How fast should broadband connections be in 2033?

Link here: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9445-how-fast-sh...

I say my own word: All home should be capped speed at 400/400 for next 10 years! That's more than enough!

We don't need more than that!

Certainly *you* don't, as you've told us many times before.

This is a non-story. The market will determine what speeds are in demand and what price points consumers will bear.

Equally: if you want it badly enough, and are prepared to pay a market price, you can get pretty much any service you like. Symmetric 10G/10G leased lines are available to almost every property in the UK today.

Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean it isn't useful for others.

My wife runs a small business which includes twitch streaming and I work from home. There are occasions where we both need to do large up/downloads (at the same time) and I assure you being on a gigabit (now Cityfibre finally connected us!) link makes that a lot less stressful!

I agree for most people that a lower package will probably suffice - that's why there are other options on the market but there are cases for the top end options, especially with the increase in home working.

I suspect we'll creep up in gb's connections purely on market competition, as some of the non-OR networks have already been putting in extra capacity as they have been building their networks. So they are going to want to use that in an attempt to overtake OR. But OR will respond.

I think it'll be between 1gb to 10gb.

I think we have to remember that at some point, as I've been saying for years on these forums, most tv broadcasting is going to be on fibre connections in the future. So the current network speeds and capacity will have to be enhanced for that.

For the average household 1gb is probably all they need, though I think there will be speed options well above that available to buy in 2033.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Link here: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9445-how-fast-sh...

I say my own word: All home should be capped speed at 400/400 for next 10 years! That's more than enough!

We don't need more than that!

I would be OK with 80/10, so maybe that should be the cap. 😜

I’ll take a mere terrabit/s connection thanks Max. Are you going to drag me off to the Gulag now 🤣

What would an arbitrary speed cap be designed to achieve?

To prevent people like Max being envious of their neighbours.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Link here: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9445-how-fast-sh...

I say my own word: All home should be capped speed at 400/400 for next 10 years! That's more than enough!

We don't need more than that!

400 what ?

bits per week? Apples per tonne? Terrabits per femto second?

In reply to a post by MHC:

bits per week? Apples per tonne? Terrabits per femto second?

I think some of my corporate connections are in that first unit, quite like the idea of bpw.... maybe only 8. The rest of the time I can sleep.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

All home should be capped speed at 400/400 for next 10 years! That's more than enough!

We don't need more than that!

Yes Mr Putin!!!

In reply to a post by candlerb:

To prevent people like Max being envious of their neighbours.

Nail on head. Co-incidentally (or not!) 400mb is not really too much higher than the maximum download speed on g.fast packages (I recall that g.fast is available at Max's property).

Why should they be capped? Up to people if they want to pay the money for a higher speed connection, capping speeds are not going to make any difference to you getting fibre, you will get it when Openreach thinks that they are going to make money by bringing it to you or an Alt net starts up where you are and openreach think they are going to miss out.

Speeds may get faster, 2Gb/s is the fastest around my place with Zzoomm, but I really don't think many people will get it unless they have a very big house and lots of people in it. while 8K video and above is here, I doubt we will see it on any streaming services for a long time,

Other half has 1Gb/s, but she is knocking that down by half, maybe more when her contract is up later this year, she only got it because she could, and I feel a lot of people may do the same.

In reply to a post by MHC:

400 what ?

bits per week? Apples per tonne? Terrabits per femto second?

1000 to 2000Mbps down and 1000 to 2000Mbps up for large businessess/school and university
400Mbps down and 400Mbps up are more than enough for a family home!
200Mbps down and 200Mbps up are more than enough for a single parent/lone parent
50Mbps down and 50Mbps up for social welfare benefits

Edited by adslmax (Thu 02-Feb-23 08:50:12)

To generalise on what each and ever home/business in the UK needs is foolish. Clearly I don't know your requirements just like you don't know mine.

