On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:55:24 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

With people offering deals at £15 or less, its not worth raising capital
for.

That depends on the distrubution of the population in relation to the
telephone exchange. If there are a lot of people more than say 3 miles
from the exchange and/or the local copper(ali...) is crap then ADSL is
going to be slow and at the mercy of BT Openreach fixing it (residential
line, two, three, 5 days?).

Wifi only covers the last couple of hundred yards at best anyway.

Spherical objects. We have many AP to end user hops well over a mile. You
do need line of sight though, which for places with trees can be a
problem. Few trees up here...

- you still have top lay fibre or tight beam microwave TO it.

Not impossible.

And it congests fast.

Agreed, our WiFi based network was fine when it was installed but now down
in the town with the plorification of home WiFi LANs the air space is
*very* crowded. We offer a cheap "set up your wireless LAN" service to try
an mitigate some of the problems by shifting private LANs to different
channels to reduce mutal interference problems.

Network congestion hasn't been to much of an issue until recently and then
only on some links, users are bandwidth limited though.

You can get anything of BT/ISP's if you pay for it. 2Mbps to your house
rock solid 1:1 contention ration and zero throttling..for a mere 12k a
year or so.

Which will probably be provided on fibre so why mess about with 2Mbps go
for the 1Gbps. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:53:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of
optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto..

If jointing the fibre no, that is a skilled and time consuming process. If
the lenghts aren't particulary long it's probably easier to blow the old
ones out and new ones in.

Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't
need a lot of em.

DTH needs one fibre cable per home/end point back to a "hub".

I think we are slightly at cross purposes.

What I had in mind ws that BT would install a load of one to many fibre
repeaters/multiplexers in street cabinets fed with power from the exchange.

The a single fiber from the street cab to the home.


And probably some sort of video caching kit in each exchange. So that
downloading videos was real time.


Another way
of distributing the connections is fibre to "good site(s)" then wireless
as the final link. You can get reliable wireless stuff these days that
doesn't use 2.5GHz (WiFi and loads of other stuff) and will give speeds to
a few tens of Mbps over decent distances. Personally I'd want to put in
DTH fibre with development grant support.


wots DTH?

The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters.

Find suitable places with mains, install your kit there, give the owners a
free connection as payment.

Till that mains goes..

Nope. For resilience it all has to be fed from the exchanges.

I cant see a better solution than using BT streetboxes as fibre fed
exchange powered concentrators.

Even if you still had copper to the home, you should be able to get
about 20Mbps over a 100m or so. With rewire with cat 5, 100Mbps.

That is what needs to be done realistically: Upgrade each exchange for
more bandwidth, then start pushing the fibre further towards the
customer on a case by case basis.

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott
wrote:

"Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.

Why not get a 512K or 1M product? Then you won't be paying the same
as people who get 4-8M.


--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, wrote:

Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?
Because most of them are lossily compressed already?

doesnt make any difference to the fact that one can greatly reduce
file size by further (lossy) compression


Why not replace all images with a line saying 'here used to be an image
here' and be done with it?

I used to when on dialup, but a lot of pages dont render acceptably if
you do that today. Plus pictures do have their use!


NT

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 01:59:30 -0800 (PST), wrote:

Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt.

Not there for a list with less than 10 items?

Often not there for multipage results. It turns a simple task into a
monumental waste of time.

Toolstation site is even worse, for other more basic reasons. Why dont
these sizeable businesses realise theyre screwing up on basic stuff
and losing sales.


NT

Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing
in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
sites.

Won't happen. Web sites are designed by ...
perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to their
servers with gigabit ethernet.
(snipped)

Thats the cause, but any web designer with a clue should try their
site on the connections users actually use - which includes 56k.
Failure to do so is incompetent.


NT

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

There are not.

It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange.


make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you
can get more speed.


All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.

I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
doing it right in the first place would not have been.

Andy

wrote:

Yes, but
a) further compression is often possible
b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
speed up webpage loading

snip

Oh there's an idea I can use lossy compression on those jpeg images on
the web server. Oh hang on...

Andy

Andy Champ wrote:

I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
doing it right in the first place would not have been.

I thought the reason they DID use copper (in the 70's?) was because
copper prices HAD gone through the roof?

Andy Champ wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
There are not.
It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange.
make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you
can get more speed.
All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.


I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
doing it right in the first place would not have been.


They didn't know that at the time.

Much of Milton Keynes was wired with aluminium, and this apparently
restricts broadband speeds quite severely.

