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Author Topic: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.  (Read 7123 times)

tickmike

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The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« on: April 02, 2014, 02:44:06 PM »

The Joys Of Living In The Countryside, this is what I have been saying to our village parish council.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26819483
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kitz

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #1 on: April 03, 2014, 12:54:26 AM »

I hate to nit-pick, but am I missing new something here.

I know BT are getting a slating because they are winning all the contracts, but when other companies dont place any bids Im not quite sure what the other option could be.  Any company tending a bid for rural regions dont know if its going to be profitable or not.   
If there was a possibility that broadband in rural areas could bring in a profit then Im pretty sure that the likes of Virgin and Sky would soon be putting in bids.

Are we therefore to say that BT shouldnt get any subsidy, just because they are BT?  At the end of the day BT have to make a profit too and account to their shareholders, and without the subsidies then they too may bypass their area.
BT has always worked on the one price for all basis whether you are rural or urban with the urban areas subsidising the more rural areas, but no company is going to want to go where it the costs arent justifyable.

Im quite happy to slate BT when they do something wrong, but seriously if I lived in a rural area, I can hand on heart say I cannot think of any company who could do FTTC much better.  FTTH is a different matter and subject for debate again, plus you also have to think of the millions of wasted subsidies when a company cannot make it pay. -  If companies such as DR struggle in urban areas like sheffield imagine how hard it must be for rural regions to maintain some sort of profit.   B4RN is different they are in an enviable situation of having some top uk experts in their area and working on the project for free.

IMHO too much government money has been tied up and wasted in red-tape surrounding BDUK.     

Its also interesting that you can also read that report in 2 ways. 
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sheddyian

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #2 on: April 03, 2014, 02:34:48 AM »

Imagine if BT wasn't a profit-led company, but was an arm of the government.  Which was tasked to provide universal broadband at a specified speed to everyone in the country.  Not at a profit, nor a loss, but as a service.  Because that universal service can be used to run a business. a hobby, a broadband support forum.

OK, maybe you might argue against that - "arm of government" etc.  Perhaps it could be at arms length, away from political interference beyond tasking it with provision.

I'd like BT to be able to provide a service to all, irrespective of distance.

Ian


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burakkucat

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #3 on: April 03, 2014, 05:37:32 PM »

How about as a subsidiary of GCHQ:angel:
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Black Sheep

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #4 on: April 03, 2014, 07:02:22 PM »

Imagine if BT wasn't a profit-led company, but was an arm of the government.  Which was tasked to provide universal broadband at a specified speed to everyone in the country.  Not at a profit, nor a loss, but as a service.  Because that universal service can be used to run a business. a hobby, a broadband support forum.

OK, maybe you might argue against that - "arm of government" etc.  Perhaps it could be at arms length, away from political interference beyond tasking it with provision.

I'd like BT to be able to provide a service to all, irrespective of distance.

Ian

Yes, yes, yes …… Imagine Thatcher had never existed, and sold of all the family silver. There would possibly have been a Broadband USO put in place alongside the existing PSTN USO ??
Plus, and far more important, I'd still be on a 'Final Salary Pension Scheme' !!.

Great post from Kitz above, but I don't know how many times she has to compose and post it on the forums ?? The same debate has been covered many times in similar threads, with kitz pointing out the same bullet-points. In a nutshell …… without BT, you wouldn't get FTTC if you are rural, and it is a non-profit making venture !! Smell them thar roses.  ;) :)
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #5 on: April 03, 2014, 08:21:58 PM »

The point I always need to make in this debate is that I genuinely think the perception of 'rural' areas may be slightly off-kilter between contributing parties.

If we were talking about people living in the middle of back of beyond in some sparsely populated part of Britain, that would be one thing.   But BT and the Government, in the deal that they have struck, are being allowed to disregard huge swathes of densely packed population, often just an hours' drive from London (hence why they are so densely populated).

If BT didn't want to take the criticism, they could have walked away from the negotiating table.   But they struck the deal, took the money, and now must live with the legacy.

Just my opinion (but I'll not stop expressing it  :))

On a related note, somebody recently suggested to me, and I don't know if this is fact or fiction, but the claim was... For the cost of HS2, we could furnish every home in Britain, no matter how remote, with fttp.  ???
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Black Sheep

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #6 on: April 03, 2014, 09:58:07 PM »

'If BT didn't want to take the criticism, they could have walked away from the negotiating table.   But they struck the deal, took the money, and now must live with the legacy'.

Hi 7LM, I completely understand folk's frustration as to how the FTTC/P programme is being rolled out. I'd feel the same if my area had been overlooked. It's human nature.

I don't understand the comment above though, given what has already been said on this and other similar threads ?? If BT walked away from the negotiating table, no-one in these bespoke areas would have a hope of getting VDSL services ??
 
