Slashdot Mirror
UK Government To Back Broadband-For-All
Barence writes to mention that the UK government is throwing their weight behind a broadband-for-all initiative with an initial round of £250 million in funding. Using money left over from the digital television switch, the initiative aims to have a 2Mbit/sec broadband connection or better in every home by 2012. "Analysts welcomed the proposals, but say there are still many details to be hammered out: 'The Chancellor... needs to consider how to remove the barriers that prevent the people who cannot afford broadband to get connected. They need to ensure that competition in the market remains fair and consumers are given choice rather than one or two providers.'"
Five bucks...er, five pounds, that this will be filtered to high heck...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
2000 called. They want their broadband back......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I guess it's a start, so they should be congratulated on that.
However 2Mbit seems remarkably slow. Even now, I'd find it too slow to bear. By 2012, in 3 years time, I'd imagine it will seem even more obsolete as services change to take advantage of higher bandwidth.
I have 10Mbit at home and that's about the lowest I can bear. I will upgrade to 50Mbit soon.
I wonder if there will still be a a market for people who wish for non-government ISP's to only have the government filter their packets rather than send their data down pipes, routers, and infrastructure owned and operated by the government. I wonder how many orders of magnitude easier it will be to do that kind of in-depth sniffing on government pipes than on private pipes?
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I live in the boonies of the USA and my connection peaks just over 1 Mbps (I have a WiFi connection to a tower on the local volcano. Not a typo.) 2 Mbps would make me dizzy with joy, especially since at peak times I sometimes get under 500kbps. A lot of people out there are still using a modem, like me until a few months ago.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If I couldn't afford broadband I would definitely take free 2Mb/sec over dial-up, no contest.
Most likely the UK will pass a three strikes law in the near future, meaning the broadband will be for all except those who are accused three times by the recording industry of file sharing, with no warnings or evidence required.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Internet is more and more a utility. People can't live without it, so I think the governament stepping in and offering free/cheap internet access for those who can't afford it is only fair. Plus they can pass it as a education initiative.
While 2MBit/s might sounds slow to those of us that have turbo connections and get upwards of 10Mbit/s, this is actually a decent number for an initiative such as this.
2 MBit/s is actually a very attainable number for a cheap internet solution to get EVERYONE access to that speed. And while some may scoff at it being slow, 2 Mbit (around 250 KB/s down) is still about 5x faster than dialup. And it would be an always-on connection, something dial-up is not.
Also, for the UK to fund an initiative like this, it is VERY forward thinking, considering there are many parts of the UK that have roads no wider than a single small European car, and barely receive tv signal or cable-equivalent. I have been to parts of the UK where there is literally NOTHING for miles and miles. For them to be pushing for 2 MBit/s in these areas (if they are SERIOUS about providing this speed of internet to EVERYONE), it would be a viable alternative to the laggy, delay-prone satellite internet that many people in these areas are forced to purchase.
Ever tried to play an online FPS w/ Satellite? Yea. It sucks.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Not only will you have broadband, but Phorm will even track what websites you visit in order to serve adverts that are relevant to you, and the goverment will be monitoring your connection to make sure you don't inadvertently access any violent pornography and that no terrorists try to indoctrinate you. Sign me up!
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I wish I could get 2Mbps where I live. That would double what I can get here.
It's weird, isn't it? People applauding what they want, rather than what you think they should want.
This is just so V can stream to every screen in London with minimal buffering.
Network effects. The more people on the Internet the more valuable it is to everybody.
That's a good plan.
Main problem is the thing that's always faced postal services - those last two percent of people? they're not profitable. Without government intervention they may never get broadband unless they're also farking rich.
Of course newer 3G(+) wireless services do mitigate this somewhat.
this is actually a decent number for an initiative such as this.
No it's not, because by the time they are done spending money at the rate the Government typically spends it they could have bought a fiber to the doorstep system for every man, woman and child in the UK. Why would you spend a pile of money to build a system that's obsolete as soon as you turn it up?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
same thing going on in other parts of EU if you watch the news, they want to build it out then filter , control , then they have you , trolltariens @ work
People have access to a resource that they wouldn't have had otherwise?
I don't know about you, but that seems like a definite improvement to me.
So, from your statement, you are stating that fiber lines cost the same or less to implement on a per-home basis than phone lines/coax/copper?
