Better broadband internet connection

Working most of the time from home, paying for a good internet but not always getting the service I pay for. I am from Romania, where internet speed is amazing and I really miss it. I don’t understand why a city as London has such a bad internet connection, sometimes even on the phone. Hope will be better in the future. :)

I live in SE1 near the river and have a extremely slow and intermittent connection. I have tried to contact BT/Openreach but all they say is that there are no plans right now to upgrade the local cabinet. This is idiotic as they are spend so much money sending engineers out for repair whereas the small cost upfront to upgrade would eliminate most of the problems we have had. The engineers are frustrated themselves and have told me that the priority is to connect up small rural communities and not the centre of the capital city!

Forward thinking companies like Hyperoptic Ltd https://hyperoptic.com currently provide symmetrical speeds of up to 1Gb (1,000 Mb) to many offices and residential apartments in buildings in London and elsewhere, proving that decent speeds are possible when a purpose-built infrastructure is used.

Sadly the map is entirely wrong! In Grange Park, N21 those of us on BT internet have speeds around 6-7Mbps and only one device able to be online at a time because we 'live too close to Winchmore Hill Exchange'. Therefore we have copper wire and no facility for Infinity Broadband as we have no green cabinet in our street. 'However, if neighbours want to club together to finance installation and connection of a green cabinet they may be able to help' Quotes from Openreach!!!! We don't want overpriced Virgin and certainly don't want a Sky package - and all the others work off the landline - which would still be copper wire!

It's not as though we live in the Outer Hebrides - we are a suburb of London inside the M25. Come on BT!!!

Fibre broadband has been in my street for at least 8 years. The house next door was amongst the earliest to have it installed. I am sent leaflets from my own ISP (TalkTalk) inviting me to upgrade to fibre. However, when I make enquiries I am told that 'fibre does not exist in my street'. Each manhole that I have peered into (OpenReach personel making yet another fibre connection) is now packed with the CD/DVD sized devices that route the fibres to the relevant dwelling around my address. My line connects from the same manhole and telegraph pole.

I pay for upto 8Mbits/sec download speed and now I receive between 2.0 and 2.5Mbits/sec if I am lucky. As more people get connected my speed has dropped accordingly.TalkTalk get really shirty if I suggest that I should pay them only a quarter of the price . I am threatened and told that It is all my fault and they will charge me if they find anything wrong on my premises such as an extra telephone perhaps in a bedroom just like the one I have had connected for the last 35 years.

The story gets more interesting in that all of the fibre connected people have had to go back to BT to get their broadband connected. This would appear to be one for Offcomm to look into, and it has been mentioned to them. They don't do anything, TalkTalk are impossible and really poor in what they deliver (if they deliver). No one else seems to supply fibre. So much for the competitive spirit we are all told exists. As for TalkTalk's claims on service - pigs gassed up and ready for take off.

Here I am, having to use the very thing that I am complaingin about to make my complaint known. If Mr Khan wants to do something about this ludicrous state of affairs he is most welcome. I live in inner London not the north pole.

Your map of internet speeds id wrong; my neighbours and myself receive average speeds of 5mb per second and this varies to 10 mb on a good day yet we are within a stones throw of the dome of St Pauls...

When friends recently visited from New Zealand they could not believe that I did not have access to high speed fibre broadband as I was in the "Financial Capital of the World"!

This is the crazy bit: despite asking BT for fibre on multiple occasions and being declined a chance meeting the other day got my hopes up! You need to be aware first the my front door is less than half a meter from a BT inspection cover and the other day I had a discussion with an OpenReach engineer working in it - he told me he was installing fibre broadband for an EE telephone mast at the end of my road - Bingo I thought!!!

However approaching BT again and getting them up to date with the situation came to nought! They said "we don't talk to OpenReach"!!! If ever there was a case of the tail wagging the dog then this is it! This none communicative relationship needs to be examined by some body as it is just not healthy...

Your map is wrong, it says I should be receiving 10-20 mb per second but my neighbours and myself only receive average 5 mb and 10 on a good day!

I live in the centre of London within a stones throw of the dome of St Pauls and when friends come to visit from New Zealand they cannot believe that I cannot access the fastest fibre broad in the centre of the "Financial Capital of the World" I tend to agree with them.

