UK Government To Back Broadband-For-All 192
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.'"
Bloody hell! (Score:4, Insightful)
Five bucks...er, five pounds, that this will be filtered to high heck...
Re:socialism (Score:3, Insightful)
It's weird, isn't it? People applauding what they want, rather than what you think they should want.
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?
Re:2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:1, Insightful)
So, from your statement, you are stating that fiber lines cost the same or less to implement on a per-home basis than phone lines/coax/copper?
You, my friend, do not live in 2009. You are somewhere far off into the future. Perhaps somewhere around 2050 or later. And on Mars.
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?
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.
Re:How about better jobs instead of lower costs? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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?
Re:Only 2Mbit (Score:3, Insightful)
Its a lot faster than what the US has committed to making universally available.
Re:socialism (Score:3, Insightful)
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 poor to sicken and die, maybe I'm too optimistic.
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)
Re:Bloody hell! (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 government unlimited power to monitor and control our communications is a terrible policy. Unless, of course, they offer to give us cool stuff for FREE. Then it's a fantastic idea that only a drooling Luddite could possibly oppose.
Re:2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:2mbits? woo-hoo! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:It certainly works that way in Australia (Score:1, Insightful)
you create a nice dystopia fantasy for people to rail against, but the reality is the filtering will never happen.