Andy Burns wrote:

I thought the reason they DID use copper
^^^^^^
aluminium obviously

(in the 70's?) was because
copper prices HAD gone through the roof?

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:14:46 +0000, Andy Champ wrote:

wrote:

Yes, but
a) further compression is often possible b) lossy compression is
possible for images, this can dramatically speed up webpage loading

snip

Oh there's an idea I can use lossy compression on those jpeg images on
the web server. Oh hang on...

Right-sizing them does help, though. Many web servers still have huge
images displayed as a 100x100 thumbnail on the web page.

Mark wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott
wrote:

"Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.

Why not get a 512K or 1M product? Then you won't be paying the same
as people who get 4-8M.


Yes I thought about that. There seem to be very few 1Mb offerings and
these are at the same price as my 'up to 8'. Unless you know better...

"Huge" wrote in message
...

Won't happen. Web sites are designed by gel-haired, oddly bespectacled
weirdoes
dressed all in black with perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to
their
servers with gigabit ethernet. That's why so many of them are crap.
Someone
pointed me at a "5 a day" video this morning on an HMG website; it's
176Mb. Like
I'm going to wait 30 or 40 minutes for *that* to download.

That would only take about 3 minutes on my ADSL link. 8-)

"robgraham" wrote in message
...

8

Having read through this thread, I have been surprised at the
aggression of the responders. This NG is normally extremely tactful
in its comments to OP's but in this case I found many of the answers
near enough offensive.

My assumption is that this is a demonstration of the disconnect that
is occurring in UK society between those living in urban and rural
environments, with the urbanites all too often classifying anyone
living outside the towns and cities as winging scroungers.

I would suggest that all of you who have contributed to this thread
should do as I have done and re-read all the responses and you will
see the attitude that is coming across.

All I can say is shame on you all.

His whinge is in the same class as the idiots that buy houses on flood
planes and then demand a flood control scheme at great expense to everyone
else who wouldn't have bought a hose that floods in the first place.

All his letter says is "It costs more to supply broadband to me but its
slower and I want a bigger subsidy and sod the others".

Rob

In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.

So by this you grow/raise all your own food?

--
*Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off NOW.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
Peter Scott wrote:

Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
can over double the average speed?
No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
meanest of web pages probably is compressed.
Yes, but
a) further compression is often possible
b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
speed up webpage loading


Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international
links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in
latency.

About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is
usenet and text emails.

Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?


Images are always compressed. GIF, JPEG, PNG - all compressed to the
hilt.If you mean reducing image *size* or *quality*, that's a different
matter.

Its what was said in the first place, lossy compression.


Most compresion f data streams is designed to give 100% recovery
of the actual raw data: with an overcompressed JPEG you don't get the
quality back ever.

you do if you click the image, then you get the uncompressed version.
So you dont lose access to the quality image, just in most cases you
dont need to dl it. Such a service used to get used on dialup, with
significant speed up, since most of the data on your average webpage
is images.


I did that on the fly to ensure that thumbnails weren't massive pictures
displayed small..


I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.

And the taxpayers would get pretty ****ed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
are paid for out of public money.
Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind
lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more
expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may
well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole.


Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30
people in his location.

I was discussing national investment in rural broadband. I would think
it clear that this will have a positive impact on british business. Do
you not think it would?

Not really, no.
Since the numbers of people living at the end of very long lines is
rather small.

I thought village living was still reasonably popular. I'd also think
the ability to do business online from out of town, which brings lower
costs and more land availability, would be a boon to significant
number of businesses.


NT

Andy Champ wrote:
wrote:

Yes, but
a) further compression is often possible
b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
speed up webpage loading

snip

Oh there's an idea I can use lossy compression on those jpeg images on
the web server. Oh hang on...

Andy

lossy compression is for dling, not uling.


NT

Bruce gurgled happily, sounding much like they were
saying:

I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
doing it right in the first place would not have been.

They didn't know that at the time.

Much of Milton Keynes was wired with aluminium, and this apparently
restricts broadband speeds quite severely.

Which is why MK is working towards city-wide(ish) WiMax broadband.

Adrian wrote:
Bruce gurgled happily, sounding much like they were
saying:

I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
doing it right in the first place would not have been.

They didn't know that at the time.

Much of Milton Keynes was wired with aluminium, and this apparently
restricts broadband speeds quite severely.

Which is why MK is working towards city-wide(ish) WiMax broadband.


Thanks - I didn't know what the proposed solution was, just that the
problem was quite severe.

Sorry for my ignorance, but please tell me, what is WiMax broadband?