When Openreach engineer iinstalling G.fast 330/50 for my property he asked me why you need fastest speed if it only just two adults in the property as he recommend me 80/20 FTTC will be fine these days. I ask him why does Openreach want to rolling out FTTP possible 2.5Gbps in future he replied nah that for businessess, not for home as Openreach know FTTP 80/20 to 330/50 are more than enough for every homes.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

When Openreach engineer iinstalling G.fast 330/50 for my property he asked me why you need fastest speed if it only just two adults in the property as he recommend me 80/20 FTTC will be fine these days. I ask him why does Openreach want to rolling out FTTP possible 2.5Gbps in future he replied nah that for businessess, not for home as Openreach know FTTP 80/20 to 330/50 are more than enough for every homes.

A man with a red flag walking in front of a motor car was more than fast enough for most people at one stage.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

When Openreach engineer iinstalling G.fast 330/50 for my property he asked me why you need fastest speed if it only just two adults in the property as he recommend me 80/20 FTTC will be fine these days.

If an Openreach engineer said that to me, they'd have been reported for trying to do my employer out of business! I won't repeat my previous post however there are only 2 people in my household and we kept hitting the limits of a so called 80/20 connection for over 3 years before gigabit became available....I use more bandwidth a day than some offices so generalisations like this just don't work.

One of my local altnets is offering 10GBps although they don't list the price on their website.

Somebody should tell JISC that no campus needs more than 2Gbps, they've been spending money for nothing

In reply to a post by jpm:

Somebody should tell JISC that no campus needs more than 2Gbps, they've been spending money for nothing

Yes, I think it is symptomatic of someone commenting on something they know nothing about. That 2Gbps is a factor of 10 to 100 out, certainly for data intensive research.

A terrible idea.

Not everyone's use case is necessarily the same, for starters. Furthermore some people may want to have a faster speed to potentially save time, as long as the route and/or server at the other end isn't congested and can cope with delivering that kind of speed at the time.

You can't just throw an arbitrary number as a limit based on whether a connection is being used by a family or a single person.

In terms of FTTP it’s the increase in reliability rather than speed that is the reason I upgraded. Noisy copper used to be the bane of my life.

I doubt that is true. We have 4 people in our house and the Openreach engineers that installed our FTTP were happy that we had gone for 900 Mb/s! Yes, we don't use that speed most of the time but it's convenient for certain situations.

In reply to a post by Dassa:

In reply to a post by jpm:

Somebody should tell JISC that no campus needs more than 2Gbps, they've been spending money for nothing

Yes, I think it is symptomatic of someone commenting on something they know nothing about. That 2Gbps is a factor of 10 to 100 out, certainly for data intensive research.

Exactly. The datacentre of the company I work for services upward of 25000 simultaneous remote connections.

I'm happy for your connection to be capped. I would object if my connection was.

I work from home and I currently have a 500/500Mbps connection. I often need to download large datasets - a few hundred GB each. A typical download now maxes my connection for an hour or so. Sizes are likely to get much larger over time.

When I had ADSL2+ one download would take more than two weeks! (and would be out of date by the time it had downloaded).

Most of the time the average traffic is just a few Mbps, but when you need bandwidth there is no substitute.

In reply to a post by sheephouse:

When I had ADSL2+ one download would take more than two weeks! (and would be out of date by the time it had downloaded).

Its interesting how things have changed, when I worked from home before I retired I had an extremely slow connection so I used both Citrix and RDP to my office desktop so I never had to download large amounts of data over the slow connection, It worked for me then but good you can now download large amounts of data to your device at home

In reply to a post by dect:

Its interesting how things have changed, when I worked from home before I retired I had an extremely slow connection so I used both Citrix and RDP to my office desktop so I never had to download large amounts of data over the slow connection, It worked for me then but good you can now download large amounts of data to your device at home

We used to do this, in the days when everyone had an office with desk and PC on it, and a handful of people had (expensive laptops) to take home, or used Citrix from a home PC.

