Slashdot Mirror
High Cost of Converting UK To High-Speed Broadband
Smivs notes a BBC report on a government study toting up the high cost of converting the UK to high speed broadband, which could exceed £28.8 B ($52.5 B). The options examined range from fiber to the neighborhood, providing 30-100 Mbps connections for a total cost of £5.1 B ($9.3 B), up to individual fiber to the home offering 1 Gbps to each household at a cost of £28.8 B. England's rural areas could pose tough choices. In the lowest-cost, fiber-to-the-neighborhood scenario, "The [group] estimates that getting fiber to the cabinets near the first 58% of households could cost about £1.9 B. The next 26% would cost about £1.4 B and the final 16% would cost £1.8 B."
Providing this level of internet infrastructure will be a viable investment for the future. Realistically this level of investment will keep them ahead of the pack for the next 10 years and during that time it will open the doors for businesses that typically operated on sneaker net to operate online. Faster transfer speeds mean more business gets done. More business means a better economy, which through taxes will easily recoup this initial loss.
For now and the next few years, most people would be more than thrilled to get the 8 to 24Mb/sec that they have paid for. This only needs more backbone, not the ultra-expensive "last mile infrastructure".
Fiber can then be laid opportunistically when infrastructure is upgraded, then connected together wherever the demand arises. To spend enormous amounts of tax money debating hypothetical universal options is stupid.
Paid Q&A/Research
Still cheaper than the money they will end up wasting on ID cards.
What kind of business needs a really fat pipe to prosper?
Businesses involved in delivery of digital content? A lot of the big TV names in the UK are offering on demand streaming video via the internet (BBCi, 4OD, ITV, Sky and Virgin). They're now starting to trial streaming of HD content, but with the lack of high speed connection it's not really a viable option for most people, and with HD devices starting to become more popular, pretty soon most people are going to want it.
I work in a UK satellite office, for a US based organisation. We have a VPN to the US servers, tunnelled over the internet. A faster internet connection could halve the time it takes me to do an Subversion update. It could halve the time it takes me to get a large trace file needed to solve a customer's problem. And it would make me less frustrated. All of these mean more productivity.
However, TFA is talking about household internet.
I can think of two ways businesses can benefit.
Firstly, employers of home workers, for the same reasons as office workers benefit.
Secondly, businesses that stand to gain from this are ones that are feeding rich content to home Internet users. Whether it's ad-supported Flash games, e-commerce sites with lots of supporting movies/sounds/images, or retailers of online content (e.g. iTunes), the faster your customer's pipe, the more enjoyable their experience becomes, and the more they're likely to spend (or gain you in ad revenue).
How about better real time teleconferencing as opposed to sending humans on expensive jet airplanes all over to meetings, or for workers who can work at home instead of physically commuting daily to the office?
Spam, Porn, Illegal downloads, Mafia....
Oh the legitimate ones, Remote tech support, daytrading, Online Security analyst.
If you have a online business, you're mental not having it at a central hosting location. It's not worth being able to walk over and touch the server for the price difference of the broadband and support that needs to go with it.
Honestly you can very easily support an online Store over 128K line. I have a friend that supports his 6 figure online income via a cellular connection.
If you ae dealing with high bandwidth content, then what is wrong with your executives being located in a place where you dont already have very high bandwidth availability? You need to physically beat to death your advisors that told you to build 64 miles away from the nearest optical node the telcos have.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.