I do not see the reason to use any tax money on this. Spending tax money creates always a controversy as people start asking questions about priorities. Sometimes rightly so.

If I were the supreme dictator, I would solve the funding gap by increasing Openreach part of our line rentals. The asinine decision to cap it and actually force them to decrease it over the years prevents the natural mechanism of funding network upgrades: get the money from customers. I just got a £1,50 "line rental" price increase from Sky, and not a penny of this money goes to infrastructure building.

Yes, a monopoly needs supervision and a watchdog to make sure prices are not unfair. But it does not feel fair either that I have funded in my line rentals network upgrades in "easy to upgrade" parts of the country, and when it would now be time to upgrade my connection, the others are not willing to chip in. If and when our wired (copper, fibre, coax, whatever) infrastructure cannot be upgraded to acceptable levels - and kept on an acceptable level also in the future - with the funding created by current line rental charges, then it is fair to say the line rental charge is too small.

If the poor do not have money to get a telephone line and the very basic internet connection if connection prices were increased to a more sustainable level, maybe we should use some tax money to give more money to the poor instead in a form of a subsidised connection. This would pass the political apparatus much easier than a decision to use taxpayers' money to build networks. Whatever this increase would be, most of us would not notice it anyway.

Just my thought.

H

you do not know my conditions,

Nor you mine. Perhaps you should have stated what these conditions were if you wished those reading to consider them.

people like you think they know everything and do everything they can to put others down, I hate people like that,

You posted on a Public Forum stating your views, I disagreed in some parts.

I agree with much of what you have said here.

You most likely haven't funded others in the commercial rollout. Those investments were done on a ROI - the likelihood is that over time those will actually be paying for other things - possibly even helping to fund those on long lines whose support costs are higher.

The reason to upgrade the easy ones is a short ROI so that the money earned from those helps to pay for the less cost effective areas of the network.

Many people don't want to pay more. In fact many people will go with very bad ISPs to save a couple of quid. Most people do not pay for higher speed packages. Even on the full fibre networks most people will pay for the lowest package available.

Have run two lines here since 2006

Like being unable to update your camera software, or that your fridge can't tell you it's running low on fromage frais ?

People have, can, and do live without the internet.

Yes. As I wrote, some people choose to do so. This is their choice. What I do not want to see is the choice being forced upon people by refusing to offer them a suitable service.

I can easily go to Starbucks and update my camera there. No problem. It is just a minor inconvenience. And by half way decent software design this problem would not be there as there is no reason whatsoever to timeout a connection that seems to be downloading data, albeit slowly.

If the gadget refusing to update itself were my smart meter, heating control, tv or air conditioning, I would be much more limited with my options as the item would not move, and low quality software will be written also in the future. I would not be too surprised if in five years' time it would be next to impossible to buy gadgets that did not have upgradeable software in them.

This is just one example.

How things are now, the gap between "slow" and "fast" connections is growing. There is nothing in the innovation pipeline that would give those who can only get a slow ADSL connection more speed, unless someone (openreach, ISP, government, the household suffering from a bad connection) upgrades the physical connection. in FTTC category, some will be eligible for G.Fast, and those with FTTB/FTTP will have a path to even faster connections. This creates a problem if and when investment mostly focuses on improving the speeds of the masses instead of elevating those left behind to the "standard" level, which in today's technology and OR's chosen strategy would be FTTC with a possibility to upgrade to G.Fast later.

Of course we don't need to care about this and tell those who are seriously unhappy with the service they get that there is no need to worry, some people are happy without internet and stop moaning about first world problems. I just don't see the point of this, as those who feel they have a problem are generally more aware of their situation and complications it causes than those who either do not care or are not suffering from the problem at all.

In my opinion people who complain about USC level speeds in year 2017 do have a valid reason to be unhappy. It is a complicated issue to solve with the current infrastructure pricing and ownership structure, and all sorts of efforts to highlight the issue should be welcomed, not shunned.

H

Edited by deleted (Wed 22-Mar-17 15:07:37)

A Labour government could renationalise BT Group.

That would even things up.

You are a rude person, you do not know my conditions

What are you doing to resolve your problem?

BT and VM are commercial companies rather than charities and use commercial criteria when deciding which areas to serve. If not BT or VM who do you think should pay to provide to provide the infrastructure to enable you tp order a faster connection? Have you considered getting to gether with your neighbours and contributing towards the cost of installing/upgrading equipemt to allow obtain a better connection as others such as myself have done?

Please don't say "the state" should pay. IMO govenment has far more important and critical programmes to fund including the NHS, education and care of the infirm, elderly and disabled than updating internet speeds to allow users to upload videos to YouTube, watch 4K movies on Netflix or Amazon or download games from Steam.

In reply to a post by MCM:

You are a rude person, you do not know my conditions

What are you doing to resolve your problem?

BT and VM are commercial companies rather than charities and use commercial criteria when deciding which areas to serve. If not BT or VM who do you think should pay to provide to provide the infrastructure to enable you tp order a faster connection? Have you considered getting to gether with your neighbours and contributing towards the cost of installing/upgrading equipemt to allow obtain a better connection as others such as myself have done?

Please don't say "the state" should pay. IMO govenment has far more important and critical programmes to fund including the NHS, education and care of the infirm, elderly and disabled than updating internet speeds to allow users to upload videos to YouTube, watch 4K movies on Netflix or Amazon or download games from Steam.

No one around here will pay for the upgrade, VM and Openreach earn billions yet they cannot upgrade us like other people? Why should we the people have to pay for the mess that these Isp's have caused, using a outdated copper structure which isn't ment to carry broadband signals it was ment for carrying phone lines, our area would bring money to Openreach and VM yet they keep skipping us and people around us have better internet.

Okay let me put this straight to you MCM, I myself am Disabled and the internet is really important for me and takes my mind off of the [censored] I have to deal with in real life from people already judging me, from the day I was born I was judged, called a retard and so on and so forth.

I still don't see why it should be a commercial business' responsibility to provide a service any more than them asking you to contribute towards it.

If you read my message earlier, you'd see that a fibre cab is in design and it should be ready later this year.