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On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 09:03 +0100, Henry Bremridge wrote: > On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 08:47:43AM +0100, Neil Winchurst wrote: > > Many western European countries do much better than us for their > > broadband, it seems. Especially France. Why? Simple, their national > > phone system is not run by a private company with shareholders. > > > to quote Deng Xiaoping > > "Who cares whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice" > > The issue is three fold: > - What will be the cost of providing fast broadband to all? What is the cost of NOT doing it. > - Who will pay? And when? How about making the national telecommunications backbone public again, out of the hands of a private company. Paying shareholders is most likely the reason we have no/little fibre network. > - What will be the benefit? And when? Internet TV, Video on Demand, Video Calls (at a reasonable quality), more/multiple simultaneous streaming services etc etc. The state of UK broadband has been a pet hate of mine for many years now. Broadband Britain is nothing more than a joke, the plan to offer a minimum of 2Mbit to everyone has now been discarded and the ambition for that was 2012. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7098992.stm An old article, from 2007; but take time to note the speeds countries then achieved against good old Broadband Britain, in fact compare many to what we get now even 3 years further on. For now, here is a IRC quote from a good friend in Sweden... 22:26 <@XXXXX> anyway, yet another isp is offering gigabit internet here now The cost is about 100E and do you want to bet they have no bandwidth management or quota on the line. I was talking with that same friend a few days ago when my ISP decided that a business grade account (Â40pm) decided that not only should it impose a limit of 100GB per month, but if you exceed that you are limited to 128kbps for 30days. Superb business approach! Sadly 100GB per month is actually generous for the UK so there is nowhere that I can find to move to with having ADSL2 in the exchange. My Swedish friend manages hundreds of gigabytes per month in traffic and ISP's over there seem to manage just fine. For Â40 here in the UK I almost achieve 2mbit (200kB/sec) with a quota. Other UK fixed line ISP's have insanely low quota's, saw one of 3gb a couple days ago and I imagine there are lower. Internet TV and many other services have little chance of finding success in the UK. -- John Williams My linux blog of notes and guides http://subbass.blogspot.com/ -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq