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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.
I think you'll find the UK is substantially larger than your city, probably by a factor of 100.
I live in central London. The best I can get in my building? ADSL, 15Mbps up / 1Mbps down. No cable, no fiber.
My line is fibre. They moved the connection 60 feet from the exchange to a cabinet and told me I had fibre broadband. They didn't bother to do anything about the 3 miles of garbage copper between the cabinet and the house but they've ticked their box and I have fibre broadband
There are more than 8 million reasons, if each reason is a square kilometer. By comparison, The UK is a mere 242 thousand, and it's going to take 15 years
That really doesn't make sense.......there are also more people in America, too. If you're going to make a comparison, you should talk about population density. But that isn't convincing either, because even with America's population density, most people are in regions that could be covered by fiber reasonably. We may have to compromise on remote places like Coulterville, California; but honestly I think we could even get fiber to them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They specifically addressed this on the radio this morning - was an industry guy but he said a move towards eliminating 'false advertising' would be part of the plan. And yes - it's full fibre they're talking about, not just fibre to the cabinet then last hop copper.
Same here.
I've got the Skymuster satellite internet. It is about the same cost as a fixed broadband line (50 bucks a month) and faster than the ADSL2 i got in town. It is volume limited (40 Gb peak, 60 Gb offpeak) and it is somewhat flaky, particularly at weekends (they claim the latest router upgrade cures that). The other alternative is broadband via 3G or 4G wireless. That costs a straight $5 /Gb over the Telstra network, less over the flaky networks, but those don't work out in the bush.
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?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
FTTC, which one day suddenly dropped to 1 Mbit/s, and the ISP said the line tests were fine and there’s no obligation to deliver faster. Then another *wonderful* ISP tech said he could relabel the query and thus cause a BT engineer to actually come out and run tests. Which he did. And the on-site tests are more thorough than whatever the ISP people have access to. He found a couple of red flags to do with insulation. So he, the *wonderful* man, traced the fault to a copper section between two cabinets, and so he tested all the spares and switched me to the best one. Broadband speed not only went back up, but became better than I had before the fault ever happened.
But yeah, fibre, then 600m of whatever decent copper you can hope to find. And I am fortunate it is only 600m. I gather it can be up to 2000m.
This is why: http://www.usdebtclock.org/. A lot of states are broke too. Mine certainly is.
We'll make great pets
....cynical....
They aren't broke until the creditors stop giving them money. I say "giving" because they aren't getting it back. California is broke but they spend plenty of money. And why not?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's not the bandwidth.. it's the low latency.
Communities without fiber connectivity are not long-term viable. Slowly people are realizing this.
..don't panic
Ah, this bullshit again. The only US state that has a valid reason to complain about area or population density, for the purposes of building out a fibre network, is Alaska. Every other state is easily manageable, there's only a lack of political will, and corporate bribes to ensure it doesn't happen.
We gave the ISPs the money to do this once before, they didn't
We have success stories in America too, like Vermont and parts of Utah (note that these are not particularly dense population areas). I assume eventually this will be solved everywhere, but it will take a while.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Alaska?
So California's pensions are all paid up? The schools are adequately funded? Police and fire have all the resources they need?
Ken
I don't think you fully understand how QoS actually works. It requires configuration and it is turned off by default on all the consumer routers I've ever owned that offer it. I believe the QoS Packet Scheduler is turned on in Microsoft Windows now by default but it doesn't work the way you described. It has a reserved bandwidth limit that by default is 20%. That means that when certain QoS traffic is occurring only 80% of your bandwidth is available for non-QoS traffic. I think you would call this "shaping" rather than "realtime packets and their replies always get processed/transmitted first". That's not true at least in the case of how the QoS Packet Scheduler in Microsoft Windows works. I'm pretty sure you have to manually install/configure QoS in *nix.
We'll make great pets
Yeah, maybe Alaska gets the cut. I'm sorry but they're used to it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Interesting, do we have some telecom industry shills moderating today or is it just someone stalking me? If it's the latter you wasted your mod point buddy, there is some SJW stuff you could have targeted later on.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There's no reason the US shouldn't have this, too. Or at least your local state, if you prefer things at the state level.
