Government controlled Broadband eh!

[Evans Electric]

Well vote Labour , they want State control of BT   or  Open Reach  ....give us all "free"   Broadband   prior to taking control of the internet .  

No thank you  Mr Corblimey .      With the State giving out "Free" broadband  all the other providers would be going bust for a start .... they'd have to be paid off  from our taxes.  !!   

I remember State control ,   The State controlled all communication  , like the Postal system , the Parcel system  , the telephone system , telegram system ,(GPO)  one channel television , one company radio ,  a huge slice of road transport   (British Road Services)  ,  all the railway system ,  with local control over bus services and  educating children  &  High street restaurants ( As in The British Restaurant).   ....The Coal Board  , British Steel , British Waterways,  CEGB,  Gas Board,  all the Electric Boards & the Water Board.

 

[ProDave]

Read the small print.

They pledge to give free fibre BB by 2030.

To achieve that, they need to win the next THREE elections, next month, December 2024 and December 2029, to be the party in power in early 2030

I suspect there is more chance of me winning the lottery than that happening.

Just undeliverable "promises" that they KNOW they will have plenty of excuses to not deliver (like they are no longer in power)  Your BT shares are safe.  But plenty of gullible voters will fall for the con.

 

[Evans Electric]

But plenty of gullible voters will fall for the con.

And THATs what its all about !!

 

[Murdoch]

I don’t trust any of them.

pledges, or promises.... nobody gets held to account when these aren’t achieved

election bribes is all they are

and the broadband one ..... how can a party that centres itself in Islington really have any idea what is going on in deepest mid wales, or on the Hebrides, 

what a sorry state our politicians have brought us too

Read the small print.

They pledge to give free fibre BB by 2030.

To achieve that, they need to win the next THREE elections, next month, December 2024 and December 2029, to be the party in power in early 2030

I suspect there is more chance of me winning the lottery than that happening.

Just undeliverable "promises" that they KNOW they will have plenty of excuses to not deliver (like they are no longer in power)  Your BT shares are safe.  But plenty of gullible voters will fall for the con.

The UK will be back at the polls next June 

 

[Sharpend]

They’ve brought us too or do we just allow it all to go on, any other country they’d have been protests galore until things changed.  The British make a lot of noise with very little action. 
 

KEEP COMPLAINING AND REMAINING!! 

 

[ProDave]

They’ve brought us too or do we just allow it all to go on, any other country they’d have been protests galore until things changed.  The British make a lot of noise with very little action. 
 

KEEP COMPLAINING AND REMAINING!! 

Part of me shares that sentiment.

BUT look at what is happening in Hong Kong. Am I the only one that cannot see that ending well?

 

[Sharpend]

More to the point which country is going to move in to take control when it goes belly up? 

 

[Evans Electric]

BUT look at what is happening in Hong Kong. Am I the only one that cannot see that ending well?

Ah  !  China  ... the  government that turns the troops upon their own students .                I don't see it ending well ... we'll send a gunboat  no doubt. 

 

[binky]

I am of the opinion certain things are better run by a single company, possibly the state, but not necessarily. Our broadband is worse than that of Madagascar ffs!  Trouble with private comanies is that they will never spend the money to provide a universal service to all the UK, so, if you take the Post Office for example, they will deliver letters and parcels to the Outer Hebrides, can't see any of the other competitors doing that. And as for water, are we really ever going to run multiple pipes to every house to have proper competition???

Now, I also remember the old days of state run services, those days are long gone, competition has changed and steamlined these services, so if they were renationalised I can't really see them changing much or going back to old, fat inefficient services they used to be, but it would be nice to remove the profit for foreign companies on essential supplies and the flow of money out of the UK. 

I also like the idea of some proper investment in the UK, we are lagging behind the competition far too much and dying a slow death - saw the same ****e when I was in industry. The sales company made all the money and starved the manufacturing side of investment with the inevitable result the sales team stayed and the factories shut down as they bought cheaper from China...

 

[Murdoch]

^^ regarding 5g what most people don’t realise is the vast numbers of masts that will be required, by each network to give the necessary coverage ....

i was working on the on the edge of Guildford town centre yesterday ... no mobile signal all day, no 3G, no 4 g...... bliss

 

[binky]

^^ regarding 5g what most people don’t realise is the vast numbers of masts that will be required, by each network to give the necessary coverage ....

so if you had a single company running the masts....it makes more sense than multiple sets of masts imho.

 

[Murdoch]

so if you had a single company running the masts....it makes more sense than multiple sets of masts imho.

Yes - that or force the networks to allow proper roaming inside the UK

but there is some mast sharing in remote areas

 

[Sidney]

The large masts are owned by a small amount of companies such as Arqiva and MBNL, they rent out space on them for the network providers such as O2, EE, Vodafone and Three. These providers then lease out network space to companies such as Tesco, Virgin etc.

5G requires that the antennas and feeders are replaced and new base stations installed where the existing ones are. Currently they run 2,3 and 4G from the base stations, the newer ones will run 2, 3, 4 & 5G. Only difference being is the higher frequencies required by 4 & 5G mean coverage will be reduced so rural areas should still get decent 2 & 3G coverage but in built up areas the faster technologies will e better. Add to this the current increase of microcells being installed in built up areas capacity will be greatly increased. These microcells are currently being installed in the top of phone boxes, under shop fascias etc and only require a broadband connection to operate. 

Oddly enough when 4G came in both O2 and Vodafone streamlined their costs and decided to site share, this was a complete headache to install as it was double the work but the money was good. Now O2 and Vodafone have fallen out and the shared sites are being ripped out, that's costing a few quid...

 

[Sharpend]

Wonderful, so what you’re saying the 4g signal that we’ve only just got out in our rural area we are going to lose. So this supports my theory- the network providers of mobile phones which are a necessary requisite of living in the middle of nowhere for emergencies are not as important as the city people who only really want data to keep in touch with their emails every other second. 
perhaps if I became a celebrity I’d do away with my mobile so having no signal wouldn’t be an issue! 

 

[Sidney]

You shouldn't lose 4G, this would remain. More than likely 3G will go to free up frequencies for 5G leaving 2G for voice, 4 & 5G for voice and data. 2G is still preferred for voice as it's a solid technology with a large transmission radius due to its low frequency.

Just been given an interesting article on LinkedIn about the Labour plan for free internet:

I don't normally do party politics on social media but the UK Labour Party Internet policy announced yesterday is an interesting industry development that needs comment. 

It is difficult to build a list of every single active Internet Service provider in the UK as the market is so dynamic. It ranges from BT at one end, though cable companies like Virgin Media to small, sometimes local providers like https://www.wightfibre.com/ who have invested in fibre infrastructure to serve their local communities. 

A good place to start is the fact that there are 880 members who exchange traffic on the London Internet Exchange linx.net. That number isn't an accurate reflection of the number of organisations providing service to UK homes and businesses though. LINX in London and other UK cities is a major international hub. Many organisations around the world bring their Internet traffic through the UK as we are globally significant. Perhaps a third of the 880 members, say 300 are actively engaged in providing general Internet service to UK homes and businesses. 

Another guess could come from the 133 members of the UK Internet Service Providers Association ispa.org.uk/members/, but membership is not comprehensive and some major players are not members. An estimate of well over 200 significant UK Internet service providers is therefore a reasonable number. 

The announcement seems to be about one organisation, BT Openreach, the private organisation that is a part of BT Group and owns much but not all of the last few miles of physical infrastructure outside of major cities all the way to our homes. Crucially it doesn't actually provide Internet service to anyone, only the ducts, poles, copper wire and (small amount of) fiber to our homes and business. 

Our actual Internet service is provided by one of the hundreds of service providers. This includes Openreach parent BT who are just one of the many providers of retail and wholesale service. 

Often these providers buy access to the essential "last mile" copper lines from Openreach but link them back to their own networks. 

