alt Hacker NewsHe claims:
> One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet.
Which might well be true where he is (ie he's limited to the equivalent of shared HFC or xDSL), but certainly isn't true everywhere.
I've had gigabit fibre (full duplex) in London since 2016, and the building had it before I arrived. It also has incredibly low latency to the major data centres of London, and not a lot more to most of western Europe.
Replies
It's possibly because of a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority back in the ADSL days: https://www.asa.org.uk/resource/broadband-speed-claims-guida...
Full quote. The problem is the price.
> One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet. They have a range of deals like 30 Mbps – 75 Mbps – 150 Mbps – 300 Mbps – 500 Mbps – 900 Mbps, each one costing a few more pounds per month than the last.
Gigabit is so much more expensive (obviously it's gone down a lot). In London 2016, I had ADSL broadband at 16 Mbps for £12/month. That building didn't have fiber at the time. When fiber finally happened... it started as 30 Mbps fiber for so much more money.
Fibre rollout in London was (is?) really, really patchy. If your building had it you were lucky. If you hadn't had it already you may well have found it impossible to get at retail.
Symnetric gigabit connections can be hard to come by in London.
If you're served by a niche fibre provider (e.g. Hyperoptic, Community Fibre) then you're golden.
There's Virgin (think Comcast) with paltry upload speeds due to the cable tech. Understandable though not ideal.
Then there's the OpenReach full fibre network with paltry upload speeds due to... ??? there appears to no good reason, other than not wanting to cannibalise their leased line business. Does anyone actually know why they don't offer a symmetric product like the niche fibre ISPs?