Maybe 10-15 years ago, but I'm not convinced nationwide fiber is a smart investment now. Next generation mobile networks (e.g. "5G") and low-orbit satellites could provide the nationwide broadband coverage more efficiently than laying and maintaining* physical wires along every rural public road. Those technologies are being tested right now and could use a boost of investment.
* - I don't think most people realize how expensive it is to maintain fiber cables. If a fiber cable is damaged by a storm or an inexperienced excavator operator you can't just splice the line and replace a few feet; you often have to replace hundreds, sometimes miles of fiber all around the damaged location. Urban areas can absorb the cost/risk to laying fiber, but rural areas might not.
How do you think your 5G cell towers connect to the net?
Smoke signals?
Cell towers are connected to the net by fiber.
It is at times like these that I am reminded of the dark fiber that has been laying dormant in east Berlin since the mid 1980s.
The bigger issue is that BT claimed that large areas of the country where commercially unviable to upgrade to FTTC because uptake would be too low. There are places where the FTTC cabinet that BT claimed where commercially unviable where are full, have had a second one added which is now also full. There was a large amount of clawback in the subsidy scheme to break that deadlock (which has laid bare BT's utter inability to predict demand) that kicked in when uptake reached a certain percentage on a cabinet. Admittedly most of that money has then been used to enable more cabinets with FTTC so the tax payer didn't actually get more money back but did get more people connected.
Note that BT pulled exactly the same stunt 20 years ago at the beginning of the ADSL rollout, claiming there was no demand for ADSL at 512kbps download 128kbps upload. Something that looks utterly bonkers now.
The thing about going full fibre is that while there might not be a wide spread use case today this is IT, and at no point in the last 50 years has network capacity not eventually filled up. So saying it won't fill up in the future is setting yourself up to look like an idiot and the time frame to roll out fibre is such that by the time you have finished the roll out there is almost certain to be the demand.
Finally with fibre once you have the physical fibre in place getting higher speeds is a matter of simply changing the optics at either end. However nearly all the expense in rolling out full fibre is in laying the cables not the optics that go on either end.
As Charter advertises it in the US, "Fibre-Rich broadband". That's so much made-up bullshit that it's amazing that it's not illegal. But it's apparently true enough that it's OK to trick everyone without a technical understanding of networking.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Strange how so called first world countries are so slow in initiating programmes that could be implemented really quickly if the powers that be actually thought them important. But no, corporate profit and military spending above all. Forget about affordable housing, a decent minimum wage, health insurance etc. I know we're talking about the y(U)c(K) here, but isn't it pretty much the same story the world over?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Our Scandinavian friends continually remind us that they have extensive broadband with high speeds even in remote areas with low population density. Are they lying? I can't see any reason that they would.
My take on it is that the US on the whole has a short term ghetto mentality when it comes to future planning. Profit NOW! Invest in the future? No, that is socialism. Profit NOW!!! Meanwhile we pay plenty of tax that we see little 'benefit' from apart from the basic crumbling infrastructure, huge military (benefit? hah!) and...I can't think of anything else.
The fact the Brits are potentially implementing this might be commendable if it weren't for the fact that they are currently in the toilet due to their own population's and politician's idiocy (not unlike the US) but the 2033 goal seems very much a matter of, we have no idea what we are talking about, or how to do it, we'll get back to you. Best we dump this on a future government. Bye.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I think you will find that the fight you have described is a bipartisan effort that benefits no one.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I'm currently developing an entirely new communication system that will revolutionize life as we know it. It consists of an intricate web of wires and pulleys, and most important of all, smoke and hidden mirrors. It will be free to all. The only thing necessary will be the continual working of the bellows and operation of the treadmill. For an extra fee, if you are fortunate enough to dwell close to running water, my company will install a water wheel. State taxes may apply.
Pat. Pending
You were close, but I beat you to it!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
That'll keep you regular.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
What wireless telecom is paying you to post that drivel, Ranbot?
They aren't broke until the creditors stop giving them money
Wow, you do know who the "creditors" are in this case right? I'll give you a clue, they have publicly stated that they want to be the dominant economic super power of the world by 2025. They are not members of the United Nations. They really don't like the United States very much. They especially don't like us because we started a trade war with them.