Now in the 2020's the offices are all closed, everyone is mobile (laptop & phone & backpack) and there are no PCs, or Citrix system.

Pre-covid and pre-FTTP I sometimes visited a colleague's house to use his VM connection when I needed a large download.

Fast connections are not just about streaming a 4K film - with home working the time saving in downloading large files is important, even if most of the time the connection is hardly being used.

Of course, for anyone only posting to message boards a slow connection is just fine. That's why there needs to be a choice.

In reply to a post by sheephouse:

Fast connections are not just about streaming a 4K film - with home working the time saving in downloading large files is important, even if most of the time the connection is hardly being used.

Totally agree thats why I said its foolish for anyone to make statements about other people internet speed requirements. The bottom line for me is, if you're willing to pay the monthly cost who are others to say you shouldn't be allowed to have it. Sadly this is similar to the curtain twitchers who are jealous of what there neighbours have.

In reply to a post by sheephouse:

That's why there needs to be a choice.

A choice! not in Max's world, he wants to mandate just what you can have for no good reason that he has posted.

But, then moans when he can't get FTTP, then goes back to VDSL from G.fast!

In reply to a post by Grimers:

But, then moans when he can't get FTTP, then goes back to VDSL from G.fast!

Why, it’s almost as if he is talking out of his bottom

In reply to a post by simon194:

One of my local altnets is offering 10GBps although they don't list the price on their website.

i read somewhere that Zzoomm was doing that, but I can't see it on their site, I wonder if it was a misprint,

I had a email from Plusnet to confirm my broadband price will increase by £3.54 after March, so that will be £28.12 a month. so i need to wait and see what they can offer me. See what now broadband can offer closer to the time.

In reply to a post by spile:

In terms of FTTP it’s the increase in reliability rather than speed that is the reason I upgraded. Noisy copper used to be the bane of my life.

I must be lucky, which makes a change for me, the only problem I had with FTTC is when nothing would sync apart from a Huawei modem, even Openreach could not find what the problem was, so I just kept the modem in line. All works fine now, with any router/modem no idea how long the fault lasted .

I have the speed i expect because of how long I am from the cabinet

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

it’s almost as if he is talking out of his bottom

Sadly this board is having its fair share of it at the moment, two repeat offenders ruining lots of threads.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i read somewhere that Zzoomm was doing that, but I can't see it on their site, I wonder if it was a misprint,

Community Fibre (mostly London area) and CityFibre (wholesale operator) are both deploying XGPON already, but as others have posted you can run GPON and XGSPON on the same fibres in the street. Community Fibre has a 3Gbps offering (v.expensive).

Zzoomm are adopting XGSPON hardware, but doesn’t mean they are ready to offer faster speeds to customers, there is all the data centre and peering network links to increase which will be secondary to growing the homes-passed footprint.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/08/broadb...

Yes it is another long and pointless thread that achieves nothing apart from making me wonder why do I bother reading this rubbish.

Edited by Realalemadrid (Fri 03-Feb-23 22:40:35)

And don't forget to tell data centres that they will be capped witha 100Mb symettrical connection too.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

it’s almost as if he is talking out of his bottom

Sadly this board is having its fair share of it at the moment, two repeat offenders ruining lots of threads.

Groundhog Day was Wednesday but has felt like it most of January round here! 🤣

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Yes it is another long and pointless thread that achieves nothing apart from making me wonder why do I bother reading this rubbish.

No, i disagree. This thread are useful do we need faster broadband by 2033?

I stand with my previous capping speed. If openreach will do G.fast 160/160 - I take it!

Did you happen to catch your shadow on Wednesday Phil…err sorry Max? 😅

In reply to a post by adslmax:

No, i disagree. This thread are useful do we need faster broadband by 2033?

I stand with my previous capping speed. If openreach will do G.fast 160/160 - I take it!

