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UK Government To Back Broadband-For-All
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Apr 24, 2009 01:11 PM
from the millions-more-botnet-zombies dept.
from the millions-more-botnet-zombies dept.
Barence writes to mention that the UK government is throwing their weight behind a broadband-for-all initiative with an initial round of £250 million in funding. Using money left over from the digital television switch, the initiative aims to have a 2Mbit/sec broadband connection or better in every home by 2012. "Analysts welcomed the proposals, but say there are still many details to be hammered out: 'The Chancellor... needs to consider how to remove the barriers that prevent the people who cannot afford broadband to get connected. They need to ensure that competition in the market remains fair and consumers are given choice rather than one or two providers.'"
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Bloody hell! (Score:4, Insightful)
Five bucks...er, five pounds, that this will be filtered to high heck...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It'll likely be filtered, monitored, and throttled. More so as time goes on. And since the government operates the service, subsidizes its use, and owns the infrastructure there will be little incentive for less restrictive, privately owned providers to compete, even if they're allowed to do so.
But one thing I've learned from reading Slashdot is that when "Free as in speech" meets "Free as in beer", "speech" usually loses. Even when the government is picking your pocket to pay the bar tab.
As in, giving the
2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:5, Funny)
2000 called. They want their broadband back......
Re:2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in the boonies of the USA and my connection peaks just over 1 Mbps (I have a WiFi connection to a tower on the local volcano. Not a typo.) 2 Mbps would make me dizzy with joy, especially since at peak times I sometimes get under 500kbps. A lot of people out there are still using a modem, like me until a few months ago.
Parent
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I live in the boonies of the US and get 300 kbps, take that! Lets play who has the slowest internet.
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I live in the boonies of the USA and my connection peaks just over 1 Mbps (I have a WiFi connection to a tower on the local volcano. Not a typo.) .
The problem isn't that you can't get broadband in the boonies. Anyone can. The problem is that most of the time, that option is via satellite. Once you get past the initial hardware expense, monthly service for satellite tv and Internet packages are comparable to cable packages. The problem is the damn latency. Satellite is fine for downloading files and surfing. But try playing FPS's on one.
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Yeah, I was getting the same kind of connection speeds, the copper out here is pretty bad. Even if satellite worked on your site, it would still suck. However, people who live in the boonies don't get to complain about that last mile (Well, you can complain, but just don't expect anyone to be sympathetic) any more than they get to complain when civilization finally does show up, and they start getting traffic on "their road". In the mean time, is there anyone near you with whom you might form a co-op? You c
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While 2MBit/s might sounds slow to those of us that have turbo connections and get upwards of 10Mbit/s, this is actually a decent number for an initiative such as this.
2 MBit/s is actually a very attainable number for a cheap internet solution to get EVERYONE access to that speed. And while some may scoff at it being slow, 2 Mbit (around 250 KB/s down) is still about 5x faster than dialup. And it would be an always-on connection, something dial-up is not.
Also, for the UK to fund an initiative like this, it
Re:2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
this is actually a decent number for an initiative such as this.
No it's not, because by the time they are done spending money at the rate the Government typically spends it they could have bought a fiber to the doorstep system for every man, woman and child in the UK. Why would you spend a pile of money to build a system that's obsolete as soon as you turn it up?
Parent
Re:2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:4, Insightful)
It does if you are stringing new wire. The cost of the wire is nothing compared to the labor cost of installing it. If you aren't stringing new wire then why haven't the phone companies already provided service?
Parent
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It looks like it is going to be implemented by putting lots more HSDPA cellphone towers around the countryside. They give you 3.6Mbps if you are close enough to them.
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I guess it depends on whether they are targeting 2mbit as in actually 2mbit or "2 mbit UNLIMITED at 1:1000 contention with 4gb /month cap". If it actually ends up averaging 2mbit and not 500kbps then it's not so bad.
2 Meg is Sufficient for their Surveillance Trojan (Score:3, Funny)
What, you thought the British government was gifting its people with free broadband because it liked and trusted them?!
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That's at least 2Mb/s everywhere in the UK. There are still some rural areas, particularly in Scotland, where the only 'high-speed' Internet access you can get is ISDN, at 128Kb/s (for two channels), charged per minute and very expensive. My mother can currently only get 1Mb/s from her ADSL connection in rural England due to her distance from the exchange, and I can get about that from my phone (UMTS) when I visit her if I put it in the right spot in the corner of the room (although with slightly higher l
Only 2Mbit (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess it's a start, so they should be congratulated on that.
However 2Mbit seems remarkably slow. Even now, I'd find it too slow to bear. By 2012, in 3 years time, I'd imagine it will seem even more obsolete as services change to take advantage of higher bandwidth.
I have 10Mbit at home and that's about the lowest I can bear. I will upgrade to 50Mbit soon.
Re:Only 2Mbit (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still at 1.5Mb you insensitive clod!
-Rick
Parent
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Having an always on connection that is fast enough to do reasonable software updates for a fair price would be the main thing. Always on lets people use the internet in an entirely different way than modem dial in. This kind of service can make sure that residents can keep their setup at home secure. And it helps people to start using private and government internet services.
