"Livingstone said there weren't enough applications that needed such speeds. "Ultimately it's about what people will pay for," he said. "The economic case is not great.""

The man is an idiot or is just trying to justify BT's slow rollout / lack of investment.

I vaguely remember a similar comment back in the 80s when someone asked why people would want to have a computer in their house.

It comes down to this; If they don't make the investment, this country will be relegated to the level of a third world country.

We didn't need the internet, until we had it.

It's not a matter of need, it's a matter of progress and availability will fuel demand, providing it is priced appropriately.

In addittion, BT Can't afford NOT to do it, since someone else will, if they don't. It wouldn't cost Virgin much to extend their fibre to the home from the street cabinets.

"High speed fibre to the end user? Nah, they won't want that.....what do you think we are trying to do here anyway? Lay the foundations of the UK's future high speed network infrastructure or something? Nah, you don't want that. 'sa load of rubbish."

"Livingstone said there weren't enough applications that needed such speeds."

And, according to early predictions, how many computers would be needed to run everything?

Unless of course you mean the people that pay for X Mbps, unlimited and are then told it will be J-K Mbps and capped at ABC Gb/m

I thought everyone was pissing and moaning about iPlayer/BitTorrent being onlineageddon?

.. but currently given the state of the internet as it is we don't even have a ford, we have a half dead horse and a cart.

Wrong. We can and we should.

Would he argue that we should have competing electricity grids or sewage networks?

more than 1mb of ram

sound fimiler?

It's all very well saying that we could have 40Mbit/s downloads, but how about a decent bit of symmetry here. I'd like a more symmetrical service because I when I'm working from home, there's a noticeable bottleneck when accessing a VPN to upload files. If we're to become better at teleworking, this sort of thing needs to be taken into account so that video conferences (often N-way) are possible on a residential internet feed without running into capacity or bandwidth caps.

All this talk about increasing download speeds (whilst also increasing caps!) What about increasing our feable upload speeds?

I forget how slow my upload speeds are up until the point I try to upload even small (<100MB) files to my web server then it feels like i've single handedly killed the internet.

"What we cannot do in the UK is go back to monopoly," he said. "Imagine that coming from BT."

yes, well they would say that when they are behind virgin already.

they'd got many years of expensive infrastructure to put into place before they come to the same level of speed that virgin already offer.

during this time with the same investment virgin can improve and expand their existing network.

BT don't want to see a monopoly because they can't see it being their monopoly...

And yes, Ferraris are faster than Fords, most people make do with Fords.

I think that a more accurate description would be that modern locomotives are faster than steam trains...

He's right of course, there aren't many applications that require 50Mbps download speed, but that's not to say that people don't want that.

especially with TV being provided by the internet, houses having more than one computer...

I think that the best advice that BT could be given is this.

Build it and they will come.

put the infrastructure in. make it over capacity.

then you can run adverts saying, virgin not the only fibre provider, BT provide fibre, we give you what we sell you, no slow down, no caps, no limits, pay for what you get and get what you pay for...

with a promise like that -that they actually could fulfil people will want to use BTs service.

"We can't be guilty of interception - it's too difficult to explain"

- BT

"Phorm/Webwise is a good thing"

-BT

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."

- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"

- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

- Ken Olson, president, chairman & founder of Digital Equipment Co, 1977

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent."

- Alexander Graham Bell.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."

- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

If it's not profitable to put a hamlet on the next-gen network, why should a private company be obliged to make the investment? There are plenty of satellite-based broadband services out there, and plain-old half-meg ADSL is good enough for anything apart from streaming video and heavy-duty VPN use.

Rural living carries far more benefits than we townies get through our broadband. I would love to have a few acres out back, a vastly cheaper mortgage, a barn to build my projects in and the ability to have some peace and solitude from time to time.

Ah well, can't blame people for wanting everything.

It would seem that the world doesn't care who said what, or when they said it.

--Henry Ford, 2035

Dot-com bubble fibre-mania anyone? While much of it did eventually get used, many of the firms that laid it lost their shirts. Assuming exponential growth is just as irresponsible as assuming little or no growth.

The history of "build it and they will come" has as many failures as sucesses, so you can understand BT's caution. Will an application with even greater bandwidth requirements than HD-on-demand, AND mass-market appeal come along? Possibly. In a reasonable timescale? No way of knowing.

You certainly can't build a business case for wiring the whole country based on the demands of the small segment of the population who post in this forum.

Flame away.

PS. Of course, this could merely be a negotiating tactic to get the government to spring for the costs.

My views on all this are firming up. The Government needs to make the strategic investment in a fibre network in areas that are otherwise uneconomic for BT/NTL et al (whoever al is). What's more they need to abandon the idea of a 2Mbps USO and aim for 1Gbps. Anything else isn't going to cut it - especially by the time they have finished the roll out.

http://www.trefor.net/2009/04/17/digital-britain-summit/

I do find it so funny how so many people think virgin have put fiber into homes when thats just not the case, before anyone gets on their high horse I have both an ADSL connection and Virgin 50mbit installed, it comes in over copper coax cable, it runs copper to the cabinate. Most cabinates have copper to the headend still so at very very best virgin have the lead on BT doing the Fiber to the cab. Luckily im in one of the FTTC trial area's so I will be getting that, not for the added download but for the fact the imply there will be a decent upload.

Ether way I pay for it because I want it, I dont NEED it but well I dont need a lot of things I pay for.

The distinction between 40Mb/s and 100Mb/s is just a factor of 2-3. On a logarithmic scale, that's small beer if most urban populations currently make do with about one tenth of that and rural populations might have one hundredth. Now if FTTH could actually deliver 1Gb/s, it might be worth putting in, but I doubt the backbone could take it.

Also, I'm not sure the focus on download speed is helpful. Someone else has already mentioned upload speed and (in the past) still others have mentioned implementing decent routing support in local exchanges as ways of boosting the overall usefulness of the whole system. And then there's the IPv6 rollout. I'm sure BT are investing *at some level* in all of these, but the constant focus on download speeds surely tends to bias their decision making in favour of the music and video pirates rather than people trying to use the net in more creative ways. If this is considered *national* investment, should it really be driven by freetards?

Remember these are the people who believed that the introduction of a two colours phone was more than radical enough for that century, and that there was really no demand for it as the black chunky phones were more than adequate to meet all known requirements.

The only areas of innovation known within BT are creative billing and avoiding customers with legitimate complaints.

At all levels they have the souls of clerks.

All I want is something in the region of the supposed national average speed claimed by Ofcom. Even 50 percent of it would be an improvement for me at the moment.

One of the greatest benefits of living in a rural environment being the absence of numpties like yourself ;-p.

Yeah, we've all got acres out the back and barns and have names like Caractacus Potts! d(^O^)b

Wouldn't swap it now I'm here though, even if it means I'm only at the end of an 8Mb line.

This is just Bumbling Telecom at their finest.