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UK Delays National Broadband For Three Years
DMandPenfold writes "The British government has said that it will not be able to complete the rollout of broadband across the UK until 2015, blaming a lack of funds. 'Under the previous Labour government's original plans, everyone in the UK would have had access to 2 megabits per second broadband by 2012.' On Thursday, UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt organized a meeting for major broadband providers 'to identify the current barriers to providing basic level broadband in rural areas as well as suggesting ways to make more use of publicly-owned networks, such as those connecting schools and hospitals.' BT, the country's biggest telco, estimates that the necessary government funding for the project will be as much as £2 billion."
From the article:
"Most grandmothers will get by without broadband".
As a 49 yo grandmother, feminist, and C programmer I am offended by this.
Why the delay? It should be scrapped altogether.
I have nothing against people in rural areas wanting the same services
as everyone else but why should I have to fund it? If they want to get
money for this they should increase the council tax to rural areas to
pay for it. They chose to live there so they should pay for the privilege.
The BT 21CN is just wrong and doomed to failure. Its over budget, delayed
and will never work right. By the time its completed they'll be needing
to upgrade to keep up with things like BBC IPlayer, YouTube, P2P and other high
bandwidth services.
Quite a few years ago I tried to get my local council to create it's own
broadband network. The local community would fund the internet network and
then add the cost to the Council Tax. If other areas did the same they
could link's their networks to each other and create a massive resilient
network that isn't dependant on BT's overpriced services. Local connections
would be at nearly LAN speeds. It would promote community services and
facilities. It would also remove a lot of the traffic going through exchange points
like LINX.
Holy crap, UK is extremely tiny compared to Canada and over here the lowest we can get is 5 megabits per second. Even in my remote town in the middle of nowhere, we now have access to 12 megabits per second for commercial clients.
"BT, the country's biggest telco, estimates that the necessary government funding for the project will be as much as £2 billion."
This is a farce. What the new Government did was ask the TELCOs what the problems were with deploying rural broadband. That's like asking De Beers how to reduce diamond prices.
BT can pay for it themselves. Roll out the universal service obligation for broadband. BT's already got special treatment thanks to its representative in government, Ofcom. It's time it also enjoyed obligations.
I don't want the bloody government paying for this. I don't want the government doing anything else with the Internet in this country, in fact. From the IWF to Cameron telling Facebook to take down troll comments praising some guy with obvious mental health problems who went on a killing spree, this government is more New Labour and less Liberal than the last.
Makes me sick. BT should pay for it, they already have a monopoly, so you can't avoid paying them money. Why can they not pay for this themselves? They have stiffled innovation for years. They promised 21CN for the whole country and I don't believe they ever had any intention of delivering it.
2 Megabit by 2015 !!! I thought my 8Mb broadband was slow.
There was talk about funding coming from the TV license fee, why hasn't this happened, I would consider broadband to be more important than the digital tv switch over. Especially as most of the remote areas have trouble picking up terrestrial TV anyway.
...this means that there are people in the EU who are being denied their Basic Human Right to free 100MB Internet service! Could it be that there has been some exaggeration going on? Have we been misled?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The current UK government:
We're privatization much of the NHS! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
We're scrapping hundreds of school building projects! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
We're freezing all public sector pay! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
We're cutting thousands of jobs in quangos! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
We're scrapping a ban of cigarette vending machines! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
We're sending Cameron to visit America to defend BP! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
We're taxing graduates! due to lack of funds and bad management by the previous government.
-
Ok, so they have a horrible job. But later cuts would have been the answer, and blaming the previous administration is never the answer.
Reports say they're pulling out of Afghanistan in 2014, so the timing sounds about right.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The real focus should be on the advancement of knowledge which allows for technological innovation which increases standard of living and keeps the currency strong because others want what you produce, so govt should print as much money as it needs to fund the tools necessary to allow individuals to exploit their native intellect to the fullest.
I used to be on an ISP that used BT's infrastructure for internet access, then when they started throttling through traffic shaping I jumped ship to one that's LLU (Local Loop Unbundled). My download speed went from 3mbit to 5.5mbit overnight and my upload speed went from 0.6mbit to over 1mbit.
BT have most of the country by the balls, there are many people who want to completely ditch BT for a LLU ISP but their local exchange hasn't been upgraded yet.
