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back to article Digital divide looms again over superfast broadband for all

An influential internet industry group said today it would cost almost £29bn to deploy a 1Gbit/s new fibre optic line to every home and business in the UK, raising the spectre of a renewed digital divide if operators are able to neglect rural rollout in favour of more profitable urban infrastructure. The finding comes shortly …

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  1. Digital Freedom

    Left Arm Right Arm?

    We seem to have a HUGE problem in this country because all telco's are strategically pulling in opposite directions and its not actually helping the main cause of their existence: THE END CUSTOMER.

    I am desperate and i mean DESPERATE to get FTTH or CableTV simply because ADSL@5km (512K) is enough to pull your hair out with when you're homeworking over a VPN.

    If the cost of FTTH is due to "digging" then why doesn't VirginMedia pally up with BT and let them share each others trenches, ok some modifications and trench merging may be required... but the overall result is VM can instantly reach more homes without major "construction" and BT can run Fibre To The Home through VM trenches to avoid digging up peoples front gardens as they already have ducting in place.

    Is it just *me* or are VM and BT deliberately dragging their heels on this one? Come on this is WIN-WIN for both companies here????

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    @JonB re monopoly vs competition

    Wtf has competition ever brought the world that co-operation couldn't have done just as well? Competition has brought us the UK's worst broadband retailers... from the clueless but pioneering Bulldog, through to boring but incompetent ones like CPW and Tiscali. What's the point of choice when the market is reduced to BTR vs CPW vs Tiscali vs Orange vs CowboysRUs, and any real choice offered by the likes of AAISP, Zen, and all the others in between with a clue has gone forever, having been forced out of the market by suicidal pricing from the volume players and incompetent regulation from the clueless ones at Ofcon?

    I know BTw haven't a technical or commercial clue because I've been watching their failures at every opportunity since Pipex invented mass market prices for broadband (2002? Twas a long time ago). From the "MTU problem" which led to the collapse of the national access network in autumn 2002(?) (Cisco Express Forwarding didn't work right over BTw datacentre LANs which were still using 10/100 Ethernet kit that didn't do jumbo frames, what a surprise), through VPs that didn't correctly prioritise 512k vs 1Mb vs 2Mb, through VPs that were semi-permanently on red and amber for capacity. And then there's the utterly ridiculous pricing for BT Centrals, based on an average usage of (wait for it) 20kbit/s per customer!... are you bored with the list yet, 'cos I am, but there's more if you want.

    Competition doesn't fix any of those issues, competence in the technical department and in the regulatory oversight does.

    In a properly regulated total monopoly a sensible price is an agreed (and realistic) cost plus an agreed and realistic margin. Same as you get in the cartels that dominate most capitalist markets, except that in a properly regulated monopoly the discussions are legal, above board, and on the record, and involve the democratic process, whereas in the usual illegal cartels the opposite applies.

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  3. rick buck
    Flame

    We don't need no stinkin' ditches

    Why not wireless. It would send the signal to all involved, no matter how far away they are, or how cost effective the distance involved would be.

    Fire up the rocket, and put some satellites up to send us a signal to all corners of the earth.

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  4. Henry Wertz Gold badge

    Caps

    "... the main problem I can see with this is the caps that ISPs deem reasonable at the moment. With a modest ten-fold increase in download speeds (say 80-100mbps for FTTC) could we expect a ten-fold increase in the caps too? At 100mbps it wouldn't take long to burn through 50GB (which to me seem to be the 'fair-use' cap most 'unlimited' ISPs impose)."

    Who knows. I guess NTT in Japan (on it's 100mbit/second) service has a 900GB/month *upload* cap (actually, 30GB/day); downloads are not capped.

    Personally, I'd like some competition. Where I live (midwestern USA), the cable costs $56 a month (8mbit or so down? no caps as yet though!). The phone line running to my house is 18,000 feet long, and the local phone co is downright allergic to remote DSLAMs so no DSL, fiber, etc.; the other choices are an EVDO air card ($60/month for a 5GB cap) or satellite ($??? for, I think, a cap where you're throttled way down after a few 100 MB). Oh, and dialup's right out, a modem on my line gets about 12kbps, no 56k for sure. I *don't* need more speed, but a reduction in price would be great.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    i approve of it

    gigabit, that is...

    http://i37.tinypic.com/nf05s9.jpg

    (on a less retarded level, it is great to move data around, but for access to small files there is still more lag than when working on a local disk)

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