openreach: we're the best!

also openreach: takes 10 (ten) days to switch me from one drop cable to another (i'm on the wrong one because of their fuckup in first place, some genius decided to pick a drop on the other side of a busy 4 lane road and leave it to the installer to drag an aerial over it)

in a real country i could have connected, disconnected, and switched to a different ISP 3-4 times in ten days. not even a joke. next day is the norm

(somewhat upsettingly i actually do believe openreach that they're the best, in the sense that everyone else is probably actually worse)

the absolute hardest part of being in the UK is that institutionally, people can barely do anything. if even that. (this is not a slight against the UK in particular, most of Europe is like that)

happy with nearly every individual i met*, unhappy with every institution i touched. what a combination

* i know some dont go to the UK to not get hatecrimed but if someone wanted to do that to me they've kept it very well a secret. maybe im just lucky

what the fuck are they even doing for ten days to change configuration of one port? playing tetris? surely not

@whitequark

The UK is a lot like the part of the world that we come from, except that nobody there has built up antibodies to the stupidity.

@iris_meredith NZ or something else?

@iris_meredith btw the description in bio is brilliant, not sure i could have come up with something so powerful if i tried

@whitequark you might be because i know a couple girls who did twice in a week once

i would be a lot more annoyed if virgin shut down my service on the day they said they would but i think they're asleep also. (i did not call them and it is belief-stretching to imagine someone at openreach not being able to reconfigure one port promptly but messaging someone at VM on a Saturday to make sure they delay it...)

@whitequark

I was thinking Poland in this case, at least on my end. Used to be similar levels of general institutional failure, but Poland seems to have been quite a bit better than the UK at routing around institutional failure, as it were. People in the UK seem to just kinda... go along with it? Act as though that's how it's meant to be?

@iris_meredith oh. yes. that totally tracks.

@ikeWren not even an implication in 3.5 years for me. welp

@iris_meredith have you seen Texhnolyze?

@whitequark

Thank you, thank you! The worst thing is that that was about one of my earliest articles, and the article in question was downright milquetoast by comparison with some of what I do now

@iris_meredith article so powerful it incinerates the brainstem of the hn poster before theyre done

@whitequark

I haven't! Should I put it on the list?

@iris_meredith oh yes. imagine an extended duration Edward Hopper painting that crosses very deep into existential and body horror. It also perfectly describes the UK in the context of this discussion somehow

@iris_meredith if I recall, the first 14 minutes of the first 22 minute episode have exactly zero speech, but it does start out with a... how do I put it... there are things being done to an eye that most people would find objectionable. the first time I watched it, it didn't register as unusual, so it took reading some reviews to understand why people see it as niche

@whitequark I really do appreciate that .au's NBN can switch you to another provider in an hour or two

@jpm I seem to recall that NBN was like one thing Australia managed to only mostly fuck up instead of completely fucking up this century, institutionally speaking? and they still didn't get to do fiber?

@whitequark @jpm yes and no, some places are fibre to the premises, some are only to the curb/node; this mix was designed to be cheaper to build than full-fibre, but it isn't of course

@hayley @jpm ah okay that's less bad than what i've read on the topic a decade+ ago. or maybe the plans got less bad in that time

@whitequark the last time I tried to disconnect Internet service (in Wisconsin) they sent a technician to one of my old addresses (after I had given them my current address and verified it with them on the phone that morning) and disconnected the person living there instead, without knocking on the door or talking to anybody. I've been afraid to ask them for anything since then, as my brain now associates this with harm to third parties 🫠

@ryanprior oh man

@whitequark @hayley yeah there's an entire saga of political influence around it.

It started off as FTTP + Fixed Wireless + (Geostationary) Satellite, and even had a few suburbs around the country connected to FTTP, including the home I live in now. Satellite connections were provided by leased spectrum on existing satellites, and two dedicated satellites were planned. It was slow going and politicians in the opposition were unimpressed.

* CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT *

Fibre build-out was "too slow" so newly-elected government decided to stop fibre roll-outs and drop VDSL2 nodes into streets, plus buy capacity on HFC networks that are in capital cities. Technically this did get folks connected to NBN faster, but many folks complained that the "new" VDSL2 services were slower and less reliable than their previous ADSL2+ services. The HFC services were generally unreliable, and tended to slow right down when more than about 3 people in the suburb wanted to use it at the same time. It was a pretty shit user experience and the previous-government-now-opposition were unimpressed.

* CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT *

Now that most of the country is connected to a mess of FTTP (beloved by everyone who has it), FTTN (with shit speeds because the copper is fucked), HFC (with shit speeds because it's shared DOCSIS 2), the new government decides that it must be the retail ISPs’ fault for being shit and tells the ACCC to build a download speed monitoring system (I have one of these boxes) and demand wording about "peak time performance" on advertisements. They quietly shelve the plans for dedicated satellites because there's less demand for it than expected.

With enough monitoring data on board, they clue in that VDSL2 FTTP connections are absolute dogshit, so they get NBN to put VDSL2 nodes on street power poles outside peoples' homes, and oh by the way the VDSL2 nodes on power poles take power from the VDSL2 modems on the other end. The HFC network is upgraded to DOCSIS 3, requiring a truck-roll to replace every customer NTD, but it's still unreliable because the HFC plant is about 30 years old at this point and still slows down in peak times. NBN starts offering technology upgrades for users to pay for fibre connections, and people laugh at the many 10's of thousands of dollars some quotes come back with.

5G mobile networks start rolling out, and StarLink appears, which completely eats NBN Satellite's lunch, and half the NBN Fixed Wireless users jump ship too. NBN upgrades the Fixed Wireless network to try and compete, somewhat successfully.

Now, the original FTTN VDSL2 connections are being upgraded to FTTP.

@jpm @hayley decisions have been made