Norfolk Broadband
How appropriate!
BT has been chosen by Norfolk County Council as the preferred bidder for a £39.3m contract to run fibre-optic broadband out to the sticks. However, the agreement between the national telco and Norfolk won't be sealed until later this year, and is subject to Europe's approval: the European Commission stalled the deal to …
You're issue is BT's monopoly and your answer is to disallow network competition? Are you mad? You honestly think a state monopoly is a good idea?
The market gives people what they want (because that's what people pay for and makes them money).
The state gives people what it thinks they should have (Go drive a Volga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Volga_31105.jpg ).
I assume you don't believe in a free internet then?
@HMB
The market tends to give the people what it can make them buy.
Sometimes central planning is the better idea since it takes into account those who do not have a direct influence (the disadvantaged) on whose behalf the state spends money.
And sometimes the state makes provision for the benefit of the whole including industry.
(one example I can think of is the Brabazon Committee, which got things about 75% right)
we don't need anything very high tech, better cabling will deal with most of the problems.
We've just had a new phone line in at work and had that broadbanderised and we're getting six-eight times the speed of our old line (the new one gets all the way up to 4Mbps!).
You can actually hear the difference in the lines even on voice calls.
Really old copper cable would have been patched up a lot over the years so could have a load of ropey joints all along it's length. That said, with the speed difference you're talking about, it probably wasn't copper. There's still a lot of aluminium cable in the network and it's really crap for data. They always replace old ali with copper these days which leads to big speed increases for customers on the end of it.