Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tickmike]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWCt21KYP5c

[AArdvark]

Thank you!

Loved it.
I am sure BT didn't 

Unfortunately, in most non-rural locations that is the problem. No access.
As we know in some rural places like 'B4RN' laying your own fibre is doable if people work together. Access is via your neighbours.

[WWWombat]

What an absolutely bizarre interview.

A pretty accurate start, with the history of the government wanting competition from cable companies (though no link to the present, about where the presence of competition has brought us).

In the middle, Peter then starts to go for the jugular ... about how fibre is the only possibility for the future, and how it is totally impossible to rely on a "2 century old technology". How farmers are digging it for themselves.

But at the end, he loses the plot, and advocates a whole host of start-ups who will give a hybrid fibre-wireless setup.

The last point is perfectly sensible, perfectly practical ... but it utterly destroys his earlier argument.

[Weaver]

Nutty.

A nightmare vision. A chaotic load of self-appointed monopoly telcos. No way should public money be be given to create monopolies, and we need backhaul behind last-mile services ehich has to come from somewhere. I think the current wholesale model is the right one, with BT providing a coordinated national joined-up service whilst we still have our choice of ISP.

Locally there have been many instances where the government has created monopolies, several exchanges had a Scotnet-or-nothing 500k ADSL service, a bloody disgrace. In the Western Isles there was (is?) a monopoly slow and expensive RF service which attracted a heap of complaints. I was considering buying a house there and was dreading the lack of proper connectivity.

[WWWombat]

The two-century thing intrigued me, so I went looking...

First commercial telegraph system looks to have been 1837, for railways comms between Euston and Camden. This failed to win the contract, losing to a pneumatic+whistle system!

First transatlantic telegraph line was 1858, though it only worked for a few weeks (at 0.1 words per minute). A durable replacement happened in 1866, working at 8 words per minute.

Surprisingly, the first transatlantic telephone cable only happened 100 years later, 1956, with 36 channels, carried over coax pairs.

As ever, bandwidth development over the material seems to be key, not the material itself.