BBC should not pay for fibre, Ofcom tells MPs
The dog and pony show over whether the BBC should contribute to distribution costs for iPlayer rolled into Westminster yesterday, with Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards telling MPs he doesn't believe forcing Auntie to cough up for a fibre network is the best plan. Appearing before a joint session of the Commons culture and …
Copper wire should have been phased out as the internet "boom" started (10 years ago, lest we forget!). BT got greedy and looked at the balance sheets, realised they could pump crap services like ISDN and ADSL over their existing lines (512kb... a massive boost over 56k modems) and forget about upgrading their infrastructure. Moore's law appears to be in effect on internet speeds (consumers expect stuff to doubhle in speed/capacity/size/shineyness every 18 months or so), so BT's infrastructure has maxed out - they should pay for it.
If the BBC are forced to pay ANYTHING towards this, it would set a precedent that any successful site would have to follow. What next? Facebook reimbursing companies for loss of earnings because a member of their staff spent all morning looking at photos of their cousin's neighbour's dog's circumcision?
Please. These below-cost isp deals are just harming the industry and causing those isps who can provide the service they charge for to be pushed out by people who provide minimal connectivity but claim it's equivalent.
Make people charge for what they provide. If individual ISPs want to block iplayer then they should make it clear that their £5/month service is with that block and if people want iplayer they have to go elsewhere.
Apart from a box I read about that makes the internet faster (some professor was mentioned, I can't seem to lay my cursor on the articles at the moment.
However, whilst searching for it, I found out about an Aussie maths whiz with an internet speeding-up algorithm;
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/11/05/1194117915862.html
...and also about the 'Grid' replacing the internet;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece
So what is the problem folks?
Even then, if you really want to delay things and sweep new discoveries under the rug so you can carry on grumbling along at the same pace you always have - why not form yet another consortium and make the internet a charitable institution?
We can have people out with buckets on the streets begging for money for optical fibre.
The problem is getting bandwidth the DSLAMs in the local exchanges. Maybe Ofcom should reintroduce the concept of party line concept for fibre optics. Most ISP could drastically increase their capacity and decrease their costs with links that only get them to nearby exchanges and they can share a fibre with others thanks to the magic of fibre wavelength division.
£25 billion of taxpayers funds to bail out nothern rock or £25 billion on FTTH?
i vote for the latter ;) (and i work for the crock)
AC
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