UK digital minister denies legal right to 10Mbps is 'damp squib' UK digital minister Ed Vaizey has denied government plans for a universal service obligation of 10Mps are a "damp squib" but admitted the government will keep the target "under review". Plans to give everyone in Blighty the legal right to 10Mbps were formalised in the unveiling of the Digital Economy Bill yesterday. They were …
Never said pro-privacy though...
Also encryption, supporting using https sites as opposed to http can be said to be 'pro-encryption'.
Ultimately these words mean nothing. Colour me cynical* but recorded deeds are really required of any polictician's promises.
*a kind of purply black, tinged with blue.
That's what I was thinking. I can't see it being viable to have 10Mb/s universal service obligation to the arse end of nowhere without it costing an arm, a leg and maybe a kidney or two. I bet there's a whole raft of get out clauses which are so badly defined that providers will be able to drag their feet even in cities and new build areas.
I'm stuck on 6Mbps ADSL in central Edinburgh; I could switch to Virgin and get more speed, but at the expense of having to change all the bundled services that I get from BT (the only option when I was an early adopter for ADSL in 2001), and disrupting my phone, tv etc, as well as adding to the cost.
What I'd like would be an option of FTTC or FTTP that wasn't as disruptive, and moved us away from bundled services, so I could pay a little for the bundled services (email, backup hosting) and separately for access, making competition between internet providers a reality.
So you're not really stuck then, it's a choice?
Competition has delivered a situation where you could choose to have better broadband but you prefer the cheaper, less good broadband. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem for the telcos. If Virgin or BT made FTTP available in your street, that would cost more than cheapy ADSL over existing copper. If enough people decide they want cheaper instead of better the investment by the telco has been pointless - worse than pointless, repeated on a national scale it would cause bankruptcy.
For a while, I was connected to Ed Vaisey on LinkedIn. (Not quite sure how that happened.) I did send him some links to various things happening at the time to highlight the need to upgrade infrastructure if we wanted UK business to be competitive. Not sure that it had any impact though.
"We will keep under review, we do not want to leave people on 10Mbps in 10 years' time when they might need 100Mbps," he said.
Well, there are those of us that would dearly love to get 10 Mbps at the moment, but there's smeg all chance of that happening any time soon, or even probably in the next 10 years. (For reference; the all powerful BT regularly promote their high speed service to me, but can actually only deliver a rather miserable 1.3 Mbps.)
Getting 0.5Mbps is a transformative experience, as anyone who got broadband in the early 2000s will remember. Moving up to 2Mbps is very nice: you can watch Youtube in better quality, pages load faster, emails download sooner; but it's not a revolution in the way that the first step was.
Stepping up to 10Mbps just isn't that important. Yes you can watch Netflix in HD, but in terms of getting things done it doesn't change much. You can't buy stuff from Amazon any faster; you can't fill in your online tax return any faster. The main complaints come from rural businesses, in particular farmers. They complain that e.g. DEFRA's 200-page image-heavy PDF on how to claim farming subsidies takes too long to download. I can think of a solution that doesn't cost billions.
Getting 99.9% of farmers up to 2Mbps would be money better spent than getting 50% up to 10Mbps or higher.
"Getting 99.9% of farmers up to 2Mbps would be money better spent than getting 50% up to 10Mbps or higher."
Surely the cheaper solution would be to reduce the size of the PDF so it's quicker for Farmer Giles to download? Or someone goes to one of their (regular) farmer meet ups with a laptop where I person downloads it and then distributes it to the people who need it?
"Surely the cheaper solution would be to reduce the size of the PDF so it's quicker for Farmer Giles to download?"
Odds are that the images in the PDF were imported as-is at original resolution and the PDF has commands to display it at the smaller, cropped size. It seems a lot of people don't know that cropping, re-scaling and re-sizing the image for the target document before you import it is a useful skill to have.
Scanned receipts to our expenses claims system normally contain multi-MB scans in full colour. One or two send in sub-200KB files in grayscale at 150dpi which are more than adequate.
10Mbps is 2Mbps for each person in a 5-person household.
Everyone focuses on their personal use, when nowadays all the kid's have phones, consoles, tablets, the wife has her own, etc. a guest comes over and wants to jump on the wifi, and they ALL want that 2Mbps YouTube streaming to work at the same time.
