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back to article What's in Hammond's box? Autumn fallout for Britain's tech SMBs

The Government in its Autumn statement promised to invest £1bn on "digital infrastructure", an extra £2bn annually on UK R&D, and at least £400m on new venture capital funds through the British Business Bank, which it hopes will unlock a further £1bn in private finance for growing firms. The National Productivity Investment …

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let's stop the rot now.

    All this 'Direction' from the Government and BT still keeps its techincally biased blinkered approach that obfuscated, bamboozled, 'upto' Pointless Copper Carcass G.fast is the way forward. As a metaphor, Talk about BT drunks blocking the doorway.

    For the money BT supposedly 'save' (a completely skewered line by BT) on installing G.fast, you spend on maintenance afterwards, with a very much inferior product to boot, to true Fibre.

    Let's stop the rot now, make the switch, going forward as soon as possible. G.fast is just a money making scam to gouge pricing, enable tiered pricing, to make believe Broadband is somehow a 'limited resource' for the final 300m to the property. Consumers are fed up to the teeth with 'UPTO'.

    BT, name a date, when you will install your last new install of Copper. As taxpayers, most believe we've paid you to make this push, away from Copper, in funding Superfast 'Fibre' Broaband rollout.

    (Q replies from retirees that want the battery backed Copper to phone Emergency Services, my Broadband is fast/expensive enough. There is a new generation out there saying different. Sigh)

    1 2 Reply
    1. Peter2 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Let's stop the rot now.

      I'm not a retiree, but an IT professional who has had a quote for an FTTP installation.

      The preference for FTTC over FTTP has much to do with the financial reality of the costs of running fibre directly to a building that doesn't already have it. The costs are eye wateringly painful even for a business, and having tailed the engineer doing the survey around and having a chat, I'm not convinced that the quote was massively padded considering the work that had to be done. It's hardly a trivial or cheap job for Openreach.

      Yes, In an ideal world everybody would magically have FTTP tomorrow without digging up every single road in the country or that costing anything to do, and that FTTP would cost the same as VDSL.

      In the real world, if it costs at least several thousand to do a FTTP deployment that's near the cabinet and the ROI on putting the fiber in is >10 years then the speed of installations is going to tend to make a glacier look fast moving. Want it to happen faster? Persuade everybody on your street to pay an extra ~£50 per month for the next ~5 years for their internet connection, and I'm sure the rollout would speed up to at least glacial speeds.

      But when there is a combination of people not wanting to pay for the extra speed, and a fair percentage of the country is still at speeds which could have been achieved 20 years ago with an ISDN line (and would be quite happy to get FTTC speeds...) then politicians are going to prioritise getting everybody VDSL speeds over a rapid FTTP rollout that on a national scale would have a yearly price tag similar to either our education budget, or the interest payments on the national debt to be done in any reasonable time period.

      TLDR? It's an economic issue, not a technical one.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Commswonk
        Reply Icon

        Re: Let's stop the rot now.

        The preference for FTTC over FTTP has much to do with the financial reality of the costs of running fibre directly to a building that doesn't already have it. The costs are eye wateringly painful even for a business...

        ...Persuade everybody on your street to pay an extra ~£50 per month for the next ~5 years for their internet connection, and I'm sure the rollout would speed up to at least glacial speeds.

        But when there is a combination of people not wanting to pay for the extra speed...

        You do realise that comments like that on this forum are tantamount to heresy, don't you? The fact that what you say is intuitively correct as well is neither here nor there; FTTP is the True Religion.

        I would very much like to see the figures for the upgrade of FTTC from ADSL when the choice was / is offered; my understanding is that it is a lot less than might be expected, with many residential customers making the decision that the additional cost is more than they either need or are willing to pay.

        I also wonder how many businesses opt for "ordinary" broadband and how many opt for the rather (much?) more expensive "business" version, where the choice exists.

        Economics aside, I suspect that quite a lot of people (including all politicians) simply fail to realise that a major upgrade (such as FTTP) is a lot more complicated, costly, and time consuming than simply scribbling an order on a bit of paper, after which it simply "happens".

        0 0 Reply
        1. Peter2 Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Let's stop the rot now.

          You do realise that comments like that on this forum are tantamount to heresy, don't you? The fact that what you say is intuitively correct as well is neither here nor there; FTTP is the True Religion.

          Well, that depends on which group of people are involved.

          You've got the IT Professionals, the vast majority of whom will agree with the simple economic reality, a fair few of which "know" this already because they've already done FTTP, had (or know of) management exclaiming words to the effect of "HOW F******* MUCH?!?!" when they've presented a bill, regardless if they eventually paid it or not. These people are going to nod silently before moving on.

          You've got the enthusiasts who may not have considered it this way before who might find an alternate (sane) view interesting as it lets them change their worldview to fit the facts.

          And you've got the unthinking zealots who aren't interested in listening or learning and want to adapt the facts to fit their worldview, rather than their worldview to fit the facts. These people can't rationally refute the facts so they'll have a hissy fit or temper tantrum like a five year old. There aren't many of these people, it just seems that way because of how loudly they scream.

          1 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Blowhard

    Maybe investing in fibre rather than rail is a way of boosting the economy?

    Cancelling HS2 and using the money to develop fibre infrastructure would be a way of stimulating growth in technology companies throughout the UK; this could even be used to finance additional undersea connections across the English Channel, Irish sea and Atlantic Ocean as part of a public owned infrastructure company; maybe even look at accelerating FTTP by setting up a company to compete with BT for last-mile connectivity? Fifty-five billion pounds buys a lot of things, and the twenty-first century economy will be more influenced by faster digital communications than slightly faster rail journeys and increased rail capacity.

    4 2 Reply
    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Meh

      Good ideas apart from the publicly owned bit. Governments have a proven track record of cocking those up big style.

      2 1 Reply
      1. Triggerfish
        Reply Icon

        Or privatising them for their mates.

        3 0 Reply
    2. Commswonk
      Reply Icon

      maybe even look at accelerating FTTP by setting up a company to compete with BT for last-mile connectivity

      Compete to do what exactly? OK; a "competitor" installs widespread FTTP. Who provides the "electronics"? The same company? Who provides long term maintenance? The same company? It might be competitive to start with, but it finishes up being a single supplier. It would be like deciding to buy from a particular car manufacturer and then finding that you were stuck with them until the day you die.

      Not a solution IHMO.

      0 0 Reply
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Maybe investing in fibre rather than rail is a way of boosting the economy?

      Certainly almost any use is better than spending half of the next decade's total government transport investment on a form of transport that provides c5% of UK passenger miles; And then geographically focusing that vast malinvestment on a link between two of the closest and best served cities we have; And that already have one of the fastest and most frequent high speed train services on the network; And where the "solution" still results in shittily located terminal stations unsuitable for onward travel or even for the existing network.

      Fifty-five billion pounds buys a lot of things

      Not when government are buying.

      0 0 Reply
  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Let's see how much of that money actually goes to SMB's

    My guess, not much.

    3 0 Reply
  5. MJI Silver badge

    I was hoping it may have been about

    Richard

    With his annoying car.

    2 0 Reply
  6. HmmmYes

    Improve public transport - less HSL, more capacity and Oyster card across the Northern rectangle of Hull, Liverpool, Carlisle, Newcastle.

    Less benefit and DLA; stop hiding unemployment. Make them work or at least stop paying them not to work.

    Invest in a UK Wide GIS setup - covers fibre, leccy, water, planning etc.

    Put all civil servants on a 2 year contract.

    0 0 Reply

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