You, my friend, do not live in 2009. You are somewhere far off into the future. Perhaps somewhere around 2050 or later. And on Mars.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
You may want to talk to your retarded little brother USA, and see how that worked out for them.
Gov'ner: Here's 250$ million, Broadband for all, yea! :(
Telcos: Yea!
Pleabs: Yea!
Gov'ner: Where is our Broadband?
Telcos: What broadband?
Gov'ner: Where is our money?
Telcos: What money?
Gov'ner: *shrugs*
Pleabs:
so now they can spy inside!
This is my sig.
Is it the government or the taxpayers who are paying for it?
It does if you are stringing new wire. The cost of the wire is nothing compared to the labor cost of installing it. If you aren't stringing new wire then why haven't the phone companies already provided service?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well, somebody is going to have to dig the trenches and put down the cables and all. I presume that this is exactly what they are doing. This way people earn money and you get something in return. This is typical behavior for governments during this particular economic crisis.
Besides, for many remote places the cost will be prohibitive (of putting cables down) for an individual or group of individuals. So the government will have to put the infrastructure there for them. Otherwise they may face even more people moving from the countryside into the already crowded cities.
So of course it is dead easy to turn around in 2012 and claim that yet another published target has been met.
I've had 20 mbit down / 1 mbit up for 50 quid a month for nearly 2 years now.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the US, the issue of providing Internet access to the poor, so that they can try to improve their situation (e.g. through online educational materials, job training, reading up on technology, email access, etc) is largely resolved through libraries. If you are really so poor you cannot afford to get high-speed internet access, then go to the library.
The library approach limits costs (because you are only provisioning Internet access at a relatively small number of places throughout an area, instead of providing it to thouands, or even hundreds of thousands, of homes). It's inconvenient enough that people still have incentive to earn their own money and buy their own Internet access, instead of just using this 'free' access forever which other taxpayers have to pay for.
.. by giving up half of their income?
...is this really needed at a time when we should be making real an effort to cut spending.
I love the idea, but we need to prioritize a little, could this 250m be better spent elsewhere? Or not at all?
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
It looks like it is going to be implemented by putting lots more HSDPA cellphone towers around the countryside. They give you 3.6Mbps if you are close enough to them.
I guess it depends on whether they are targeting 2mbit as in actually 2mbit or "2 mbit UNLIMITED at 1:1000 contention with 4gb /month cap". If it actually ends up averaging 2mbit and not 500kbps then it's not so bad.
Maybe for those remote places, we just have to face the fact that cables aren't going to be cost effective, and instead focus on wireless or satellite solutions for Internet access?
how do they plan on gettin' a computer in every home by 2012 too?
Broadband-for-all... in order to Spy-on-all.
It gets worse:
"You will give us your money so we can pay for this. You have no say in the matter."
"Since we're paying for this, we will decide what sort of content is acceptable on 'our' internet. You have no say in the matter."
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
What, you thought the British government was gifting its people with free broadband because it liked and trusted them?!
That's at least 2Mb/s everywhere in the UK. There are still some rural areas, particularly in Scotland, where the only 'high-speed' Internet access you can get is ISDN, at 128Kb/s (for two channels), charged per minute and very expensive. My mother can currently only get 1Mb/s from her ADSL connection in rural England due to her distance from the exchange, and I can get about that from my phone (UMTS) when I visit her if I put it in the right spot in the corner of the room (although with slightly higher latency).
In other parts of the UK, you can get much faster connections. I currently have a 10Mb/s connection, and 24Mb/s or 50Mb/s connections are available in other parts of the country (and here soon...). Currently, however, the incumbent telecoms companies have no incentive to deploy broadband infrastructure outside the more lucrative urban areas. This is starting to change with the HSPA rollout, since you can cover a lot of rural homes quite cheaply with a small number of towers, but it's still not very fast.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How do you figure that? Are you referring to the 50% marginal tax rate introduced for next year? You do know that only applies to income over GBP150K (say $225,000), right? Scarcely half of most folks income.
Anyway, the lions share of this investment comes from money not spent by the BBC for switchover to digital TV, rather than direct taxation.
And no, the BBC licence fee is not 50% of anyone's income. It's about GBP 142.50 (~ $220) per annum. If most people where you live earn about $440 a year, you have my undying pity.
--Ng
Looks like they are learning from the US' mistakes.
They need to ensure that competition in the market remains fair and consumers are given choice rather than one or two providers.
