Nearly all new homes built in England must include gigabit internet access

[Slappy McPhee]

I pay $90USD/mo for my ATT fiber symetrical 1000Mb plan before taxes I believe however do not have a data cap which is huge for me since a typical month of usage is 5-8TB combined dl/ul with some months hitting over 10TB. My wife is talking about moving to a neighborhood that is ComCast and I am shivering with dread.

 

[ddferrari]

I do a lot of commercial construction but I also see plans for large residential plans where they are building 100+ homes. If the developer can pay for water, sewage, gas and electric all to be run to and around these sites I would find it trivial for them to add highspeed internet into them. And, it's unfortunate, because I see many of these housing plans still without "high speed" internet. Or, something that I find really annoying when look at these plans is that 1 telecom will install internet for the entire neighborhood and setup some requirement like "you have to purchase X cable plan to receive internet speeds above 100/25. Which I think 100/25 is the minimum allowed to be sold, at least in my area.

However, we are getting to the point were gigabit is starting to be "slow", atleast for home network use. I was working on moving to 2.5gigabit but I might move straight to 10

Well I'll disagree that gigabit is slow in ANY scenario. But if I could could jump to 2.5 for a reasonable price I'd be all over it.

Of course, that would require a new modem, router, and NIC for my system. Not sure it's worth the +$500. 1 Gig seems pretty nice in general.

 

[yRaz]

Well I'll disagree that gigabit is slow in ANY scenario. But if I could could jump to 2.5 for a reasonable price I'd be all over it.

Of course, that would require a new modem, router, and NIC for my system. Not sure it's worth the +$500. 1 Gig seems pretty nice in general.

I have 9 systems connected to my NAS so I really would just want 10gig on my main computer and my NAS, I 1gig would be find for everything else but I definitely feel the 1 gig limits on my home network. If I'm backing up to or working from my NAS and one of the other systems tries to access something on it it really slows things down. I have a 16 port switch and it's all 1gig. It was great when I got it for $100 for what was almost 10 years ago at this point but I've grown out of it. I don't mind paying for something if I'm going to have it for YEARS.

2 10 gig ports and 8 2.5's would be my idle home network but for costs I'm likely only going to go 2X10gig and 8X1gig. Most of the built in ports on my other computers are 1gig anyway but they wont be forever. 2.5gig seems almost standard on any decent hardware these days so it'd be nice to have a switch I can "grow into" again.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I am paying
I don’t know about UK but I am paying ₹2800 ($28) per month for 1000Mbps up/down TataPlay Fiber here in Mumbai.

Fcuk me, that's insane and India isn't a tiny country, it's 1/3rd Australia's size. Our National Boradband Network NBN was hijacked by the scumbag right wing luddites with the primeminister once having said only pirates need more than 25Mb/s. They set us back 15 years and now the NBN is screwing us over by trying to make a huge profit on data that is virtually free.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

In larger cities & towns, perhaps, but, you do realize how spread out America is? England & most of Europe will fit inside the USA with room to spare.

I don't need a geography lesson, USA and Australia are very similar in area something we taught in elementary school.

 

[ddferrari]

I have 9 systems connected to my NAS so I really would just want 10gig on my main computer and my NAS, I 1gig would be find for everything else but I definitely feel the 1 gig limits on my home network. If I'm backing up to or working from my NAS and one of the other systems tries to access something on it it really slows things down. I have a 16 port switch and it's all 1gig. It was great when I got it for $100 for what was almost 10 years ago at this point but I've grown out of it. I don't mind paying for something if I'm going to have it for YEARS.

2 10 gig ports and 8 2.5's would be my idle home network but for costs I'm likely only going to go 2X10gig and 8X1gig. Most of the built in ports on my other computers are 1gig anyway but they wont be forever. 2.5gig seems almost standard on any decent hardware these days so it'd be nice to have a switch I can "grow into" again.

I stand corrected. I can see why 1gig may not be nearly enough for a NAS setup.

I guess I meant as an individual, personal user, 1gig seems like plenty. But again, if I could get to 2.5 reasonably without having to swap a bunch of components, it would be awesome.

Xfinity recently bumped up my bandwidth to 1200mbps no charge, but my modem, router and mobo are capped at 1000mbps and I cant see spending the extra $ to grab the additional 200mbps "freebie".

 

[yRaz]

I stand corrected. I can see why 1gig may not be nearly enough for a NAS setup.

I guess I meant as an individual, personal user, 1gig seems like plenty. But again, if I could get to 2.5 reasonably without having to swap a bunch of components, it would be awesome.