The fact that bundled routers are generally crappy at fair-share of bandwidth is a bigger problem. Honestly, buy a router(*) that does proper QoS and bandwidth slicing - it's amazing the difference it makes to even the crappiest broadband line.
But people forget that just because you can do a YouTube stream, everyone else in the house is yelling "My remote desktop cut out", "My webpage is taking forever", "I can't watch the football", etc. at the same time.
*I use a DrayTek Vigor model plugged into a Virgin SuperHub in modem mode. Honestly, you have no idea how much nicer it makes the experience for everyone. QoS and sharing on the wireless channels, pushing capable clients to the 5GHz channels, QoS and sharing on everything in and out of the Internet. My girlfriend can stream what she likes while the ChromeCast is playing movies and my ping in CS doesn't go above 15.
I didn't even have to configure much. I just set the gaming ports and VoIP to high priority, HTTP / HTTPS to low priority, and everything just flows even with dozens of party guests on the Wifi playing Jackbox Party Pack or similar.
It's worse for virgin business clients. There's no modem mode in the firmware that's accessable by the end users, and they have withdrawn the multiple IP option that allowed you to use your own router behind the business superhub.
So you're stuck with that they provide, or you double nat. :(
I use my own router behind the SuperHub2 configured for modem only mode, and do plenty of NAT and Port Forwards.
It's kind of embarrassing to read that 10Mb/s will be seen as some kind of achievement, I guess that's the spoilt effect of using 150Mb/s on Virgin cable. But other countries are rolling our Gb/s+.
Two children each watching a different film on NowTV boxes, while I have a remote desktop session over a VPN to the office at the same time as a Skype for Business meeting and concurrently downloading a DVD sized .iso file in a few minutes is what those of us not dependent on BT infrastructure have come to expect.
BT could do it, but they won't because they can get away with not doing it and keeping the infrastructure investment costs off their short term figures.
"BT could do it, but they won't because they can get away with not doing it and keeping the infrastructure investment costs off their short term figures."
BT seem quite keen on making money, so if they're not doing it it's probably because they wouldn't make any money. It seems unlikely that a FTSE100 company gets to remain a FTSE100 company if it suddenly decides that making money is just too much effort.
There is much talk about other countries rolling out fibre and Gbit/s, but if you look at the actual data (Akami State of the Internet 2015 Q4), even Japan and the much lauded South Korea aren't really that far ahead of the UK in average internet download speeds, considering the beating up of BT and Virgin over lack of real FTTP, and relying on copper from street cabs to home.
https://www.akamai.com/uk/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/
South Korea 29.7 Mbit/s
Sweden 19.1Mbit/s average
Japen 17.4 Mbit/s
Uk 13.9Mbit/s avaerage
"BT could do it, but they won't because they can get away with not doing it and keeping the infrastructure investment costs off their short term figures."
BT wanted to do FTTP just after priovatisation, but Thatch would not let them. She preferred to favour Cable companies, and bhlocked this.
Cable companies have largely come and gone and sunk billions into disruptive digging up of the street in a limited number of area's, and flushing these billions of ££ down the toilet. See NTL/Telewest accumulation of smaller comanies like Telecential and others, combining in a bankrupcy and emerging debt free as Virgin Media... eventually sold on to Liberty Global.
Delivering FTTP infrastructure, or something better than phone copper to homes fundamentally costs a ton of money, so the ROI is pretty low unless you whack Line Rental up to say £50/month to cover the costs of it. Do you see Sky, Talk talk, Vodafone doing any infrastructure work??/ Not really, they are jusy whoring off the back of Openreach.
That being said, it's a better spend fot the UK than the £20-100bn on HS2/3/4.
Getting 99.9% of all residents (not all are farmers who can benefit from DEFRA assistance) up to >=2Mbps should have been the target all along.
I live in Northumberland and the frustration in the rural communities regarding broadband funding has been its concentration on "High Speed" broadband. All this has meant that those who had ADSL speeds of >2Mbps got access to FTTC but those who didn't have access to broadband still did not get access to broadband.