Not sure about useful, but it is an interesting topic, well for some, sorry MAx, I don't agree with the capping, it doesn't make any sense and will benefit no one apart from maybe the service providers
G.fast is pretty unreliable, from what I have heard, in that you have to be next to the cabinet to get any decent speed. From where I am from the cabinet, it would be useless.
I know you don't have FTTP where you are at the moment, but would you not prefer that? Be cheaper for a start.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

some of us got our own mind and don't follow like sheep and do what we are told like school kids, some of also see what is happening in this world

Never understood how someone who seems so proud of above then feels the need to keep repeating the same old stuff about Zzoom and Openreach (and others things) over and over and over and over and over again in virtually ever active thread.

Just like them we have brains and they only need to be told once.

Why do you need 160/160?

Our family of 3 get on very well with 40/10.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Why do you need 160/160?

Our family of 3 get on very well with 40/10.

Plenty of families have to cope with that speed, and lower and larger families at that.
I was going to say do people really notice faster speeds in everyday use, and then thought that is a stupid thing to ask because I use a 1Gb/s connection sometimes, but the only thing I notice is that some web pages may download a fraction of a second faster. Very few devices would take advantage of it anyway, this is why she is going to knock the speed down by half when she can.
I would like a faster upload speed, certainly in the next weeks as i need to send some audio files up to a server so someone in the U.S.a can grab hold of them, but I may take the drive to the other half and use her connection.

I don't know that capping is the way forward but the topic I see time and time again is that the majority of the British public think that faster is always better.
This is something the ISPs are not going to dispute as it is in their interest to sell you the fastest connection but the vast majority of people could manage perfectly well with a decent router setup on a lower speed.
Throwing bandwidth at the issues does solves some of those but beyond a certain point, more bandwidth is really only useable for a very small minority of people and then maybe from a business* rather than consumer requirement otherwise it is a good option for multiple concurrent users at home.

*WFH is a business requirement not a residential one

The majority of people have no interest in getting involved with the in and outs of a router though so I don't expect to see much changing and if, like my daughter in Portsmouth they can get a 1gbit synchronous service for <£40/pm, why would they?

Edited by smouty (Sun 05-Feb-23 19:59:36)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I was going to say do people really notice faster speeds in everyday use, and then thought that is a stupid thing to ask because I use a 1Gb/s connection sometimes, but the only thing I notice is that some web pages may download a fraction of a second faster.

In the UK we have a cultural condition of "that is good enough" which as a society is holding us back. Quite well described in Olaf Swantee's book (the guy behind the Orange/T-mobile merger) just as he left due to the sale to BT.

Why does the UK consumer accept poor in-car coverage from mobile networks, accept poor home broadband especially uplink speed? For £10 to £20 a month? When our neighbours in continental europe are much more likely to go "whats the best I can get for what price?" and then make a sensible decision, perhaps paying £25 for something dramatically better.

Something bizarre about UK psychology

It starts a bit of a vicious cycle as well because Ofcom seem to be only concerned with retail competition and the ease of switching provider to pay as little as possible - they won't make interventions when e.g. Virgin Media run a congested area for several months and take any sort of enforcement action to improve service quality. They don't really regulate in areas other than commercial which is a shortcoming of the organisation.

In reply to a post by jpm:

They don't really regulate in areas other than commercial which is a shortcoming of the organisation.

Agreed, the VM service in my street fails every summer due to a rusted up 30+ year old cabinet. Despite the regular income and escalating support calls, VM do nothing. As soon as there is an alternative (altnet or OR) in the road they will lose a LOT of customers. Ofcom don't care.

That is the next stage in the Welsh government plan for roads. They have mandated 20MPH limits in all built up areas already from later this year to reduce accidents and encourage walking cycling.. (50mph on the motorways) but this hasn't got everyone out of their cars yet so the man with the red flag is coming!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In the UK we have a cultural condition of "that is good enough" which as a society is holding us back. Quite well described in Olaf Swantee's book (the guy behind the Orange/T-mobile merger) just as he left due to the sale to BT.

