BBC click us broadband report

[torledo]

Did anyone else catch a report on the BBC news 24's technology feature 'click' into the stated of broadband in the US.

They reported broadband speeds far below other parts of the world...3mbps+ compared to 100meg in parts of the far east and 10meg+ in parts of europe. They described the difficulties in providing fiber to the x in built up areas - and how they're basically waiting on this infrastructure upgrade to do something about the speeds.

They also describe a situation where incumbent carriers are desperate to protect their core network and infrastructure investments. Plus the inablility to exploit the potential of wireless for delivery access in City's.

If all of that sounds familiar it's because it's practically a mirror image of whats happening here in the uk. Broadband speeds limited to an ageing copper infrastructure. check. Only hope for 100meg+ speeds is for fttx rollout which is many many years away. check. A cable company with a vast closed infrastructe and a former state owned monopoly who've been strong armed into providing access to competitors. check.

Which begs the question as to why the producers didn't focus the report closer to home if they wanted to highlight second rate internet access infrastructure and telco politics, thus saving a few bob by not flying their reporters to the big apple to deliver a report anyone with access to the internet could have delivered. jokers.

[Simcfc73]

Did anyone else catch a report on the BBC news 24's technology feature 'click' into the stated of broadband in the US.

They reported broadband speeds far below other parts of the world...3mbps+ compared to 100meg in parts of the far east and 10meg+ in parts of europe. They described the difficulties in providing fiber to the x in built up areas - and how they're basically waiting on this infrastructure upgrade to do something about the speeds.

They also describe a situation where incumbent carriers are desperate to protect their core network and infrastructure investments. Plus the inablility to exploit the potential of wireless for delivery access in City's.

If all of that sounds familiar it's because it's practically a mirror image of whats happening here in the uk. Broadband speeds limited to an ageing copper infrastructure. check. Only hope for 100meg+ speeds is for fttx rollout which is many many years away. check. A cable company with a vast closed infrastructe and a former state owned monopoly who've been strong armed into providing access to competitors. check.

Which begs the question as to why the producers didn't focus the report closer to home if they wanted to highlight second rate internet access infrastructure and telco politics, thus saving a few bob by not flying their reporters to the big apple to deliver a report anyone with access to the internet could have delivered. jokers.

Think that is exactly why, think ITV should do a report on the BBCs effect on global warming.

[beeswax]

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's always this

[dhicks]

They described the difficulties in providing fiber to the x in built up areas - and how they're basically waiting on this infrastructure upgrade to do something about the speeds.

That strikes me as fair enough - chunks of cable don't get run from house to house for free, someone's got to pay for that infrastructure. That's why the whole software-as-a-(remote)-service thing bothers me - I can't see it working very well with today's Internet access speeds/reliability/shared bandwidth. This is especially true for schools - I wouldn't want to rely on the Internet connection for any functionality, I'd want it local to the school.

--
David Hicks

[torledo]

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's always this

I tend to agree with the comment that it's the last mile that's the issue.

Core networks of the major tier 2's have virtually unlimited bandwidth and capacity.

BT had a choice, spend 20 billion on fttx, or spend half that on effectively converging their voice and data networks and removing certain legacy WAN technologies from their portfolio. They did this in part becuase of the potential of the Saas model dhicks was mentioning and the potential for so-called tripe play. That's where the revenue generating options are for the next 20 years, not in costly, low return, large scale fiber rollout.

Therefore it should be government funded initiative. If the govt. are going to receive billions from selling off chunks of the radio spectrum in one or two auctions, the least they can do is put it in a pot to pay for naitonal fttx rollout. They should start saving money now for this instead of throwing money at nuclear reactors, trident and national id cards.

[srochford]

That strikes me as fair enough - chunks of cable don't get run from house to house for free, someone's got to pay for that infrastructure. That's why the whole software-as-a-(remote)-service thing bothers me - I can't see it working very well with today's Internet access speeds/reliability/shared bandwidth. This is especially true for schools - I wouldn't want to rely on the Internet connection for any functionality, I'd want it local to the school.

--
David Hicks

for home use there is a real problem - home users want cheap broadband and cheap doesn't pay for fibre to the door. In schools it could be less of an issue. Universities and colleges already have connections to the Janet network which gives very fast connections to a robust network. Provided that all the resources you need are also directly connected to this (and not going down some bit of wacky ADSL for the last bit) then it should be possible to do it.

Money is involved - running Janet costs a lot - but the technology is pretty much there.

[torledo]

for home use there is a real problem - home users want cheap broadband and cheap doesn't pay for fibre to the door. In schools it could be less of an issue. Universities and colleges already have connections to the Janet network which gives very fast connections to a robust network. Provided that all the resources you need are also directly connected to this (and not going down some bit of wacky ADSL for the last bit) then it should be possible to do it.

Money is involved - running Janet costs a lot - but the technology is pretty much there.

good point about cost for home users. If ADSL2+ is the best we've got for the net 10 years already meagre margins for dsl providers will become non-existent. Infact ofcom, BT and the dsl companies are already trying to thrash out details of ADSL activation and access in BT's 21CN. ofcom and the service providers want to see what they call broadband dial tone on each phone line.

[dhicks]

for home use there is a real problem - home users want cheap broadband and cheap doesn't pay for fibre to the door. In schools it could be less of an issue.

I gather this was the idea of the broadband consortiums set up around the country - the idea was that schools would get broadband via a consortium-supplied connection, something like JANET with dedicated fibre connections, not 50-to-1 contention ADSL lines. This winds up being very expensive to do for some schools (some schools are in small villages with no broadband infrastructure), but the idea was that all schools would pay an evened-out flat fee. In practice, rollout proved so slow and crummy that even cluged-together stuff like ADSL performs better.

--
David Hicks

[localzuk]

I gather this was the idea of the broadband consortiums set up around the country - the idea was that schools would get broadband via a consortium-supplied connection, something like JANET with dedicated fibre connections, not 50-to-1 contention ADSL lines. This winds up being very expensive to do for some schools (some schools are in small villages with no broadband infrastructure), but the idea was that all schools would pay an evened-out flat fee. In practice, rollout proved so slow and crummy that even cluged-together stuff like ADSL performs better.

Yep. That is one of the reasons there are RBC's. But the issue here is home users, not schools.

[CAM]

Whats crazy is a fair while back, BT did have the funds to roll out fibre and hi-speed lines, but the government decided it isn't necessary due to lack of demand. Then later, the broadband boom began...

[localzuk]

The labour government we have is unable to create long term plans. They flit from fad to fad, coming up with short-term after short-term plan, wondering why things aren't improving.