|
|
UK government to help push faster broadband
Author: Phil CogarPublished: 19th September 2007
Faster broadband speeds could be coming if the UK government decides to help build a fibre network.
"Today we face a new challenge. Other countries are starting to invest in new, fibre-based infrastructure, delivering considerably higher bandwidth than is available in the UK today," said Stephen Timms, Minister for Competitiveness. "I have decided to chair a high level summit later this year to consider the circumstances that might trigger public sector intervention and the form that intervention might take."
All of this came about from an event that was organised by the Broadband Stakeholder Group.
Richard Allan, Director of Government Affairs at Cisco and a member of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, believes that 40 percent of UK citizens should have a fibre connection by 2012. He says that 24 megabits/sec is the top out under good connections on copper-based system.
The move to fibre based systems won't come cheap though as it's estimated that it will cost between £10 and £15 billion to build a fibre network. This is the part where government help is needed. Planning laws and lowered civil engineering costs would help lower the overall cost of the upgrade.
Normally, fibre lines are run through ducts in municipal sewage systems because of the fragility of the lines but this might be an unavailable route in some parts of the UK. Deeper sewers that aren't municipally owned could pose problems in many areas but another solution is available. Micro ducts are used in such areas where fibre is blown through them in long runs.
The government should announce any plans to step in either late this year or early next.
Do you think that you'll see faster broadband speeds if the government steps in and lends a hand? Discuss your thoughts over in the forums or in the comment section below.
Related
Comments (40)
Compare over 250 mobile phones &
52,000 deals!
Compare over 100 broadband & mobile broadband deals online!
- Site Links:
- About
- Email Editor
- Newsletter
- Privacy
- RSS
- Score Guide
- Our Other Websites:
- Auto Express
- Channel Pro
- Computer Buyer
- Computer Shopper
- Den of Geek
All content © bit-tech.net 2000-2009
© Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited licensed by Felden
I'm on NTL (now owned by Virgin).
I can only hope I'm in that 40% by 2012
+1
Uploads should be at least half your max download.
"are NOT quite up to speed"?
personally, I prefer a SLOWER, STABLE connection, to a FAST, UNSTABLE connection. currently i have a SLOW, UNSTABLE connection.
F**K YOU BEE TEE WITH YOUR OWN HOMOHUB.
It's fixed now guys, along with a couple of other typos. Sorry about that, was in a big hurry when I was typing that one out but thanks for pointing it out.
im with aol, oh god why did i go that route, Mainly cos i don't pay for it but hey ho, anyways, they don't cap me, they just have a tendency to cut me off time to time, when im d/l large files, idiots
QFT!!
Upload speeds atm are at a stupidly costly premium, door to door fiber is the way forward!!
With the sweeds already doing so, and france implimenting it, fiber would open doors to all sorts of tech, HD tv, digital phones, as well as internet.
I wish the goverment best of luck trying to get the BT puzzle together in order to roll out such.
AOL should die as a company NOW, and I hope they do.
Agreed, upload speeds are very poor and there's no reason for it, maybe when broadband was first used there wasn't much the average user uploaded, but with the advent of stuff like YouTube and widespread P2P use, the average user is more likely to want a high upload speed.
Not correct at all my friend. I hated AOL before I signed up. Im with them because they were the only provider available for my flat which is in a newly built area. I had no choice other than no internet acess at all. I can now use other providers now but im stuck in a contract.
256k upload was great on 512k connections, but 512k or less upload is rather pathetic on 4mb+ connections.
It's even worse for me though, due to virgin media's horrible traffic shaping i spend most evenings with a crippled 192k upload :'(
im glad the government are finally going to do somthing to help us, hopefully these stuipd bandwith caps can be dealt with too, no point having a 100mbit connection if your only allowed 40gb/month
Considering what other countries have now, that's pitiful. We will be an international joke. For business, and our standing in the tech world, it's not at all acceptable.
If the government don't do something about this it's going to take such a long time to get a good percentage of fibre. The rest of the world will be on two way Gbit connections and we will all still be on 10Mbit. Hell in France (France!!) 60Mbps isn't uncommon as they have VDSL... BT's '21CN' only upgrades us to 24.. Only BT could package that as an advance.
As for AOL, I'm on them, they are crap. They didn't used to be though. Until the beginning of the year and the maxdsl 'upgrade' they had no evening caps, no limits and I got a perfect service of 2Mbit. I could download 24/7 and it would always be a flat-line for both up and down. Since Maxdsl I've been meaning to switch ISPs but I haven't found one which doesn't have some kind of fair use limits or complicated bandwidth usage time scheme. They all have the same arbitrary limits and bullshit but package it up differently. The first ISP which lets me use my line limits 24/7 and doesn't pester me with 'fair use', port blocking and traffic shaping gets my cash. I've downloaded and uploaded about 400GB in the last month and while AOL cripples my connection in the evenings, I can't see that I would get a better deal somewhere else.
The government first of all needs to step in and stop all the limiting, then things like iplayer and other torrent services will work for everyone that wants them. I can't see why ofcom should allow the ISP's to get away with selling services they intentionally don't supply.
Nope uploads should EQUAL your downloads, we should have none of this asynchronous rubbish.
Not the rumor I head from a BT Wholesale account manager in my last job. He said BT were definitely going to do FTTC (fiber to the cabinet) and about 3 months later it was in the news that this was being seriously considered by BT as it would allow for VHDSL to be a possibility in the UK.
i would be glad if i could get even close to that much allready...
*starts looking for a job in sweden* honestly.. the crap quality of certain isp's really sucks donkeyballs and the upload speeds are like in the 56k stoneage...
From what I have read no fibre to the house is stiil the case. The general gist, that I get, (and as Andy Mc said) is that they will be putting fibre to the local cabinets. This, obviously, reduces the the copper length thus garnering greater speed.
Afaik, there are no plans to do FTTH just to the "green" distribution boxes in streets. As much as I dislike BT, you cant really knock them from there government owned days with the better state of network that was built..... check out germany if you think your DSL speed is bad.
Hows FTTH any different (in terms of who foots the bill) to what basicly the cable companies had to install when they were starting up, its cost them an arm and a leg so how do you think they will react over this news?
Prehaps it comes to the old chestnut that BT can no refuse any UK resident the chance to own a telephone line?
As it turns out I don't really upload stuff much anyway, but yeah, a faster upload would be nice.
Therre's more than just having faster potential lines anyway, the ISPs need to beef up their systems as well.
They're already complaining about joost, and the BBC iplayer etc and say they intend to throttle this type of traffic.
They (plusnet) have recently changed their packages for the worse though, with an 8am to 12am 'peak' time, and introduced peak time download limits, needless to say i opted to stay with my current package, though i have been considering moving to another provider, any idea who has the best unrestricted packages at the moment? (primarily for gaming, i dont use any P2P/torrents/usenet nowadays)
Here in New York Verizon FiOS (which is fiber to the premises by the way) offers up to 50 Mbps, though for almost $100 a month. In Asia the internet connections are usually a lot faster than here in america.
One day we will all have them in our homes .... one day
so they ought to sort out the ping issue, i want less than 30ping!!! i get 80 in Crysis :(
Aslong as its not over 80 you should be fine really (p.s. crysis is a bit laggy anyway, prolly due to the beta code)