Slashdot Mirror
The UK Decides 10 Mbps Broadband Should Be a Legal Right (engadget.com)
British homes and businesses will have a legal right to high-speed broadband by 2020, the government said Wednesday, dismissing calls from the network provider BT that it should be a voluntary rather than legal obligation on providers. From a report: Ministers originally considered adopting BT's voluntary offer, which would have seen it spend up to 600 million pound ($804 million) giving 1.4 million rural residents access to speeds of at least 10 Mbps. However, in a statement today, the government confirmed that it now will go down the regulatory route as it provides "sufficient certainty and the legal enforceability that is required to ensure high speed broadband access for the whole of the UK by 2020." Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said: "We know how important broadband is to homes and businesses and we want everyone to benefit from a fast and reliable connection. We are grateful to BT for their proposal but have decided that only a regulatory approach will make high speed broadband a reality for everyone in the UK, regardless of where they live or work."
10 Mbps, is not super fast by the standards of a lot of Slashdot users, but it is serviceable.
In fact as a cheap bastard I only just recently upgraded from a 10 Mbps to a 30 Mbps connection myself.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
And here I am, forced to pay CAD$80 per month for a 15Mbps asymmetric connection.
Go to another ISP? The only other option is satellite, which is five times slower, 50% more expensive and has a data cap of under 10GB per month.
Maybe it was broadband in 2010. Today you should be able to get at least 100 Mbps. Many of the areas we're bringing broadband to are receiving 1 Gbps symmetric.
10 Mbps is a complete joke, you'd be lucky to get two Netflix streams on that without stuttering.
after all how much can the government monitor?
and whats with the red TARDIS it the title?
I heard the next Doctor was going to be a female - does she change the colour?
Do domestic internet connections below 10Mbps even still exist?
I fail to see on a philosophical level how anything can be a right if it requires someone else to provide it for you.
I understand that the people who come up with stuff like this have good intentions in mind, but at some point they can just as easily start to argue that plantation owners ought to have a right to have a certain amount of cotton picked for them.
Also, since this is the UK, a right to broadband is pretty fucking useless considering you're only free to use it unless you want to look at porn or say things that other people might not consider nice.
I mean seriously, they're going to have deploy all new equipment and replace parts of the aging copper line hauls with fiber. The cost difference would be negligible to make it Gigabit capable. The main difference is the optics used at the central offices and local pops.
You wrote: "I fail to see on a philosophical level how anything can be a right if it requires someone else to provide it for you."
Well, someone must provide you with freedom of speech for it to be a right. I can assure you that Chinese in China doesn't know a shit about the "right of freedom of speech".
Good luck with that. BT couldn't even get 250K connections to work right 5 miles from the center of town while I lived there (Near NewMarket).
I'm enjoying my 150/150Mbit connection back here in the States, even though I am 16 miles out from the center of town at half the price BT charged me for their crap connection.
How can we be talking about government-mandated "legal" things and the conversation can't even approach getting right the distinction between rights, entitlements, regulations, and the like?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If itâ(TM)s also the law that you can be beheaded for calling the queen a cunt
Look at me, I can legally not insult her majesty on internets at BLOODY FAST SPEEDS
10 Mbps is Baseband, not Broadband. I remember when things were that slow back in the days of baseband ethernet cables and vampire taps. God, that was about three decades ago.
Good to know the UK is catching up to the 1990's.
made 300 baud a legal right, back in 1998? Seriously, someone thinks putting a lower limit on bandwidth is a good idea, & then etching it in stone / law?
How can something that costs other people money and time be a legal right? This talk is insane.
I wonder if it will be a true 10mbps or if it will be like my service where I'm subscribed for 25mbps but get at most 8mbps (at 3am on a weeknight)
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
History has proven that time and again, corporations will never do anything altruistically. Therefore is sometimes takes regulation to make things happen. I am glad that the UK went down this bath. 10mbps can do a lot - including streaming at 720p HD. It's also fine for VoIP.
Can they?
