Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it even existed

Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by odiroot on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:11PM (#31115247)

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.

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by martinald on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:20PM (#31115331)

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 £20-60/month depending on operator. Speeds are generally very good.

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by waxyalan on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:54PM (#31115663)

Hull doesn't use Openreach all the cabinets are private KCOM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCOM_Group

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by martinald on Thursday April 21, 2022 @06:16PM (#31115847)

Ok, fine apart from Hull then.

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by some-human on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:44PM (#31115558)

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.

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by fmajid on Thursday April 21, 2022 @08:03PM (#31116689)

There are others. 6 months ago a small ISP called 4th Utility (https://the4thutility.co.uk/) wired my building. I think it’s GPON, their max offering is 300 Mbps symmetrical, which is a whole lot better than OpenReach’s lousy “super fast fibre” that painfully did 40 down and 8 up despite promising 72 down.

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by martinald on Thursday April 21, 2022 @06:17PM (#31115861)

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).

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by odiroot on Thursday April 21, 2022 @06:25PM (#31115922)

Bingo! I didn't want to name them, to give them free publicity.

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Re:Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it ev... by martinald on Friday April 22, 2022 @05:33AM (#31119733)

I'd be very surprised they are laying copper though. Nearly all of their network expansion has been FTTH.

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