(emphasis mine)
2 Mbit (around 250 KB/s down) is still about 5x faster than dialup
V90 was 56Kbit down, 33Kbit up (rarely achievable) - not KByte. 2Mbit down, 250kbit up is far better than 5x faster (particularly as the majority of traffic for the average user is down).
I think he was referring to the total lack of conscience on the part of the people who are applauding the stealing.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
I live in the boonies of the US and get 300 kbps, take that! Lets play who has the slowest internet.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
So you're saying that MaBell has no corruption fees, has always worked in the best interest of their customers and is the pinnacle of social success?
Obviously, that isn't the case. Imagine everyone in your neighborhood had equal parts of the controlling majority of shares of the local ISP. You each had to buy those shares, but they are yours and they can never be revoked. Having shares gives you a seat (along with all of your neighbors) at the board meeting where you can argue for faster speeds, buried cables, cheaper prices, etc... Even the neighbors who don't purchase services from the ISP have an interest in keeping costs down to make their stocks more valuable, or in preventing unsightly cabling close to their homes, or keeping the price low to improve the competitive nature of their own provider.
Now replace "local ISP" with "local government" and you have the situation. Yeah, you pay taxes, but you get a controlling stake (ie: your vote and lobbying access) in the process for doing so.
Try going down to your "local" AT&T branch and argue for faster speeds, cheaper rates, less cabling, or anything else. You have literally no say in the matter.
So long as the stake holders are different people than the customers, the company will never act in the customer's best interest (unless the customer's interest happens to align with the stake holders' interests).
There are other reasons to oppose government provided/controlled ISP services, but contrasting it to the private sector is not a strong argument. As we've seen through out the history of the industrial and technical revolutions, the private market does not handle utility services well.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Because, on the evidence of the last few decades, corporations are certainly not going to provide broadband for the entire population, or anyone outside profitable urban areas. Even when subsidised by governments, they eat up the subsidies and fail to provide a universal service. Eventually the US will work this out.
Though the way you reject universal health care because "it's socialist", allowing your poor to sicken and die, maybe I'm too optimistic.
Yeah, and there are still people stuck on dial-up. 2Mbps to every home wouldn't be nothing.
Still, it seems like 2Mbps in 2012 should be a bit behind the times. In the near future, being stuck on DSL should be like being stuck on dial-up now. Most of us should have 10Mbps symmetrical connections (or better). I know, someone is going to say that's ridiculous, but I don't think it is.
Now if anyone can explain to me, how can this be so massively applauded and supported by the public?
The same argument was applied to the telephone network. It was stupid then, just like applying it to the internet is stupid now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, I was getting the same kind of connection speeds, the copper out here is pretty bad. Even if satellite worked on your site, it would still suck. However, people who live in the boonies don't get to complain about that last mile (Well, you can complain, but just don't expect anyone to be sympathetic) any more than they get to complain when civilization finally does show up, and they start getting traffic on "their road". In the mean time, is there anyone near you with whom you might form a co-op? You could put a solar-powered repeater on a peak visible to you and your compatriots, and pipe the signal up there from the nearest place you can get a signal (Even satellite, if need be.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
blahblahblah...improve spammers' ROI in elected representatives by giving spammers direct access to unsuspecting people who are already more likely to fall prey to their scams.
there, fixed that for you.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
You might want to check your math though. Most dialup I've seen rarely breaks 56Kbps. If they are planning on 2Mbps, then that's an increase of roughly 40 times, not 5. The jump from dialup to 2Mbps, is roughly equivalent to going from a relatively slow 2Mbps broadband connection to a 100Mbps LAN connection.
Let me do the maths for you...
Dialup is rated at 56kbps.
This broadband is 2Mbit, or about 2000kbps
2000 / 56 = 35.7
That means this initiative is 35.7 times better than dial-up. Now I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that anyone on dialup RIGHT NOW would be glad of such speeds.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I agree. One wonders how long the government-as-solution-to-all mindset will last? Looking to the free market for solutions just isn't on the mind of many people these days. As if the government (at least in the US) had ever run any of these type programs well (Post Office, anyone?)
2mb/s is horrible. At the rate they are planning 4G will be available and considerably faster than this broadband for all, which is sure to be monitored feverishly by the government.
government has no revenues other than those it forcibly removes from its subjects, so it won't come for free - you are going to pay for it anyway. 50% is just rough estimation of how much money UK government extorts from the productive sector. Easiest way to calculate this ratio is to compare treasury budget vs. GDP. I am not from UK, so 50% is just rough guess based on how things work in my country.