Um... has anyone mentioned the increasing rate of data production to you? It's not just a mattr of more people connecting to the net; we have more devices per person connecting across the out-pipe and more data per person being generated, stored, transmitted and used.
In 2000, when I first got 0.5mbps, I had one device connected to the net, which I mostly used to look at static web pages (porn was mostly just images back then). By 2010, I had 5, which were being used for video, active pages and online games. In my house now, I have something like 12, which are doing everything from OTT TV to streaming movie data to my mobile in-the-field (and, in fact, carrying my phone calls too). By 2020, I expect to have about 30+, which will be doing things like regulating my heating system by actively drawing real-time weather data from the Met office, planning out my calorific intake from my fridge in a cloud DC in Norway, streaming 4K video at a gig for every 5 seconds.... and, of course, relaying literally every action I take on my PC to Microsoft/apple/google/amazon.
So yeah, you ARE increasing in terms of 'getting things done' - I'm now doing dozens of things simultaneously IN ADDITION to watching Netflix in HD. Many of those things, most people are not aware that they are 'doing', because their PC or phone is doing it for them. But your basic data appetite has probably increased a hundredfold since 2000, even if you personally think it's just a needless quality-of-life improvement.
But your basic data appetite has probably increased a hundredfold since 2000, even if you personally think it's just a needless quality-of-life improvement.
Just wait until your kettle starts talking to all its friends, along with every other appliance you have in the house.
You ain't seen nothin' yet...
so , er , whats your ideal number of pixels for a TV picture?
To me 8k tv is just a waste of hdd space , bandwidth , tv electronics, etc ,
pointless is what im saying.
Theres gotta be a limit to how small the human eye can detect , and im willing to bet that if your 8k tv is smaller than your house , then its probly over that limit
10Mbps is a joke. 50Mbps is better, but if you want technology to develop it should be aiming for 100Mbps now, and 1Gbps by 2020.
Exactly what does "if you want technology to develop" actually mean? And will it result in my having to pay more for a faster broadband connection than I need?
"Not a binary debate, that you are either pro security or pro encryption."
I had to read that several times to see the conflict. I read "pro security" and thought pro information security and therefore pro privacy, which *is* pro encryption. But he meant "pro government controlling everything". Silly me. I obviously need more education about how to live every moment in fear of terrorists and paedophiles.
You need an exponential rise in the number of FTTC cabinets in a 2km2 area to achieve an average 100Mbps speed per customer, its just not feasible using FTTC. Thats why its known as a Cul-de-Sac Technology, to upgrade it, you need to reverse out (of the Cul-de-Sac) and mostly start again, to achieve 1Gbps average speeds using real fibre.
Per 2km2, you need to add a minimum of 8 cabinets to reduce the maximum line length to 500m (as the crow flies), from a maximum line length of 1km (as the crow flies) per 2Km2 area.
To achieve G.Fast at 330Mbps you probably need a maximum line length of 250m by cable.
If you plan it so you meet in the middle, you have your 250m distance (as the crow flies), but cable routes are not that structured or straightforward, and often quoted as twice the length. To half this distance still further to 125m, you then need another 16 FTTC cabinets per 2km2.
That makes a total of 25 FTTC cabinets per 2km2, each cabinet having a maximum line length (as the crow flies) of 125m, which by cable would give you a more realistic 250m distance to meet the G.Fast quoted speeds of 330Mbps.
The Cabinets on the edges of the theoretical 2km2 area would in theory, feed the adjacent areas, so there is some overlap, but you still need 25 Cabinets (connected to Power too) per 2km2. for near Ultrafast speeds en masse for everyone, by that I mean not 'upto' but actually 330Mbps for everyone. 1Gbps speeds - well you just need to lay real Fibre, and chuck out everything you have so far.
It would be better to show it as a diagram, I have to say. Basically the whole wonderful Ultrafast 330Mbps G.Fast Technology parade by BT and Ofcom is utter tosh (being polite), its never going to happen, well not in the next decade. It will need some serious miniaturisation/clever self powering to achieve it.
The point being, if they knew it was going to be this complicated to achieve faster speeds why were the likes of ofcom hoodwinked into going down this route, other than technical incompetence, dare I say - bribery/greasy palms.
