No Government wonga for next generation broadband
Report due
THE GOVERNMENT is finally ready to disclose the results from the long-awaited review of UK broadband services.
These findings will contribute towards decisions such as whether or not firms should get subsidies to lay high-speed cables for business as well as homes.
The INQ has already reported the huge cost of fitting the UK for Next Generation Broadband (NGB), but is the high-speed service enough to sway the decision.
NGB would boost the speed of broadband connections from 3-4Mbps up to 100Mbps and beyond – depending on where you live in the UK.
However one of the first steps in this process involves telecoms firms removing the old copper wires and replacing them with fibre thereby using light to carry the data, but extensive re-wiring of this kind could again put a spanner in the works.
The report apparently says there is no case for the government to provide cash subsidies to telecoms firms in order to pick up the pace in the deployment of fibre.
BT has already said it would put 40 per cent of UK homes within reach of next generation broadband by 2012 and invest £1.5 billion to upgrade its network.
So, as with most things, NGB is dependant on monetary investment – we’ll just have to wait and see who will front this project. µ
Comments
Infrastructure
Every previous infrastructure has benefited from central government subsidies of some sort. Whether it's direct money or tax incentives. Why is this one different?lucky bastages
Wow lucky guys, 100mb broadband in your homes, ohh i am excited even tho im not getting it. I hope it all works out for you.austalia has 24mb max on adsl2 lines, and terrible upstream,1mb upstream is the average (not cable) cable seems to get better upstreams now foxtel has dumped cable tv for a different cable/standard, which freed up the cable for better broadband speeds.
australia wont get much faster anytime soon, as telstra which was government owned for a long time, the previous howard gov decided to privatise telstra, and this has created a monopoly. many plans have been laid for fibre cable and other high speed soloutions, but telstra will not share the network once its up and running, effectivly closing all the competitors out for good, and making consumers pay stupidly high amounts of cash and crap plans.
atm telstra's adsl2 is very expensive, their unlimited plan which is highest available is 60GB d/l your uploads are counted onto that amount as well so uploads are not free, and you are capped to 56K once you use it up. that is 150buks AU,
where as a private company, can do 150GB no uploads counted for 129 buks AU including phone line.
Now this has crippled telstra and they have since tried to get this fiber node network going, to entice customers back, but they want to close out the competition, no one will be allowed to connect to the backbone so they can raise prices back to the old days where 20GB was the max plan and it was 400 dollars a month.
so I hope you dont face problems like this in the UK, so the consumer watchdog is telling telstra if they make this they have to let others onto the netowrk just like now, so there would be wholesale pricing etc.
But they have come in and said if thats the case then we wont build it. and this in a way is fair enough. if you had option of making a network that you ran for a premium price, no competition, of course you would do it, and make alot of money. but if you had to share, and provide wholesale prices, then whats the point. so I see both sides, but when the howard government privatised telstra, they signed the death of technology advancment in the broadband field, because telstra is just looking after itself now, its a private company, its allowed to do that. so a new communications group needs to come into the austalian scene. and I hope its IInet. they have already said screw telstra, and made their own network in well over 50% of australia, adsl2 is available in more homes then what telstra has, so thats a big number already. they just need governemtt backing. IInet are fair, and have good pricing and fair plans. so I hope they do step up, and take us where it looks like you are going, and I must say 100mb adsl looks mighty sexy to me
Strange.
I was told subsidising such was against the EU rules, did something change while I was AFK?Heh. . .
Newsflash to Aussie guy, most of Britain doesn't even have ADSL2 yet and if you are in an ADSL(1) area you are lucky to get to 8Mb except in the middle of the night!