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Can Mobile Broadband Solve the UK Digital Divide?

Posted by samzenpus on from the come-together dept.

MJackson writes "Lord Carter's interim Digital Britain report recently proposed a new Universal Service Obligation (USO), which would effectively make it mandatory for every household in the UK to have access to a broadband service capable of 2Mbps by 2012. Since then there has been much talk about Mobile Broadband (3G, 4G) services being used to bridge the UK Digital Divide, but is that realistic? The technology has all sorts of problems from slow speeds and high latency to blocking VoIP, MSN Instant Messaging and aggressive image compression ... not to mention connection stability."

10 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. overload by the_denman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    but how many people can it support on a tower at a time before it slows to a crawl?

    1. Re:overload by KGIII · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The term "available" is so wonderful to use in so many ways. Just because the service is technically available does not mean that it is affordable, effective, consistent, etc.... It should be interesting to see how this turns out. There's a bit of a movement to do something similar here in Maine but that's not going so very well and hasn't really been going anywhere in the few years since they started it as I recall.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  2. USO sounds like a really great plan by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, it may be a little socialist in some respects, it really forces a good thing onto the people with very little downside except short term funding issues.

    If you think that short term funding issues should take precedence over long term societal growth, then by all means reject this proposal. But it should be noted that that sort of short term thinking is what led to the collapse of the American auto industry and the subsequent begging for bailouts.

    It is forward looking policies that brought Korea and Japan to the forefront of broadband technology. With every new home wired for fiber and existing lines being replaced at a rate of 3 miles per hour, these Asian countries have already made investments that Western countries should have been making 10 years ago when the DotCom boom was in full effect and money was plentiful.

    1. Re:USO sounds like a really great plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      people need to stop worrying about whether or not something is or is not "socialist", and weight things on their merits, not their labels.

    2. Re:USO sounds like a really great plan by nicklott · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In the UK "Socialists" would have come round and put rock salt on the road while you were asleep, thus saving you from making this Bad Analogy.

    3. Re:USO sounds like a really great plan by Dhalka226 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That we should disregard what people actually said and slaughter kittens is exactly what I would expect a guy who's really bad at analogies to do.

      Hrm. Yeah, fitting whatever words I want in your mouth is satisfying but ultimately stupid. He never said we should accept any particular idea. He simply said we should be less concerned with the label and more concerned with whether or not it's a good idea. I fail to see how that justifies your attitude, much less your tone of superiority. It's perfectly reasonable.

      So far as "once you start out [. . .] there's no turning back," you'll have to do better than that. That's nothing but a worthless slippery slope argument (no pun intended). If supporting a particular initiative will inevitably lead to the end of our, uh, tulip beds, "trust me, it will" comes nowhere near the mark of evidence, nor of intelligent debate. But then again since you start out slinging insults at somebody for a perverted interpretation of what they said, I would expect little else.

  3. Wireless is a short-term solution by Zouden · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We (Western nations) should just bite the bullet and install fibre. The theoretical limit of data transfer over fibre is far in excess of what we can reach now, so a good fibre network would serve the country for decades.

    Wireless is a cheap cop-out. It'll always be slower than fibre.

    --
    "A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
    1. Re:Wireless is a short-term solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yep, for example I'm only getting 20Mb/sec on my wireless connection right now...

      I think you're exaggerating slightly. No-one is suggesting that existing cable should be ripped out of the ground because it is too slow. Wireless however is very useful for low population densities where it is cheaper to put up a mast for one or two isolated people than to dig up the entire countryside. Those masts will still be connected to the wired network. It would be easy to give 2MB/sec goal for everyone in these areas, even if they all use their bandwidth simultaneously (although rational economics would dictate that you should oversell because the probability of *everyone* using their full quota simultaneously is vanishingly close to zero).

      If these isolated people want faster than that, nothing is stopping them getting together and paying for laying the cables themselves. I simply can't see it being worth it though.

  4. Re:2Mbps By 2012? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Uhm, no - the UK is falling behind because Ofcom (the telecommunications regulator) regularly tells BT (the primary telecoms company in the UK) what it can and cannot do, because the other telecoms companies in the UK would not be able to compete.

    It did this in such ways as forcing BT to sell wholesale at lower cost than it would take to recoup investment.

    Thankfully, Ofcom have come to their senses with regard to BTs new Fibre to the Cabinet upgrade plan - BT will be able to set a wholesale rate which would recoup costs within 3 to 4 years, rather than the 15 years Ofcom usually limited them to.

  5. It's the carriers, not the technology by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Mobile Broadband (3G, 4G) services being used to bridge the UK Digital Divide, but is that realistic? The technology has all sorts of problems from slow speeds and high latency to blocking VoIP, MSN Instant Messaging and aggressive image compression ... not to mention connection stability."

    What?!?

    I use a 3G HSDPA service regularly with two different laptops that have built-in HSDPA modems from Sierra Wireless and Ericsson. I also use Nokia and LG phones over Bluetooth tethering (since I'm in Australia and have sensible carriers that don't lock that down).

    I get a public IP address. No NAT. No filtering, either. Full use of VoIP (SIP or *ick* Skype), etc. No dodgy proxy hacks with image compression or other nasties. It's just a regularly IP service.

    It's fast. Not ADSL2+-over-wifi fast, but quite fast enough for everything I need to do, including VNC/RDP remote control of machines at work, SSH, etc. Latency is occasionally a wee bit high, but nothing too bad.

    It's pretty stable - it only goes a bit flakey when going through (eg) a train tunnel where it completely loses reception. Even then, it often just transparently recovers without apps or the OS ever really noticing. Sitting in one place, it's rock solid.

    I use VoIP via my 3G service in my laptop regularly, via both SIP and (when forced, reluctantly) Skype. It's pretty darn solid; the only issues are VERY occasional quality drops due to latency spikes.

    With a 1GB per month data allowance (for a wallet-smashing $15 per month ... so, about the price of a decent lunch) I can get a lot done. My carrier, Three (Hutchison), is the best priced data carrier in Australia, but Vodafone and Optus aren't too much worse and they have much better coverage, so this is hardly unique.

    So ... if your 3G service sucks, it's because your carrier sucks, not because the technology does. Unfortunately, it looks like carriers DO suck in the US and the UK, though for different reasons.

    In the US, you get hardware you've bought and paid for but is locked down so hard you can barely breathe next to it. Want to install your own apps? Better pay to unlock that feature. Want to use bluetooth/wifi tethering? Better get the "Internet" plan to unlock that feature. Want to use another provider's SIM with *YOUR* hardware, even after your contract has expired? Tough luck.

    In the UK, it doesn't seem to be so much locked down as crap. Blocked and filtered up the wazoo, WAP-like transparent proxying and HTML/image reprocessing, private IPs handed out with all traffic through proxies or NAT, etc. Ick.

    This will have to change ... but it's a carrier problem not a technology one.