When I rented a flat nearly 10 years ago, we had to get a wireless broadband solution as the local area hadn't got any decent broadband installed yet (despite being a brand new village between two towns), however to install it they needed to drill through the entire wall. To do that I needed the landlords permission, but it turns out it was owned by someone (or an entity) in China and the estate agent couldn't get ahold of them, so I said fuck it and just said yes they can go ahead and do it.

That sucks. For what it's worth all the victorian/edwardian partitioned slumlord mcmansions I lived in had more mold and nutty neighbours than internet, one was on one of those condemnded-to-be suburb streets that had literally no signal, but had 5G+ the second you crossed the road. Never seen anything like it.

The only place that had openreach optic fiber and gigabit speeds on offer was a brutalist apartment block built in the 2010s which was great. Between that and swapping out the decrepit southeasterns for the luxury of avanti trains, traveling north of the M25 is like going decades into the future. London and Surrey feel like peasant villages compared to the luxury of the Norf.

There's a fair bit of work that goes into hooking up a block of flats, including lots of cables throughout the building, drilling through walls, installing equipment in the basement, risers, each floor and each flat at the end. Freeholders need to sign it all off so don't know what a law change will entail.