No, if it was up to the "free market" then people in rural areas wouldn't get served, while the cities would just get faster and faster. This is what's happening at the moment and why the government needs to step in. It's like public transport, it's great in cities but terrible in rural areas and if the government didn't step in, could even be non-existant. Utilities, like the internet or public transport occasionally need the government to step in and deal with it, otherwise people wouldn't be able to get them (see Rural Electrification Act, it took government intervention in the USA to get electricity everywhere).
You give him/her too much credit. Lackeys think for themselves and have a shot at becoming the evil genius eventually. This person is either a mook or a goon.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I downgraded from standard Comcast (7 Mbps) to their slowest offering of 756 kbps (0.756 Mbps) just to save money. It isn't so bad! Vonage works fine, youtube works fine, flash games (my kids play all the time) work fine. An ISO or anything larger does take some planning or patience however. I will want to upgrade when/if streaming video displaces my PVR though.
But how does this GBP250m investment constitute half your income, as you claimed? Do you mean that the *extra* expenditure pushes the tax take to half your income? If so, you need to read the article again - it's paid for by monies already collected by the BBC for digital switchover. There is no extra taxation for this proposal.
Celarnor suggested that people would have access to services that they would not otherwise, to which you replied "...by giving up half of your income?".
And yes, government gains income from non-voluntary taxation. That doesn't help in any way to establish the accuracy of your observation.
By the way, your use of somewhat juvenile perjoratives like "forcibly removes" and "extorts" makes me think I'm in discussion with a Randroid Libertoonian. And since that bores the living shit out of me, you're welcome to the last word.
--Ng
Who could have? Why haven't they? Speculating about what it seems like it ought to cost is different than doing it.
The monthly bandwidth cap matters much more than the bandwidth per second. I'd rather have a 200 kbit/s connection with a 100 gb monthly cap, than a 2 mbit/s connection with a 10 gb monthly cap.
That being said, does anyone know what the monthly cap is going to be? I don't live in UK but I still hope there isn't going to be one.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
And nobody has to setup the wireless or satellite connections? :S
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
you need to consider taxation as a whole, since you don't have an option to selectively pay only for services you find useful for yourself. Should we have that option - no one would prefer government services to the ones provided by private businesses. and thanks for that label, i take it as a compliment
I have a UK broadband connection, with an 8128Kb sync. My last provider implemented throttling, so my speed at weekends dropped to 512K on average, and down to sub-200 regularly. One day I hit 62K. That's when I left.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Get rid of the cars, and cities are WAY WAY WAY more efficient than having everyone all spread out. If the jobs are in the city, it's horribly wasteful not to live there too. Again, the cars are literally the only inherent problem; get rid of them and replace them with almost anything else and the city will become a pleasant place to live.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would have had the first post, but damn this 1200 baud modem.
Having been on Virgin's fibre broadband at 20Mbits (yup, 20) for 6 months, while it is indeed very fast and so far, reliable, it is NOT fast enough. As soon as another occupant of the house beginds to watch an HD stream or download something, it slows down - sometimes even grinding to a halt altogether during busy evenings. Furthermore, with the advent of widespread cloud computing, considerable strain is going to be put on the Internet as a whole. Already, using Google Docs on anything but the fastest connection is impossible, with it timing out if the connection slows down too much. (Not Google's fault.) For the sake of the economy, like the autobahns, highways and motorways of the past, the governments of today (Singapore has already done this) needs to build a super/mega/ultra/wikkedly fast national network of at least 40Mbits (yes, 40) with a 5Mbit or more downlink to make uploading content and teleconferencing practical. The ideal way to achieve this without digging up half the planet to lay fibre to the home will be to use 4G LTE wireless technology. We MUST invest now!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
You only give up half your income if your loaded, in which case you can afford to leave anyway. It's this horrible socialism that means we don't have to spend 17% (that's an average i'd guess the poor pay even more as they can't afford insurance) of our income on health-care (even those taxed 50% still only give 14%, the majority 11%, the poor 6%). We seam to have an education system that leaves fewer behind than America.
Seriously 'socialism' isn't that bad, sure you get screwed by the government a bit and our economy is up the shitter, but your free to leave if you don't like it. We're not talking about communism or the taking away of individuals freedoms to support the government, just 40% tax in return for education, health care and various other necessary services. Sure the government are a corrupt bunch of thieving cunts, but you get that under any system.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
if you compare 2mbps to 28.8kbps (probably a more realistic number, since lots of the people forced to use dial up are unable to get DSL because the copper is bad) the ratio comes out nearer to 70x faster (overall).
