Kingston Upon Hull - Still no Broadband Competition in Hull 2 February 2022 at 3:14PM in Broadband & internet access 9 replies 161 views

SophieSchof

The last time this appears as a thread was 12 years ago on MSE. Wondering whether MSE has ever taken on /challenged/helped Kingstonians in lobbying for a fairer costing broadband provision by the city's only supplier Kingston Communications. Based on its continued monopoly across the city, it remains a significantly higher cost to have unlimited broadband in the City.
It is almost impossible to function at home in this current era without access to unlimited broadband and my poor Dad who lives alone, literally has to limit the amount of time he spends on FaceTime and can't use basic streaming services like the IPlayer because the deal he has (which is still way above what most others pay for Unlimited in all other parts of the country) is fearful of running out of data.
Surely there has to be a challenge MSE can take on? If anyone has come up with ways around this, would love to hear...

victor2

Is mobile broadband an option?

NeverinDoubt

Ofcom don't seem to think it's a problem despite investigating the situation on a number of occasions over the years. To say any other providers are prevented from operating within the KCOM area is largely incorrect.

tallmansix

Kingston upon Hull has the best broadband in the country, nearly every single house has access to full fibre, they are way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the product so inevitably you will pay a little more for the privilege of that. Many people in the UK are struggling with terrible low speeds despite paying not much less than a KCOM customer. There is even some 10Gb broadband in Kingston - I'd give me right arm for that.

I've looked and KCOM starts at £29.99 for a basic 30mbps unlimited broadband that is full fibre to the house - you can't really compare that with the shonky ADSL copper or VDSL copper from cabinet deals at £20 a month in the rest of the UK that claim to be fibre when they aren't.

There are a lot of people in the country that would be jealous of the near 100% full fibre coverage you have. Likemost of the UK, I can't get full fibre to my house so if I want a decent speed I've literally got one choice as well, Virgin Media. KCOM are slightly cheaper than Virgin Media on like for like broadband speeds.

The grass isn't greener outside of Kingston upon Hull.

onomatopoeia99

tallmansix said:

Kingston upon Hull has the best broadband in the country, nearly every single house has access to full fibre, they are way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the product so inevitably you will pay a little more for the privilege of that. Many people in the UK are struggling with terrible low speeds despite paying not much less than a KCOM customer. There is even some 10Gb broadband in Kingston - I'd give me right arm for that.

I'm struggling to think what I'd do with the extra 9930Mbps if I had a 10Gbps connection since I have no speed problems at the moment.  I'd certainly need to replace all my network adapters and switches which are all gigabit, not 10Gbps, though.

What do people do in domestic settings that needs a 10Gbps link? 

victor2

onomatopoeia99 said:

tallmansix said:

Kingston upon Hull has the best broadband in the country, nearly every single house has access to full fibre, they are way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the product so inevitably you will pay a little more for the privilege of that. Many people in the UK are struggling with terrible low speeds despite paying not much less than a KCOM customer. There is even some 10Gb broadband in Kingston - I'd give me right arm for that.

I'm struggling to think what I'd do with the extra 9930Mbps if I had a 10Gbps connection since I have no speed problems at the moment.  I'd certainly need to replace all my network adapters and switches which are all gigabit, not 10Gbps, though.

What do people do in domestic settings that needs a 10Gbps link? 

I remember when I first ran a 9600 baud modem wondering if I'd ever need faster...

onomatopoeia99

victor2 said:

onomatopoeia99 said:

tallmansix said:

Kingston upon Hull has the best broadband in the country, nearly every single house has access to full fibre, they are way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the product so inevitably you will pay a little more for the privilege of that. Many people in the UK are struggling with terrible low speeds despite paying not much less than a KCOM customer. There is even some 10Gb broadband in Kingston - I'd give me right arm for that.

I'm struggling to think what I'd do with the extra 9930Mbps if I had a 10Gbps connection since I have no speed problems at the moment.  I'd certainly need to replace all my network adapters and switches which are all gigabit, not 10Gbps, though.

What do people do in domestic settings that needs a 10Gbps link? 

I remember when I first ran a 9600 baud modem wondering if I'd ever need faster...

I started on 14.4K and wanted faster immediately .  I got ISDN2e in the end, but that wasn't fast enough.  ADSL at 2Mbps was when it launched, but nowadays 20 years later I'd probably want 40Mbps minimum for comfort, so that's 20x in 20 years.  Give it another 20 years and I might want gigabit.

tallmansix

onomatopoeia99 said:

tallmansix said:

Kingston upon Hull has the best broadband in the country, nearly every single house has access to full fibre, they are way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the product so inevitably you will pay a little more for the privilege of that. Many people in the UK are struggling with terrible low speeds despite paying not much less than a KCOM customer. There is even some 10Gb broadband in Kingston - I'd give me right arm for that.

I'm struggling to think what I'd do with the extra 9930Mbps if I had a 10Gbps connection since I have no speed problems at the moment.  I'd certainly need to replace all my network adapters and switches which are all gigabit, not 10Gbps, though.

What do people do in domestic settings that needs a 10Gbps link? 

Just downloaded the full suite of Visual Studio 2022 - 40GB.

On a 70mbps connection that is an agonising 1hr 20mins of waiting

On my 550mbps connection it was 10 minutes which was bearable.

On a 10Gbps connection it would be 30 seconds.

onomatopoeia99

Fortunately the VS installer lets you select the components you need and avoid the ones you don't, so my download took about 20 minutes while I was getting on with something else, and I still got a lot of stuff that I very much doubt I'll ever actually use.  I can't think of any reason why I'd want to download and install the whole thing.

Obviously if I had to re-download it every time I turn the computer on that would be annoying, but once a year I can live with it.

Blackjack_Davy

victor2 said:

I remember when I first ran a 9600 baud modem wondering if I'd ever need faster...

I started on 300/300 or 1200/75....

tallmansix said:

Just downloaded the full suite of Visual Studio 2022 - 40GB.

On a 70mbps connection that is an agonising 1hr 20mins of waiting

On my 550mbps connection it was 10 minutes which was bearable.

On a 10Gbps connection it would be 30 seconds.

Poor you. I'm on 35mbps I downloaded a game the other day, it took 4 hours...