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France Plans 20-Billion Euro National Broadband Plan
judgecorp writes "France is planning a €20 billion programme to get super-fast broadband to its rural population. About half the funds will come from government investment, and President Hollande believes the work will create 10,000 jobs. Half the population should have fast broadband in the next five years, and the whole country in ten years. France is at a disadvantage for broadband as it is a large country with a lot of rural areas. However, it also has a more left-leaning government willing to take on infrastructure projects."
Hollande!
You call that a large country with a lot of rural areas? Now this is a large country with a lot of rural areas!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I hope this works out for them, but I'm not holding my breath...
If your nations economy can support this, then why not?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
And nothing does more than national broadband at keeping nazis at bay !!
How on earth does "willing to take on infrastructure projects" mean left-leaning?
I have a suggestion - since "left wing" vs "right wing" means different things in different places we should not use them.
Why does the President of Holland need to get involved? Surely the responsibility for a national broadband network should fall to the President of France?
You obviously never heard of Canada to claim that France is a large country with a lot of rural areas. Canada is 14 times larger and has half the population. Now please, tell me again how large France is and how much of a disadvantage it is.
I don't know where the claim of 10,000 jobs created came from. Perhaps it was just the overactive imagination of the submitter. But given that the figure is 2 million euro per alleged job created which is a ridiculous figure should job creation have been any sort of priority, it seems incredibly stupid to try to make that a selling point of the scheme.
Consider for example, the global flood that is the main point of drama in the classic story of Noah's Ark. It kills almost everyone and everything; it cleanses the world of sin for a time; and it creates 8 high value jobs!
Robin Hood wore red and not green?
Australia is a large country with a lot of nothing. There are like 4 city centres where most people live, a bit of rural population, and then a whole bunch of empty nothing. Not surprising, given the climate and geography really.
The US is probably one of the most rural nations over all. Lots of big cities too, of course, but a substantial amount of population that is spread out over a substantial amount of land.
And look at how that worked in the US... do you think the same should apply to roads as well, they are becoming almost as important for the ecconomy.
null
Is this person serious?
If so then wow, you americans really are brainwashed..
If your tax dollars being spent for your benefit is communism, then I guess your tax dollars spent against your interest like in the US is despotism, feudalism, and slavery.
Make that 12.
As we learned recently, French workers work only 3 hours a day of the 7 they should.
Then most of the world is communism...
The government builds roads and all manner of other infrastructure for the benefit of all the people.
Many things are simply not economically viable to do in a capitalist system, so they would never get done at all without government intervention.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
you are an idiot. when a government does something like this, it will spur a growth in the economy and the whole operation will be paid back in taxes, and then continue to add to the economy. you right wing dumbfucks just don't understand how to build a nation.
Ahem..it's take from all and give to few. Those who are already served by privately built networks are likely served by them in the future. Also fiber does nothing without the equipment at the both ends. Those might as well be private, public and various investment supported mixes, who knows. Public projects, like temples for Amen Ra as an jobs creation instrument was know to the ancient Egyptians already.
.. I'd love it if they finished rolling out fiber-optic in Paris first.. Depending which arondissement you're in, the only option is super-saturated ADSL (800k/s down, 70k/s up) - or cable, which is even worse..
Um, think there laying infrastructure, not giving away internet.
wasnt most of Franch is telecommunciation infra structure built BY the tax payers until privatised?
for americans.. there's no way they'd let the french do something like this first.
Brainwashed?
What part of if you don't fucking work then you don't fucking eat do you not understand?
As others talk of roads, you do understand that roads are funded by taxing the fucking GAS that EVERYONE USES TO DRIVE THE FUCKING ROADS. I agree that it's not quite that simple and the statist has worked very hard to pervert this over the years to make taxes as "progressive" (spit) as possible, but the end here in the US we are supposed to value EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY not OUTCOME.
Now go fuck yourselves you Euroweenie trash commies.