UK Internet infrastructure is among the best and certainly most cost effective in the world at the core of the network. In London and major cities a plurality of backbone providers operate competitive high speed fibre networks with lots of capacity. 

Openreach by contrast has historically dragged its heels over fibre to the premises. Its imperative to extract maximum commercial advantage from ownership of existing copper wires to our homes and businesses have perverted public policy and persuaded successive governments to give it public subsidy in rural areas to cement this monopoly through Openreach owned fibre to the cabinet technology which, surprise surprise, locks-in its copper wires.

The rest of the industry (the other ~199 providers who are not BT) are infuriated with this dead-end, slow, copper based approach and numerous competing last mile providers have entered the market. 

Unable to cost-effectively use the duct and pole network that BT Openreach have a monopoly over, they have had to dig new fibre paths but now serve and are planning to serve a large chunk of the country. 

This has by and large been done with private capital as it turns out you can build entire new infrastructures in some areas for less than BT Openreach charge for access to their existing ducts. 

Even in extremely rural areas, organisations like https://b4rn.org.uk/ have proved that it can be cost effective to build high speed fibre to the premises to outlying villages and farms using community initiative for a fraction of the cost Openreach claim they need to charge. 

None of this is happening fast enough, especially in those rural areas. Nationalising Openreach and embarking on an ambitious building programme to equip every premise that doesn't currently have one with a duct capable of carrying fibre service, then providing access to this at a fair, location independent, cost to their choice of ISP would be a transformational idea. 

The part of the announcement that makes no sense at all is the idea that Internet access would then become free. In order to do this, the Government would have to nationalise and consolidate those 200+ providers into one state owned monolith. 

I guess it could instead just put them out of business by launching free state funded alternative, but that would lead to a decade in the courts and collapse of technology investment into the UK. 

Would much of the world bring its Internet traffic through London exchange points, paying tax on that infrastructure after the government had chosen to gut the domestic industry in favour of a single state owned provider? I doubt it. 

There needs to be some serious clarification from Labour about what they are proposing here. There are some well overdue structural changes that we have never had the political will to make which would radically improve the last mile infrastructure in this country. 

Election soundbites of #freebroadband, "make Google and Facebook pay", or "British Broadband for British people" do not cut it. What is the substance of the proposal? 

Link to original article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/free-broadband-rob-pickering/?fbclid=IwAR15645tKrVzcZhusXELYwfc3nGjwatLYm6jIMVauzE6tpzE44nl_YUU0h8

 

[Evans Electric]

Just thinking ....... at some stage in Labour's plan  I , and millions of others  will receive a letter stating my broadband , as of this date , is now free ,  we will only be charging for your landline phone calls .      

 

[Blue Duck]

Part of me shares that sentiment.

BUT look at what is happening in Hong Kong. Am I the only one that cannot see that ending well?

Not just Hong Kong, there is much unrest in other parts of the world at the moment that is not reported by our mainstream media.

Chile 

Iraq

Iran

Bolivia

Ecuador

Peru

Venezuela

Egypt

France

Haiti 

Indonesia

Lebanon

Pakistan

Spain

Holland.

Was approached by members of the Labour party yesterday and told them in no uncertain terms to duck off! 

No chance these tools are getting my vote!

 

[Sharpend]

Not just Hong Kong, there is much unrest in other parts of the world at the moment that is not reported by our mainstream media.

Chile 

Iraq

Iran

Bolivia

Ecuador

Peru

Venezuela

Egypt

France

Haiti 

Indonesia

Lebanon

Pakistan

Spain

Holland.

Was approached by members of the Labour party yesterday and told them in no uncertain terms to duck off! 

No chance these tools are getting my vote!

 I can’t believe you don’t want free broadband Ducky! 

 

[Blue Duck]

They approached me with the stop climate change pitch, so obviously I don't  care about the environment either....

Making me feel like a red neck. :shakehead

 

[Murdoch]

Just thinking ....... at some stage in Labour's plan  I , and millions of others  will receive a letter stating my broadband , as of this date , is now free ,  we will only be charging MUCH MORE for your landline &  phone calls .      

Edited that for you