Of course they are going to come in for criticism, they can't please millions of EU's in one go. One area will be the very first in the UK to get FTTC, another area will be the very last. Then there's your predicament, I'm guessing BT don't feel it will be cost-effective to pursue FTTC/P installation with stand-alone funding, so they wont. It's not done by flipping a coin, it's done on individual business cases.

As has been mentioned many times before, even with government backed (BDUK) monies, ONLY BT are left at the table, because most predicted dates for making profit are deemed to be 20yrs into the future !! That is why the other bidders buggered off to the pub.

For the umpteenth time of telling (not aimed at you 7LM  :) ), BT are a business. They have to make profits, just like ANY other business on this planet that wants to remain solvent.
 
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #7 on: April 03, 2014, 10:30:13 PM »

If BT walked away from the negotiating table, no-one in these bespoke areas would have a hope of getting VDSL services ??

But that is the whole point.  As things stand, with the deal BT agreed with the Govt, we don't have a hope (*) and never will.   Not next year, not in 5 years, the current plan is that about 6 million people in Britain will not ever get VDSL.  That is never, no hope, ever.

I would not asking for fttp btw.   My home abuts a cross roads with a large moden estate stretching out on the other side, about 400 homes within a few hundred yards.  Why not FTTC then?

* Our best chance I can see, and it is a slim chance, would be if something like this ever happened, and they could be persuaded that areas of the UK such as the M4 corridor qualified for similar aid as 'developing world'  ::)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/27/lasers-satellites-and-drones-how-facebook-got-3-million-people-online/

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4candles

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #8 on: April 03, 2014, 10:43:51 PM »

Yes, yes, yes …… Imagine Thatcher had never existed, and sold of all the family silver. There would possibly have been a Broadband USO put in place alongside the existing PSTN USO ??
Plus, and far more important, I'd still be on a 'Final Salary Pension Scheme' !!.

No 'possibly' about it - in the early eighties that was BT's intention - albeit at that time it was going to be CTTH - 'coax to the home'. No doubt it would have become what we now know as FTTH, given the way that technology was rapidly evolving then...

However, Mrs T  >:D  decreed that telecommunications must be a 'free market'. Yeah right - like water, gas, electricity and rail  ::)

I'm all for the 'free market' in general, but not for the basic national infrastructure.
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BritBrat

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2014, 07:37:10 AM »

Do you think any of us will have any internet connection  when the power lines go off?

No private company wanted to invest in new power stations so who is going to keep the lights and anything else that uses electricity going.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2014, 07:43:05 AM by BritBrat »
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kitz

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #10 on: April 04, 2014, 09:10:52 AM »

Quote
but the claim was... For the cost of HS2, we could furnish every home in Britain, no matter how remote, with fttp.

Ive heard several times before that the costs of HS2 could be better used towards the deployment of FTTP, but I dont know if its a like for like figure.    In fact I dont think Ive ever seen an estimate of how much it would cost to deploy FFTC to everyone.  Ive seen figures that would say something like 90% etc.

Just out of interest..  the estimated cost of HS2 is £43 billion.   In comparison the estimated cost for Jersey to go FTTH is somewhere in the region of £42 million.   How would that equate to the UK.. anyone any good at maths and want to come up with some ballpark figures.   Yeah I know Jersey doesnt have any real obsticals such as the Lakes, Pennies, scottish highlands and welsh regions etc..  would it would be an interesting figure to play with.

TBH I really dont know it could be approached.  I agree it needs to be government lead and funded, but not in the way BDUK has done. FTTC is never going to be able to reach 100% of the population.  I think the UK should be looking at other technologies for the more remote regions.  Satellite would probably be more appropriate now that costs are beginning to come down.

As regards to what 7LM says about the 'inbetween' areas, I wholeheartedly agree in that too much of the population is being left behind.
The problem with putting everything out to tender is that it wastes so much money in red tape, and no outside private company is going to take the unprofitable areas. :(   
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #11 on: April 04, 2014, 10:01:21 AM »

Yeah I know Jersey doesnt have any real obsticals such as the Lakes, Pennies, scottish highlands and welsh regions etc..   

Yep, in this age of austerity pennies are the biggest obstacle of all.  ;)

Aren't spell checkers wonderful?  On OS/X Xcode IDE, even the source control commit messages are spell checked and auto-corrected.  You often want to quote the name of some non-dictionary word for a code variable in these messages, it can be great fun looking back over your commits and seeing what went unnoticed.  :D
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #12 on: April 04, 2014, 11:14:16 AM »

Just out of interest..  the estimated cost of HS2 is £43 billion.   In comparison the estimated cost for Jersey to go FTTH is somewhere in the region of £42 million.   How would that equate to the UK.. anyone any good at maths and want to come up with some ballpark figures.   Yeah I know Jersey doesnt have any real obsticals such as the Lakes, Pennies, scottish highlands and welsh regions etc..  would it would be an interesting figure to play with.

