Wesley wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11922424

Can't see how the government spending almost £1 Bn on this is going to
generate too many jobs. Most call centres etc seem to be located abroad
anyway. It will be great for on-line gamers and people who download massive
files. I can't understand why the Government is so keen to promote it. Am
I missing something here??


well yes.

While broadband and fast broadband can't totally replace travelling, it
does a heck of a lot to help.

If someone's job is done in front of a computer and 90% of their daily
communication is through that, or a phone, it makes them totally
position independent - as Indian call centres have discovered.

Now the archaic British Management has yet to figure out how to manage a
remote workforce except by subcontracting it to a whole subcontinent,
but, if there is an ounce of common sense left in it, sooner or later
the penny will drop and people all over the country will e working in te
same virtual office on the same projects.

Now we do a lot here, and pushing up BIG graphic objects of several tens
of MB takes a long time at 448KBps.

Likewise its inadequate for quality video in the UP direction. If we
want to create virtual offices and VPNS we need high speed *symmetric*
transfers.

ADSL was created on the assumption that the domestic market would be net
consumers of data. However proper VPN working would be better served by
SDSL - 10Mbps bi-directional is very usable to access a file server,
though it feels slow by gigabit standards.

And finally, access to decent speed broadband for business to business
communications is almost mandatory these days.

So that's the business case.

Domestically, on-line shopping is already a significant player. If
anything CAN replace queuing up for car parks to find the store doesn't
have what you want, and then queuing to get out again, it has to be a
plus for the country. IF a decent way of paying for it can be sorted
out, there is also no reason why books, CDs and DVDS cant be online
downloads either, thus saving more transport, more plastic and more
trees etc.