Labour Broadband plans are based on current Gov estimates

[SirGalahad]

https://assets.publishing.service.g...data/file/727890/FTIR_Annex_A_-_FE_Report.pdf

Page 11

To roll out Fibre to the Premises under the current system will cost

£22bn for a 75% coverage
£20.3bn for 100% coverage as a national monopoly
£20.3bn for 100% coverage using a mixed franchise / regional monopoly
£32.3bn for 100% coverage in an enhanced competition model

Labour says the annual running cost of the fibre will be £230m which they would raise from the large tech companies like Google etc.

 

[motorbiking]

Did you read it in detail - they don't recommend the National monopoly option.

Rough numbers suggest it would take about 8-10bn annually out of the economy and pensions.

Its easy to say tax the tech giants, but if it was that easy govts would do it.

 

[festive]

Indeed BT CEO reckons 100billion if you include the rollout and nationalisation..

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-b...-broadband-may-cost-100-billion-idUKKBN1XP0NO

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s opposition Labour Party’s plans to nationalise parts of telecoms provider BT’s (BT.L) network and provide free full fibre broadband may cost more than £100 billion, BT chief executive said.

“These are very, very ambitious ideas and the Conservative Party have their own ambitious idea for full fibre for everyone by 2025 and how we do it is not straight forward,” Chief Executive Philip Jansen told the BBC.

“It needs funding, it is very big numbers, so we are talking 30 to 40 billion pounds.. and if you are giving it away over an eight year time frame it is a another 30 or 40 billion pounds. You are not short of 100 billion pounds.”

 

[Notch7]

festive thinks the UK should go back to dial up internet

 

[motorbiking]

Hands up who things governments are good at this?

 

[mattylad]

And what would we actually get from this?
Probably fibre to the property but the lowest speed and the lowest data allowance.
For some that may be fine, but in my house we download the whole internet at twice a week
Last weekend I transferred over 150gb of data in one night due to the need to backup my minecraft server, Im not gonna be able to do that one whatever the government plans for Im sure.

 

[Notch7]

Hands up who things governments are good at this?

Good at what?

Coming up with crackpot ideas?

On a serious note, I think there are 2 sides to the privatisation vs state ownership models -both have merits done well.

On broadband I can see government involvement is needed to push fast broadband, but we would be better to follow the South Korean model -government collaboration.

 

[festive]

festive thinks the UK should go back to dial up internet

Nigel Notch the dinosaur drinks mushroom tea all day and dreams about his forum friends

 

[SirGalahad]

It all depends on how much FTTP rollout affects GDP.

The report is a good starting point for debate on deciding how we want to move forward. How important is high speed fibre to the country as a whole?

HS2 or Free High Speed Broadband - which will have a greater impact on GDP?

 

[motorbiking]

I can’t really think of anything I could do with a 200mb connection that I cacti do with 80 from a home usage point of view. If we lag behind I reckon it’s because the demand isn’t there.

If you are going to do it. Might as well do mobile too. Then you can use the router to do both.

 

[Notch7]

Fibre to the cabinet now reaches majority of homes, over 95% I think.

I would have thought the 35mb - 80mb would satisfy most users needs.
Most people would be happy they didnt suffer dropped connections and could get through to customer services when they do get problems.
Support from from all suppliers is abysmal, esp untalk untalk, minus net......

Will having speeds of 1gb plus really make much difference to the UK?

 

[Mottie]

When we stay in cottages in the Peak District, the Internet has been as low as 3 or 4 in some places. That’s still been enough for us to use our firestick for streaming, browse the net, make WiFi calls etc.
I've got a mate who has to have Virgin cable with something like 200 speed. He doesn’t use it as much as we do, I'm sure he only has it just so he can brag about it!

 

[motorbiking]

I was with Be, got sold to o2. Who then sold us to sky, from sky to plusnet who basically rob you once you contract is up. Just moved to Vodafone and while my other place seems fine on super fast 1 this super fast 2 seems very unreliable. Currently on my second router and this one is dead on arrival.

Would I trust the govt to do it better - no way. At least I can switch if I want.

 

[festive]

Fibre to the cabinet now reaches majority of homes, over 95% I think.

I would have thought the 35mb - 80mb would satisfy most users needs.
Most people would be happy they didnt suffer dropped connections and could get through to customer services when they do get problems.
Support from from all suppliers is abysmal, esp untalk untalk, minus net......

Will having speeds of 1gb plus really make much difference to the UK?

Agree here 80mb or so is fine for most customers, however like most things as you say it's the quality of service, the latency/jitter you can have 1.21 jiggawatts of broadband but no good if it's up and down like a whore's draws. Some of them you mention are a pile o sh' when it comes to qos, yes especially untalk. 'Plosnet' peer off BT so they should be close to same network quality.

Anyway i digress, yes customer service from all of them is absolutely shocking, BT possibly the worse, the irony of them being the worst at communicating with their customers, i so want this group to be chopped into little pieces i despise them immensely.

 

[SirGalahad]

Looks like Thatcher hand was involved in messing it all up. What surprise.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

"In 1986, I managed to get fibre to the home cheaper than copper and we started a programme where we built factories for manufacturing the system. By 1990, we had two factories, one in Ipswich and one in Birmingham, where were manufacturing components for systems to roll out to the local loop".

At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do.

"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.

"Our colleagues in Korea and Japan, who were working with quite closely at the time, stood back and looked at what happened to us in amazement. What was pivotal was that they carried on with their respective fibre rollouts. And, well, the rest is history as they say.

"What is quite astonishing is that a very similar thing happened in the United States. The US, UK and Japan were leading the world. In the US, a judge was appointed by Congress to break up AT&T. And so AT&T became things like BellSouth and at that point, political decisions were made that crippled the roll out of optical fibre across the rest of the western world, because the rest of the countries just followed like sheep.

"This created a very stop-start roll-out which doesn't work with fibre optic - it needs to be done en masse. You needed economy of scale. You could not roll out fibre to the home for 1% of Europe and make it economic, you had to go whole hog.