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.

So by this you grow/raise all your own food?


Britain now imports approximately 90% of its food needs, so I don't
think we need to be going cap in hand to our farmers.

The idea that rural areas subsidise the cities (in any way, shape or
form) is just laughable!

Bruce wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.
So by this you grow/raise all your own food?


Britain now imports approximately 90% of its food needs, so I don't
think we need to be going cap in hand to our farmers.


IIRC its about 505 actualy of all its food..as far as food NEEDS go,
well that's a different matter.

The idea that rural areas subsidise the cities (in any way, shape or
form) is just laughable!

And just where do you think the sewage goes -where the trees that make
the oxygen are? Where the water you drink come from?

cities think they are islands: they are not. They import nice stuff an
produce ****. Millions of tons of it every day. That **** has to be
dealt with, mainly by spreading it over he countryside after getting rid
of the worst..

The country can do without cities, but the cities cant do without the
country.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Bruce wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.
So by this you grow/raise all your own food?


Britain now imports approximately 90% of its food needs, so I don't
think we need to be going cap in hand to our farmers.


IIRC its about 505 actualy of all its food..as far as food NEEDS go,
well that's a different matter.

The idea that rural areas subsidise the cities (in any way, shape or
form) is just laughable!

And just where do you think the sewage goes -where the trees that make
the oxygen are? Where the water you drink come from?

cities think they are islands: they are not. They import nice stuff an
produce ****. Millions of tons of it every day. That **** has to be
dealt with, mainly by spreading it over he countryside after getting rid
of the worst..

The country can do without cities, but the cities cant do without the
country.


I obviously gave you a golden opportunity to vent your spleen, but you
have not explained at all how the countryside subsidises the cities.

No surprise there, because despite all your bluster, it doesn't!

Bruce gurgled happily, sounding much like they were
saying:

Much of Milton Keynes was wired with aluminium, and this apparently
restricts broadband speeds quite severely.

Which is why MK is working towards city-wide(ish) WiMax broadband.

Thanks - I didn't know what the proposed solution was, just that the
problem was quite severe.

Sorry for my ignorance, but please tell me, what is WiMax broadband?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12..._keynes_wimax/

Adrian wrote:
Bruce gurgled happily, sounding much like they were
saying:

Much of Milton Keynes was wired with aluminium, and this apparently
restricts broadband speeds quite severely.

Which is why MK is working towards city-wide(ish) WiMax broadband.

Thanks - I didn't know what the proposed solution was, just that the
problem was quite severe.

Sorry for my ignorance, but please tell me, what is WiMax broadband?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12..._keynes_wimax/


That's great Adrian, many thanks.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.

So by this you grow/raise all your own food?

I pay for my food unlike some rural dwellers.

"Peter Scott" wrote in message
om...
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Peter Scott wrote:
Now this really is getting off-topic but I want to answer some of the
points raised. The county where I live subsidises cities. I am not
making that up, it is a fact. I pay the same taxes as anyone else but
the amount of tax-payers money spent per head in the cities is much
higher than in the country. That's why, though I pay very similar
council tax rates, I get much poorer services like roads, policing and
education spending. Central government support is much lower.

Well if you want to go that route, as a single non married childless
person for years, I subsidised the rest of the population.

So what?

Cities alos benefit you, by making the countryside a nicer place to live
in.

Don't quite follow the last point. I don't see how I benefit from cities.
Did you mean by not having lots of houses?

You benefit from civilization.
There wouldn't be any broadband, etc if it weren't for cities as there
wouldn't be any civilization to develop them.


I entirely agree about subsidies however. There are all kinds of them,
including, I hope, one for the cost of providing better broadband in the
country. I was attempting to point out that rural areas subsidise the
cities, and would like a bit back.

You don't.
If you want the facts remember it costs more to provide you with every
service.
That includes schools, transport, fire, police, ambulance, phones and
everything else you want to name.


To pick up the child point, without people willing to devote time and
money to bringing up children there would not be the future earners to pay
for the care of older people. Even if an older person is entirely
self-sufficient on investments, there has to be a thriving economy to keep
up the value of those investments, and this relies on young generations.

Peter

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.net...
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:

However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly the same as people
who get 4 Mbit/s or better.

I don't like the way ADSL is marketed with the "up to" in a 6pt font or in
a footnote against the 8Mbps or 24Mbps in 144pt. Neither does OFCOM and is
attempting to do something about it.

If it meant that ISPs refused to accept rural connections then the
situation would be out in the open!"