Xfinity recently bumped up my bandwidth to 1200mbps no charge, but my modem, router and mobo are capped at 1000mbps and I cant see spending the extra $ to grab the additional 200mbps "freebie".

using a NAS makes the limitations of of 1gig on a home network annoyingly apparent. 2.5 gig as standard is almost here so not a huge deal. Just something to keep in mind if you ever find yourself looking at network gear

 

[Pensiveclown]

We have nothing in america, I mean we sure can shoot the s**t outta anybody around the planet, but for actual things that help citizens we have squat.

As a US resident I'm having trouble following this article, possibly because situations are so different.

Here in the US, if you can't get high speed internet, it's usually because there is no service provider with a fat pipe running near your house. Creating a new building regulation saying a builder has to provide that connection would just mean there are large parts of the country that would become unbuildable. A home builder can not miraculously hook you up to a network when the closest physical connection to it may be dozens of miles away.

Conversely, if there is a fat pipe, you can probably get service even if say your older home has no wiring at all. Adding that wiring is typically included in your initial installation, which itself is often free as part of a promotion.

Anyway, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around a law that makes it a builder's responsibility to provide a high speed connection when I don't see how that can reasonably be done if there's no network to connect to.

It has to be done at some point. We can't just use the excuse "it's too difficult" and stick to overpriced, slow, outdated internet.

If you are a millionaire running a telecom company and watching starving people pay ridiculous prices for your slow internet. Then it's all fine. No worries in the world! Clearly, those poor people should simply get wealthy. How? Oh wait. That's right. They don't have any opportunities to pull themselves up the social ladder in life! No good education, no abilities to make investments (even just in yourself)

 

[Ben Myers]

As a US resident I'm having trouble following this article, possibly because situations are so different?

Here in the US, if you can't get high speed internet, it's usually because there is no service provider with a fat pipe running near your house. Creating a new building regulation saying a builder has to provide that connection would just mean there are large parts of the country that would become unbuildable. A home builder can not miraculously hook you up to a network when the closest physical connection to it may be dozens of miles away.

Conversely, if there is a fat pipe, you can probably get service even if say your older home has no wiring at all. Adding that wiring is typically included in your initial installation, which itself is often free as part of a promotion.

Anyway, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around a law that makes it a builder's responsibility to provide a high speed connection when I don't see how that can reasonably be done if there's no network to connect to.

I'll explain why building Ethernet into a house is a good idea.

Let's start with my house. When we got broadband internet over 20 years ago, I paid an electrician to run Ethernet cable to three upstairs rooms in my house. We got a deal, because my son, avid to have internet and with no decent wifi router available at the time, crawled around our unfinished attic to help run the wires. From each upstairs room, the cable ran up to the attic crawl space, across the attic to a central column where all the electrical wires ran. Thence, down the column to the basement, across the basement ceiling and up to my office where the cable modem was. Bingo, we had internet in four places for four people. That was an EASY job! I wish that I had had Ethernet run to the kitchen, the TV room, and the enclosed back porch. Even with 802.11ax wifi, wired Ethernet is faster and more reliable.

Try to add Ethernet to any house today, and the job would be more difficult, depending on the house construction.

The point of the UK law is, first, the government recognizes the importance of broadband service for its citizens in a wired and electronic economy, second, that wired Ethernet is way more reliable than wifi, and, third, adding Cat 6 cable to a house WHEN UNDER CONSTRUCTION is an almost trivial job. The incremental cost of running Ethernet during home construction would be a tiny fraction of the sticker price of the finished home. This is consumer-favorable legislation like we do not have any more in these here United States. Lobbyists for the home builders would crush a similar attempted law in this country, dumping dollars in the laps of the members of Congress, all of them, because the builders are clueless and do not want to change their ways. Federal and state legislatures are equally clueless for the most part.

 

[SirDigby]

Because if you knew anything about the UK you’d know that it is a TERRIBLE spot for solar. Also solar is *** expensive, new homes are already unaffordable.

TBF new homes in the UK have stupidly artificially inflated prices and are built to really poor quality. It's devs trying to make as much profit as possible, not the brick and mortar price being high.

 

[BMW2003]

How much does a Gb plan cost in UK. In Australia we have pathetically asymmetric 1000/50 plan for $149 per month and the 1000/400 is only for business' at $400+ per month. Most of us are only lowly 50/20 or 100/20 plans costing $80-100 per month.

Is this for fiber internet connections ?

 

[Ben Myers]

TBF new homes in the UK have stupidly artificially inflated prices and are built to really poor quality. It's devs trying to make as much profit as possible, not the brick and mortar price being high.

This is no different than the United States where real estate developers rule. Not only are prices high, but control is ceded by local authorities, and developers build what they want and where they want.

Silicon Valley is one extreme where, in some towns and cities, each block has a different type of development, office park, apartments, free standing houses, factories, strip malls all in close proximity to one another. When I lived in Arizona many years ago, developers would use construction equipment to make "roads" in the desert and erect street signs, selling undeveloped desert acreage to unwitting buyers. And that remains an Arizona tradition to this day.