Hear is the craziest thing - I have a telephone manhole cover within a half meter of my front door and the other day when I saw an Open Reach engineer working in there he said he was laying fibre for the EE Telephone mast above the bar at the end of my road but that this was a commercial cable and not domestic... None the less I requested fibre cable again from BT and told them about my conversation and they said they didn't/couldn't liaise directly with Open Reach. There really is a case of the tail wagging the dog between these two organisations and the perfect excuse for them to say it is each others fault! There should be something done about this silent relationship with means that a valley in Wales can have fibre and a street in the City of London cannot - or at least some people cannot! I am not saying either has priority but sensibility says the City should not be refused because discussion between BT and Open Reach does not exist!

The broadband in my neighbourhood can be pretty slow and very inconsistent. Whilst it isn't such a problem for me, it is a huge problem for the small museum (run by the City of London) where I volunteer, as we can't register numbers of people and payments on the till correctly, ending up to having re-enter data at the end of the day and requiring staff to do overtime for which they are not paid. Inconsistent broadband also means that I have to revert to my phone to access the internet using up data which, in turn, can cost extra money - despite paying for broadband. Studying for her exams, my child could not access information and lectures posted by the school for several hours which was a real problem.

There is high speed fibre in my area, but I am unable to get it due to lack of available connections in the 'cabinet'. In fact, very few people actually do have it. So far there has only been one cabinet installed in this area apparently due to complaints by the super wealthy people who live in the area claiming that they don't want more cabinets on the pavements as it would look ugly. However, they are the ones who got the available connections in the one cabinet! I have been told for over a year that BT Openreach will make new connections available once demand is high enough, but Openreach doesn't compile a waiting list to monitor said demand. No one I have called, including BT, can even give me an estimate of when new connections 'may' become available. I have also written to Openreach, but my inquiry has never been followed up on. There seems to be a purposeful witholding/control of fibre availability by Openreach. It seems pretty clear that Openreach has a monopoly, and this monopoly is keeping London in the dark ages. Additionally, no one on any councils nor the Mayor seem to be remotely concerned or motivated to do anything about this. The whole thing smacks of corruption. It seems that deals have been made and palms have been greased behind closed doors. Business as usual.

Broadband affordability and the internet access, in general, should be treated as a right and should be in public ownership, like other utilities and services should be such as transport, to ensure that necessary investments in the infrastructure is made rather than feeding the fatcats.

I'm lucky as currently I have cable & phone line connections. However, it is disappointing that BT seem to be dragging their heels when it comes to laying fibre connections. They really need to do more as the Internet has pretty much become the 4th utility!

I live in N7 and work from home, and I get my broadband through my BT phone line. Top speed is around 5Mbps. In the ads BT promises 17 Mbps or more. I've tried asking BT about installing fibre broadband and they tell me that BT Openreach have no plans to install fibre in this area so we're stuck with the old copper lines, which apparently come direct from the exchange, not from a cabinet nearer at hand. Even my MP (Jeremy Corbyn) got nowhere with asking BT about this. This is the middle of London, for goodness sake, not some remote country area, and BT can't be bothered to provide decent speeds.

Those of us who have to put up with this should be given a big discount on broadband provision from BT.

There's no point switching to other companies like Plusnet or TalkTalk as they use the same BT lines.

Our home broadband speed is really slow. As I don't work from home or anything like that, it's more frustrating than anything else. But 2 weeks ago I was at a cottage in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall and the broadband there was so much quicker. Simple software updates were so much speedier than at home in London.

Half of the houses on our street are connected to the exchange closest to us, which is fibre enabled. However, our building, as well as other buildings on our street are connected to an exchange, which is much further away, resulting in lower than advertised broadband speeds (10Mbps off peak, 0.5-3Mpbs peak times). This exchange is also not fibre enabled and there are no plans to upgrade this exchange.
We live in central London, zone 1, about a minute walk from the tube station. I do not understand how we do not have super fast broadband. I agree that the UK is way behind in terms of fibre roll-out and availability of super fast broadband. Very frustrating and also embarrassing for a developed country.

I used to be with BT with a premium business connection. This was dismal, slow down loads and drop outs. Monday mornings was a nightmare. I have changed to Virgin and have had excellent service and have been notified of upgrade works before they happened and they were carried out in the promised window. Download speeds and upload speeds are much enhanced and I saved money!

I'm not really sure what the point of these discussions is. The Mayor's office is well aware of the shortcomings of London's network infrastructure and has been for years but has so far done very little or been unable to tackle the problem. Some people seem to be pushing solutions such as Relish 4g broadband as an alternative but a quick glance at the online feedback shows them to be totally inadequate. The refusal of the government to invest any money whatsoever in infrastructure is typical of the shortsightedness they've been displaying for years.