Furthermore if you want some extra "BT suck" fodder just read this articale about a guy who was quoted £56,000 for broadband - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/8577092.stm
Is that Telco estimate of £2 billion, before or after they siphon off as much profit from the Taxpayer's money? Or does that figure include the profit share the Telco's will pay themselves out of that estimate? I mean, the history of broadband expansion in some other countries in the past seems to be that the Gov. sponsored portion tends to disappear and Taxpayers never seem to get much value for money or worse yet rate increases on top of the taxed portion.
Just asking.
Hi
I live out in the middle of nowhere where I enjoy clean air, wide open spaces and lower property prices. It's great but I really want it both ways and think I deserve a high speed internet connection as well.
Some people have suggested to me that I should move somewhere more densely populated if I want high speed internet access, but I find this proposition to be absurd. I think I should be entitled to high speed breadboard and furthermore I think everyone else should have to pay for it. I know it'll be extremely expensive to deliver a broadband service to where I live but I think I should be able to enjoy the benefits of living in the countryside as well as having access to the same facilities dwellers of urban areas enjoy.
I see nothing unreasonable about my position and demand you all start paying for my internet connection immediately!
Sincerely,
An owner of a large country estate
I live in a remote village in Scotland. I already have "up to" 2 MB broadband. Last week I was uploading files at 2 KILOBYTES per second. If this is what they're offering then I want my 56k modem back.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Until it gets down to the issue of who pays for it. I'm reminded of an ancient Roman orator, who was asked which wine he liked to drink best. His answer?
"The wine, for which, someone else has paid for."
Kinda sorta sums up the broadband debate everywhere. Everybody wants it; nobody wants to pay for it. And it would certainly be best if someone else paid for it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I've never really understood why people in rural areas feel it should be a legal requirement for their internet to be as fast as it is in cities. If you want to escape the riff-raff and live all on your own in the country, you should be prepared to deal with whatever that might bring you.
We'll be hearing this from the Tory-Lib Dem government for the next 4-5 years, I suspect. There will be many many things that we should be doing, but because Labour mismanaged the public purse, the digital divide in the UK will have to stay.
It's really quite boring that politicians spend so much of their first time blaming the previous incumbents for current problems, instead of being a bit more proactive and concentrating on solutions instead of laying blame...
cat:
You want all the neat stuff you need to actually live in a heavy urban area delivered to you from the rural areas, plus have it cheap. Swell, this is now possible because as a nation we invested in a set of "commons", we now have decent roads everywhere, rail service, and seized property where electric transmission lines, natural gas lines and water lines exist..all to bring stuff to you in the cities, our royal "blues" bloods now by voting demographics, cheaply. So, if the rural people just want a little better internet, all of a sudden this "commons" idea gets bad? OK, maybe it is! How about you voluntarily give up all your cheap trucked in stuff and piped in stuff and go out and start contracting for your food and water and electricity, and pay transit fees and tolls, boundary line by boundary line, to each owner, to all the rural landowners to get that stuff? What do you think your urban existence would really cost then?
I'm all for it really, dump the commons, privatize everything including the roads, no more eminent domain seizure and use for the transmission towers and water pipelines, toll roads everywhere, all of that, let it simmer for a few months, just to see what is really valuable today or not. Let's rock! Bring it on, we'll see who cracks first.
Here, just to show you we rural people have some compassion for our now starving urban area "neighbors" under the "chuck you farley, we got ours now you pay up what we demand if you want anything better like normal 21st century stuff" private everything model of society and economics... you might need this http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/e-sermons/butcher.html You need to print out a hard copy now while you can..my guess is your electricity would go to, oh..a few hundred bucks a kilowatt hour at a minimum once all our transit fees are paid to us. Maybe more..or maybe we just wouldn't care and say "no, tough luck, we don't need anything you have, including your scam fiat currency crap. We could do that, too. We got the food, water and energy, you got...consumers. That's it..you just consume what we provide, and provide cheap.
Have fun! Let's do it, the grand experiment, get this sorted out what is really worth what, once and for all. Then no more debates, we'll all know what is necessary and what isn't, who gets paid too much and who gets paid too little, and what is more important, and whether or not a "commons" is a good idea. Let's let a real free market and no more public commons *anything* sort this all out. I'm totally ready and would really like to see it. Making my bucket of popcorn right now!
21CN is the core network you muppet - its not for the D side
In a world where there are 15 people who are each worth between 20 and 60 billion dollars?