that was the East Midlands. Cities, towns, - some sporadic FTTC. Villages - no FTTC.

The 5 max live projects outside of BT wouldn't add up to a decent sized conference hall of users.

Cornwall has indeed had another tranche of EU / Govt largesse, being equivalent to Macedonia economically.

The East Midlands has some dive cities at the bottom of the economic league. We're still waiting for the Black Watch to retake Nottingham.

well I have said my view, everyone has their own, BT have done nothing wrong with what they doing, I just think it shouldnt be happening like this. You dont go up the economic league without investment.

Of course I didn't mean the service was 1:1, but rather the fact many average users believe a broadband supplier that says 8megs, to receive 8megs, when in reality its many times lower than that.

Whilst other countries just get on with it.

yeah, the grass is always greener on the other side - until you actually look.

or more than 448kbit upload.

832k is available universally, but nobody buys it. Clearly not that important.

Most of your list comes down to TV and entertainment. Do we need to create a million antisocial couch potatoes like S Korea did by feeding this addition / obsession ? Is porn and TV and games a good reason to tax & spend ?

Edited by yarwell (Tue 08-Feb-11 22:39:59)

In reply to a post by kwikbreaks:

14.9GB does not significantly alter my conclusion that the general public are quite right to be indifferent to speeds over 8Mbps.

Seems there are still plenty of folk out there, like you, who don't understand the relationship between building infrastructure and then using it rather than finding a use and then finding out that you don't actually have the ability to deliver.

10 years ago plenty of people said you didn't need ADSL because most people didn't even use the internet and 56k was cool for the websites and services of the time.
6 or 7 years ago it had moved to "ADSL is fine, 512k is perfect...you don't need 2mbit though - don't get uppity son"

Then when everyone decided broadband was a good idea and things like gaming, youtube and epic HD pornography turned up some people decided that maybe 2mbit wasn't cutting it anymore and so we moved on to our 8mbit and LLU and 20 mbit cable connections and guess what - few people said "actually, I know I can have 24mbit but you know what? just give me 512k"

Because who wants 512k these days? No one, apart from the relatively few poor souls who still can't get any broadband. A far cry from the not too distant past when 512k was blazing. I remember it myself and thinking "OMG" at the possibilities. Today it
s about as current or useful as a 1st gen ipod.

And so it continues. Point is, you provide the speed first and then services and uses are found to take advantage of it which drives the whole thing forward and leads to progress and by extension brings the economic benefits that people seem to be all to skeptical about. Skeptical because they've seemingly managed to forget about all the differences between today and 1999 when ADSL was just a trial.

Why is there nothing out there that requires or takes advantage of a 100mbit connection? Because next to no one in the world has a 100mbit connection. Come back in another 10 years when people do and things like youtube and iplayer will look quaint by comparison to whats possible. Alternatively just plateau at 20-40mbit and be done with any further inventions or new ways to use the internet and computers.

Edited by orly (Tue 08-Feb-11 22:33:58)

Because next to no one in the world has a 100mbit connection.

there are quite a lot, they just do the same stuff a lot quicker by and large.

Half the people in the UK could have 50M but less than 300,000 opt to buy it. Why is that ?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Because next to no one in the world has a 100mbit connection.

there are quite a lot, they just do the same stuff a lot quicker by and large.

Half the people in the UK could have 50M but less than 300,000 opt to buy it. Why is that ?

Because its time is yet to come. What currently uses 50mbit? Not much. But try to get away with 512k or 1mbit these days and people cry that it is inadequate.

In the coming years as FTTC and the like become widely available and more people come on board then you'll see a lot more uses/services come along...and then the cycle restarts.

You build it, the early adopters set the trend, gradually more people move over and then you get people inventing services to take advantage - at which time you reach a tipping point where everyone must have it and then you move on to the next stage.

That said, for many people 8mbit or even 2mbit might be perfectly fine but you don't just stop there because in a few years they'll be as laughable as 56k and ISDN is today.

To be honest probably the most beneficial thing the government could do is fund a nationwide, complete, FTTH rollout and then allow the likes of BT, virgin and anyone else to pay to access and manage it rather than sinking money into useless endeavors like the "war on terror" or bailing out every Tom, Dick and Harry.

I first got online around 1997 when your PC had a pentium 1 running at something like 100mhz and your connection was 28k. Today I have a connection that is roughly 1000 times faster than that and as you mention, there is faster available to some. So what will we put up with in 14 years from now in 2025? Seems to me the only feasible course of action is FTTH to allow the gigabit speeds that will become necessary. Anyone thinking you can dick about for another decade with ADSL2 and VDSL to the cabinet is sorely mistaken in my opinion. If we do, it will be to the detriment of the country as a whole.

The guy who presented the ADSL rollout to the BT board allegedly said they were going to do it alphabetically starting in Aberdeen. Individual views of these things tends to be skewed by personal situations.

Openreach are recruiting for FTTC build so resources may be a factor - building in proportion to regional resources perhaps. Doing higher return locations early always works well in finance models, generating funds for the less attractive locations that come later and allowing time for demand to build.

yeah the providers that still provide 832kbit on adsl max have a nice premium on it. and not that many lines will sync at it either only about 2./3rds.

your last comment proves my point in that we have people here who think we should only spend on whats needed today, no future proofing and only the min necessary.

That's over a month (data usage).