infrastructure to the customer to overcome copper's | limitations? Because the move from dial any number to the | local exchange to a node (FTTN) to now the curb (FTTC) | certainly seems to reflect that more adequately. | gopher_space wrote: | Are there more people available to work on one vs the | other, or would you be trained to handle both? | fweimer wrote: | There were some fairly large fiber rollouts in the late | 80s/early 90s (OPAL, Optische Anschlussleitung). No copper | meant it was impossible to deploy DSL, and available optical | networking technology wasn't cost-effective during the first | years of DSL rollout. Rumor has it that the old OPAL | infrastructure can be used for GPON today, but that became | available only much later. For many years, your best hope as an | OPAL customer was that the incumbent eventually deployed | copper. | | I'm not sure if OPAL deployment at a much larger scale would | have created a sufficiently large market for optical networking | equipment and bring down prices much earlier. Probably the | number of impacted OPAL customers would simply have been | larger. | | (The copper cable mentioned in the article is actually TV | broadband cable, and that had much less coverage than the | copper phone lines eventually repurposed for DSL.) | riedel wrote: | Actually the cited article rather explains that the move to | copper was also heavily motivated to support cable television | which allowed to stream more right leaning media to households. | In the end it is mostly about power not necessarily corruption. | guerrilla wrote: | It's funny how openly corrupt German political party leaders | always turn out to be, yet we still don't consider it to be a | corrupt country. | alex_young wrote: | That was 40 years ago. Do you think they are still as | corrupt? | guerrilla wrote: | Did you miss the last 40 years? Where's Gerhard Schroder | work now? | LargoLasskhyfv wrote: | Ahem. _Cum-Ex_ | johndoe0815 wrote: | Yes - and Covid even accelerated this by enabling shady | deals for the delivery of overpriced masks by CDU/CSU | politicians. There's even a Wikipedia article about this: | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maskenaffare | Matt3o12_ wrote: | Yea there are many examples of high level corruption in the | german government (and most western governments actually, | including the US). A recent example is the mask scandal | with CDU/CSU (same party) https://www.dw.com/en/german- | mask-scandal-unforgivable-viola... | | You will not find much local corruption though, which is | what most people think of when they hear corrupt countries. | Local corruption is paying of a cop, judge, that kind of | stuff. I'm sure it also happens in Germany, but that is | very very rare. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | My experience, having German family: Germans in general | are very much about propriety and doing things correctly | and are often very harsh if you step outside this line. | | So to be corrupt in Germany, and places like it, is to do | the "corrupt" thing "correctly" -- e.g. in some | structural fashion tied to political parties, long term | associations, business connections, etc. that have the | appearance of being practical, official, and "right." | | A friend of mine who came from Iran originally had a | comment like this about western countries corruption vs | "third world" or "second world" corruption: | | In Iran or etc. corruption is almost more democratic, | because it means as a regular layperson you can bribe | some local official to make something go your way. It's | not just, it's not fair, it's ugly, but it's "accessible" | if you have some spare cash. | | But in the west, corruption is for the super rich and the | connected at a much higher level. e.g. you can't bribe a | zoning official so you can build an addition or a shed, | but if you're powerful enough you can control a political | party and prevent it from investigating your company, | have it enact some preferential laws, or stop it from | some raising some tax. | guerrilla wrote: | Yeah, I tried to explain this to someone about Portugal | too... they didn't get it. If the system is completely | broken and going to kill you in a "non-corrupt" country, | there's nothing you can do about it as someone who's not | a megacapitalist. | johndoe0815 wrote: | Maybe a first step to discourage this would be to restrict | the time the chancellor or any minister can be in office to | two election periods (like the US president). Sixteen years | of Kohl and Merkel governments, respectively, paralyzed the | country and hindered progress especially in the digital | sector. | wongarsu wrote: | Because the US government isn't captured by corporate | interests? They rank significantly worse than Germany on | the Global Corruption Index [1] and on the Corruption | Perception Index [2]. In a global comparison both are | great, but relative to each other the US really isn't an | example Germany can look up to. | | The chance of a government staying in government for a long | time also means that governments have to think long-term | because they might still be in government when the | consequences come around. In the US system the optimal | strategy is to do things that look good in the short term | but backfire as soon as your term limit expires. That way | you look good, and the next president (who's with near | certainty from the opposition party) looks bad. | | I'd be more in favor of passing an age limit, but I'm well | aware that that has no chance of happening. | | 1: https://risk-indexes.com/global-corruption-index/ | | 2: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021 | guerrilla wrote: | Or just ban public officials from holding stock and from | taking on jobs at state clients... | hetspookjee wrote: | They'll find a way, of that you can be sure. I think | restricting the term is the only way possible to limit | corruption in that regard. | prirun wrote: | Lottery elections: put people in office like jury duty. | You don't want to be President? Too bad! You're | qualified, have a good background (whatever that is), | people have vouched for your character, so ... you're it | for 4 years! | | I'd trust my next door neighbor to be President more than | someone who actually _wants_ to be President. | moffkalast wrote: | It's still the same party in charge, it's not like much | would change in that case. But yes, every bit helps. | LargoLasskhyfv wrote: | Wasn? Bananen Republik Deutschland! | jjtheblunt wrote: | maybe because they get exposed, then fail re-election | imtringued wrote: | It's a corrupt country but its economy is big enough that it | can shoulder a parasite or a dozen. Developing countries and | eastern Europe does not have this luxury. | guerrilla wrote: | Hmm, that's plausible. I'd still like to see someone try to | measure that though. Interesting thought. | | I'm not sure Germany isn't experiencing negative effects | from this though. Like the Gazprom thing, for example, this | broadband thing, maybe even the nuclear thing? | lampenrad wrote: | If Germany is a "corrupt country", than what's the rest of | Europe?: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/koyyv5/eu | ropean_pub... | Barrin92 wrote: | Because corruption as an issue is overrated or wrongly | defined. South Korea and Japan are mentioned in the article | as exemplary countries when it comes to internet speed and | infrastructure but both have virtually no dividing line | between private conglomerates (Chaebol and Keiretsu | respectively) and public administration. The same is true in | Germany, but with few exceptions that kind of intersection | doesn't matter because governance is by and large _effective_ | , which beats clean. | | In fact this kind of conglomeration between the public and | private sector is why they get things done, compared to the | vetocratic nature of other countries. | pyuser583 wrote: | Both countries have reputations for terrible "big business | style" corruption. And really good infrastructure. | RicoElectrico wrote: | German corruption indirectly affects the stability of the | European Union, as they with France are de-facto most | important players now. In the "new EU" countries, whatever | Germany does wrong or hypocritical will surely be | weaponized by euro-skeptics. | foobarian wrote: | It's because they do even their corruption by the book, so it | seems legit. | cjbgkagh wrote: | Germans are really good at Public Relations (PR) but people | don't think they are, which helps them be good at PR. | lampenrad wrote: | That is not the case. Otherwise, with regards to the war in | Ukraine, Germany wouldn't get this singled out when it | comes to criticism. | | In fact, one of the biggest domestic criticisms of the | government right now is their terrible communication | strategy. | | English is the lingua franca and as such Anglo media has an | incredible amount of power in shaping opinions in the West. | | And frankly, the reporting, particularly from Anglo and | Eastern European media, has had a heavy anti-German bias | for weeks now. (Up from the usual moderate bias) | guerrilla wrote: | I don't think this contradicts their point... Others can | be more powerful, but most of the time those more | powerful aren't attacking them. The rest of the time | Germany's PR is good and working... | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _we still don 't consider it to be a corrupt country_ | | It's by and large not, and to the degree it is, it's open and | not insidious. The kind of corruption that kills economies is | the insidious type. (And the stealy variety.) | radicaldreamer wrote: | I disagree, VW/Mercedes emissions scandals and Wirecard | (particularly the behavior of BaFin, which was defending | wirecard and harassing journalists for years) point to | entrenched corruption. | | Nobody in government or industry has really been prosecuted | for either (some Wirecard folks are on the run). | ricardobayes wrote: | "Honk if Thatcher's dead" relevant: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUlj48Rvp1c | vermilingua wrote: | The problem with pissing on Thatcher's grave is that you | eventually run out of piss. | kazinator wrote: | > _Immediately after that decision by Thatcher's government, the | UK fell far behind in broadband speeds and, to this day, has | never properly recovered._ | | I'm not buying it. I mean, you can only blame what Thatcher did | in 1990 for so long. | | There was nothing magic about the year 1990 that you had to have | the fiber then, or else you irrecoverably missed the boat. | InCityDreams wrote: | I was on the dole during Thatcher. That fucking witch fucked up | so much, i would find it difficult to ever forgive her, but | more importantly (as in 'bigger than her') the people she | empowered, that empowered others to fleece a once-great | country, and dumb it down horribly. I'd never, ever, accuse her | of messing up broadband though. Jesus, that's a real | elastication of the truth. | blibble wrote: | the classic liberal in me (vs. modern "liberal") didn't like | her authoritarianism | | but she saved the country by smashing the trade unions that | were holding elected governments (both Labour and | Conservative) and the rest of the country to ransom | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week | | trade union domination over the government is now thankfully | a thing of the past | youngtaff wrote: | Having been on the dole I can sympathise (was quite a few | years after Thatcher though for me) | | I think the biggest problem with Thatcher is she recognised | the old industries were dead but didn't do enough to replace | them - Nissan Sunderland perhaps being one of her few | successes on this front | | It also easy to forget that the closure of the mines is one | of the reasons our CO2 emissions have gone down - mind the | demise of UK coal was as much Scargill's doing and Thatchers | jonatron wrote: | I've noticed FTTP is now available to people served by wooden | poles in my area. Metal poles or underground mean no FTTP. I | guess attaching a box to a metal pole is an insurmountable | engineering challenge in the UK. So some people have the choice | between VDSL, FTTP, Cable, and others have only VDSL, or 5G I | suppose. | tebbers wrote: | I have FTTP in London and that's how they're delivering it - | there is an optical box on the telephone pole and my fibre line | comes into my house literally alongside my telephone line. It | just terminates at a slightly different location in my flat. | odiroot wrote: | I don't really understand the wooden poles. I thought it's a | relict of the past but then again, I saw a new wooden pole | being erected a few weeks ago, it had the junction box on top, | I guess ready to provide the final legs to houses. | sgt101 wrote: | Metal poles? I've never seen a metal pole for phone lines. | blibble wrote: | I have Openreach FTTP and I live on a modern estate with | ducting | | before the installation date I watched the guy push the fibre | through the duct, popping out outside my external termination | box | | then on the day the guy laid the internal fibre and spliced | them together | Teandw wrote: | Attaching the box to a metal pole isn't the problem. There are | other problems such as H&S, expected demand (as the boxes have | limited amounts of ports) and pole capacity in general. Poles | can only have a certain amount of wire loading. | | Those are not always straight forward things to consider when | put all together and forward planning is also needed. | | This kind of goes into it: | https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/04/openreach-upda... | rogy wrote: | Yep i live on a managed estate full of old people who've lived | here since they were built, only get VDSL. Management comittee | wouldn't even let Virgin install cable, so going to have to | wait for them all to age out of the committee so we can get | somewhere ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-21 23:00 UTC)