UK Broadband

[monaghanmonaghan is verified member.]

his best quote was when talking about UK broadband:

We are a World Beating Internet Nation.

What a joke, broadband is cr*p unless you are in a town or city, I currently get 80mbps (give or take the minor loss to the end of the road), however, we've been considering a move to a rural location as I can work anywhere with an Internet connection and we're looking at adsl speeds between 0.5 & 2mbps, virtually none of the rural exchanges even have LLU, let alone fibre, 3G coverage is poor to non-existent and satellite is far too expensive to get a decent download allowance and cable installs stop at the edges of towns.

 

[fozfoz is verified member.]

What a joke, broadband is cr*p unless you are in a town or city, I currently get 80mbps (give or take the minor loss to the end of the road), however, we've been considering a move to a rural location as I can work anywhere with an Internet connection and we're looking at adsl speeds between 0.5 & 2mbps, virtually none of the rural exchanges even have LLU, let alone fibre, 3G coverage is poor to non-existent and satellite is far too expensive to get a decent download allowance and cable installs stop at the edges of towns.

Come to NZ and urban is 0.5-8mbps. Rural anywhere on the planet is going to be substandard. Distance to exchange etc. 80mps is OMG. Sounds like you've got it good in the UK to me.

 

[monaghanmonaghan is verified member.]

Problem is that virtually all the UK government stuff is now on-line and the rural communities have difficulty getting a reliable connection. Those making decisions don't have to cope with the rural connections! I don't expect fast connection in the middle of nowhere, but if we are to be a "World Beating Internet Nation." then we do need to ensure everyone has the chance of a decent connection.

Anyway, better get back on topic

 

[Stephen]

speed v charity?

Problem is that virtually all the UK government stuff is now on-line and the rural communities have difficulty getting a reliable connection. Those making decisions don't have to cope with the rural connections! I don't expect fast connection in the middle of nowhere, but if we are to be a "World Beating Internet Nation." then we do need to ensure everyone has the chance of a decent connection.

Anyway, better get back on topic

Although its a difficult topic of where any surplus Nominet generates should go apart from "Please remove the £12 transfer fee now!"

If the £6 milion a year surplus spent on charity would make a dent in the UK speed issue and if it was spent would it just allow the likes of BT to spend £6 miliion pa less?

 

[monaghanmonaghan is verified member.]

I wonder how many villages & hamlets could be upgraded to fibre with £6 million? The process is mostly popping a box in the street using existing ducting for the fibre backbone and a bit of power to the street box, so I guess a fair few could be done.

Not really a glamour project though, so I guess the money will continue to go to the same collection of "good causes"

 

[gimpydog]

I wonder how many villages & hamlets could be upgraded to fibre with £6 million?

A: Not many. A local village featured on the tv news this week. They paid for the work themselves at a cost of £500k. Admittedly, they blew fibre into the home, not to the cabinet, but they laid the duct across fields. That's a big saving compared with laying in the carriageway at £100/metre + the cabling costs.

Sorry to go of topic, but I thought I'd add some perspective to your point.

 

[bulkcorn]

Although its a difficult topic of where any surplus Nominet generates should go apart from "Please remove the £12 transfer fee now!"

If the £6 milion a year surplus spent on charity would make a dent in the UK speed issue and if it was spent would it just allow the likes of BT to spend £6 miliion pa less?

The £12 should at least be reduced to no more than £5(VAT inclusive)! £12 for is way too much for transfers!

 

[websaway]

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...-domain-names-at-the-department-for-transport

 

[websaway]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...ominet-plan-for-secure-.uk-web-addresses.html

 

[anthony]

Most people simply don't understand the real issues involved in deploying a network, especially in a competetive environment. Forgetting the oft misleading 'fibre optic broadband' statement pumped out by the ad agencies, it costs a small fortune to deploy fibre where it hasn't gone before, or to upgrade the fibre to be suitable for the most up-to-date DWDM kit. Just to be clear, without a robust fibre backbone, you have no high bandwith infrastructure to support anything, and everything needs a backbone, including the mobile networks. No operaters like to share their backbones unless compelled to do so politically, which means multiple networks to be paid for. The £6M quoted before is a drop in the ocean, the head end equipment alone can easily push the £1M button. Same on the mobile networks, some of the Juniper cards alone, yes an individual vertical card, can cost £250k each!

The mobile networks are the main investment calls at the moment, FTTA being a significant requirement to support those greedy little 4G smartphones we're all getting. Can you imagine the up front cost this amounts to? New antennas, RRUs, demarcation boxes, power supply units, fibre & power cables, mast, each holding 3 antennas (6 or more in urban sites), and all those new cables running to the backbone. We might need to go to femtocells too in highly urbanised locations, that would add even more to the already unbelievable costs.

As for FTTH, it's not likely to take hold in the UK any decade soon, not whilst they can squeeze more and more out of the last run coax installs. It would take legislation to force a change in this area, maybe starting with something like the latest French approach of forced 6-fibre installs in certain sized new build projects, but that is an insignificant tokenism in reality. Small wonder too that Vodafone snapped up C&WW, no more paying BT to piggyback onto their network anymore!

 

[monaghanmonaghan is verified member.]

Most people simply don't understand the real issues involved in deploying a network, especially in a competetive environment

I spent many years working in IT support for one of the companies involved with building some of the original digital mobile networks, I've also spent a lot of time in and out of data centres so have a fairly good appreciation of the costs and I'm aware that it is not trivial to roll out a fibre cabinet to the middle of nowhere. I was using a data over a phone line system to provide telephone and minicomputer terminal on a single copper line which was more or less the grandparent of ADSL.

My issue is that we're becoming a 2 tier nation as far as digital technology is concerned, cities & towns get reasonable coverage, rural is getting forgotten, but our towns & cities are getting rather full so we need to go out to the country sooner or later. I'm aware there is a plan to get ADSL to everywhere, but this is something silly like 2Mb/s. We allowed the cable companies to get away with digging up all the streets in town, but allowed them to only cable the profitable areas.

I have a friend who (now) lives in a small village in the middle of Tanzania and she gets better mobile signal than we've had on most of our recent UK holidays

Love the idea of B4RN though!