thats not answered my question, your answer applies everywhere not just rural, so again why are they targeting rural?

I think they do realy need to define what is meant by a rural area of the Government may be raising false expectations with some people.

To much focus on very remote areas wii detract from the overall rollout. The new consortium should as far as possible focus on the areas where BT has no current plans to rollout FTTC equally they should not be foccussed on very rural hamlets of 3 or 4 houses several miles from anywhere.

The government should also be looking at ensuring that charges are higher in very remote area.There is nothing unfair about that. It simply costs a lot more to provide it.

The governement because at the committee meetings (if you watched) were assurred that commercial firms would manage around 50 to 60% coverage without any government money, because these were the areas that were commercially viable.

That was supported by both BT and VM spokespeople (Neil Berkett being one if I recall).

As for this consortium, I guess they won't want to compete in areas where VM or BT is already rolling out, and they would not get the additional funding to add another network to those areas.

Why will it do better than other initiatives?

At this point we are talking about a few meetings and possible signs of intent, no signed contracts to sign-up X million customers from the two named providers.

VM's regulatory team will be playing careful to avoid them becoming SMP, with their own closed network in 50% of UK, and big player in another 'open' network, it could easily be viewed as having a very significant power over things.

I think most of this network will target the urban and semi areas not already covered.
I think the goovernments view of rural may be more low density semi urban areas the rural rural. I don't think they really intend to spends thousands of poundt to provide Broadband to a farmer 3 miles up a track and several miles from the nearest village

The problem is the government have never really defined what they mean by rural perhaps they should give some indication ie would it be 50 subscribers served by a cabinet or a 100 or maybe even 25

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

equally they should not be foccussed on very rural hamlets of 3 or 4 houses several miles from anywhere.

Why?

100% coverage is fair, isn't it?

You're applying your own logic to what is acceptable. The people in charge do the same.

I have given the reasons.

Is it fair that most users should pay to have HS Broadband supplied to a remote Scottish Island with three people on it when it could cost hundreds of thousands of pounds?

There will be a small percentage of the population where with current technology it will be cost prohibitive to supply broadband at any sensible costs.

There are plenty of people in the UK who cannot get main gas or sewerage because it is to expensive do supply it

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-11 18:06:38)

If there is an island with just 3 or 4 people on it, then it is going to get a satellite service - pretty much no debate.

Where is the statement about every single household getting next gen (>=25Mbps) type speeds? There is NOT one.

The 2Meg USC does not even mean 100%, the wording allows for exceptions to even the 2Meg.

Less about competition now, but fractured debates on the rights/wrongs of US Commitment and the proprosals from BT and VM/FTel/Cisco/TalkTalk consortium with regards to who should get the BDUK money.

Closed due to the size making it unwieldy for people to follow what is being said.