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British Broadband Needs £1bn More Funding
judgecorp writes "A report from the London School of Economics says that funding for superfast broadband in Britain faces a £1.1 billion shortfall. It's a government priority, but rural areas are uneconomic to cable up. From the article: 'Britain is in danger of missing out on the economic and social benefits of superfast broadband due to a lack of government funding and e-skills, according to a new report.
Research by the London School of Economics (LSE) and Convergys claims a funding gap of £1.1 billion could cause the government to miss its target of having the “best superfast broadband network” in Europe by 2015.'"
it's a small country.. should be easy enough to set up national fixed wireless service that reaches all but the most remote areas (e.g. areas that'd need multiple towers to reach a handful of households)
for other industries they real beneficiaries are not the outlying regions but the connected in high places people who choose to have estates far from their primary place of work.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If there is a real benefit to having rural broadband, the customers will make it pay. If it is uneconomic, it means that people don't really want it as much as they pretend to.
Now what with all of this government meddling?
They have a billion dollars sitting around. That'd cover half.
At a time when austerity is the word of the day and cuts are being made all over the place, I wonder whether "superfast broadband" in rural areas is the best way to use limited resources. Presumably, people choose to live in rural areas because they derive benefits from that (clear air, outdoors, less crime, community, etc.). Good for them! But why should city dwellers subsidize their rural lifestyle? If you choose to live in a rural area with low population density, you have to accept that perhaps your internet connexion will not be as fast as if you lived in bustling city.
Can't we use some of that? It's a much worthier cause.
Just before the 2010 general election, the now ex-Labour government shoved through (mostly) to BT, the main backbone company in the UK £10bn to upgrade switches etc. to enable spying on all phone calls and internet traffic in real time. Imagine what you could do for an economy instead of spying on people, you built a phone / data network that is faster than your competitors for businesses.
Oh well, you can dream on with politicians having common sense. They are more worried about themselves and what people are saying about them, than worrying about the economy.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
any plan where a bureaucrat uses the word "e-skills"?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
How amusing - our dear little con-dem Government reckons Britian will have the best superfast broadband by 2015, do they? Well, they might like to "encourage" BT to pull its finger out and upgrade all the exchanges to ADSL2 for a start. There are thousands of small exchanges stuck about 5 years in the past and no plans whatsoever to upgrade them.
Meanwhile all the effort seems to be going to towns and cities, the places that already have the choice of cable or ADSL2 or fibre to the cabinet. They really ought to splunk that cash on bringing everyone up to speed instead, but no, as it's all about money it's far more efficient for them just to push ahead where there's already fast broadband.
I think there's more chance of the Sun suddenly exploding than there is of the UK having the best superfast broadband by 2015.
Superfast broadband is great, but are there really economic and social benefits?
Fast broadband makes a difference to entertainment but hardly necessary for employment, communication or accessing public services. Unless the government has plan to put high end tech jobs out in the depths of the Scottish highlands I would have thought that 4 MBps would do just fine. I struggle to see why I should subsidise some farmers access to NetFlix.
Who commissioned this report again? Any danger of the LSE coming to the conclusions the client wanted?
Then don't. Seriously, so much noise is made in the UK about universal access to broadband and the majority of it is people complaining that the speeds they get are terrible. Or that BT has told them they need to pay thousands if they want connecting. What do all of these people have in common? They live in rural areas often right in the middle of nowhere.
The papers love this kind of thing as it allows then to print headlines like "Rural Pensioner charged £90,000 for broadband setup". Ignoring what should be obvious to anyone which is if you choose to live in a remote location then you have to accept that there may be downsides to that decision. One of those downsides will inevitably be poorer access to services. Expecting any company (or government) to run miles of cable and install switching equipment for the sake of one house is ludicrous.
In the same way I can't move to the middle of nowhere and then complain that I have to walk miles to buy a paper in the morning, complaining about not having access to the best broadband speeds is hardly reasonable.
Fast broadband is never going to happen here then...
I guess we should just give up and move on with our lives.
If the ISPs will continue to limit how much you can download each month as if there is a limited supply of "internets". ISPs in the UK (no idea what it is like across the pond) seem to follow the same business model that the movie/music industry does and until that changes, I don't see a valid reason for this and I live in one of those areas considered "rural England". Many people I know don't need 'super-fast' and don't care for it. In fact most just care how much it costs and when ISPs start offering "super-fast broadband" they will also start offering super-high prices. The entire way internet services is sold in the UK is dodgy as hell (again, no idea what it is like across the pond). Each provider tries to sell you their own internet and tell you it is better then the rest. They are still selling WiFi as part of their packages as if it is a rare commodity that no-one else provides or is able to get and make it sound as if it is something exclusive to "their internet".
The main UK problem is that backhaul from the exchanges is very expensive (and metered, believe it or not) unless you put equipment at all of them. This makes it almost impossible to compete with the few carriers who DO have equipment at all exchanges. Therefore broadband competition only exists in the cities where you can get enough subscribers that it is worth putting in your own equipment. Then add FTTC, where it is impossible for more than one carrier to put in equipment. There simply isn't room or power available for each carrier to be able to put in their own DSLAM in a cabinet, so competitors are forced to use the expensive and metered lines from the main carrier.