And there would be no rural broadband at all, just like there is no cable
outside urban/medium sized town areas.

Solution is to get off your bum and get a community broadband service
running. Plenty of experienced help available, good starting point:

http://www.broadband-uk.coop/

Fibre DTH is possible, digging up roads is expensive and complicated
legally. So you don't dig up the roads but bring the land owners on board
to have fibre ducts laid under their land. Commercial contractors charge
for digging holes but out in the country there are plenty of people with
diggers, get them involved. There may even be some one with kit that can
mole the ducts through rather than having to cut 'n cover.

Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more
and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps
internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third
party content providers.

Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally
the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection
these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an
e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can
piggy back on those connections.

I have seen and input into a project where fibre would be run to the home.
However it won't run at some silly 100M but at 10G.
When you have 10G to the home and you can connect the distribution switches
together the network doesn't need a core.
It becomes a mesh with 10G interconnects.
However there is some resistance to the idea from the existing providers.

Most network designers don't actually understand networks or what can be
done IME.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.net...


And it congests fast.

Agreed, our WiFi based network was fine when it was installed but now down
in the town with the plorification of home WiFi LANs the air space is
*very* crowded. We offer a cheap "set up your wireless LAN" service to try
an mitigate some of the problems by shifting private LANs to different
channels to reduce mutal interference problems.

Run 5G rather than 2.4G.
There is no congestion ATM and 36 none overlapping channels rather than the
three WiFi uses.
You can use smaller woks too.

"Gordon Henderson" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Tim S wrote:
The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't
be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost
of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.


Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?

I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
needed).

And that's the crux of the proble. It was costing us £200+ to do each
install and the punters would not pay that. You need people with insurance
and ladders - specially if you're going to drill into peoples houses. We
used local sky installers and they weren't cheap. Do it yourself, crack
some external render/plasterwork and you've suddenly got something more
to wory about than just putting a cable through the wall...

If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.

And one p2p'er will kill the lot.

That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to
"get
a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a
chance
of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
taking a supply.

We got just over 100 people (out of 1800 houses) to put their names on
a bit of paper in one town. This was after running an 18-month funded
project to raise awareness and research the effects of broadband in a
rural community. Then barely 50 committed to the install of £99, which
was less than half what it was really costing. Our first customers
cheque bounced on us. Then trying to get £25 a month out of them was
like pulling swords out of stone )-:

On paper, 50 customers at £25 looks good, but the running costs (without
staff) were close to £1000 a month - to buy the backhaul, pay for space
on the masts and farmers, etc.)

It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade
the
Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
advantageous.

Wonder if any village has done this?

Do yourself a favour and don't do it.

I know of a small one in Warwickshire that did.
Probably only because a lot of the residents worked for Marconi and a local
business wanted help setting up an internet link.
The deal was the Marconi engineers set up the companies stuff and the
company allowed the WiFi to be piggy backed on the service.
It worked well as most company traffic is in the day and most other traffic
is at night.
I have no idea if its still going.

Bruce wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Bruce wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.
So by this you grow/raise all your own food?

Britain now imports approximately 90% of its food needs, so I don't
think we need to be going cap in hand to our farmers.

IIRC its about 505 actualy of all its food..as far as food NEEDS go,
well that's a different matter.

The idea that rural areas subsidise the cities (in any way, shape or
form) is just laughable!

And just where do you think the sewage goes -where the trees that make
the oxygen are? Where the water you drink come from?

cities think they are islands: they are not. They import nice stuff an
produce ****. Millions of tons of it every day. That **** has to be
dealt with, mainly by spreading it over he countryside after getting rid
of the worst..

The country can do without cities, but the cities cant do without the
country.


I obviously gave you a golden opportunity to vent your spleen, but you
have not explained at all how the countryside subsidises the cities.

No surprise there, because despite all your bluster, it doesn't!

No, it completely supports it, in te way that fundtaions support a house.

Without them its less a question of subsidising, more a question of
subsiding.

Now if the people who own the country started charging for te water they
supply, and all the carbon they sequester, and all the oxygen they
produce, and started charging for all the landfill..the countryside
would be a very rich place.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Now if the people who own the country started charging for te water they
supply, and all the carbon they sequester, and all the oxygen they
produce, and started charging for all the landfill..the countryside
would be a very rich place.


So people who live in the countryside don't eat, don't breathe, don't
consume and don't produce any rubbish.

Interesting theory, but rubbish!

