On 17/11/2019 14:13, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Sun, 17 Nov 2019 11:44:48 +0000, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I'm all in favour of a government initiative to get fibre to all
premises in the UK. Given the current purely commercial setup is not
expanding fast enough. A mate who lives in Lewis (S coast of England,
and hardly miles from 'civilisation') still hasn't got even FTC, despite
very slow BB.

But the idea of making it totally free to use just pie in the sky and
silly to boot.

Just another example of the political parties trying to buy votes.

When was *any* policy - especially one floated to win an election -
delivered exactly as promised ?

Never, that's when.

So if we strip away the frothing, maybe there's a case for some sort of
universal provision of broadband at a basic level. Enough to access the
services provided online by government ? And if the subscriber wants and
can afford more, they upgrade to full fat HD streaming levels of
broadband ?

Openreach have just launched a 500Kbps FTTP product (and no, that was
not a typo - I really do mean 0.5 megabits per sec). Which may sound
daft, however its one of the stepping stone technologies to
decommissioning the copper local loop. So very entry level FTTP will
become the de-facto provision for those wanting landline phone only.
(i.e. it would be supplied with a VoIP line access module to provide the
voice service). There is also a suggestion that the consumer could add a
normal router to the line for a basic level of internet access, at
little / no cost over that of the normal line rental, with an upgrade
path to faster data should they wish, with no need for further cabling /
engineering works etc.

And "free" broadband covering the entire UK makes a **** of a lot more
fair use of tax money than the ¿is-it-isn't-it? saga that HS2 has become.

It makes no sense, so its hardly worth arguing about whether that
amounts to more or less sense than HS2.



--
Cheers,

John.

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