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Belfast Plots 1Gbps Ultra-Fast Broadband Network
twoheadedboy writes "Belfast is going to get ultra-fast broadband, as plans for a 1Gbps network get going. Belfast's City Council has been guaranteed £6m of the UK government's £100m Urban Broadband Fund, but could receive up to £13.7m if the Government approves its plans. The city plans to get the network up and running in three years, which will make it one of the best-connected cities in the world."
You can step down to the pub for a pint (or twelve), then browse around to see if anyone's blowing up protestants using flash mobs that night.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Will consumers be able to transmit/receive a data throughput of 1 Gb/s?
Seems like all of Belgium's neighbours are developing plans to roll out FTTx .
Meanwhile we're stuck in the dark ages and this country's telecom duopoly (Belgacom & Telenet) can't seem to care.
On one hand we have the semi-nationalised Belgacom, earning money on the network they were able to roll out using taxpayer's money.
They recently decided investing in FTTH is too soon, preferring to look into revitalizing DSL technology to support marginally higher speeds (50 MBit instead of 20).
Smaller providers resell their service with somewhat better pricing and conditions, but they are not big enough to make a dent.
Then there's Telenet which owns the cable market on the Flemish side of the country. They started advertising "Faster than light" 100/5 Mb/s connections to customers, but were forced to retract this ad due to false advertising because 1) It's not faster then light 2) Their product FibetNet is not actually FTTH but fiber to the neighbourhood and then distributed across DOCSIS 3.0 modems.
Bottom line: neither company has any financial intrest in rolling out FTTH, citing high costs and low potential returns. They seem to think their current products are more than fast enough for today's online applications and that technology firms don't need to invest in new technologies to remain in business.
Years ago a plan was hatched by politician Vincent Van Quickenborne called SuperFastBelgium. It aimed to promote fiber rollout with financial incentives to companies. Nothing ever happened. I wrote an e-mail to that politician's cabinet asking what happened and if there had been any meetings with industry leaders as promised. I only got a political bullshit answer, nothing concrete at all. (Never voting for you!)
So it is with a tear in my eye that I read this article and hope that one day, people in charge here wake up and actually get off their asses to do something for a change. Because I want my 1 Gbps FTTH!!!
1 GPS is enough for anybody. Having a public-owned utility providing the connectivity has been great. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I will, however, willingly part with our mayor and congressman. If you are interested in worthless scum of the earth, please reply with where we can send them. Tar and features will be provided with our compliments.
If the Ulster were to be part of the Republic of Ireland right now, would they be getting £13.7 million just for upgrading their broadband?
Oh and I don't care if it is green or orange. I only care if it is fast.
My parents can get 1Gbit/s for $90/month in their house, as did I in my last appartment. And we are a much less densely populated country.
...government renames Northern Ireland capital Belreallyfast, as Irish linguists protest.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Not much comes from there but dark, cold winters. You'd think if they could, they'd have moved down south !!
What utility is there in speeds beyond the 10-20Mbps required for video streaming?
It's unsinkable!
And BT leave residents in Darragh Cross who live 12 miles from the Capital with a 1meg connection. The Rural Divide Widens!
If the US had a municipality with an extra $6 million, or if the federal government could dole out an extra $6 million all it would take is the local government using their eminent domain rights to condemm whatever property they wanted to build the network. They could rip commercial wires down from poles and replace them with their own to get this done. There really is no limit to what could be done with this, if a government decided to do this.
Except, within a week of doing so such a city would be sued out of existance. Sorry, but municipalities do not get to run roughshod over commercial businesses in the US. Nor do they get to compete on the basis of offering services for tax dollars that other commercial entities have to charge their users for. Also, pretty much any use of eminent domain these days is going to result in a court fight if it deprives any individual or commercial entity of real property rights. The old days where a county could build a road through a bunch of existing homes is pretty much gone and has been for quite a while. And after the last public court fight over eminent domain rights, nobody is going to want to push the envelope much at all.
Another problem is geographic boundaries. If you want to offer fiber service to one part of a town and not another you better be awfully sure of yourself. And have lots of data to back up the decision. Because if there are minorities living in the part that you were not planning on serving, they will likely sue. Heck, people will sue no matter what because they aren't being served in the manner they think they should be. It doesn't matter that you might only have two customers that would pay for the service in that area - not offering it is not an option.
And people wonder all the time why this stuff is so complicated.
One of the best ways to go about this is to use the same approach as Stockholm, where we've had "ultra-fast" 1Gbps broadband for quite a few years now.
The city has founded and funded a city owned company with the sole purpose of putting fiber in the ground to every part of the city. The company then allows any ISP to rent space in the fiber, ensuring fair competion in the internet connectivity marketplace. Since the company has easier access to city decision makers whenever they need to dig up a street it is possible to coordinate the work and put more cable in the ground at a faster pace.
Since the company gets good revenue from the ISPs the city only had to use taxpayer money for the initial part of the network and has now regained that investment.
Everyone wins and the internet gets better!
What happens to my unused bandwidth, anyways? I get 150GB/Month and do not even come close to exceeding that. So why does life call for faster internet in the first place?
This is all very nice, but here in Lafayette, Louisiana, we just got 1 Gb service up and running. See http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20120406/NEWS01/204060326. This is part of the joy of a city owned ISP. The big commercial providers are pissed, but we customers love it!
I'm really sick of hearing how all these places in the UK other than Scotland are getting their fair share of this broadband money - 1GBps networks being rolled out - London's 100mb planned networks already assured of upgrades. Every other English city seems bet getting 100mb networks; right down to the smallest village - but yet, in Scotland, most places barely even have 1mb lines; my sister barely gets 20 kbps and she lives less than 15 miles from a city of 100, 000 people. we don't all live in Glasgow you know. I, and most of the country, will be voting YES come the referendum in 2014. Let's see your NHS and fibre optic dreams stay afloat when we take back our North Sea gold. :)
An the money will be wasted on fat cats and various other BT like companies.
What they will also do is go yay great, fast internet, then place a huge CAP on it meaning you cannot download your purchases from Steam or on-line Video rentals streaming etc.
6m for that? Won't be enough, you can be sure they will ask for more money or it will fail and them saying "we never got enough funding so the project is ended".
One thing for sure, Stormont is fat and greedy. Look at all their family members working for their ministers and submitting expenses.
Northern Ireland is a BANANA REPUBLIC.
Yay, let's focus on the West and forget about the East just because well, it's the East, nothing ever good happen n the East right?
Well, while the network in Belfast might be up and running in three years, there is already a fully functioning COUNTRY-WIDE 1Gbps high speed internet in Romania. Cities such as Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca already have such connections FOR OVER A YEARS. Welcome to the future... in 4 years Belfast?