I love how you use the term "creditors" as if there are these magical creditor fairies that have an infinite amount of money to lend out. If that's what you think, at some point, you're in for a rude awakening. There is no free lunch, my friend.
We'll make great pets
How do you think your 5G cell towers connect to the net?
Smoke signals?
Cell towers are connected to the net by fiber.
You answered your own question.... Connect one fat fiber to a tower that covers many square miles instead running fiber down every little rural podunk road to every cabin or farmer's doorstep. I didn't mean to say no fiber at all in rural areas, just that it's not cost-effective to run fiber to every doorstep, when wireless technology can bridge that gap.
FWIW, I grew up in a very rural area on gravel road where my parents still live. They had dial-up until about 2006, when a regional Wi-Fi ISP opened, which made browsing the web bearable but a far cry from "broadband". Standard cable TV/internet became available to them ~4 years ago. My father works in IT, so he jumps on these things as soon as he can, so you can't blame them for being luddites. There are areas near my parents that are more rural with only dial-up or Dish Network available. Urbanites vastly underestimate how difficult and expensive it is to build infrastructure into rural areas.
Police and fire have all the resources they need?
Bike trails galore, check. Aesthetically pleasing landscaping galore, check. Save the whales, check. LGBT legislation, check. All sorts of other excessive tax spending, check. Police and fire resources? Ah well, you respond apathetically:
No program ever has "all the resources it needs"
No problems with this logic at all...
We'll make great pets
I'm not familiar with UK government efficiency. How likely is it for this goal to be achieved in the given timeframe?
1) 100% achievable
2) overall achievable but some area will not be connected in that timeframe
3) it's going to be late by 1-5 years
4) it's going to be late but it will eventually get there
5) next Ice Age
6) Jesus coming back
I didn't respond apathetically. I dismissed your "No True Scotsman" argument before it started. Or, if that wasn't your intent, then I misread it. But the verbiage led me to think this point was dishonestly made and I treated it as such.
The point is, California is running surpluses, and seems to have adequately funded their government obligations. So, you know, that works as an example.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
oh :-(
You misspelled "idiot" while calling someone an idiot.
You are an idiot.
Yes, 2033 reminded me of the UK's 2040 target to get rid of infernal combustion engines. "Kicking it into the long grass" as we say in this septic isle.
Yeah but the phone lines were installed by an advanced civilization and no-one quite knows how they managed it. Possibly aliens.
So far; your own arguments are "the government should" as well, to the point of specifically decrying government inaction in regards to corporate action.
No program ever has "all the resources it needs". Hell, the US military, the most overfunded thing ever, still doesn't have moon-bases with lasers to destroy ICBMs.
I disagree with nearly everything you said, BUT... this last part actually made me laugh out loud.. Quite clever and very funny... (I'm not being sarcastic)
In this case, the government in the US, both on state level and federally, has in the majority of cases worked for the companies benefit. Having LESS government would make that situation worse, because it'd allow the large, established corporations to trample everyone else even harder.
Nice, you just contradicted yourself and probably don't even realize it. Carry on though. :) Can't have a rational conversation with folks that don't mind holding contradictory ideas in their heads...
We'll make great pets
Nope, we're talking about QoS. It is a platform agnostic network feature/pattern.
We'll make great pets
I don't need ad-hominem attacks when there's actual information.
Recent 5G news:
https://mobile.slashdot.org/st...
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
https://mobile.slashdot.org/st...
Recent Satellite Internet news:
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
5G will be commonplace in about two years and LEO satellite broadband will be longer, but no longer than it would take to lay fiber lines down every single rural road in America at great expense.
We have success stories in America too, like Vermont...
Sorry, but that is exaggerated or just bullshit. I grew up in rural VT on a gravel road and my parents still live there. Standard cable TV/internet became available to them ~4 years ago. Fiber is pipedream. I know some areas got fiber, particularly if they were near larger cities/towns like Burlington, Stowe, Montpelier, Rutland, etc. but there's still vast swaths of rural land where thousands of people live and get internet connectivity via cable, Dish Network, cell phones, or dial-up (yup dial-up is still a thing in some areas of VT).
Electricity, water, waste water, phone lines, how difficult would it be to bury glass fiber alongside those?
