Digital minister Matt Hancock promises 'full fibre' eating plan for Blighty Digital minister Matt Hancock has promised there will be a forthcoming government strategy to ensure Blighty's "full fibre future" is realised in the next decade. Speaking at the Parliament and Internet Conference 2016 today, he told The Register: "There will be more in the coming weeks and months. But I can’t put more flesh …
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Yes but what do the figure in "UK's current part-fibre, part-copper infrastructure has brought superfast connectivity to the majority of the country, with 95 per cent of the country to have 24mbps next year" actually mean.
I have 72Mb fibre in my area but I can't actually buy it because the cabinet only supports a couple of dozen of the couple of hundred residences and it's at capacity. So when I asked about fibre I was told it was in the area but not available to me at any price.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Alternatively, when things aren't going well, just change the name.
FTTP is now 'full fibre'
Windscale is now Sellafield
Radiation is now 'Magic dust'
{Thanks to old Friends of the Earth T-shirt)
I musn't be too negative though - hopefully I'll join the 2% in a couple of months.
ain't all bad, £12 a month you can have unlimited 8MB/s on EE and tethering your andriod phone via usb or bluetooth/wifi, doom 2016 is still playable most of the day
if you live in crappy bath and in a crappy council block estate you can have 80MB/s on BT if your lame enough to pay them direct
ain't all bad, £12 a month you can have unlimited 8MB/s on EE
That ain't all that good either. For less than twice your £12 I have >40MB/s via FTTC from BT; OK it's not unlimited but the limit is far, far more than I ever need.
I also have a "Three" dongle for internet access when I am away from other forms of connectivity for the laptop and while I don't expect a PAYG dongle to be "price advantageous" the performance I get is, frankly, crap. That, I suspect, is at least partially down to the incoming signal rarely exceeding - 90 dBm, but my location is determined by factors that I cannot control.
Fast it definitely ain't. I might go as far as to say "if you want high speed internet don't rely on getting from the cellular network.
I've more chance of staying dry when pissing in the wind that being able to get 24mpbs internet via the BT cable that reaches my house, now or ever. I wonder if BT don't have to forfil this requirement if Virgin Media have cable in place?
As to a fibre connection to my premises, hahahahahaha.
Interesting that once a FTTC box is fully subscribed that's it, I wonder how limiting this makes the FTTC offering from BT? It'll rule out a large number of people I reckon.
to get 100% connectivity that will be a hell of a lot of road digging.
If the existing cables are on telegraph poles or in ducts, then there's not so much expensive digging required, which makes a big difference. You'll have to hope one of these two apply, because with all the madcap, unwarranted, and economically unjustified infrastructure schemes that the government have signed up to, there not much chance of finding enough people capable or pouring concrete or laying tarmac...
A partial list includes Hinkley Point C, Heathrow R3, HS2, Thames Tideway, HS3, CrossRail 2, Moorside, Wylfa B, Oldbury B, Bradwell B, Sizewell C, not to mention many tens of billions on water AMP6, Ofgem's c£40bn of RIIO programme's, billions on some notably unambitious road schemes, token flood defences etc, and that's before we consider the impact of government promises of new towns, and 200k+ new houses built each year. That little lot totals something around half a trillion quid, over and above the existing asset renewal needs.
Now, with vast budget and balance of payments deficits, rising private sector debt, yet investment plans formulated using the "kiddy in the sweetshop" model, you really have to wonder why the Labour party are so busy whining about "austerity".
TalkTalk's head Dido Harding has previously said the company would like to roll-out FTTP to 10 million homes across the United Kingdom by 2025.
I think this actually means "TalkTalk's head Dido Harding has previously said the company would like someone else to roll-out FTTP to 10 million homes across the United Kingdom by 2025."
I really, really would like to know how Matt Hancock's ambition is going to be brought to fruition. Neither BT nor anyone else* can be told to provide a mass roll - out of fibre in the hope that customers are going to buy the service. Like it or not BT (and OR if it is separated) is a plc with a board that answers to the shareholders, who by and large are the big pension funds, insurance companies and so on. They would be up in arms if they had any reason to suspect that their returns might be impaired by an orgasm of capital investment that had been enforced with no certain return on a sensible timescale.
I cannot see a full fibre system being sold to users at the same price as (say) the current FTTC rates; it would make no economic sense whatsoever; it might never actually generate any meaningful return. What will happen? Will FTTC services be ceased so that users have to take FTTP at a greatly increased monthly cost or do without?
It's fine for businesses to want FTTP (or whatever name the minister likes) because it is not them that actually pays for it; as with all their other bills the money comes from their customers. Domestic users don't have customers and a full fibre system that was rolled out to "all" but was only used by business users would simply not pay for itself.
But then this is politician meets technology; the results are rarely if ever pretty.
* "Anyone else" in this context means any of the existing service providers; if HMG wants to set up its own company - not owned by shareholders - then all well and good... apart from the fact that it would then be us all as taxpayers that were funding the losses.
It's just capitalism at its worst.
BT have no real competition, and inherited a truly national copper based network, they can make decent money without upgrading the infrastructure. Why should they do more than they do, it's just good business?
Of course, it sucks to be stuck with a monopoly supplier.
Some Eastern European countries have amazing national fibre infrastructures, but their phone systems were so bad they really had to start from scratch and thus leapfrogged nations like ours.
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