MSE News: Government promises faster broadband in £830m push 6 December 2010 at 10:36AM in Broadband & Internet Access 20 replies 3K views

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"A plan entitled Britain's Superfast Broadband Future aims to create a "digital hub" in every community by 2015 ..."

Read the full story:
Government promises faster broadband in £830m push

Crowqueen

Caroline Spelman is seriously missing the point if she thinks this is the biggest issue for the countryside - they have cut subsidies to local bus services, so although I would welcome high speed access here, it would be no thanks to them if the local Aldershot-Reading bus was axed and we had to rely on the infrequent and very cursory Reading buses service.

Buses, Caroline, please, not just a virtual "superhighway".

Premier_2

Where's the goverment mustered this £billion (almost) up from?

I thought we had no money ... thats what they always claim when when questioned as to why they are cutting services and putting up taxes.

kwikbreaks

Premier wrote: »

Where's the goverment mustered this £billion (almost) up from?

I thought we had no money ... thats what they always claim when when questioned as to why they are cutting services and putting up taxes.

I vaguely recall hearing that it is money collected as part of the TV licence fee and earmarked for use in the digital switchover but not all used.

liam8282

What is the point in the govt paying £830est for this broadband service?

How is the govt going to get their £830est investment back?

What is going to be so good about the govts bb service, that is going to make the market place ditch their current providers?

People who want or need fast broadband already have it. Virgin already provide it, BT provide it.......

In places you can't get it, like the countryside, it has been proven not to be cost effective to put it there, by companies like Virgin, BT, etc. There are alternatives available so people can still access the internet, although not as good, but there are alternatives.

A better idea would be to scrap the tv licence, make the bbc commercial and scrap the govt broadband service.

Save people the £145.50 a year for the licence, and save the govt wasting our £ on pointless schemes.

JJ_Egan

Are they actually saying what this speed is or are they ignorant of the fact that the majority cannot get the 50 MB they are on about as its with a cable company with limited access .

jje

tifo

and BT had the cheek to ask for some of this money to upgrade its network for faster broadband. Why should the govt pay a private company to do what it should do anyway if it wants to make money from broadband?

Mankysteve

I think people in rural area would juts be happy with 7mb. Reliable 7mb broadband would be nice that doesn't throttle down when there's more than two user on-line.

ILW

What are the major advatages of 50mb, I only get around 5 and it seems to do all that I need.

anotherbaldrick

The government seem to have got the notion from somewhere that making 50 Mb available to everyone will turn the UK into a tiger economy. All I can see is that the on -line gaming nerds will benefit.

kwikbreaks

ILW wrote: »

What are the major advatages of 50mb, I only get around 5 and it seems to do all that I need.

Mostly used for downloading Linux ISOs if you believe what the self admitted heavy users say or 24x7 !!!!!! torrents if you believe others. The truth of course will be somewhere between the two.

In terms of the current internet for straightforward single user browsing there is no real advantage in getting over 2Mbps. Multiple users need a bit more. Multiple video streams more still. The only thing that really benefits from high speed is large downloads and those are usually throttled back during peak periods anyway. If run overnight does it really matter if they take one hour or ten?

So to answer your question - probably no advantage at all for most completely legitimate usage but great for those Linux distros or....