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
just 40% tax in return for poor education, poor health care and various other poor services that you would get more effectively should you instead keep those 40% for yourself. You get bunch of corrupt thieving cunts under under any system, however in free market system you can at least get them out of business with your $-votes. here i corrected it for you
I find the term "broad band" offensive. I much prefer the phrase "all female orchestra", but I agree that everybody should have access to one. What do you mean off topic?
The problem is, this will end up being universal. Just think about all of the crappy services that governments provide like mail delivery. Here in the USA, Fed-Ex, UPS and DHL all provide a much better experience then using the USPS, but not by much. How much more will ISPs fail to innovate because they only now have a niche market? Whenever the widest used alternative is crappy, you only have to beat it by a bit to appear "competitive" and when the crappy service is government run, you can bet it will be crappy for its lifetime.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
But how else will the poor be able to connect to the Internet with their MacBook Pro, you insensitive clod?
oh yes, i certainly do reject universal "free" health care, because it's socialist, and because it's not free and because it does not work and never will. Yet you'd be surprised, but it does not imply that the poor are condemned to sicken and die
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.
"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."
The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.
"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."
Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.
A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
"Again, the cars are literally the only inherent problem [of cities]"
Could you please post me the intergalactic coordinates of the world you are living on? I'd like to give it a visit.
I'm sure they won't block the URLs of activist groups who criticize the government.
http://www.campaignforliberty.com *enter*
500 server error
Send your spendthrift head of state this
"I want all prices to go down, except the price for what I sell, which I want to go up!"
Now imagine that being wanted by everyone. Welcome to the democratic interventionist state headed for socialism and poverty.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Try a 300, baby!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What's wrong with private companies investing to deploy those systems, and subscribers paying for their Internet access like anyone else? Again, I see no reason why the government is a superior option to private companies in providing Internet access.
Censorship effect. When everybody is on gov't broadband for the zero cost, it will be easier to centralize control over what they get to see.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
without the farmhouses, we wouldn't get food, remember. Not everyone can live in the city as it would mean that basic things such as food would not be available... without food, we die. Why shouldn't the people that do an extremely important job (arguabely, more important than a 9-5 office job) be able to have modern conveniences such as the internet and public transport? Also, FYI I don't live in a farmhouse, I have relatively good (8mbps) broadband... though I do wish my country would cut down with the survailence
I once used a 28.8K dialup modem to connect to an ISP. Over VoIP.
You are perfectly right it doesn't work. It just provides better service than private health care for one 5th of the cost. If we only knew what the right solution was. The only experimental knowledge we have today is that US style healthcare sucks, public healthcare suck too, but is slightly better and a whole lot cheaper.
I live in a small town in Iowa, and until recently, I had 100 mbit fiber, for $65/mo.
Granted, it's capped at 20 gigs/mo, with 50 cents/gig overage. But still, I find it amazing that there are places in this country where your choice is satellite, dialup, or cell.
Speaking of which: Does anyone know where I can get better Internet?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Physical fibre is cheap - cheaper than copper. The expensive part is the labour of installing it, digging trenches and such.
So why would you waste money on installing 2Mb/s connections to people who currently have nothing, when you could install 100Mb/s connections or faster for the same cost?
First they are connecting telescopes with fiber, now they are about to give away broadband!?! See, this tiny little island can do all that while rich companies can't get cable to my neighborhood. Next thing you know that island country will be all "we are an empire" and stuff, while us US folk slip into 3rd world status.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I live in the boonies of the USA and my connection peaks just over 1 Mbps (I have a WiFi connection to a tower on the local volcano. Not a typo.) .
The problem isn't that you can't get broadband in the boonies. Anyone can. The problem is that most of the time, that option is via satellite. Once you get past the initial hardware expense, monthly service for satellite tv and Internet packages are comparable to cable packages. The problem is the damn latency. Satellite is fine for downloading files and surfing. But try playing FPS's on one.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It's frustrating trying to find a good deal here in the US. Much like cellular services, the major ISPs offer no financial incentive, only slight feature differences at the same price range. Competitive pricing is non-existent where I live.
