"Broadband Britain" Under Threat

Too late, not quick enough, rivals far ahead...

[g1smd]

Interesting commentary about the state of broadand in Britain, and where things might be heading:

[telegraph.co.uk...]

[Lord Majestic]

What's good in speed if your ISP will cut you off if you use your connection in any way seriously? 40 GB monthly transfer limit is fairly typical in the UK and companies get away with advertising "unlimited" plans where as they are actually very very limited.

The Govt should force BT to lay down some serious fiber to houses - they should start yesterday because even if they do it quickly it will still take many years.

[g1smd]

It was the Thatcher goverment (in the 1980s) that banned BT from laying down fibre to every house as being anti-competiitve. So instead, they opened up the market to competition, by inviting (mainly US) firms to install cable TV along with telephone service. Unfortunately, the stuff they installed was already old technology back then, and we never got that network that BT had planned.

[lawman]

So we sent them outdated technology and they sent us Beckham.

[g1smd]

Some might say that was a fair swap then.

[Lord Majestic]

So we sent them outdated technology and they sent us Beckham.

Not just Beckham, but also Posh! Now send us 2 rusty screws and we will call it even :)

I can't see any alternative to fiber to every house and lots of fiber between points - this sure is not going to be cheap but the only "alternative" is limiting actual traffic usage just like it happens with trains in the UK - high prices and actually no spare capacity: this is a very bad situation to be in.

[Lexur]

40 Gb. is a lot of transfer for normal usage in every home except, of course, if you're planning to download music or movies (and then the ISP's want too their cut of the pie).

[Lord Majestic]

Normal usage is changing - people are buying HDTV devices and want to watch high quality video streams on demand - a few such movies will easily fit 40 GB. More importantly legit P2P services like Joots use upstream to broadcast data over the Net and more such things will appear.

ISPs don't want to invest a penny - they prefer to engage into a price war and sneaky terms and conditions allowing them to kick off people who ISP deems are not profitable.

[Monkey]

In Antigua - they're trying to ban people using VOIP!

[g1smd]

Several South American countries, expecially those where the telephone system is state-run, are now blocking VoIP calls as they are taking away from their revenue for international calls.

In France they have had 24MB ADSL services with movies on demand, and other such services for several years. That is only just beginning to happen in the UK, but at far lower available bandwidth.