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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."
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.
snip...
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?
It is red phone box, red was the default colour for the telephone boxes provided by what it now BT (formerly British Telecom and prior to that the General Post Office), the Tardis is a Police Box.
In fact as a cheap bastard I only just recently upgraded from a 10 Mbps to a 30 Mbps connection myself.
And if you lived in the UK, you wouldn't have to do anything anymore because you have the RIGHT to get someone else to buy you internet service. The entire framing of this topic is absurd. "Good for them" might be, say, making it clear that if you pay for 10Mbps, you actually GET that, or the vendor that promised that has to make it right or give you your money back. That's not the same as having a "right" to something. That word has no businesses being used in this context.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Who is going to pay for the infrastructure?
I know what you want people to answer... "The government, it's a free hand-out, socialist state", etc.
And whereas, initially that is true, in the end, the person using that connection will pay for it. It will just take longer for the IPS to get their money back from installing the cable for a rural route not already served, than it would in a densely populated urban cluster. If it takes a company 10 years to recoup an investment they will be less willing to invest than if it takes 5. Sometimes they don't want to invest, or take risks in a longer term investments. The government is forcing their hand here.
Some of the really rural, out of the way, places, they may never make their money back. They will most places eventually though. Most of the UK is fairly densely populated. Even rural areas in the UK aren't usually too far from an urban hub. It's not like the US Midwest where you can sometimes drive an hour without hitting a major population centre.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The UK has a reputation for keeping tabs and spying on its citizens.
This 4K argument is crap.
Why not argue about 8K streaming? 16K streaming? There will always be a higher resolution and there will always be people that will spend a ton of money to get it aso that they can brag about having more than you.
720p is a very fine resolution for pretty much everything. You dont need more. You just want more. Pay for your own wants.
"His name was James Damore."