The real problem is the absurdly low monthly transfer cap. With Hughesnet it's like 9GB/mo, or at least it was last I looked. My ISP gives me 30GB/mo at 512kbps-1Mbps for $50 and I can buy another account if I need to do more downloading, on the same hardware. Allegedly, anyway. I consider myself particularly blessed. I just hope my ISP stays in business :(
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would have been before you, but I've been having reliability issues with hawk-on-pigeon packet loss. Both ways, in the snow. So there.
You get bunch of corrupt thieving cunts under under any system, however in free market system you can at least get them out of business with your $-votes
No you can't in the US you still get corrupt bastards like Cheney in charge and appointees like Scooter Libby, Clinton taking advantage, etc. You can keep shouting free market all you want, but what exactly got you into trillions of dollars worth of debt? And wouldn't a free market country have let the banks fail?
40% tax in return for poor education, poor health care and various other poor services
While i may not be the smartest thing to come through the British education system, there are certain areas of America where they appoint senators that haven't a clue where oil comes from. Education isn't something that you just need for yourself, having people as educated as possible helps in all walks of life, so even if you could get a better deal with 10% of your salary, you would still be worse off if you were surrounded by idiots.
Not only is our 'poor' healthcare system cheaper than your but it keeps us alive slightly longer 78.7 vs 78.06. Healthcare is another thing that really helps a country, even if you could (not that america does) get a better deal for yourself, having an unhealthy country affects your workforce and so your still stuck in a worse situation overall.
Our various other services include policing where although we do have more crime, we have significantly (less than half) less rape/murder.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
My BT circuit (I don't get a choice there isn't a cable co.) has the last 800m from their cabinet on aluminium cables. I can't see that being replace with fibre any time soon.
The day this Moronic Gov't promises something that makes a difference to me and doesn't cost a fortune in wasted taxation I'll eat my hat.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Because the internet like the postal service before it is something that is essential to businesses so a minimum standard should be provided to everybody (regardless of profitability) because it benefits everybody. OFC there are limits and conditions, but overall government support/funding to get broadband internet to everybody at a reasonable price is a good step, not only for the receivers but also for all companies with an online presence and to a lesser extent everybody else online.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Hey....
The post office pretty much pays for itself to my understanding. It's not very expensive to ship a letter across the U.S. What more do you want? I think of all the government run agencies, the USPS is doing a kick ass job.
So does FexEx, UPS, or DHL deliver a document from any mailbox to anywhere in the country for 43 cents in a couple of days?
You have to take then for what they are. They aren't (primarily) a parcel service. They aren't an overnight courier. They are a mail service. And for that they do a pretty good job.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
You can still pay for private healthcare, Bupa is a prime example of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bupa
And if you've got enough money to afford private health care, the tax that pays for the public health care probably isn't a big dent in your paycheck.
Privatization isn't always in the best interest, this case is a perfect example.
The reason these people don't have internet at the moment is that the telephone/internet service providers don't find them to be profitable and therefore won't spend money to get them connected.
This is exactly why the government is investing that money to get them connected, at which point the ISPs can make money off them.
So does FexEx, UPS, or DHL deliver a document from any mailbox to anywhere in the country for 43 cents in a couple of days?
We'll never know, because USPS has a Federally granted monopoly on 'non-urgent mail'. Take that away from them and I'd wager that UPS and/or Fedex could drive them into the ground in short order. If nothing else the USPS is overpaying most of their employees, though I'd wager that private enterprise could find savings in other areas as well.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Great level of debate. Fuck you too.
. Wherever there's universal coverage, there's also usually long waits for specialized surgery
Of course there is. The alternative is no queue, and if you don't have the cash to pay for prvate treatment, you just go home and die. As for the 30% or so of the US which has no health insurance. The US has the world's best medical care, for their rich, and 4th-world level for their poor. And has the infant death rates to prove it.
>> Using money left over
What is that? I've never seen that before...
"Why would you spend a pile of money to build a system that's obsolete as soon as you turn it up?"
Sounds a lot like the private sector (at least when it comes to the internet), the private sector is milking old technology for all it is worth.
Or the NHS, or Royal Mail.
Yeah, the NHS sucks, let's abolish it and have to sell your house when you want an operation. And if you still can't afford it, just add another $100k to your $100k college debts.
This just my opinion, but you can stick your free market up your bollocks.
I don't want the sorts of people running AIG or GM to be in charge of my healthcare or education. Maybe it's time the free market was put on the backburner for a while.
