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Shaun Orchard wrote: > 2009/7/31 Neil Winchurst <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxx>: > >> Referring to the last sentence, exactly. Which I why I stay well clear >> of BT. >> >> I still find it hard to believe that this country has its phone network >> run by a private company. Crazy. >> >> Which probably explains why we are so far behind most other western >> European countries for broadband speeds. >> > > > To use a few of the bigger players as an example: > > The French government holds a 27% stake in France Telecom > The German government holds a 15% direct stake in Deutsche Telekom > The Swiss government holds a 52% stake in Swisscom > The Spanish government doesn't own any (if very little) of Telefonica. > > The only real difference is that some other European telcos have > minority ownerships by their respective governments, whereas we do > not. Even so, these companies will be expected to maintain a profit > just as BT is. > > Even in countries with "superior" phone networks, the likelihood is > that they still rely on ADSL/ADSL2+ for rural areas (if not in more > urban areas also), so the distance limitations still apply as much as > they do here. I doubt France Telecom, for example have rolled out > remote DSLAMs to the outposts of rural France. > > Those headline speed tables are perhaps a bit flawed, because when BT > rolls out ADSL2+ in any significant scale (I'm on one of the few > non-town exchanges to get it next year) we'll look better in the > tables. But, as ADSL2+ doesn't really provide a huge benefit to longer > lines (unless SRA is enabled so the speed can vary based on line > conditions without resyncing), the problems we have now will still > exist. > > Shaun > > The problem as I see it that BT and the electricity companies have been allowed to continue to distribute using overhead cables. They should have been obliged to put them underground in concrete pipes or the like. This would have facilitated the use of fiber optics. John W Hansen -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html