Vaizey: Legal right to internet access, sure. But I'm NOT gonna die on the 10Mbps hill

The comparison to Luxembourg seems daft. A city a bit smaller than leeds and a country about the size of the lake district is in no way comparable to the uk, especially considering their very different demographics.

If I could get an actual phone line it would be a good start. The USO for voice telephony used to involve everyone paying £200 to get a line in.

Nowadays, BT want nearly £30,000 to install one in the Cairngorms National Park. The so called USO only applies to the first £8,000 of the install cost.

I'll quite happily take a 10mbit data only line instead. But the "USO" will doubtless be so BT and its pals can cherry pick what and where "Universal Service" applies.

"Luxembourg is aiming for speeds of 1Gbps by 2020."

Not really a fair comparison, Luxembourg has just over half a million population and is 2,500ish km2

The United Kingdom has a population of around 64million people and 242,000ish km2

I have a client with a 10-11mbps vdsl connection (.5 up).

The throughput varies from 1mbps to 9.5. But as it's 10mbps (well, 10041 this morning, the sync on down varies from 10040 to 11731) I bet that'll be classed as over 10mbps anyway.

Another client was told they can't have help because they can have over 2mbps according to a postcode check. Phsyical line: 780/200, with a throughput of .3mbps.

10mbps in this case is a question of "by which measure?"

Upstream?

What would be nice is if the requirement were for symmetric 10 Mbit/s. At the moment, for pretty obvious commercial reasons, while downstream data rates are large, upstream data rates are so low that you can't upload large data sets in reasonable time. So if, for example, you want to upload a backup off-site to a friends house and vice versa, it becomes rather difficult. I know there are technical solutions to that (Full backup over several days, partials on a nightly basis), but some services just simply don't work - such as decent quality video between relatives. I know someone on ADSL2+ with 14 Mbit/s downstream and 440-odd kbit/s upstream (I know some specific reasons about that) - but it means that getting decent quality video from that end-point is not possible. Codecs are good (and continually improving), but they are not that good. That ratio (14 Mbit/s down, 440 Kbit/s up is worse than the old Prestel ratio 1200/75).

The negotiation between the DSLAM and your modem could be made dynamic. Use a small number of frequencies for a permanent upstream and permanent downstream connection for control signals/protocol, then use the rest of the frequencies in a demand-determined manner, so that they are used for downstream when downloading, upstream when uploading, and split in the proportion of the length of the interface output queues for both-way traffic. It's just a slight modification to an LAG/LACP type of approach.

David Cameron promised last year to give everybody the legal right to request a broadband connection capable of delivering a minimum speed of 10Mbps by 2020 ... so this is another one of his promises that are not worth the air used to speak them and just a lie, with the bar so low, even his useless government should be able to hit the target. Then again, based on past performance, they'll probably cripple the countries network infrastructure !

RE: Upstream

@Carl Thomas

Point taken, thank-you for the link to the reference (NICC ND 1405 V3.1.2 -- Guidelines on the Use of DSL Transmission Systems in the BT Access Network), and yes, crosstalk is an issue. I'll say one word - vectoring.

This is an interesting read:

http://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/2014/vectoring-crosstalk-crisis

and this:

https://evolving.net.uk/bonded-adsl-guide/crosstalk-and-vectoring/

and a Belgacom page (in English)

http://www.edpnet.be/en/support/installation-and-usage/internet/what-is-vectoring-technology.html

It would seem that vectoring effectively eliminates the crosstalk problem and would allow upstream capacities to be increased.

Even if dynamic allocation of frequencies to upstream and downstream use is not possible, I would still like to see greater upstream capacity available, even if this had to be fixed in advance.

I can also dream of CuPON, although the likelihood of its being implemented is vanishingly small.

CuPON: The Copper Alternative to PON 100 Gb/s DSL Networks

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263516512_04251082

What's the point in the Luxembourg comment?

So because a country small than greater London and surrounded by 1st world countries is able to offer it's citizens a 1GB/s service it some how follows that the UK is a problem? Really? How is this relevant? I guess when you've an axe to grind anything looks reasonable even it's plainly daft.