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upperholme

Listed below are comments made by upperholme between Friday, 18th July 2008 and Monday, 8th June 2009.

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Making the new BBC Weather site 12:02pm on 08 Jun 2009 All very interesting. Now can we have the old site back please. This new stuff is appalling. It offer so little of real use or value I am amazed it was allowed to be released. I have gone with it over the last few months, and given the benefit of the doubt. But it is now time for you to admit failure, go back to something that works, and start again - assuming you are determined to redesign.
100Mbps broadband - who needs it? 1:06pm on 12 Feb 2009 I'm afraid this article smacks of sloppy journalism, and I had assumed that you were above and beyond that Rory. I know you've done your homework on the fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) issues, and I know that you know about the great work that people like Daniel Heery in Alston, the folks at the Community Broadband Network, and others, are doing on fibre.

This whole debate about 100Mbps and will people use it is rubbish. When broadband first arrived 10 years or more ago, we were all used to 56Kbps modems, and most of us were pootling along OK with that. Now we are all complaining that we can't get 8Mbps or more.

What is needed here is a bit of vision - not much, but a bit. So armed, we could then see the potential that 100Mbps (or more) symmetrical connectivity could deliver in terms of social and economic benefits, especially for more rural communities. Please let us not be diverted by the likes of BT and their opinions about people not needing more than 10-20 Mbps. That sounds to me like the guy from IBM who said the world would probably only need 5 or 6 computers, or the Postmaster General who commented, on the launch of the telephone, that it might be fine for folks in the USA, but in the UK we had plenty of telegraph boys, and so had no need for such stuff.

Why do I get the feeling that the UK will still be argung over whether fibre is actually a good investment or not, while the rest of Europe will be enjoying the return on that investment, while pointing and laughing at the quaint Brits and our strange obsession with copper?
Brown and fast broadband 3:42pm on 06 Jan 2009 The simple short-sighted approach to public sector intervention in fibre is indeed to simply hand the cash to BT, Virgin, or both, and oblige them to deliver a minimum to every citizen that wants it. By taking this approach the government will miss one of the single biggest opportunities of the century, and also contradict their own rhetoric (OK, nothing new there). By using the funding more cleverly to empower local communities across the UK to own and control their own fibre infrastructure, Gordon will create a much richer and more sustainable telecoms infrastructure, delivering far wider socio-economic benefits than are achievable simply by lining the pockets of BT/Virgin shareholders. It's a tougher ask, a bigger challenge, but with a concomitantly larger pay-off. I know which option I prefer. (http://colnevalleyfibre.net)
Broadband poverty - a 1% problem? 3:47pm on 18 Jul 2008 Rory

If you want to learn about the truth of the UK broadband "not-spots", and the real potential for FTTx in the UK, then you should talk to Malcolm Corbett from the Community Broadband Network (www.broadband.coop).

BT's recent announcement on fibre investment is a fudge designed as a holding position to keep the politicians onside thinking that the market will solve the issue (which it won't) while the haggling with Ofcom over a return on the investment can continue, and also opens the door for the RDAs and local authorities to come through waving bundles of cash.

Why invest in 40Mbps technology when it will have to replaced in 10 years with true FTTH at 100Mbps plus anyway? It simply does not stack up (unless you are BT, that is).

Broadband, and fibre, is an essential utility today, in the same way that electricity is. To have people, regardless of their location, that do not have access is to create an unfair playing field with areas that will suffer increasingly from economic decline.

Connectivity is the new real estate. Businesses simply will locate where they can get good connectivity, taking jobs and prosperity with them.

The real solution, as neatly set out by Malcolm Matson over at www.oplan.org is to create a new network of networks, each owned and run by the community it serves, interconnected with each other and the world, and open for the private sector service providers to run the services across.

FTTH is a disruptive technology. History tells us that whenever a new disruptive technology arrives, the incumbent players do not work in the interests of the citizen consumer in enabling that technology. They act - quite reasonably - to protect their vested interests. Hence BT's plans to roll out FTTC, when FTTH is what will deliver the sustainable benefit that consumers and communities really need.

My advice to Adrian Linney: start a campaign to create a community owned fibre network in his locality. If he waits for BT, he may well be waiting a very long time.

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