I now have VDSL (FTTC) - this is only ~200m less copper cable, there is still about 3000m of copper between me and the Cabinet.
Previously I was on speeds of about ~3mb(ADSL), now more like 13mb
I suspect the main change is the wider use of spectrum, but the shorter cable helps too.
unsurveilled.
I recently upgraded to 1Gbps (symmetric) and I would say that is "high speed". But 10Mbps seems decidedly on the average-to-slow side. Is this some politically-motivated lie to make people believe the 2rd rate speed they will be getting in 2020 is "great"?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I would presume that they could do fixed wireless as a solution, as well.
It may be a legal right to have it available, but without competition, will the average person be able to afford it ? And if BT is legally required to provide it everywhere, but a large percentage of rural customers can't afford to buy it, then the costs will just be passed on to the city customers.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
4k streaming is beginning to be a thing, and the displays and associated hardware are trending down in price, as per usual for newish tech.
10 mb/s isn't going to cut it indefinitely.
The important thing here isn't the 10 mb/s; it's the idea that connectivity is so important that equality depends on access.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The UK has a reputation for keeping tabs and spying on its citizens.
I mean seriously, they're going to have deploy all new equipment and replace parts of the aging copper line hauls with fiber. The cost difference would be negligible to make it Gigabit capable. The main difference is the optics used at the central offices and local pops.
As a network engineer: No, the main difference is the trunk lines. The last mile cost is negligible. Practically all new last mile installations are Gbit capable already.
If you wish to give a subdivision of 500 houses 100Mbit, you are going to need about 5Gbit of trunking. If you want the same subdivision to have 1Gbit, you are going to need to put in 50Gbit of trunking.
Typically right of way legalese is for one and only one cable, which ends up being a bundle of smaller cables but that's another discussion. So you have to choose. One 10Gbit cable, one 40Gbit cable, or one 100Gbit cable. They are all very expensive, the differences are very significant, and you do not want to go over your needs.
Is there a sufficient number of people in the neighborhood that want the higher speeds to justify the cost? If everyone wants 1Gbit then the cost can be 50 or 60 bucks a month so long as the current install has paid itself back already. But if only 10% of people want it, they will need to pay over 200 a month for the installation to break even. The company wont even bother.
If you want Gbit speeds, get most of your neighbors to inquire about it after a few months of maxing out their connections and causing congestion. If enough people in your immediate area do it, and the municipality does not make costs prohibitive, then your chances are greatly improved.
It is usually sad to hear that somebody has died. But, I, for one, have no clue who he was or what he achieved.
In reality - you know, where we all actually live - the only rights of any kind that exist are those rights for which someone(s) will impose force to ensure the availability thereof.
It's all very fine to talk about what should be; for instance, IMO, no government should impose on informed, adult personal / consensual choices - but they fact is, they do, and they can't be stopped from doing so by any practical means. Because this, although it should be a thing, is not a thing, because there is no force behind it. Which demotes it down to the status of fantasy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Personally, I think that if the Internet isn't going away, and more and more vital services are going to be accessible via the Internet, that eventually it's going to have to be considered another basic utility, like water, sewer, electric, and sometimes natural gas are. Of course if I can see this possible future so can ISPs, which I'm sure gives them nightmares regularly (i.e., their profitability would become non-existent).
How this would be a dangerous precedent, I think, is if the implementation of a policy like this is done poorly. Too much or not enough of a leash on the ISP(s) involved might mean people get price-gouged (even worse than they are already), especially if they decided you were required to have Internet, whether you wanted it or not (much like the ACA), and there wasn't any sort of subsidy for low-income people.
If the government can impede or deny a right, like the right to assembly or the right to a free press or the right to free speech, then it's a negative right. The way I always thought of it, is that a statement of a right, is a way to restrict the government's power to deny that right. Rights protect us from oppressive governments.
OTOH, If there's no one to provide the 'right', like no available doctor to treat you (in the case of a 'right to healthcare'), no amount of government intervention can guarantee that right. If someone has to take some action to provide you a right, it's not really a right. Usually the government must step in to force someone to provide that right to you, assuming that's even possible. Do you really want the government doing that?