For some people, it may be good enough, I am not stopping anyone else having fibre or want fibre stopped. I don't think I know anyone who is, there are just some people like myself who is fine with what they have,

Why does the UK consumer accept poor in-car coverage from mobile networks, accept poor home broadband especially uplink speed? For £10 to £20 a month? When our neighbours in continental europe are much more likely to go "whats the best I can get for what price?" and then make a sensible decision, perhaps paying £25 for something dramatically better.

Something bizarre about UK psychology

I have no idea how poor mobile coverage is in cars as I don't have a car, there is a place on the road up to the other half house where all signals seem to vanish for a couple of minutes, including the radio which is very strange, I presume there is some sort of interference, or aliens

I would never pay £25 a month for mobile, done that years ago when I first had a mobile, no data because it was not available then, but I remember it was with Vodafone, I paid a line rental, even if there was no line, anyway, a line rental and then so much on top for usage on a PAYG service.
Now I pay around £7 a month, sometimes less for a sim only package from Smarty, 2GB of data, unlimited calls and text, it does me.

Signal loss is a different thing, but it can't be easy to cover every single bit of the country, maybe the mobile network companies can get together and share masts, that would work better, I don't know. I don't really follow the mobile network stuff that much as what I have works for me and I don't have anyone or companies saying what you have is old, we are going to change it and turn your old thing off.
I know 3G is being turned off on some networks, which is a shame as it will affect some people. There is a lad at work whose phone i think is 3G, so he will need a new phone, but thankfully they are not expensive, a Nokia 105 is around £35, but then again his phone can fall back to 2G anyway, which is going to stay for a while longer. So maybe he will not need a new phone.

I know someone who still use ADSL, it is cheap and does what they want, saying that FTTC is only about £4 a month a more, but if they want to stay on ADSL then that is up to them. Full fibre is around there as well now

Anyway, sometimes new is not always better, look at our digital TV system and our digital radio system both are awful and suppose to be better than the analogue service they have or are supposed to replace.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Anyway, sometimes new is not always better, look at our digital TV system and our digital radio system both are awful and suppose to be better than the analogue service they have or are supposed to replace.

I've figured you out Adrian!!

You know people are going to reply to this crazy comment which is what you want them to do, so you can then tell everyone how you won't pay for a TV licence, so I will save you the bother by telling everyone for you. No need to reply

Which is exactly what I am paying for my service from Community Fibre £25/m now, I was paying £35, but they dropped their pricing late last year, there are 16 maisonettes in our block but only 4 or 5 are connected up, I was the only one for the first year of service, some people just don't like/want to change

In reply to a post by dect:

I've figured you out Adrian!!

You know people are going to reply to this crazy comment which is what you want them to do, so you can then tell everyone how you won't pay for a TV licence, so I will save you the bother by telling everyone for you. No need to reply

LOL./

Oh come on the digital terrestrial TV service is awful, the channels change more times than some people change their socks and a lot of TV/set top boxes can't cope with it. HD on most of the channels are awful, last time I watched TV Channel 4 was ok. So many rubbish channels on Freeview where the space could have been used to get better picture quality on the main channels. The same with DAB, awful quality and unreliable. Lets squeeze in as much as we can and stuff the quality, seems to be the British way of doing things. Shame really as both services could have been great
Dab never go anywhere and now it will die a slow death because people will use their smart peakers, phones or other devices to listen to radio and with better quality

In reply to a post by The_Voyager:

Which is exactly what I am paying for my service from Community Fibre £25/m now, I was paying £35, but they dropped their pricing late last year, there are 16 maisonettes in our block but only 4 or 5 are connected up, I was the only one for the first year of service, some people just don't like/want to change

Some people are happy with what they have. I noticed a couple more down our road have connected to fibre, one openreach and one Zzoomm, out of 59 houses, 5 as far as I can see have gone to Fibre, but then it is early days i suppose.