This isn't funny ... this is sad :(
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Thankyou; that's exactly right. Your post is the least deserving of a Troll mod that I have ever seen.
The British economy is completely fucked because these cretins took our tax money and squandered it on their social engineering projects. This is another one of them. Here's an idea - instead of spending £250m of our money on broadband, why not lower some taxes? Then, we would be able to spend our own money on the things that are important to us, instead of it being spent for us. Maybe that would be broadband, maybe not.
Even the poorest working people in Britain have to pay income tax. The Government obsession with surveillance is only the most well known of the many things that are wrong here. Petition for Gordon Brown to resign.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
About 14 years, and every year it's got better. The "Eternal September" was a good thing. The benefits of mass Internet use (Wikipedia, Youtube, etc.) far outweigh the increased effort needed to ignore the worthless content. If newbies are really so intolerable maybe the problem is with your own skills.
Well, who wouldn't want to wait months for an operation, even after alleged "improvements", while risking death in a poorly-run hospital? Poorly-run because bureaucracies are inefficient, and in the public sector, there is no motive for improvement.
I wonder why so many people buy private healthcare insurance in Britain, paying twice for healthcare, if NHS provision is so good?
Could it be that the NHS isn't actually that great, and people only believe that it is because they are lied to by the Government and the media? Both of which tell them that (1) the NHS is value for money and (2) the alternative would be worse.
The British imagine that poor people were dying in the streets and becoming destitute to pay for operations, until the NHS was brought in to fix everything. It doesn't occur to them that without the tax burden, even the poorest people were free to make their own arrangements for healthcare, and that's exactly what happened. Friendly societies and charity hospitals used to be commonplace until the NHS replaced them with something "better". And now, the tax burden is so high that even people who live below the poverty line are paying income tax in Britain.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
There are still some rural areas, particularly in Scotland, where the only 'high-speed' Internet access you can get is ISDN, at 128Kb/s (for two channels), charged per minute and very expensive.
Well afaict you can use a single channel ISDN dialup with pretty much any dialup ISP (including unmetered packages). I think there are unmetered packages for dual channel too though I dunno how much they cost.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
My guess is that BT will be forced to provide sufficiant infrastructure to get a 2 megabit link to every home. BTs backbone network sometimes has some contention but it's generally not too bad. The worst contention typically comes on the connections between ISPs and BTs backbone network (which are very expensive)
Generally this means with ISPs that use the BT system you either get unlimited deals but with horrible contention or metered deals which perform well. There are also some very expensive packages (e.g. the IDNET "buisness premium" package ) which offer both good performance and no metering.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yes, you won't be be billed per minute by the ISP, but you will still have to pay per minute for the phone call, just as you do with dial-up.
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If the government was changing for their Internet in some fashion, but allowed people to opt-out, would there be any room for private nonfilterered Internet?
Granted, there would be selection bias: a lot of normal people would stick with the government internet, whereas a lot of the actual bad guys would head for private ISPs.
Government monopolies = have some of the same risks as private monopolies. Government playing sorta like everyone else, or the government service going to people too-poor-for-the-private-market in the market can work.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
but you will still have to pay per minute for the phone call, just as you do with dial-up.
Depends what package you get. There are dialup packages with freephone numbers. They didn't charge per the minuite but they did often have an AUP which prevented being dialled in 24/7 (I think the BT package I was on said 10 hours per day in the AUP though I dunno if they enforced it) and they also made you redial every so often.
ukfsn ( http://www.ukfsn.org/home/internet/friaco.html ) have several packages using this system though they don't seem to have a true unmetered package. They also have dual channel ISDN packages (at about twice the price of single channel packages).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yeah, a 1.1 billion dollar loss in the third quarter of 2008 is stellar. Any the service there is always so quick and friendly.
Interesting then, that if the NHS is so terrible and unpopular, not even the most conservative types want to replace it with an American system that costs twice as much.
The NHS 'beaurocracy' is nothing compared tothe US where you can be charged ten grand just for giving birth. And if you can't afford it you're declared bankrupt.
Those people below the poverty line would never be able to afford private health care on their own. Why would the media lie about the NHS? Most newspapers are incredibly right wing and constantly whine about benefits and taxes, and even they defend the NHS.
People buy private healthcare for the same reason they buy expensive cars, holiday homes and plasma TVs, they have money and they want to spend them on luxuries that make them look better off than other people.
This is the same way rural electrification was implemented.
snig