But it's not done. The ethernet standard for fiber optic cable is intentionally incompatible with all previous standards. Routers and network cards for it are incredibly expensive.
But glass fiber is literally made from sand. The cable itself is cheaper than copper wires, and connectors are much more robust. You don't have to worry about RF interference either.
You have a point: Radio can cover a wider area without having to bury anything, which is an advantage in rural areas where little to no infrastructure is built anymore, or where no infrastructure other than roads have been built yet.
Getting fiber to the desk would not be difficult at all, from a purely technical perspective. It's the cost of the equipment that is prohibitively expensive, because it is more profitable to sell at high price to the few who absolutely need it or simply have the money to spare, than at low price to many.
Cool, good to hear a live report
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You have a point: Radio can cover a wider area without having to bury anything, which is an advantage in rural areas where little to no infrastructure is built anymore, or where no infrastructure other than roads have been built yet.
Thank you. Exactly my point.
Electricity, water, waste water, phone lines, how difficult would it be to bury glass fiber alongside those?
This is an example of how urban/suburban folk don't fully understand rural infrastructure challenges (that's not meant as an insult, so please don't take it that way). In rural areas [and even some lower density suburban developments] water and sewer is typically onsite wells and septic tanks, respectively. Electric, phone, and cable lines are typically above ground on poles.* Now, you could run fiber on poles, but it will be damaged more often in storms, so long-term maintenance/repairs will be much higher; and there may not be enough customers on the line to support the maintenance. There might not be enough customers on the line to justify the upfront cost of trenching underground lines either.
* - Those conditions would describe the utilities for about 90% of residents in the VT town I grew up in, which is a pretty typical rural town (i.e. some public utilities right in the village center, but the vast majority of township residents are spread out over the countryside). I also have extended family in rural areas of central PA who are in similar conditions.
FWIW, when you hear about a small rural town getting fiber, it's probably just a small fraction of the residents in the village center or narrow corridor along a main road. But, the vast majority of rural town residents will live spread out over many square miles of surrounding countryside out of reach of the fiber lines.
Phone and cable could be replaced with fiber.
I have no doubt that it will be done eventually, but if not even the phone lines are buried, then the temporary solution of bridging the gap with radio seems to be more permanent than I would have expected.
Thank you for the insight.
No.. the big companies aren't out here because the population is sparse and the ROI would be "too small". But, instead of having an open situation where small companies could fill the void, we are hampered by protectionist legislation and vast amounts of red tape that make it almost miserable to do anything.
The government should limit itself to watching for, and dealing with, monopolistic companies and practices. Regulations should be limited to the bare minimum needed to ensure safety and environmental concerns.. Fees should be limited to the actual cost for the government to carry out its tasks. They shouldn't be driven by a profit motive. Believe me, there is a HUGE profit motive in the fees.
I certainly don't see how I contradicted myself. My guess is that you have some secret assumption. But go on, feel free to take "vague accusation" to "actual argument" by explaining how I did.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The issue is not that 5G and satellite is being introduced, it's the drivel you posted about it being less maintenance and more reliable than fibre:
First of all, 5G depends on fibre. But in addition to possible fibre breaks, you also have to deal with the following:
Atmospheric conditions including, but not limited to, dust, rain, snow, hail.
Wildlife nesting/hoarding in antennas( see https://www.youtube.com/watch?...)
Traffic degradation not just in bandwidth but also latency-wise, as with all wireless.
And for satellite, it's even more susceptible to atmospheric conditions, and will have worse bandwidth and latency issues in practice.
Protectionist legislation introduced thanks to the large corporations. And no, the mythical "market" won't solve the issue.
As for the fees, that's exactly how the municipal networks in Sweden work, companies frequently bid to manage the physical networks, and then various ISP's rent capacity and offer their services. But that's still a lack of political will on the US part, both among the politicians, and the people, who vote those people in.
Yes, the market will solve the issue. I'm part of the market that is solving the issue. But, I could be doing it a lot faster, better, and cheaper if I didn't have to fight my own government every step of the way.
So tired of you statists who will say "the market won't do it" when; #1. The market is doing it and #2. The problem originated with the government and your solution is.... the government..
Dealing with the government is my #2 expense, directly behind my transport costs.