The result is that service in the rural areas is slow, expensive and metered, and service in urban areas is either cheap and slow (ADSL2+) or fast, expensive and metered (FTTC).
Just to make it worse, it is legal to tie customers in for long contracts. Right now BT won't sell you an FTTC line for love or money unless you indenture yourself for 18 months.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Virgin media posted Cable TV, broadband and phone 2010 as best year ever as revenues hit £3.8bn
BT pre-tax profits of £1bn 2010
BskyB Revenue also rose to £5.9bn, up more than 10% on the £5.4bn recorded a year earlier.
There is lots of money to invest just the companies dont want to - they would rather charge for over priced and poor quality services to keep the share holders happy.
A few years ago I would have felt sorry for people without broadband or the Internet. Now I envy them.
There hasn't been anything good on the Internet in years. It's all crap. Reading the Internet will make you stupid now.
A good example of the article missing the point entirely >>
"Britain is in danger of missing out on the economic and social benefits of superfast broadband due to a lack of government funding and e-skills"
Not quite correct, allow me to correct that for you....
'Rural areas of Britain, which are uneconomic to connect are in danger of missing out on the economic and social benefits of superfast broadband due to a lack of government funding and e-skills'
Tbh, if you buy a house out in the sticks this is one of many issues you factor in (such as distance from large hospital facilities / proximity to transit hubs etc etc..) If sparsely populated rural areas wish to acquire superfast broadband then they should be given the opportunity to invest in it on a group basis and receive reduced recurring charges if others later subscribe to the service locally without making the initial investment.
The british mainland is 800 miles long (1000 miles if you include the shetland and scilly isles) with 200 miles of mountains in scotland. While it may be small compared to the USA or russia its quite big compared to a lot of other countries.
I get a bit tired of my country being pigeonholed as some tiny little quaint island one step up from marthas vineyard or similar.
That works out to 16 pounds per person. That's less than one months revenue for the network operators.
We can raise that for them. C'mon slashdotters, start eating those hotpockets!
There was an ISP in the USA that decided it was worth it to to run fiber to it's 30k customers, who were spread over 5,000 square miles or 13,000km2. That's an average of 6 people/mi2 or 2.3/km2.
How "rural" are these areas that they're not worth it?
I thought that Britain is in danger of missing out on the economic and social benefits of superfast broadband due to The Pirate Bay being blocked.
Thankyou Ladies and germs. I'm here all week.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Mmm, for an existing provider the question is not "how much are we making now?", it's "how much more would we make if we offered faster services and/or wider coverage and how much would it cost us to do that?"
And for a new upstart the question is "can we displace enough customers from the incumbent to pay for our fixed costs?"
How much does going from say 5mbps to 50mbps improve the internet experiance for normal users? how much extra do you think most people would pay for that improvement?
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Chattanooga, TN has 1 gigabit consumer internet, via its public utility.. Only 8 residential households (of a few months ago) have signed up for 1 gigabit internet speeds (~$350/month). It is offering a $300K prize for whomever can up with how to use all that bandwidth. I doubt they will find one in the next several years. There's always the hospitals and education excuse, but that's nothing some fedexed hard drives can't take care of.
As a Canadian, I find the notion of rural areas in Britain being uneconomic to cable up to be quite hilarious.
The UK just spent 24 billion Pounds on the Olympics and nobody wanted those...
Surely they could have spent this money better on something like this broadband project... and with that much money left, give everyone a free PC!
could cause the government to miss its target of having the âoebest superfast broadband networkâ in Europe by 2015.
Surely the government jests. They seem to think that getting Virgin and BT to install FTTC is going to get us there, but clearly nothing short of a full FTTH roll-out is going to work. Fujitsu offered to do it but that would have upset Tory party donors.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
> cause the government to miss its target of having the “best superfast broadband network” in Europe by 2015.'
I'm curious as to how fast the best network is considered to be in Europe currently and what the target of the government is. The article is severely lacking in this information.
It reasonable for them to act that way in a market that is competitive, as the market itself will correct by competitors offering better speeds, reliability, and prices. Unfortunately rights to dig up our roads or ownership of ducts, falls on a duopoly for some of the country, and a monopoly for the rest so we need to force them to behave differently if we want any kind of reasonable service.
Personally I think it's silly for any of our utility infrastructure to be privatly owned, especially when they were orignally government funded. I'm not sure any of the players have shown a desire to improve or extend that, without being paid considerable sums of money, usually from government directives. We have a nice system where 3rd parties are allowed to sell services via our infrastructure, but the underlying tech itself should have been run by a non-profit.
Same goes for rails, leccy, gas, water, etc. Pretty sure it's way too late for that now though. :)
Chaps, I hate to say it, but I'm going to need another 1B pounds sterling. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that if you don't come up with the money, you're in danger of missing out on the economic and social benefits of superfast broadband. Those are some fantastic knees, by the way.
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