Re: "Our broadband? About 6 or 7Mbps down, 1Mbps up "
You just said that ADSL lines are fine and you don't even need VDSL. And why did you need a 4G backuip if your consumption was so low?
I knew it was risky, arguing with LDS, twisting my words as usual :-)
As I've re-iterated above, my point is not that FTTP should not be done but that we should recognise that it is often difficult to do and expensive and that because of acknowledged problems with ADSL, simply repairing or upgrading existing systems - to avoid problems such as latency, dropped packets and the like - would make a huge difference much sooner to many people who are struggling. Get the basics sorted out first, deal with the upgrades as funds allow. If it's Aluminium cable, or the Copper is so rotted that it needs replacing, then definitely replace with fibre (and there's a "no new Copper" mandate coming in the UK anyway), but if it's just a few connections to renew because they're corroded, or a length of overhead cable to replace because it's sun-damaged, fix the blasted cable rather than waiting three years for a fibre roll-out that might not actually happen!
As for:
Those who have low ADSL speeds are also those at the end of long lines and will get low VDSL speeds as well
Well, that's not necessarily the case, is it? Other than people who are fed directly from the exchange - which in the UK is rare except in some cities - there is always a cabinet much closer to the premises, and this is what VDSL is designed to take advantage of. For example, while our exchange is about 3 miles away in a straight line and significantly further by telephone conduit, the cabinet - where VDSL is generated - is a couple of hundred yards away. Our ADSL2+ (generated at the exchange) tops out at about 8M/1M (it's currently showing 8,192kbps / 732kbps, throughput likely slightly lower), while at work and at a relative's house, both much closer to their respective exchanges, near identical modems reach between 18Mbit/s and 20Mbit/s down. I have been estimated by a couple of those online checkers that minimum guaranteed VDSL speeds should be 38Mbps (lower tier) and 63Mbps. 38Mbps is the maximum technically possible at the low tier, and 63Mbps is not far off the maximum possible either.
At some point I will make the switch. I might have done it during the first lockdown except that Openreach had a moratorium on new installations for a couple of months which forced me to work with the existing setup, only to find it coped remarkably well.
Why the 4G stick? Well, even before lockdown I realised that we were becoming more and more reliant on the internet and as we have had over the years cases where diggers had gone through cables, or underground DPs had been flooded or pole-mounted DPs had corroded away, it seemed like a good investment for £5 a month. The router was set up to failover at that time, but during lockdown I put it on load-balancing because I was worried about the bandwidth we would need. This did cause a few problems with my mail server (the MX record only points to the wired connection which works for incoming mail but the 4G connection doesn't allow outgoing port 25, 587 or indeed most other non-web ports) but after a few months it also proved that 7M/1M was mostly perfectly fine for normal "working at home" tasks, proved by how rarely the 4G stick was used. Compiling VM images isn't "normal" for most workers in the UK!
Yes, at some point I will upgrade. I will definitely do it when FTTP arrives (because I won't have a choice) but I might do it before if we start streaming 4k, which really wouldn't cope on an 8Mbit/s link. How likely is 4k streaming? Not very. We don't subscribe to any streaming services, and the amount of 4k content on iPlayer is rather low at the moment :-) What do I find frustrating at 7M-ish? Mostly downloading OpenSuse updates if I'm honest, but if I start it before tea, they're ready to install afterwards, or if that's not convenient I can leave the thing sipping binary digits overnight.
As always, and as I mentioned above, unless there is some kind of mandate - a legal requirement - for companies to reach near "universal coverage" (c.f. the Universal Service Obligation of the UK Royal Mail and various other similar entities), they will simply concentrate efforts on the maximum Return on Investment, which rarely - if ever - covers rural areas.
M.
P.S. No. I have never owned a network hub, only ever owned one 100Mbit switch (unless you count the ones on the backs of my first few ADSL modems) and felt really sorry for a close friend who, back in the 1990s, as his family was expanding and needed more, and more-connected computers, all he could afford to buy was a second-hand 10Mbit/s hub. IIRC I'd just spent £20 on a 100Mbit/s switch and his second-hand hub cost him £12, but in those days £8 was a couple of days' worth of food for his family. I helped him out in other ways, but even I couldn't have gifted him a £20 switch back then.
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