Government Spells Out Plans For UK-Wide Full Fibre By 2033 (bbc.co.uk)

The UK government has set out a plan to roll out full fibre networks across all of the UK within 15 years by introducing laws to speed up the installation of fibre and subsidizing investment in very rural areas. From a report: The proposal comes as part of a new national telecoms strategy drawn up by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Under its targets, all of the UK will have full-fibre broadband coverage by 2033, replacing the copper wire network that currently delivers the service. It proposes legislation to encourage more private infrastructure investment. Earlier this month, research was published indicating that the UK has slipped from 31st to 35th place in the global broadband league tables, behind 25 other European countries. The data was collected by M-Lab, a partnership between Google Open Source Research and Princeton University's PlantLab, and the results compiled by UK broadband comparison site Cable.

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Bandwidth Joneses

[mentil]

Earlier this month, research was published indicating that the UK has slipped from 31st to 35th place in the global broadband league tables, behind 25 other European countries.

Spending money to surpass others is pointless if there's no benefit to doing so. Eventually rural consumers will have 100Mbps or higher. Sure, faster downloads and peak usage throughput are great, but the benefits for consumers fall off pretty quick. Can 'accessing online educational resources' justify more bandwidth than this? Even assuming hi-def video chat with tutors/business associates, with modern codecs (AV1) do you really need much more than that? Sure, VR video will use even more bandwidth, but does that really open any qualitatively different educational experiences, or businesses even? I have a feeling that today's video companies will be primarily responsible for VR videos in the future, so it won't necessarily enable many new jobs that weren't already being done with 2d cameras. Businesses already have access to fiber, in the places they want to put data centers, so do consumers really need faster speeds at home once they have ~100Mbps? Sure, a few power-users who download VM containers/linux beta ISOs daily would make use of it, but does that justify $billions in government subsidies?