Brainwashed indeed, it's you lot that are brainwashed.
As does the Arctic. Okay, but Russia's next - you don't think they'd be laying down fiber in either of these 2 continents, do you? Whereas, if Russia chose to do that, they could employ the entire world's population in just laying that out.
Thats worked so well we now spend our great great grand-children's money to do these things.
Oh, was I not supposed to actually think critically about the crap that you just said?
Australia seems to think they can convert to an almost entirely fibre network for roughly the same amount of money,....... something doesn't add up here.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=france%20australia%20landmass
Joking aside, for total ISP success you couldn't do better than imitating the UK. We have hundreds of ISPs as a result of the regulator Ofcom making things difficult for the old guard, all trying to outdo each other in a total frenzy of competition that would amaze Americans. The amount of choice is bewildering.
Why this bit of centralized "planning for competition" worked out so well we're not entirely sure, but it did. :P
How is the army funded? Are non-taxpayers entitled to protection? e.g. the unemployed, children, ...
You seem to have some anger management issues.
Oh, by the way, the French equivalent of the US interstate system is privately funded and paid for by tolls.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Or at least the west. Otherwise, China will dump on you and work to destroy your industry.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Socialists and statists steal 60 to 70% of the money I earn and use to support myself and my family, they piss on the Constitution and infringe on our natural rights every fucking chance they get.
You fucking bet I am pissed off and I am getting more and more pissed off every day and you liberal punks better wake the fuck up as there is only so much of this shit we the fucking people are going to fucking put up with.
Any other questions?
France is at a disadvantage for broadband as it is a large country with a lot of rural areas
The European territory of France covers 547,030 square kilometres (211,209 sq mi). France is smaller than New Mexico and Colorado combined. It is not a "large" country and has a population density (116/sq km) comparable to PA (110/sqkm) or OH (109 /sqkm), not NM (7) or CO(19).
But in a socialist utopia like France, any excuse for a government boondoggle is a good one.
Universal access is damnably expensive but a lot can be done on the cheap. Like hooking up the highest density areas first and requiring all new construction to have fiber. Better something than nothing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_highways_in_the_United_States
As per usual the Slashdot socialist class gets everything wrong.
Excerpts from the "commie" past of US (i.e a more sane US):
Brooklyn Bridge
Route 66
Golden Gate Bridge
Hoover dam
Moon landing
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Socialists and statists steal 60 to 70% of the money I earn and use to support myself and my family, they piss on the Constitution and infringe on our natural rights every fucking chance they get.
That's because we liberal socialists and statists are smarter than you and know how to get you to do work for us, while we sit around and reap the fruits of your labor.
And don't worry you will fucking put up with it forever. That's how life works: the powerful gets to control the weak.
Maybe in your next life you'll figure out how to be stronger.
Then most of the world is communism...
The government builds roads and all manner of other infrastructure for the benefit of all the people.
Many things are simply not economically viable to do in a capitalist system, so they would never get done at all without government intervention.
Two things, your last statement about things never getting done without government is easy to say, very difficult to prove.
Second, our crumbling and dangerous and non-innovative roads in the US seem to bend more rims on potholes and keep car repair shops in business than they do to help anybody. :)
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
Phones were free and efficient when the government telco was a monopoly? No. Well you're an idiot then.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
broadband minitel! the government is here to save you! QSD!
Can somebody out there explain why they want to spend that much on terrestrial broadband? Why isn't it cheaper and _much_ quicker to put up a geostationary satellite? I'm puzzled.
France is planning a €20 billion programme to get super-fast broadband to its rural population
I thought they French government was trying to kick people off the internet, not get them on it.
Maybe instead of getting these people on the internet and then off again, they should just save the time and effort and give the €20 billion to the entertainment industry for nothing.
They'd spend more for private internet that sucked. That is what has been going on in the USA.