In reply to a post by The_Voyager:

Which is exactly what I am paying for my service from Community Fibre £25/m now, I was paying £35, but they dropped their pricing late last year, there are 16 maisonettes in our block but only 4 or 5 are connected up, I was the only one for the first year of service, some people just don't like/want to change.

I can't talk, I'm a typical early adopter, as in the .sig, I was paying £40/month for 512k on a cable trial back in 1999 before BT's ADSL service was available to most. Many of my friends said "you don't need that, unmetered dial up is good enough" Yet I'm now on 200 Mbps for £50 and haven't upgraded to 1Gbps for £62.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Anyway, sometimes new is not always better, look at our digital TV system and our digital radio system both are awful and suppose to be better than the analogue service they have or are supposed to replace.

I've figured you out Adrian!!

You know people are going to reply to this crazy comment which is what you want them to do, so you can then tell everyone how you won't pay for a TV licence, so I will save you the bother by telling everyone for you. No need to reply

I'll have to agree regarding digital radio.

DAB has turned out to be a massive backward step with the large number of stations that have switched from stereo to mono broadcasting in recent years and reduced bitrates making the sound quality worse than FM.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Oh come on the digital terrestrial TV service is awful,

Maybe thats your experience but its certainly not mine, get a good strong signal from 3 different transmitters. Use DAB in the car with no issue. Regarding the amount of channels thats call "choice" doesn't mean you or I have to watch them but someone out there must be so good for them.

Going back to broadband you say you don't need a faster service then admit you pop to your girlfriends to use her 1Gb service when your Plusnet isn't good enough, you say you don't need a car but she has a very nice one and I'm assuming you don't refuse to ride in it. I'm also assuming you don't refuse to watch her TV either even though you won't pay for your own TV licence.

Above reminds me of when I got my first job, a guy called Joe who every Monday use to borrow £1 off another guy called Les and on the Friday after getting paid he use to pay it back and then on the following Monday the cycle would start again. Interesting how some people live.

In reply to a post by simon194:

DAB has turned out to be a massive backward step with the large number of stations that have switched from stereo to mono broadcasting in recent years and reduced bitrates making the sound quality worse than FM.

I hadn't noticed, I'll give FM another go in the car.

In reply to a post by simon194:

DAB has turned out to be a massive backward step with the large number of stations that have switched from stereo to mono broadcasting in recent years and reduced bitrates making the sound quality worse than FM.

Ofcom gave FM stations a dramatic discount on their FM licence cost for each DAB station they ran. So we've ended up with both corporations (Bauer & Global) running many more DAB stations than makes sense. And then Ofcom wouldn't permit DAB+ broadcasting until there was an installed base of original DAB, which I don't understand.

Some other European countries have given up digital radio after experiments with AM technologies such as Digital Radio Mondiale, and DAB elsewhere.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by The_Voyager:

Which is exactly what I am paying for my service from Community Fibre £25/m now, I was paying £35, but they dropped their pricing late last year, there are 16 maisonettes in our block but only 4 or 5 are connected up, I was the only one for the first year of service, some people just don't like/want to change

Some people are happy with what they have. I noticed a couple more down our road have connected to fibre, one openreach and one Zzoomm, out of 59 houses, 5 as far as I can see have gone to Fibre, but then it is early days i suppose.

VDSL is not good where I live, but it's taken years for some to change to FTTP, the only people who where informed that it was available where BT customers. BDUK who paid for the Fibre didn't even know it was installed until I told them, and even then they didn't know they had paid for it!

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Maybe thats your experience but its certainly not mine, get a good strong signal from 3 different transmitters. Use DAB in the car with no issue. Regarding the amount of channels thats call "choice" doesn't mean you or I have to watch them but someone out there must be so good for them.

Strong signal means nothing, you can still strong signal if you live virtually next to the transmitter, but if they are compressed so much you lose quality and that is the problem with DAB, everything is compressed so much and the same with Freeview. Choice is fine if you don't lose quality because of it

Going back to broadband you say you don't need a faster service then admit you pop to your girlfriends to use her 1Gb service when your Plusnet isn't good enough, you say you don't need a car but she has a very nice one and I'm assuming you don't refuse to ride in it. I'm also assuming you don't refuse to watch her TV either even though you won't pay for your own TV licence.

