In reply to a post by Bladesman:

Just seems unfair that certain people seem stuck due to circumstance outside their control - no other service industry would get away with it.

Very few service industries are expected to deliver to everyone even if the costs are astronomical. Gas supplies don't get installed just because people want them - people have to pay for them (a colleague was quoted £18K to get gas to her house when a main runs to the estate just behind them).

In reply to a post by simon194:

Where my sister used to live had no mains gas and a septic tank in the back garden. My parents don't have mains gas either, they live in the only road in their village that doesn't have gas.

I grew up without gas or sewage at my parents house. The farmer that owned it did pay for gas to be run down to us in the 90's and I believe it cost a fair few pennies. It still has a septic tank but they moved out a couple of years ago so no longer matters to us. Emptying septic tanks costs a small fortune - much more than people pay for mains sewage.

The house still doesn't have FTTC (it is enabled but the speeds are no better than ADSL1 because the line is so long and travels for a few miles over poles).

The roads are narrow and generally poor (get narrower each year) and are used quite heavily by tractors and lorries who use it as a cut through between some villages. Nearest shop is 2 miles away. Nearest bus stop is about the same distance.

All this in a wealthy part of the south coast. They were quite glad that after living there for over 40 years they managed to get out and into "civilisation".

Just seems unfair that certain people seem stuck due to circumstance outside their control

Outside their control ??? Were you forced to live at that address ???

Friends of mine have no mains gas - heating is oil fired. No mains sewer connection - so a septic tank. Electricity - supplied overhead and subject to weather conditions. Mobile phone coverage - patchy and depending on where in the house or garden they are the operator varies. ADSL speeds of under 1Mbps and no chance of FTTC.

And they are just outside Maidenhead in Berkshire. To provide a full set of services to them and their neighbours would cost an absolute fortune.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Just seems unfair that certain people seem stuck due to circumstance outside their control

Outside their control ??? Were you forced to live at that address ???

Sometimes moving isn't a reasonable option. Many people have lived at an address for decades - before these technologies came along. My parents couldn't have easily moved as they were in a tied farm cottage (rented) and couldn't afford the other places on offer in the area and couldn't move too far because of work. Circumstances can mean you are stuck where you are - but people have to accept the realities of the difficulty in delivering services to some locations (whether rural or urban).

In reply to a post by MHC:

Friends of mine have no mains gas - heating is oil fired. No mains sewer connection - so a septic tank. Electricity - supplied overhead and subject to weather conditions. Mobile phone coverage - patchy and depending on where in the house or garden they are the operator varies. ADSL speeds of under 1Mbps and no chance of FTTC.

And they are just outside Maidenhead in Berkshire. To provide a full set of services to them and their neighbours would cost an absolute fortune.

Your friends are just like many in the UK. Until last year I had lived in such a property for 20 years, quite happily. I added a small generator for when the power went down so that when it did my oil fired heating stayed on, as did the lights. Oil heating is currently cheaper than it has been for many many years and a properly maintained septic tank is often no more expensive than mains drainage

There was one difference. With years of persuation BT gradually improved the 5km of overhead line so that what started as 28kbps dial up was running as 5Mbps ADSL by the time we left. And this is the one area where it would not cost an absolute fortune to provide a reasonable broadband service to every property. The government needs to ensure that where adequate broadband will not be supplied the industry should provide subsidised satellite access. I bet that would suddenly ensure that provision to difficult properties became, well, a little more easy!

Why should there be subsidised satellite access? The other industries don't have to provide "subsidised services" ... If you want gas - you pay, if you want mains drainage, you pay. Yes, a well maintained septic tank can be inexpensive, however they can need cleaning/emptying and in my friends' case potentially renewing in the next few years which is NOT cheap.

I live in London, however do spend time at a second location up in Scotland - no gas, even though 40 miles from Aberdeen! And oil is relatively expensive there. We do however have a full 80Mbps FTTC available, recently BT installed cabinets and rerouted EO lines which form around 95% of the lines.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Gas supplies don't get installed just because people want them - people have to pay for them (a colleague was quoted £18K to get gas to her house when a main runs to the estate just behind them).

The story I was told when I moved in (17 years ago) was that if each household in the village coughed up £1,000 we could have mains gas. There is mains gas on some new estates that have been built. I'm reasonably happy with LPG, although it's at least twice the cost (so my £1,000 would have been well worth it!)

Edited by kasg (Wed 09-Sep-15 11:29:22)

Circumstances can mean you are stuck where you are - but people have to accept the realities of the difficulty in delivering services to some locations (whether rural or urban).

I agree.

OK, thanks. I was under the impression that VDSL2 used not only the ADSL2 frequencies but higher ones also, the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-bit-rate_dig... is a bit ambigous. It claims that VDSL2 performance drops to ADSL2+ at 1.6km but I guess a lot depends on the condition of the line.