Why are there phones in the rural areas of the US? Government forced it, we pay an extra fee on our phone bills to cover it. Do we have phones in rural areas? yes, long time ago. Do we still have the fees? yes. pocketed as "support" cost. Does comcast pay taxes? not much... We lose billions on our private system that slowly crawls forward.
Government is non-profit. Their overhead cost is corruption and waste. Private corps are for-profit. Their overhead cost is PROFIT and waste (arguably less) and corruption (also arguably less; although, private monopoly contractors spur MORE corruption.)
To put it simply: which one costs more in the end? profit or waste? It really depends on how stupid the public is... too stupid to have a functioning government OR too stupid to stop the corporation from screwing them? NOTE: the latter one usually requires functioning government for the people to able to beat back an abusive corporation... and if the it functions well enough, then maybe it would function at doing the job in the 1st place?
I've seen privatization at work. It is not better. They fudge the numbers like the gov employees did; but in different ways and they are way more brash about it. Citizen costs rise; start out cheaper (the hook) but after some years of low profit or loss, the business turns it around and costs end up higher. This is just my limited experience, I'm sure sometimes it is a benefit - I've just never seen it yet in my city. Yes, I used to be a gov worker. There are a lot of lazy workers, but none are paid crazy amounts like private management (at least in my areas.) People resent we get ok pay and ok benefits (not as good as people think thanx to republicans.) Thing is that this is a divide and conquer trick for morons (half the USA) because our jobs were lower than private but more secure. We maintained them, well, we went backwards and didn't keep up with inflation. But the private market really screwed workers over, so somehow it is our fault we have no STDs from decades of being fucked in the ass. You like to be fucked by those sick bastards and then hate us because we don't have the clap...
I didn't even know that France has twenty billion Euros.
Ignoring the politics a little bit, there was a really good example of how this CAN work recently with the B4RN project.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21442348
A consortium of local farmers came together and allowed the use of their farmland and spare time to place fibre and hook up the local residents with gigabit internet speeds. By coming together as a consortium and being cooperative (rather than greedy) they have combined both entrepreneurial vigour with a sense of social awareness. I don't see why this model couldn't work in France too...
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
The problem is voters and ideologues who give away the store every time some shyster promises whatever they want to hear. Free high speed internet installed everywhere in the country? You got my vote!
If I were French, the first question I'd be asking is it really worth 20 billion euro to connect all of France via high speed broadband to the internet? Second, could we get the same result for less?
No offense, but I just don't see that much value to hooking up society completely to the internet. Plus anyone who really wants to get on the internet in a developed country can find a way. My take is that most of the value of the internet is already here. Making it a little faster on the user side or adding a few more users, just isn't that valuable.
Cost-wise, I gather you're spending something like a thousand euro per household to connect up. That seems rather pricey especially given that a good fraction of those households are already connected.
Saying that it's just about getting a little faster is very short-sighted, switching from DSL to fiber means an immediate and minimum 100x increase in upload bandwith or more, for the same monthly ISP payment (going from 15M/1M to 100M/100M). Latency is slightly lower. This is pretty useful if you're running a business or something, probably! Now you can do video-conferencing, offsite back ups, media upload without thinking about it twice nor having to blow a shit ton money on aggregating four SDSL lines to get less than 10% the performance.
The bigger implications of such a level of affordable, ubiquitous network connectivity aren't really known but for a start more stuff can be done without requiring physical trips ; some other stuff will be possible that wasn't before (need to upload 10GB of video rushes in less than a hour?)
Now what about some more rural (or even unlucky suburban) place that gets 512Kbps down, 128Kbps up on DSL : if switched to fiber, it technically can get symetrical gigabit. That's a 2000x increase one way, and a 8000x increase the other way. In fact it's more than the difference between DSL and dial-up, even if you consider commercial offerings will be 100Mb/100Mb at first, rather than gigabit.
I do think a 20 billion euro plan to help deployment of that thing is very worth it, actually 20 billions aren't that much for the task at hand.