Boris Johnson’s faster broadband promise is being broken

A report in The Guardian about a report by the Public Accounts Committee.

I'll post about what bears do in the woods later.

Just in case The Guardian is too leftie for you, I give you the Daily Mail report.

There is also an article in the Telegraph. It mentions that MPs think that there are about 150,000 homes where it is not financially viable for private companies to connect them.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

There is also an article in the Telegraph. It mentions that MPs think that there are about 150,000 homes where it is not financially viable for private companies to connect them.

As I understand it, it's actually 15-20% of the UK (i.e. about 5 or 6 million properties) where it's considered not financially viable for private companies to connect them without government subsidy. That's where DCMS is supposed to be focussed.

Of those, there are about 150,000 homes where apparently it's not financially viable to connect them *at all*.

It's unclear if those 150,000 homes already have copper connections. If they do, it was achievable to connect them in the past, so why not now? I expect it could be done for a fraction of the cost of HS2.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

It's unclear if those 150,000 homes already have copper connections. If they do, it was achievable to connect them in the past, so why not now?

I guess because most of them will have been connected by the Post Office in ye olden days when it was owned by the people and worked for the people rather than shareholders.

So what is the answer? maybe a UK wide broadband tax to pay for the costs of 100% coverage of full fibre broadband even to the most rural properties/businesses and to pay for the BBC going forward.

In reply to a post by dect:

So what is the answer? maybe a UK wide broadband tax to pay for the costs of 100% coverage of full fibre broadband even to the most rural properties/businesses and to pay for the BBC going forward.

If that happens everyone will go wireless, and major 4G and 5G capacity issues will arise. It's already a struggle where I live to get decent signal, and when there's signal speeds are slow as they use low band 4G

4G and 5G would almost certainly be considered broadband in this context and taxed just the same as fixed line.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

If that happens everyone will go wireless

Not convinced people would.

I would not consider it broadband if its a mobile phone plan, a mobile phone is not a router if you get my gist.