The last mile cost is negligible. Practically all new last mile installations are Gbit capable already.
Let me highlight the problem there... There is a huge difference between the hypothetical 500 house subdivision that is cheap and easy to wire (well fiber) for high speed and rural where it can be miles between houses, think 20-40K per mile (per customer) not even sure the charged bill could pay the interest on this kind of cost. Note that this cost doesn't include right of way, leasing space on poles/utility operations - probably not digging under roads if need be... These costs can be a lot higher (plus don't forget that the company needs to make a profit providing the service)
All of this said - I would expect BT response to be - well, we don't provide ANY services to this area... unless heavily subsidized by the government, because we can't afford to spend the extra 100sK pounds
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Maybe before it is determined to be a "right" that the information highway has a certain speed limit, it makes more sense that it is a legal "right" and not a privilege that we be able to drive the physical highway...seems a bit out of logical order to me.
Choosing to regulate any corporate thing is a departure from the Neoliberal ideology that has ruled the UK (as elsewhere) for the last 40 years.
I wonder if this is really a tacit acceptance of the utter failure of that approach, or if they just saw the reaction to Ajit Pai in the US and thought they could do without that kind of grief right now.
because it's not like Crazy May isn't going to spy on everyone's Internet traffic or anything...
much the same way they enforce everyones right to "watch BBC" by imposing a mandatory Television fee
This sounds like a swell idea, but who determines how far the cable company's serviceable area is? As far as I can tell there are 10ish prominent broadband providers in the UK, and probably way more than that. What is to stop them from saying rural areas are out of their range and therefore are unserviceable on our service? They could even say that about people that were on the service at lower speeds and just drop them as customers. Now those people are screwed because no service is offered at their house. Even if the law says your service must be a minimum of 10mbps there is no company in that area so what happens then. The government can't force the private corporation to spend thousands or millions on expanding their coverage to areas that will only bring in tens or hundreds or they will bankrupt that corporation. So is the government going to start running their own cabling and providing internet to these people?
What a joke...internet is "a right".
No. Just like TV, if you don't want internet service you won't have to pay for it. Where do you get these ideas from?
So, the US FCC removes protections from the internet in the US and within a week England votes to make broadband a right?
I realize the cord was only cut 240 years ago, but isn't it time that we stopped acting like the teenage rebel?
We literally have 40 Gbps ports here on campus.
That's like ... 4000 times faster.
Heck, we even have three 100 Gbps ports, within two blocks of where I am.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They don't have a choice. As an ex-government Monopoly, now a private Monopoly, there are strict conditions already in place. One is, they must provide phone service to all that want it. They have now added added a minimum level of Internet connection (hence the article).
Provide me with muh-internets!
Who always pays, Upfront costs - the tax payer, maintenance and rent seeking - a combination of tax payer through government subsidy and the customer through line rent and usage charges.
Same as it ever was.
It's completely inappropriate to use the word right for this - much more correct is to say it's a legal privilege.
Pff 1gbps? What are you poor?
I recently upgraded to 10Gbps (symmetric) and I would say that it is "high speed". But 1Gbps seems decidedly on the average-to-slow side. Are you telling some politically-motivated lie to make people believe that the 2rd rate speed you are getting now is "great"?
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Are you aware of how many hifi systems process data at far more than the data density of a CD? And are you aware that like 20-20 vision applied to a 1920x1080 image, the odds of anyone actually being able to hear anything that far down (or deal with anything that loud) are pretty much zero? And even if they could, the amplifiers that drive the output transducers don't have that kind of dynamic range anyway, nor do the transducers themselves.
Yet... this stuff sells, and it sells very well.
And that's without even getting into the details of people buying tube gear because "reasons."
All indicators say that the broader market will bite on higher resolution pretty much as soon as they can work it into their budgets. If these folks don't have a budget issue, they'll bite right away.
