question for my UK friends: broadband in the UK

[winterbadger]

I got into a conversation about broadband with a colleague from the UK who said, in part:

"The USA, however, is frequently held up as an example of a 'cable country', and from what I've read, much of it is carried on telephone poles. Unfortunately, in the UK, the cables have to go
underground, so unsurprisingly, the UK, and indeed Europe in general, is a bit behind on this. Most people in the UK consider themselves lucky if they can get broadband at all - it's only in the last few years that most of the UK has received it. Even so, there's still only about 97% coverage, and even with this, figures from the EU last year showed that less than a quarter of UK households actually *have* broadband."

Is this correct? It seems pretty grim.

Why do all cables have to be buried?

Comments

[principia.livejournal.com]

Probably for the same reason the cables in Reston all have to be buried? For the preservation of appearance? (Not to mention a heck of a lot fewer outages in inclement weather.)

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia disagrees with the EU - More than half of UK homes had broadband in 2007, it says, citing a report about a report from Ofcom (the regulator).

[winterbadger]

Good; that sounded pretty appalling. I mean, I remember what a laughingstock British Telecom (as it then was) was when I last lived in the UK (it had just been privatised, and the effect had been pretty disastrous), but I figured things had to have improved in the telecom system at least a little since then.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Yes, well there's at least more opportunity to avoid British Telecom now! Just remember the golden rule, Never Trust British Telecom (not to screw it up).

Actually when a friend of mine moved to the US in the late eighties she was full of tales of how much worse the American phone system was than what she was used to. Long time ago now though I suppose. I'm pretty sure the UK is one of the more broadbanded countries though.

[kevinrtaylor.livejournal.com]

Someone is misinformed.
In the UK, except in rural areas, most local power cables are buried (for safety reasons I guess), but local telephone cables are mostly carried on poles. Most people can get broadband of some description, and those living close to digital exchanges (most of them now) can get up to 16Mb/s. I'm a little further from my exchange and can only get 8Mb/s. (unless I switch to Virgin, which is carried on fibre-optic.)
How long ago was your colleague last in the UK?

[winterbadger]

My colleague lives in the UK and claims to be a techie (which, in a group of [middle-aged to elderly, largely technophobic] editors is not a big stretch).

I'm debating between asking if you would mind if I reposted your comment to the list (attributed however you would prefer) and just letting sleeping (or in this case, I think, yapping) dogs lie... :-)

[silme.livejournal.com]

From my fibre optics engineer husband, the cable condition really depend on the individual area. However, he states that most people in this country outside of larger towns and cities get their broadband from their regular telephone line. That's how we get it.

We don't have cable TV here because the New Forest Council doesn't want to dig up the road to lay it. Our telephone line does come in underground. In towns that are cabled, broadband can come as part of your cable TV. If you get your broadband from your telephone line, the quality and speed can depend on your distance from the exchange.

As he says, broadband is a general term. Different people may mean different things by it. Exactly what does your colleague by it? (Said husband is a techie. :)

In the New Forest, as we don't have cable, it used to be if you wanted more channels than 1-4 (we don't get 5 well here -- long story), you had to go with digital TV. We have Sky. We could get our broadband through Sky as well, but it's basically just switching suppliers -- it would still be ASDL on the end of a telephone line. Our comes from Demon, though, on a BT line.

Now with Freeview boxes, it's easier for people who don't want Sky/can't afford it, to obtain additional TV channels.

I'd actually read that the UK was ahead of the US nowadays in terms of rural area internet coverage. We used to be behind, but we've caught up and have jumped ahead. I'll see if I can find the stats.

Here's one. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/jun/14/internetphonesbroadband.digitalmedia
This Guardian article has the US with just under 53% of households with broadband and the UK with 55.5%. Tell him that. ;)

[winterbadger]

It's beginning to sound to me as if the difference is the type of BB available and not the extent at all. At least on the US East Coast, there was a massive effort within the last ten years or so to lay fibre-optic cable *everywhere*, and that is finally beginning to get hooked up to a lot of houses. But it's mostly replacing cable (though there are some places where people still have phone-line DSL, and ever a few like my mother who still only have dial-up 56k modem service). When we had DirecTV satellite, we could have gotten their Internet service too, but like Sky, it would just have come through telephone line; its only "satelliteness" was who collected the fees...

Gosh, the mention of 'distance from the exchange' takes me back; before the cable companies started selling Internet service, it was almost impossible for me to get DSL service, as the neighborhood I used to live in had been wired very badly, and the loop distance to the nearest telco office was about twice the physical distance, just on the edge of what would function. I had 2-3 DSL companies come out and tell me they couldn't get me service before I found one (IIRC) that somehow managed to get into one of the neighborhood boxes and perform some unauthorised rewiring so as to get the DSL signal to come through...

What I love even more than the stats from that article are the corrections at the end. Dear old Grauniad at work...

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

"Cable" does generally go underground, though I'm not sure why. There was a lot of digging going on when they cabled our area. We now get TV, phone, and broadband through the same cable: was NTL, now Virgin.

But as others say, "broadband" can also go via the ancient copper overhead phone lines. I remember trying to get a decent signal through them back when I had dial-up, and I have no intention of trying again.