I go there to see her not to use her broadband, while I am there I use her broadband. She picks me up as it is a ten-mile journey to her place, while I could cycle there, I think she would be pretty annoyed if I did. As for a nice car, depends on what you call nice, she has a Land Rover Discovery, which she needs for work, but she has been looking at a smaller car for normal use.

As for TV, I hate to disappoint you, but she don't watch normal T.V either, again, no licence, no TV either, but she does have a proijector

Above reminds me of when I got my first job, a guy called Joe who every Monday use to borrow £1 off another guy called Les and on the Friday after getting paid he use to pay it back and then on the following Monday the cycle would start again. Interesting how some people live.

People can live how they want, I don't really care as long as it don't affect me.

In reply to a post by simon194:

I'll have to agree regarding digital radio.

DAB has turned out to be a massive backward step with the large number of stations that have switched from stereo to mono broadcasting in recent years and reduced bitrates making the sound quality worse than FM.

Other half have DAB in her car, lucky to get signal most of the time, FM is far better, the problem with a lot of stations on FM is the compression, I mean audio compression and not digital. Radio 1 and some local stations to start with.
But stations that don't use so much compression are far better on FM than on DAB, Classic FM for a start is awful on DAB, far better on FM and that is on a small protable radio I have here

I have no problem with quality on Dab+, it is at least 128k and 140-192k on some of the BBC channels which are the only ones I can receive but the signal is just terrible as soon as I start moving. Like most I can tether my phone and stream or even better play FLAC from the either of the two uSD cards or USB.

Digital TV can also be stunning but again it is mainly the BBC streaming at the best quality 4k HDR.
Netflix 4k streams are pretty bad at a max of 25mbit.

There's only 1 DAB+ mux available where I am and there are a few stations (Bauer ones mainly) still using MP3 rather than AAC which was supposed to be one of the benefits of DAB+. Bauer's argument was that anyone with a non-DAB+ receiver wouldn't be able to listen to the stations but I'm not sure there are not that many old DAB receivers in use these days.

I use internet radio at home because of the higher quality than DAB and since changing my mobile last year which came with a stupidly large data plan, I stream radio and Amazon Music in the car now.

In reply to a post by smouty:

I have no problem with quality on Dab+, it is at least 128k and 140-192k on some of the BBC channels which are the only ones I can receive but the signal is just terrible as soon as I start moving. Like most I can tether my phone and stream or even better play FLAC from the either of the two uSD cards or USB.

Digital TV can also be stunning but again it is mainly the BBC streaming at the best quality 4k HDR.
Netflix 4k streams are pretty bad at a max of 25mbit.

Fair enough, I notice the difference from Dab and Dab+ to FM even on my small radio I have by the bed, the difference is loud and clear on something better.,
Classic FM on FM is pretty good, awful on Dab.

As for the TV, I have not watched it really for over 5 years, apart from dribs and drabs at other peoples houses, mainly next door when I pop in there. But i doubt much have changed.

I am surprised how many people now don't bother with linier TV and watch everything online, the more people watch online the faster we need broadband, but only to a certain extent.

See how I got back onto the subject?

In reply to a post by dect:

Above reminds me of when I got my first job, a guy called Joe who every Monday use to borrow £1 off another guy called Les and on the Friday after getting paid he use to pay it back and then on the following Monday the cycle would start again. Interesting how some people live.

Isn't that exactly what the government does when their bonds become due? Therefore, we all live that way

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Link here: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9445-how-fast-sh...

I say my own word: All home should be capped speed at 400/400 for next 10 years! That's more than enough!

We don't need more than that!

I think everyone should be limited to upload speeds of 400 - that's 400 kbps - until we can get faster than that!