Then imagine the maintenance costs regards maintaining 25 FTTC cabinets (more likely still theoretical FTTdP / FTTrN Equipment) per 2km2, keeping firmware between customers equipment and the DSLAM equipment upto date, with potential for rogue firmware routers to cause interference/cross talk, the practicalities of maintaining this can of worms is just crazy and expensive. Fault finding will become a nightmare.
And that's why Rurally its never going to happen. Notspots will remain Notspots if we carry on with FTTC. Yes, you can target certain areas with FTTC, but en masse Ultrafast is never going to happen.
", its never going to happen, well not in the next decade. It will need some serious miniaturisation/clever self powering to achieve it."
Both are solved. The kit is available to buy from Alcatel Lucent and others right now.
The kit is miniaturised and fits at the top of a pole or in a small, existing pavement box. It's powered by the copper that becomes redundant when the fibre to the pole is installed.
It doesn't need 'backing out of FTTC', it's a logical extension of FTTC with the new fibre deployed from the FTTC cabinet to the pole.
I don't know where you get your facts, but there not from anyone who works in an equipment manufacturer, research labs or telco.
->Both are solved. The kit is available to buy from Alcatel Lucent.
If it was solved and available to buy, why are BT dragging their feet, regarding their previous commitment to FTTP rollout as part of the Welsh Superfast Cymru Broadband Programme?
Is that kit directly compatible with Huawei FTTC kit? (Most of BT's FTTC network)
Assuming a firmware update will solve that (yes, and its something else that needs to be maintained, along with both the Copper power feeds and the Pole fed Fibre).
--------------------------------
OK, so explain what (do) you need to get blanket coverage of 330Mbps (not 'upto' speeds, blanket coverage at 330Mbps using FTTC - not cherry picking), how many FTTC/FTTdp/FTTrN(s) are involved to do that per 2km2?.
Go on, I'm all ears. Let's get this out in the open.
I think its about right, you need around 25 FTTC or newer equivalent FTTrN/FTTdP Cabs/Pole Mounts per 2Km2 (with some overlap) to get true G.Fast speeds of 330Mbps, to get blanket coverage (not 'upto' speeds) with a maximum distance of 125m (crow flies), 250m by cable, in real world conditions.
You (Mr BT representive) sell this as a solution to rural broadband, but its just not going to happen and its a crap foundation to building a robust future network for Britain.
Subscribers will never get blanket 330Mbps coverage (it maxes out 330Mbps at 250m distance), because apathy will set in, already has to a point with FTTC at 'upto' 80Mbps.
Why has Apathy set in? because BT/ofcom have made it almost impossible for a consumer/subscriber to work out the reason for a slow connections, often signing up to 80/20 FTTC finding they get 50Mbps at best, 5Mbps at peak times, with contention, traffic shaping, ping latency and if not traffic shaping - traffic shaping by another name - network management kicking in to maintain the network.
The complexity 'sweating' of FTTC is all designed to gouge the Customer/Subscriber.
There is no logical extension of FTTC G.fast technology after been sweated/maxed to 330Mbps. To jump to 1Gbps speeds and above, without bonding copper lines (which has the same expense of connecting true fibre to the subscriber) - You hit a wall in terms of speed with G.fast, hence why its a Cul-de-Sac Technology.
G.Fast is a dead end technology from the start, if BT want to promote it - fine, but it sounds more and more like BT are looking again at future subsidies to roll out G.Fast.
We need a network that isn't beholden to BT and paying subsidies to them, each time they perform an incremental upgrade, which is what we have now (and going forward) which could have been avoided from the start by proper investment/proper legislative framework, which didn't involve subsidising BT's legacy copper dead carcass of a network.
Once over a barrel, always over a barrel.
Unless taxpayers want to subsidise digging the cabinet to the home/business, it won;t change.
NTL/Telewest and a host of smaller cable comapnies burned £bn's of shareholders money doing this ultimately becoming Liberty Globals Virgin Media Uk subsiduary....
..with not actually getting very much geographical spread outside of big cities/towns... and they were short-sighted enough to only deliver Co-ax Cab to premesis only a few years back. How stuopid were they.
