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UK Govt's Expensive Mobile Coverage Project Builds Just 8 Masts In 4 Years
An anonymous reader points out a dismal report at The Register on a project intended by the UK government to connect lots of internet have-nots, but which has so far not accomplished as much as hoped. The Mobile Infrastructure Project is intended to provide last-mile connectivity, but the project has languished, and fallen short of its promises. This year, Department for Culture, Media and Sport has managed to erect only six masts, which can serve about 200 homes apiece.
Originally more than 575 sites had been commissioned, following the publication of the “no coverage” database by watchdog Ofcom. At the rate seen so far of four masts a year it will take over 140 years to complete the £150m Mobile Infrastructure Project. The original deadline was to to have all the sites equipped and live by the end of 2015. However, that deadline was extended to March 2016 to "ensure that benefits of the program are maximized."
I can imagine the first 8 masts might have been for testing and gearing up, but maybe they have a couple of hundred sites ready at least?
...is little more than a legitimiser for misbehaviour and corporate welfare among telecoms companies, especially BT - another of Thatcher's ideological natural private monopolies which has variously been forced to share its property and artificially erect walls between its departments to give the impression that competition works, when once it was at the forefront of unhindered technocracy.
Our mobile providers are mostly merged or bought out by BT now, too.
Despite evidence like this which speaks volumes about government intervention in what is a free-market area of expertise, we still have so many people clamoring for the government to offer all kinds of services like healthcare, telephone, internet, etc.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
These two series of documentaries are necessary if you wish to understand the politics of government and public service:
Yes, Minister and Yes, Primer Minister.
This incident is an example of the following:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
tl;dr:
In an organisation that is not subject to market forces (i.e. government) it is impossible to know how to allocate resources where they are most wanted.
I erect my mast every night.
Uh huh.
In contranst the UK governments "Give lots of money to BT" and "pork barrel broadband for Cornwall" projects have both succeeded in their goals of transferring vast sums of public money into private hands and delivering minimal returns for 90% of the UK. While simultaneously lavishing enough Cornish dirt-farmers with 1Gb internet to call the whole thing a triumph for rural England.
You would be sorely mistaken, if you would believe that government provided services are not extremely low added value activities.
There are several areas where government is extremely efficient and good at it: defense of state borders, collection of import tolls, and defense in general; enforcement of the contracts and the judicial system; ensuring enhancement of certain physical freedoms, such as freedom to travel, by owning public roads.All other functions are pretty much a waste of taxpayers money.
In general funds collected as taxes are used as salaries and pensions to the government employees. That is not the worst use of money as it amounts to the state welfare.
The problem starts when ideas conceived at government are actually adding negative value to the humanity: a lot of lives and a lot of wealth is destroyed during the wars. In a peaceful times, a lot of value is destroyed by excessive taxation, excessive waste and excessive regulation and licensing. While masts are highly visible and easy to count, has anybody attempted to count their own time spent in order to pay taxes, that are used for many unnecessary governmental purchases and time spent, individually or as a group, to comply with rules and regulations.
Could this be a problem endemic to organizations that spend money that they didn't really do anything to earn in the first place?
When I hear about delays such as this, it reminds of me of Mozilla and how so many of their projects end up getting delayed by years and years.
A perfect example is Rust. Work on it started well before 2010. It was first publicly announced in 2010. The 1.0 release was anticipated "sometime in the coming year", back in 2012. But after delays and more delays, Rust 1.0 was finally released in May of 2015. By that time C++14 was widely available and usable, and tends to be superior to Rust. So there's really no need for Rust any longer.
Another example is the Electrolysis project, which changes Mozilla Firefox to use a multi-process model closer to that of Chrome. Work on that was ongoing as of 2010. Well, it's now late 2015, the stable release of Firefox is currently at version 40, and Electrolysis still isn't available for widespread use. Those who have used the dev builds that have it enabled have generally been disappointed. Meanwhile, we've seen Chrome's market share expand rapidly, while Firefox's is now in the single digits as a percentage.