It isn't always about the quality you can use; it's about the quality you can feel smug about. Not that any of that stops confirmation bias and pure imagination from stepping in and bringing out the "oh, sure I can tell the difference, you betcha" from the happy owners of such tech.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
1) Nobody
2) Nothing
I think that your comparison with other utilities is relevant. I would of course also include telephone service, which is directly comparable to Internet service: it’s telecommunications, just with a narrower scope (originally, voice only; though it was later extended through facsimile and data modems). The wide availability of those services is regulated. There’s no reason that this shouldn’t apply to Internet service (or, at least, telecommunication lines capable of supporting such service with reasonable performance, assuming that there are third-party ISPs providing service to customers connected to those lines).
For the same reason, I can’t imagine why we’d raise the spectre of compulsory service. I don’t know of any jurisdiction forcing people to open an account with the local telephone, electric, gas, water or even garbage-collection company. Local codes might require builders to install metered connections to those service networks, to ensure that they are effectively available to anyone moving in, should they wish to use them. But they don’t force them to be actual subscribers.
Since you are limited (among other things) by the speed at which the remote machine sends you its data or receives your data, in practice, very high bandwidth is mostly useful for simultaneously connecting to many hosts. That is likely to happen if you serve data (but, of course, that concerns your upload speed), if you’re running an office with several employees (or a business serving Wi-Fi to its customers), or if you have a family with several people simultaneously (and fairly heavily) using Internet around the same time every day. Otherwise, it’s likely a waste of money.
The UK's legal right to 10 Mbps broadband is a joke! Everyone over there should demand 1Gb both up and down the pipe! And make it free to all! What good is socialism if it doesn't meet the basic needs of the people?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I'm paying almost $40/month to Frontier for a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection. Country Cablevision has a fiber optic line running across my front yard but says I can't have any of it. I assume the line runs over the next ridge to the new gated community development... can't have us poor riff-raff cutting in on their bandwidth...
http://www.govtech.com/dc/arti...
"The grant funded a $25.3 million fiber-to-the home broadband project in Yancey and neighboring Mitchell County. Now completed, the network can deliver service at speeds from 25 mbps to 1 gigabit upload and download to every household in the county." That's just a God-damned lie.
https://ilsr.org/wp-content/up...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Voluntary obligations always get fulfilled, right? Damn straight there should be legal repercussions.
Liberty! Equality! Free education! Free health care! Free college! Free broadband! Free love! Free Pizza! Free Beer! Free Crack! ...Free for all! ...Free executions!
...from a more reliable source of journalism is the following.
1. It's not a roll-out. Basically, if you get 0.5 Mbps for example, you can DEMAND the 10 Mbps.
2. You have to pay for the line to be installed yourself. So if you live five miles from the nearest exchange, and it would cost £45,000 to lay the line, you'd have to pay £42,000 as BT would front the other £3K. (How nice of them! *rolls eyes*)
3. It's also going to be capped at 100GB a month.
There are places where, for instance, if you do not have electric service at your house (and it could be a multi-million dollar home with self-generated solar, for instance, just no grid connection), the County will Condemn your property and threaten to tear it down as such. I also think that if you pay for water service, you have to pay for sewer service (which makes sense, they're tied together in the larger scheme of things anyway).
To sound paranoid for a moment, imagine this: The world Internet moves to IPv6; every single person on the planet can now have their own, personally-identifiable IP address, that can literally follow you around from cradle to grave. There now is no such thing as 'anonymity' on the Internet, everything you say and do can be traced back to you, immediately and easily. Government spook types would LOVE this. That's one reason for compulsory internet service. Another, less paranoid-sounding, would be to help subsidize Internet access for the poor, much like the ACA (which by the way is for all intents and purposes now defunct) does/did.
If you're going all fiber, best practice is no trunking, middle-mile is gone. Point-to-point fiber from the house to the CO strait into a multi-terabit chassis with enough up-link bandwidth to be non-blocking. Some larger deployments may need something akin to a Google Fiber hut. Zero over-subscription is trivial with all fiber.