Virguin/Sky/Talk-Talk/3G/4G in the sticks, even Oxfordshire sticks, no chance.
I wish they would concentrate more on the distinction between privacy and anonymity.
There are a load of services I consume that are private and should remain confidential between myself and others e.g. banking, health, email
But as a general rule there are a greater bunch of services I consume where I prefer to remain anonymous, for no other reason than if retailer 'X', or website 'Y' don't know who I am, they can't pester me with follow up 'marketing'..
Lets Cap all Senior BT Management, Ofcom numpties, Politicians to a random and patchy 'upto' 10Mbps for a year, better still, make that 2Mbps - see how they cope. Nothing like forcing them to eat their own dog food.
Interesting how Ed Vaizey, toes the BT line, mentions top speeds of 100Mbps (which is within BT's remit for FTTC (just), not FTTP speeds of 1Gbps and up). In other words read that, as your stuck with FTTC for at least the next generation.
BT are going to sweat their copper to buggery, before they give in to laying real Fibre to the Premises, with all that entails. Unreliable, expensive to maintain - connections, upto speeds, contention issues, weather dependent services. FTTC is a legacy Cul-de-Sac technology Britain is now stuck with, while other Countries just lay proper fibre. What a Mess.
FTTC needs an massive exponential increase in FTTC Cabinets, to achieve a mass roll out to achieve average speeds of 100Mbps, its expensive (so expensive it will never be done especially rurally), each FTTC Cab needs a dedicated connection to the Mains/Grid, with the rental that entails.
We had a choice, and we definitely made the wrong one, regards backing BT/FTTC-copper based technologies, as taxpayers.
Your post is just a series of self-invented strawmen.
No-one has suggested that FTTC is a solution for 100% of the country or that it's suitable for the last 5%.
The government money to contribute to commercially non-viable areas came with, I presume, a mandate to improve broadband to as many people as possible for as little money as possible. FTTC was the way to achieve that because if FTTP was chosen at £2k a property (in reality more as these are the hard to reach properties) far fewer people would have benefited. Exactly how much government money do you want to spend subsidising high speed broadband that most people don't actually want to buy? Given the choice between cheap and slow or more expensive and faster, the great majority of households choose cheap.
You disapprove of how UK broadband has been delivered by BT and Virgin and the mobile companies, but you have no alternative that offers better value.
The BT solution is no better, and isn't value for money in the longer term, some would say its dishonest/obfuscates in what it portrays as technically achievable with FTTC/G.Fast.
BT offers little hope to the notspots in the UK.
To cherry pick, to obfuscate actual achievable speeds (with the direct blessing of Regulator Ofcom to accept this obfuscation as been an inherent characteristic of FTTC 'upto' speeds), to play down the technical complexity / the exponential increase in roll-out of Cabs/Pole equipment required to achieve blanket G.Fast 330Mbps coverage using current FTTC technologies. To fail to mention the increased maintenance costs / increased line rentals required from maintaining the legacy dead carcass copper network.
It also avoids mentioning the complexity of what happens when the G.Fast bottleneck/brick wall is hit - the technical limits of FTTC/G.fast 330Mbps is reached and if and how the demands for 1Gbps+ services will be implemented.
That transition won't be cheap. Most believe the topology of the network design won't be suitable at that point, for the transition to true optical fibre - FTTP.
And that's the point, for lines longer than 250m, its already obvious that Legacy Copper / G.Fast doesn't fit the bill in terms of future Ultrafast 1Gbps+ services, going forward, so why not start to get it right now for those longer rural lines, because we know today, FTTP is inevitable for these lines, its going to be a slow process, but its a start.
Let's stop the lies and deceit (with Ofcoms backing) that somehow G.Fast is going to magically solve the problem of long lines and slow internet. It won't.
...the increased maintenance costs / increased line rentals required from maintaining the legacy dead carcass copper network.
I know this thread has probably run its course but I still feel that the above warrants a response, because it appears in numerous BB related subjects.
I suspect that the "copper is dead" brigade never consider the difficulties that would arise from converting to "all fibre" networks. It would mean that even those who did not want a BB serivce (and they do exist) would have to have additional equipment on their premises, and that equipment would have to paid for; it won't just fall from the skies like manna from heaven. Unless battery backed it would fail if the power failed, and if battery backed the batteries would require replacing from time to time; rechargeables do not last indefinitely. It would also require far more installation than a simple Master LJU, with or without internal band - splitting filters incorporated.
