In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Because the internet for the public did not exist - some people forget how recent the creation of a web browser and integration of TCP/IP into consumer OS's is

I can remember when networking of any kind was unusual. I installed drivers for a 10-base T network we were setting up at the office and being shocked that the drivers only left 300kB of memory for programs. That was in the days of DOS before Windows.

God yeah, the days of juggling with autoexec.bat and config.sys to get the most out your memory

Full Press Release here

The strength of Cisco is on the hardware side and that of Fujitso on the Network side, Both companies will be working closly together to achieve the optimum network at lowest cost.

http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/news/pr/fs_20110413.html

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-11 15:46:15)

I think we've read that. It doesn't add anything extra here...

The thing I wonder is this... We all know that Fujitsu's positioning of this PR is to try to get to the goverment's £530M/£830M funding.

But if they can make the "last 20%" work (financially) with the funding, then they can surely get the "first 80%" to work without it. Where's the announcement for going national? That would surely generate miles more PR, and probably be more profitable too. Where's the ambition?

Anyway, I'm off for a week to explore England's first nationally rolled-out network, started in 1776. People moved whole factories to be part of that network - the canals.

Sure I'm not doubting that, it just (still) sounds like a Cisco hardware supply tho

Ah, but they were also the days when DOS PC's could be "rhost"ed to give you access to anything - when they just blanket-copied TCP/IP from Unix without understanding a proper security structure. Very useful on occasion...

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

THe Consortium has no option but to push the rural angle as that is what the governement is pushing so they need to target rural to leaverage the government money. There is of cause the slight issue as to what they mean by rural.
Targeting the really rural areas is not realy sensiblee as it takes a great deal of time and money to benefit a very small number of people.

I think the consortiums primary focus will be infilling and building out from their existing coverage area as you benefit the most people as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost

and why is the government pushing rural?

Because it considers as did previous government that there is money to be saved once the vast majority have a connection capable of submitting tax/council tax/other interactions with government/local authorities online

Hence the 2Meg USC which is enough for form filling, and nicely allows iPlayer at a basic level to make people feel cuddly about it.

The Next Gen stuff is about trying to ensure that the UK does not see Digital Economy businesses moving into Europe or elsewhere, i.e. losing the economy money.

Why would they not try to get the government funding? They are in business and they have a product that can fulfill the requirement. It would be silly not to try to get a slice of the action.

It should be a lot beter than many of the regional broadband intiatives that have largely failed to deliver anything much. From all the hype of the goverment and regional authorities what have they actually delivered to date?

IIn 2000 there was 512/128 cable services, it is a rare time period where BT was ahead of cable. Cable services wre live before adsl but adsl had the higher spec speeds. However between then and now cable has most of the time been ahead on speeds. I didnt say cable was innotive but rather BT have typically been reacting to what cable are doing. If cable didnt exist BT may well still be serving 512kbit dsl.

The FTTC rollout in terms of people is almost certianly going to be smaller than current cable coverage as its targeting less densely populated areas.

compare these 2 maps.
http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=2...
http://www.nextgenerationaccess.com/How/BTFTTC/btftt...

They not too dissimiliar from each other, the noticeble difference i can see is VM's coverage spreads out more east and south west, south east. BT's appears to be more concentrated and they simply drawn a line.

The one thing I will accept is that rural residents have been far more vocal about their needs for faster broadband, there is dozens of campaigns and news articles with their moans. Also the political pressure to target such areas as well.

The argument about the need to target wealthier people should stop tho as the price of infinity is exactly the same as adsl. Not to mention the fact wealth doesnt necessarily mean extra revenue, as they can be very tight with their money. Hard evidence supports that poorer places will have a higher demand for speed based on higher utilisation of resources.

Rich/poor really shouldnt be in the equation tho, it should be purely done on population density, yes that means london first followed by other cities.