Bruce wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Now if the people who own the country started charging for te water they
supply, and all the carbon they sequester, and all the oxygen they
produce, and started charging for all the landfill..the countryside
would be a very rich place.


So people who live in the countryside don't eat, don't breathe, don't
consume and don't produce any rubbish.

Interesting theory, but rubbish!

Look at the relative densities of population, and you will see that the
countryside is and effective water source and **** sink. with respect to
its population.

I suppose you think milk grows in bottles as well?

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Bruce wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Now if the people who own the country started charging for te water they
supply, and all the carbon they sequester, and all the oxygen they
produce, and started charging for all the landfill..the countryside
would be a very rich place.


So people who live in the countryside don't eat, don't breathe, don't
consume and don't produce any rubbish.

Interesting theory, but rubbish!

Look at the relative densities of population, and you will see that the
countryside is and effective water source and **** sink. with respect to
its population.

I suppose you think milk grows in bottles as well?


If it is so unpleasant living in the countryside, with people giving up
"their" air and water for city folk, as well as taking in their rubbish,
there is an unarguable case for moving to the city.

Added bonus: reliable high speed broadband!

Problem solved. Bleating stops.

dennis@home wrote:


"robgraham" wrote in message
...

8

Having read through this thread, I have been surprised at the
aggression of the responders. This NG is normally extremely tactful
in its comments to OP's but in this case I found many of the answers
near enough offensive.

My assumption is that this is a demonstration of the disconnect that
is occurring in UK society between those living in urban and rural
environments, with the urbanites all too often classifying anyone
living outside the towns and cities as winging scroungers.

I would suggest that all of you who have contributed to this thread
should do as I have done and re-read all the responses and you will
see the attitude that is coming across.

All I can say is shame on you all.

His whinge is in the same class as the idiots that buy houses on flood
planes and then demand a flood control scheme at great expense to
everyone else who wouldn't have bought a hose that floods in the first
place.

All his letter says is "It costs more to supply broadband to me but its
slower and I want a bigger subsidy and sod the others".

Rob

Wrong. I said that rural areas subsidise the cities and this is one way
that this could be repaid.

Bruce wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.
So by this you grow/raise all your own food?


Britain now imports approximately 90% of its food needs, so I don't
think we need to be going cap in hand to our farmers.

The idea that rural areas subsidise the cities (in any way, shape or
form) is just laughable!

Wrong.

We all pay the same taxes. The cities get a far higher central
government support grant for local government. That's why rural areas
pay similar council tax but get far poorer services. The difference in
support is not small. If you take least to most it can be double.

Peter Scott wrote:

I said that rural areas subsidise the cities


.... a statement that is completely without foundation.

Mark wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott
wrote:

"Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.

Why not get a 512K or 1M product? Then you won't be paying the same
as people who get 4-8M.

funding subsidy

This is the best I can do speedily. I am sure there are better data but
this is all I could find right now. Take a look at page 8:

http://www.isitfair.co.uk/Reports/Pu...licFinance.pdf

Remember this only covers whole regions. Whereas the difference between
the largely rural eastern and wholly urban London is only about 30%, the
wholly rural areas within eastern will be even lower because of the
cities within those areas that will get extra funding. The picture only
changes when the numbers are fudged by including commuters as stated
under the table. You can also see why Scotland, NI and Wales can afford
to treat their people better!!!

Peter Scott

Peter Scott wrote:
This is not OT. Comms is a DIY matter when, like me, you are trying to
improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. The government has
proposed three levels of improvement to the broadband system. Only one
level would help in rural areas. Up to now I have been resigned to
poor speeds. Now that urban speeds are set to rocket, services will
change to use them and soon rural users will be right out in the
cold. Wouldn't be so bad if I paid a lot less!

I have written to Ofcom and attach the text below. Is anyone else
interested in offering an opinion to Ofcom?

Text of letter...

"I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around
750 kbit/s....

That's perfectly usable. I think you need a sense of proportion towards
public investment priorities.

On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:29:34 +0000, a certain chimpanzee, TheOldFellow
randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

The point is that even if we wished to pay more to get the same service
as the poor townies, granting that the costs are higher, we can't 'cos
the infrastructure can't support it.

I live in a suburb of one of the 'core cities'; we have high crime
levels and the insurance premiums to prove it; I live less than a mile
from a motorway junction yet it takes ten minutes to get onto it in
the mornings; the bus takes forty minutes to get into the city centre.
On top of that, my broadband connection struggles to get 2Mbps. It
sounds like I need to move to the countryside to get better
communications and a lower cost of living.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed"?