2Mbit is plenty for such use. Unless Microsoft is going to ask people to download even more than the 1.5 GB update once you buy a comp
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Its a lot faster than what the US has committed to making universally available.
Re:Only 2Mbit (Score:4, Insightful)
2Mb is slow for what? you can stream video/audio, browse the web, the basic connectivity you 'need' in this day and age (wikipedia for kids, Google maps for services, etc)
Parent
No filtering? (Score:2)
Broadband for Some (Score:2)
Most likely the UK will pass a three strikes law in the near future, meaning the broadband will be for all except those who are accused three times by the recording industry of file sharing, with no warnings or evidence required.
Re:Broadband for Some (Score:4, Funny)
As we generally follow football (English, not American), we tend to go for a Yellow Card / Red Card law rather than a three strikes law.
Parent
Utility (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Utility (Score:4, Insightful)
If people can't live without the internet, how did humans exist throughout most of history?
Times change. By "live", we of course mean "live by acceptable standards in a modern civilized world", not "continue functions construed by science to indicate a creature is alive". Most people with some inkling of knowing how to communicate with humans would have understood the implication by social convention, experience in which you appear to lack.
How are people alive in socialist utopias, such as Cuba or North Korea, where access to the internet for all but the ruling elite is a crime?
Poorly and in an uneducated state.
How do so many people, who voluntarily choose to eschew the internet and computers, survive?
In their own little isolated worlds where nobody really cares about them.
Just because someone can't imagine their lives without a product or service does not mean that they literally require it to survive, or even if, peculiarly, that they will literally die without the internet, anyone else would be so affected be such a common and non-threatening condition.
You're just not catching on that you're not nearly as funny as you think you are, right?
Parent
A great deal (Score:2)
Not only will you have broadband, but Phorm will even track what websites you visit in order to serve adverts that are relevant to you, and the goverment will be monitoring your connection to make sure you don't inadvertently access any violent pornography and that no terrorists try to indoctrinate you. Sign me up!
Vendetta (Score:5, Funny)
Bad Idea UK... (Score:5, Funny)
You may want to talk to your retarded little brother USA, and see how that worked out for them.
Gov'ner: Here's 250$ million, Broadband for all, yea! :(
Telcos: Yea!
Pleabs: Yea!
Gov'ner: Where is our Broadband?
Telcos: What broadband?
Gov'ner: Where is our money?
Telcos: What money?
Gov'ner: *shrugs*
Pleabs:
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Guess they ran out places to put cameras... (Score:2)
so now they can spy inside!
Who's backing it again? (Score:2)
Is it the government or the taxpayers who are paying for it?
2mbit by 2012 is like outside privies by 201 (Score:2)
So of course it is dead easy to turn around in 2012 and claim that yet another published target has been met.
I've had 20 mbit down / 1 mbit up for 50 quid a month for nearly 2 years now.
All very well but... (Score:2)
...is this really needed at a time when we should be making real an effort to cut spending.
I love the idea, but we need to prioritize a little, could this 250m be better spent elsewhere? Or not at all?
Sorry, 2Mbits is NOT enough! (Score:3, Interesting)
just one objection (Score:3, Funny)
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It's weird, isn't it? People applauding what they want, rather than what you think they should want.
Re:socialism (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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I don't know about you, but that seems like a definite improvement to me.
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Because, on the evidence of the last few decades, corporations are certainly not going to provide broadband for the entire population, or anyone outside profitable urban areas. Even when subsidised by governments, they eat up the subsidies and fail to provide a universal service. Eventually the US will work this out.
Though the way you reject universal health care because "it's socialist", allowing your p
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That's a good plan.
Main problem is the thing that's always faced postal services - those last two percent of people? they're not profitable. Without government intervention they may never get broadband unless they're also farking rich.
Of course newer 3G(+) wireless services do mitigate this somewhat.
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I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the US, the issue of providing Internet access to the poor, so that they can try to improve their situation (e.g. through online educational materials, job training, reading up on technology, email access, etc) is largely resolved through libraries. If you are really so poor you cannot afford to get high-speed internet access, then go to the library.
The library approach limits costs (because you are only provisioning Internet access at a relatively small number
Re:How about better jobs instead of lower costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, somebody is going to have to dig the trenches and put down the cables and all. I presume that this is exactly what they are doing. This way people earn money and you get something in return. This is typical behavior for governments during this particular economic crisis.
Besides, for many remote places the cost will be prohibitive (of putting cables down) for an individual or group of individuals. So the government will have to put the infrastructure there for them. Otherwise they may face even more people moving from the countryside into the already crowded cities.
Parent
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Maybe for those remote places, we just have to face the fact that cables aren't going to be cost effective, and instead focus on wireless or satellite solutions for Internet access?
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It gets worse:
"You will give us your money so we can pay for this. You have no say in the matter."
"Since we're paying for this, we will decide what sort of content is acceptable on 'our' internet. You have no say in the matter."
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I don't think it will be free. It will most likely cost about £15 per month.
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