Rising to the challenge…

It seems to me that there are two basic ways of making a comparison twixt UK and Jersey… by area, and by population..

By area…
Jersey = circa 45 sq mi. UK =circa 90k sq mi.  Both figures lifted from web, but let's assume they are correct.  Thus, the projected cost of UK would be £42million x 90k/45 = ~£84 billion.

By population
Jersey = circa 100k, UK circa 64million.  Again, I'm assuming the web can't be wrong   :D.
Thus the projected cost would be £42million x 64million/100k = ~ £27 billion.

I would therefore speculate that the true figure may be between extremes of £27 billion to £84 billion, and I therefore consider the claim to be credible, that we could furnish everybody with FTTH for the cost of HS2.   It would be even better if we'd started a few years ago before FTTC rollout began, as we could have saved the cost of FTTC, which does not seem to be even  coming close to universally solving the problem of slow UK broadband. 

I am certainly of the opinion that money spent on rail infrastructure, if not exactly money down the drain, is simply not good value.  The town of Reading recently got a nice new railway station.  I've been there and it is very nice indeed, replacing the previous nice new station that was opened by the Queen in the 1990s.  But it is still just a small provincial railway station, albeit one that that is set aside from most as (when I visited) the escalators were working lifts were clean, and it has toilets that are not yet vandalised.  Like all railway stations of course, most of the (brand new) ticket barriers were acting up, with human intervention to let people through.

Reading's new station cost almost £1 billion.  To put that in perspective, it is about twice the building cost of the Shard, and about twice the building cost of the Scottish Parliament building. One could be forgiven for looking at the three and wondering, where on Earth did the Reading station money actually go?  So much, for so little, in comparison. :o
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c6em

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #13 on: April 06, 2014, 10:41:05 AM »

But that is the whole point.  As things stand, with the deal BT agreed with the Govt, we don't have a hope (*) and never will.   Not next year, not in 5 years, the current plan is that about 6 million people in Britain will not ever get VDSL.  That is never, no hope, ever.

Join the crowd as they say.
The two main cabinets in my village are not to be upgraded under BDUK.
They are approximately 500 yards from cable run ducts from the exchange to other cabinets in adjacent villages which are being upgraded....so hardly a logistical nightmare to get fibre to.  Both have power from lamp posts available within about 30 yards - so again no problem there.
Number of residences served on these two is 228 for one, 187 in the other.

Interestingly the cab on edge of village nearest to exchange (so already having the best speeds) but only serving 100 properties is being upgraded....well that's nice isn't it.
So let's work on the logic here.....as on the face of it the smallest number of people with already the best speeds are getting the upgrade while the rest on the lowest speeds are not.  Precisely the opposite of what BDUK was intended to do.

Significantly the sole cab' being upgraded has the highest population density close to it. So of the 100 or so lines, near to 100% will actually be able to achieve true SFBB speeds if they took up the service.  The other two cabs have a much more spread out population density as evidenced by their service areas being very much larger.
Checking the cumulative % metrics for the 228 line cab I find that just 25% of residences are within 500 meters of it, 60% within 1000m, and 69% within 1500m.  This is significantly lower than the National Average of 60% within 500m, 80% in 1000m and 98% within 1500m. 
You also need to factor in the universal use of Aluminum cable round here.

So our conclusion is rather than logistical difficulties, cost etc the no-upgrade decision is more due to the fact that a limited number of residences which would be able to get a true SFBB from the upgrades.
This leads us to the startling concept that FTTC is not suitable for these cabs/service area due to the way they were laid out in the ?1960?'s, and until some future technology such as FTTdP or G.Fast or full FTTP comes along we will be on ADSL2+ for the foreseeable future.

Mind you this is all not half as bad as a compact village in another county with a central cabinet serving all 100+ or so properties:  ideal for FTTC. The snag is they are miles from anywhere including the exchange so currently get around 0.7Mbps and also are not being upgraded under BDUK.  Quite how they are going to be given the minimum 2Mbps promised for those left out under BDUK/FTTC program they wait to see.


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kitz

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Re: The Joys Of Living In The Countryside.
« Reply #14 on: April 07, 2014, 12:36:55 PM »

Quote
Jersey = circa 45 sq mi. UK =circa 90k sq mi.  Both figures lifted from web, but let's assume they are correct.  Thus, the projected cost of UK would be £42million x 90k/45 = ~£84 billion.

Thank you 7LM for doing that - those are the figures which I thought may be interesting to compare. 
I know that the UK has a lot more areas that are difficult to reach, so the costs will be a lot higher when it comes to regions like Wales/Scottish Highlands/Pennines etc.

I dont think population would be anywhere as near a guide to real price as area would be,  as we have some busy cities where the population is a lot denser... but at least it is some sort of indication.
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