While FTTP even for POTS might be practicable solution for large scale new builds (subject to the caveats above) the idea of the wholesale replacement of the existing copper network just so that the speed freaks can have more bandwidth than perhaps even a majority want or need is beyond bizarre; the costs would be eyewatering and those costs could only be met by charging customers even more than they are now, and from my perspective the current costs are quite enough, thank you all the same.
I hate cliches with a passion (joke!) but the "let's get rid of copper" enthusiasts are in desperate need of a reality check.
The biggest reality check you need is how quick 330Mbps services will be the 'norm' / expected service level by subscribers and how little leeway BT will have with FTTC over copper going foward and the flak they get will be a lot worse than today, when People/Companies can't compete against Countries with a real Fibre Networks.
Once you have a UltraFast 1Gbps+ connection and have to go back, boy, do the complaints start.
'The let's get rid of Copper' enthusiasts have fought backward looking People like you for years and years.
I heard the same with ADSL roll-out, from Regional Development Agencies - 10 years ago. Remember vividly been told 'There is no chance a small little market town will ever get ADSL, its just not needed, no one is interested'.
This is by people that are supposed to be forward looking business types FFS.
Look at it now, everything delivered online, by Amazon and others. Order 10pm, get at your door 9am next day. Everyone in my road using either ADSL2+/VDSL2+ 80/20 Broadband (even the technically illiterate ones), wondering how they ever coped without it.
BT have 'kept their hands in the pockets' resisting change, every single time from:
28Kbps Dial up PAYG,
to 56Kbps Dial up PAYG,
to 56Kbps (Unlimited),
to 64Kbps ISDN,
to Bonded 128Kbps Home Highway,
to 512Kbps ADSL,
to 2048Kbps ADSL,
(avoided 'expensive' Syncronous SDSL Networks, saying not required for consumer use)
to 8192Kbps ADSL,
to 24Mbps ADSL2+,
to 40Mbps VDSL (BTInfinity),
to 80Mbps VDSL2+ (BTInfinity2).
And so on, always saying the next higher speeds aren't needed, taxpayers need to fund this, if we are to move forward.
Adding in traffic shaping / network management as these services launched, its the same approach everytime, holding back the tide of change, heavily advertising the older technologies like Home Highway, at the time 512Kbps ADSL was launching. BT have to be dragged kicking and screaming everytime to the next logical step, always looking for handouts, saying its just not competitive to invest (yet reaps most of the 1Bn+ profits once the taxpayer stumps up the cash)
As said, Copper is not a solution to lines of more than 250m in length, in terms of Ultrafast 1Gbps+ Services, so why are we spending vast amounts on a dead end copper based technology, that can't make the leap to faster network speeds without been ripped out, to start the process again (and all the upheaval that entails), it won't be seemless.
We were told FTTP 6 years ago was coming by BT to an exchange for areas on the outskirts, everytime the ball has been kicked back into the grass, in the hope the FTTrN / FTTdP is the 'golden solution' to this problem, when its still on the drawing board.
BT covering the bases, hovering over the dead carcass of their copper network, in case anyone decided to think about laying actual FTTP, in the same way B4RN has been successful.
Why is BT replacing end of life Copper with Copper.
Why is BT been sneaky, replacing Copper lines with 0.9mm copper to 'just meet contract specs' , for longer lines, rather than do the right thing as part of the Superfast Broadband Programmes and install Proper Fibre, which was the clearly the point of the programme. (That's just pure public deception)
Why isn't their a programme, where streets that are due to have their Poles/Circuits replaced, are upgraded to true Fibre. Why is the taxpayer having to subsidise this twice?
There is only one person deluded (stuck in the past) round here and it ain't me.
Thank you for your slightly abusive post; for all the venom I note that you have failed to answer the economic points that I raised, never mind the technical ones.
What evidence have you that there will be enough people willing to pay for the admittedly much better service that you are advocating? I hope you aren't trying to pretend that it will somehow happen without additional costs falling on the paying customers.
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