High Cost of Converting UK To High-Speed Broadband 268
Smivs notes a BBC report on a government study toting up the high cost of converting the UK to high speed broadband, which could exceed £28.8 B ($52.5 B). The options examined range from fiber to the neighborhood, providing 30-100 Mbps connections for a total cost of £5.1 B ($9.3 B), up to individual fiber to the home offering 1 Gbps to each household at a cost of £28.8 B. England's rural areas could pose tough choices. In the lowest-cost, fiber-to-the-neighborhood scenario, "The [group] estimates that getting fiber to the cabinets near the first 58% of households could cost about £1.9 B. The next 26% would cost about £1.4 B and the final 16% would cost £1.8 B."
Re:overtaken by new technologies (Score:2, Funny)
Googles April Fools joke comes true...
Damn. You were serious...
Q: When will work start and will this mean digging up roads in the area?
A: Work is scheduled to start in September. The sewer will be used where possible...
Source [fibrecity.eu]
I see the future now...... (Score:5, Funny)
Download 10000 MP3's or 500 movies in 5 minutes*
All for only £500 a month (Fair usage limits apply**)
*From legal sources only, though everyone knows the only place you can get that amount of files is from illegal sources, even though we hate file sharers making us a bunch of 2 faced cunts.
**If you download more than 1Meg during some unspecified time limit that differs throughout the country we will limit your speed to 512k. Full speed will be reinstated after another unspecified time period. Unrestricted access is only available between the times of 01:00 - 01:10 each day.
Remember - It's a download, not a loss. (Score:1, Funny)
"Businesses involved in delivery of digital content?"
Pfft! Outsource it to Piratebay. You can trust Piratebay. This ad brought to you by Piratebay.
Re:Remember - It's an investment, not a $50bil los (Score:4, Funny)
The BBC iPlayer already offers TV shows in HD and my "measily" 4mb ADSL connection handles it absolutely fine, even when others in the house are also browsing the web etc.
I'd love to brag about having a 100mb connection as much as anyone else who reads slashdot, but I can't really say my life suffers much from not having one.
It's an island, how hard can it be ? (Score:1, Funny)
It's just an island. Take about greedy motherfuckers! I can run a war for a month on that amount of money.
Re:Just do it, already. (Score:5, Funny)
You think you got it bad. Out in Dibley the Vicar can barely get 56K and that's only if the local sheep herder is not out shagging his sheep and wankering with the lines.
Re:Remember - It's an investment, not a $50bil los (Score:5, Funny)
The spying business ?
How else are they going to install the spy cams inside the TV's and stream all that data back to Big Brother (and no, I'm NOT talking about the one with the confessional etc.) ?
What better way to ensure that single parents are not cohabiting, or that everyone is segregating their rubbish ... and just along the way, perhaps one time in 10 million, we might actually catch someone making coke bottle bombs out of hydrogen peroxide ... so it must be worth the price.
And just think about all the employment we can create, paying people 12 pence about minimum wage so they can watch other people. No more pesky unemployment figures to worry about.
China might have talked about doing it years ago, but only the nanny state of UK could actually pull it off, in the name of "security".
Posted by a cynical ex-brit who left blighty 12 years ago, and never looked back.
Proof that England is only a small part of the UK (Score:1, Funny)
It's true! According to Google Maps, "England" is an empty farm field [google.com] somewhere midway between Stoke on Trent and Telford.
I had no idea it was such a small place. It's pretty impressive really, that so much culture and history all happened in that one tiny field.
In comparison, the UK is much larger, almost the size of an average US State. Think how many Englands could fit in that space! I wonder why they never expanded out of that field? I admit, the hedge surrounding it does look formidable from the aerial photograph, but there's a road right next to it.
Re:Remember - It's an investment, not a $50bil los (Score:3, Funny)
I have a friend that supports his 6 figure online income via a cellular connection.
I know a drug dealer too. ;-)