A quick question for you.

If someone came along and said you can have 80/20 for £40 a month but you can also have the option of 200/20 for £100 a month which would you go with? You've said you would happily pay over £100 a month for a decent connection but if another option was available for less would you still pay the higher amount?

Many of the reasons you state for higher speeds have been on the horizon or available for a while. However, the vast majority still go for the cheapest they can get (and for many the factor for paying more is support rather than speed).

4K for most people I know is irrelevant - they don't buy 4K players, they don't by 4K blu-rays and they don't pay extra for 4K streaming services. Most, if they have a 4K TV, only have 4K TVs because that is becoming the default for an internet connected TV.

I deal with a lot of different people and whilst some are tech natives that embrace 4K and all that most just don't care. Many of them don't go out of the way to select an HD TV channel over SD.

It is possible that these things will become more mainstream in future but people currently, in my general experience, don't want to pay more for it.

Also, the older generation will not be "tech savvy". Most people of any age are not "tech savvy". They may know how to use the Internet but they still don't understand it and most still have no idea why 1Gb is better than 40Mb and until someone can give them a driving reason to upgrade they just won't.

Interesting discussion on subjects I have often wondered about. I have the impression that some enthusiasts on this fascinating and helpful forum want high speeds for the sake of having them, rather like the amateur radio fans of my younger days. Our ADSL2 at 13Mb does all we want for £28 a month, including unlimited phone calls and occasional catch-ups via iPlayer. I appreciate that some require greater speed though I can't understand why anyone wants to download films etc for hours on end. My nephew proudly shows me some 90 hours of recordings on a hard drive but then admits that he hasn't time to watch it!

If I understand correctly BT/Openreach is also considering widespread FTTP which raises the question of where all these ducts are going to be placed. Virgin Media has recently cut our footways to ribbons to install fibre to every house in the town, but nobody in our community group wants it, most being happy on VDSL at 20/30Mb and around £35/£40 per month. I was amazed to see that the Virgin cabling is only 300mm/one foot down and even that produced problems with other services including my own water supply which was severed. Yes, yes, water pipes are supposed to be 600mm down, like the gas pipes and other utilities, but sometimes they aren't ...

If there is existing Openreach duct that is used for FTTP, or overhead delivery if lines arrive via poles today.

NOTE: On the FTTP roll-out so far it is going to
a) New build homes
b) Areas where gap funding is paying to ensure superfast option
c) Commercial areas i.e. generally city centres where Exchange Only lines exist i.e. no VDSL2
d) Business estates

Going to areas with existing reasonable VDSL2 speeds is a much longer way down the list, so I'd not be expecting them to come to you with the 3 million forecast for end of 2020

I would go for the 200/20 for £100, but I'd pay even more for say 80/80 - the upload is at least as important as the download for me. But I also want low latency, static IP (IPv4 minimum, preferably IPv6 too) although I could use AAISP's L2TP if necessary, no ports blocked, configurable reverse DNS, and allowance >200GB/month.
Oh, and I said I currently pay ~£100 and would pay more for a better solution, but not that I'm happy
paying that much

Edited by sheephouse (Fri 11-May-18 17:31:02)

The argument you are making is what BT OR was making a few years ago. Saying why do people need faster speeds. We'd all still be on ADSL2+ (and it took BTOR around 8 years after it had come out to implement it on their exchange equipment).

I think the price issue is more down to market manipulation rather than a true product value. It's well known that prices are too low. I think part of that is ofcoms fault and part of it is because most of us don't get what we pay for on the copper network.

In the 90s I was paying around £300 to £500 per 3 months in the dialup days. I'm sure all the 'oldies' lol remember the days of being a kid and running up your parents phone bill.

If I'm prepared to pay double per month for a full fibre connection, and if that is expanded across the country then we'd only need half the amount of internet users online in UK to equal out the current system.

Willingness to pay double what you do now will be music to the ears of Vodafone

But given the reluctance of so many to upgrade from ADSL2+ to cable or VDSL2 where available, and that even in buildings with a choice of ADSL2+ or Hyperoptic its still a long way from everyone upgrading the willingness of some to pay more does not seem to be a standard thing.

Very true. I pay for 80/20 Fibre unlimited and that currently does me but I keep on finding that things are using more and more. Yesterday, I downloaded a Windows update, 925mb if I remember right. Took about 3 mins or so. On the old ADSL, I'd have been waiting hours. And we have 3 boxes that will have that update.

Once I used to think 10Gb a month was ample. Within the first month of us going over to fibre we were nudging 200Gb. We might go up and down slightly but that has become a norm for us and we haven't even started downloading 4K stuff yet. I don't ever download films, just stream what we want to watch, no buffering etc. We also make loads of free video calls to the other side of the world, brilliant. Makes the landline a bit of a dinosaur. Never use it.

Price wise I'm paying about £10 more than when we were on ADSL (1.2Mb/s). Faster speeds coupled with unlimited is a no brainer, even if it costs just a bit more. I can guarantee you will use the speeds. But then you look at one ISP ad, faster speeds, queue dad playing game, girl singing to her friends etc and in the small print, 30GB a month cap. Dream on.

So yes, faster fibre, bring it on but don't go too mad with the price or the cap.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

The argument you are making is what BT OR was making a few years ago. Saying why do people need faster speeds. We'd all still be on ADSL2+ (and it took BTOR around 8 years after it had come out to implement it on their exchange equipment).

The ownership and installation of ADSL2+ equipment in exchanges is nothing to do with Openreach. Other than the technical aspects of carrrying out the job as a contractor to BT Wholesale and LLU companies.

In reply to a post by partial:

"The economic case for FTTP remains challenging given superfast broadband coverage now exceeds 90% and the majority of end-users are currently only willing to pay a low premium for additional speeds."

This is a key consideration. FTTC can be pretty fast (I have full 80/20) but I'd not pay much for a connection two, three of even ten times as fast. Once a connection is plenty fast enough for typical use the extra bandwidth does get you very much.