Then there's Mozilla's Let's Encrypt initiative. It, too, has suffered from numerous delays. It was claimed it would be "Arriving Summer 2015", then "Arriving Mid-2015", then "Arriving September 2015", and then "Arriving Q4 2015". It has yet to get here, obviously.
Governments take tax money by threat of force and imprisonment. Mozilla had large sums of money just thrown at them by Google, and now Yahoo. Such organizations haven't really earned the money they have; they've either taken it or basically had it gifted to them. When the money comes easy, there's little to no incentive to spend it wisely. So projects don't get completed on-time and on-budget. We shouldn't be surprised, of course. Delays and failure are a predictable outcome given the circumstances.
Keep making excuses for governments that waste your cash, sheep. The rest of us know that government is just a different kind of welfare.
It added there had been problems with site providers' willingness to allow a mast to be erected, local planning application, the availability of power and access and meeting the final value for money test based on build costs rather than forecast costs.
In other words, they fudged the numbers to make it look cost effective and ignored that fact that they can't just walk in and force people to give up their private property..
8 masts in 4 years... How much would that be if the masts weren't build to spy on people?
As opposed to which other candidate?
You can imaging that, but it isn't what's happening. The problem is that the people paying for the masts and providing the sites don't benefit from them, so they have no incentive to go along with the project.
They have pills for that now, y'know...
4 years isn't much time to give it. In the UK you need something called planning permission before you erect a mast. It's very hard to get, especially in rural areas.
UK network operators are castigated by the UK Government for not building out mobile coverage in rural areas.
Network Operators respond by pointing out that they don't because of the difficulty in finding locations to provide the required coverage, local planning applications, the availability of power and problems with site access.
UK Government says "amateurs, we can do it better than you" so sets up project to do just that.
Project spectacularly fails to achieve anything and sheepishly admits that the reasons for its failure are due to the difficulty in finding locations to provide the required coverage, local planning applications, the availability of power and problems with site access.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The rest of us know that government is just a different kind of welfare.
That is the government's job, to provide for the welfare of the people.
A government that does not, has failed.
Not that your comment has anything to do with the GP, which asked a question about the future of the program, rather than making any particular assertion as you ascribe. Therefore, all you really reveal is your own hatefulness.
This is appalling. The whole point of these schemes is to generate some headlines, take some pot-shots at the opposition and, perhaps, create some non-jobs for the boys. The fact that some moron actually went and built something just goes to show how out of touch with reality these people are. Terrible.
Slash dot is going downhill..
Editors can you take your hands out of your pants and get the numbers right!!! Is it six or 8????
You tool
"According to DCMS, a "legally binding landmark deal" with the four mobile network operators will guarantee mobile coverage to 90 per cent of the UK’s landmass by 2017. This is expected to reduce mobile not-spots by two-thirds, it said. "
The problem is that the people paying for the masts and providing the sites don't benefit from them, so they have no incentive to go along with the project.
So this is another case of a poorly written contract and insufficient oversight. No, I'm not going to blame the government, I see this as much (or more) with large corporations. The contract is to build towers. There isn't a cancellation clause for failure to perform (or it's not being exercised). Or a claw-back for delays.
One of the things government does right is roads in Dallas. The new LBJ toll express lanes were done months ahead of schedule. I didn't live there for that, but I did when US-75 was widened, quicker than scheduled, and under budget. They cut payment for lane closures, so they widened a busy 2-lane (each way) urban highway with almost no daytime lane closures (the "cost" of closing a lane at night was lower).
If the person providing the site doesn't benefit, then why aren't they compensated at a reasonable cost? If they simply refuse to cooperate because they think they can extort more money from the builders, then eminent domain (compulsory purchase) should solve that problem.
Learn to love Alaska
"The Mobile Infrastructure Project is intended to provide last-mile connectivity, but the project has languished, and fallen short of its promises."
..
Sounds like it's going to plan, as in spending as much government money as possible
Reminds me of a polka. ...Roll out the barrel, roll out the barrel of pork...