Digital Britain (including Labour's proposal for a £20/year internet connection TAX)

aproctor

aproctor

aproctor

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The government now wants to push for full UK broadband coverage and minimum speeds, which must be a good thing, although the section about piracy has stumped me somewhat as i'm sure they had the chance to do something this week and voted against it.

Surely just tightening up products such as "ADSL MAX" would be far easier (up to 16mbit. My ****.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7857402.stm
 
I saw this on BBC news a short while ago and i think its a good idea to develop broadband so that it covers a larger area, and hopefuly becomes more stable in areas were it is already deployed.

One thing that made me laugh though is that BBC have no idea of the difference between megabit and megabyte, during the news report they refered to everything in megabytes when they were actully refering to megabits.
 
I wonder if our enlightened, forward thinking, and fiscally sensible government would be willing to put forward money to assist in this aim?

Or will they just keep puffing their chests, saying things that sound good in the news, and ignore the reality of the situation?
It'll cost a huge amount to improve basic speeds available to everyone in the UK, as a lot of the limitations are to do with the physics involved in using current signalling technology on what are often bits of fairly manky copper that were never intended to carry a really clean signal.
 
Werewolf said:
I wonder if our enlightened, forward thinking, and fiscally sensible government would be willing to put forward money to assist in this aim?
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It costs the taxpayer enough to fix the roads and paths properly every time they churn them up and put half of it back to lay wires without us paying them to actually do it too.

Why didnt BT just use the same fibre optics as cable companies last time they relaid cables now they are gonna need to do a load again.
 
Largely because BT haven't generally laid new cables from the exchanges to the houses since they were first done (it costs a fortune to lay them), and had no reason to when they were first putting the cables down.

It's going to cost billions to replace the cabling to the average home, which is what is going to be needed to increase the minimum connection speed nationally (unless ADSL tech gets much better, or another new tech comes out that can make better use of unshielded voice cabling - which may or may not happen, and even if it does happen might take another decade)
 
They're just making noise. Nothing will come of it.

Until BT lays fibre to those green cabinets at the side of the road then nothing is going to improve.
 
Indeed, and the government is just, as warewolf says, puffing its chest to make good looking headlines.

They can't demand that a company that is haemorrhaging cash invest the billions required when they're not prepared to put any money in themselves.
 
£20/year tax for every broadband internet connection?

:D

First country in the world :)

They would appear to now be desperate to fill that £20bn/year hole in the budget that Gordon Brown created in 1997 by deregulating the banking sector and selling all our gold reserves when the market was at a 30 year low :D
 
Strife212 said:
Don't laugh it off, we're one of the only countries with a television license as well. They'll push it through if they want to.
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But the TV license funds something that is worthwhile having... the BBC.

They can't just slap a tax on internet connections and then not actually do anything... at the very least they'd need to setup some 1990's-esque "portal website" which has all the latest UK news and hyperlinks to other interesting "shaker and mover" websites :D
 
"The idea will be at the heart of the Digital Britain Green Paper to be unveiled by ministers, which includes plans to create jobs by boosting broadband take-up. "

Quite how a £20 charge to have a broadband connection is going ot encourage take up and create jobs I don't know...
 
tolien said:
The report doesn't say broadband down a cable. Can get GPRS at 150kbps? Good, you've got broadband.
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Think they said 2Mbit would be the "legal minimum" or something.

Funny because in order to really provide that to some uber remote regions in Wales/Scotland the only ground-based way is fibre I would have thought.
 
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