News - Government unveils ‘Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future’

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State support for next-gen broadband gets a makeover, but it still comes down to subsidising BT.

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Read more.

I'm obviously not as mature as I should be at my age. I got a good laugh out of their oopsies over the Minister's name .... not least because I can see myself making the same mistake.

Didnt really spend time to look at the transcript but i must say, this idea about the tax payer forking out ~900million to help a company is a bit silly no?

No offense intended but if you live out in the sticks with no internet then why should i or anyone else be paying for you to get it installed? I live on a main road, i dont ask you to pay for a new house in the country to get away from these roads do i? None of this is a "necessity", what i call a necessity is say food/water/shelter and telephone lines... more recently mobile lines because well it is one of the best ways to solve a problem, i.e got trapped/got mugged/attacked/ injured yourself so everyone should have this! But not internet, should pay for the infrastructure yourself if you want to have convenience.

Now back onto publicly funding BT in general, one of the worst mistakes you could make tbh. BT aren't really a good provider for broadband these days, the whole point of a private business is to not have it funded by a flipping tax payer. Isnt the owner of BT one of the richest men in the work? Why doesnt he fork out for his owns company expansion! Its an unfair advantage for BT over everyone else, doesnt matter if they can use the network (o2 etc) as they still are going to be paying bt for it, albeit Virgin come out worst as their network would get left behind due to lack of funding!. If tax payer money does get spent then it should be spread evenly over any network that doesnt piggyback off BT, so like VM and a couple of others... and it should also be payed back later on because well BT or what ever would make a killing over the next few years since they would have expanded their customer base massively.

Oh how politics pee me off!.

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Originally Posted by Saracen

I'm obviously not as mature as I should be at my age. I got a good laugh out of their oopsies over the Minister's name .... not least because I can see myself making the same mistake.

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You think you've got maturity problems? I misread the title on the first page of the piece ("A cunning stunt?") and thought that my inadvertent Spoonerism was, in fact, editorial on the ability of the minister concerned. :embarrassed:

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Originally Posted by Hicks12

No offense intended but if you live out in the sticks with no internet then why should i or anyone else be paying for you to get it installed? ... But not internet, should pay for the infrastructure yourself if you want to have convenience.

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Why stop at internet, how about making any road outside the M25 a toll road - after all, that's the way it used to be done 200-300 years ago. :p
The point that the government is trying to make is that there's so many government services that are (best?) delivered via the internet. So if they move these to online-only then it's going to (probably?) save a lot of cash. Plus, if you don't go for universal provision, you get into the nasty position of have's (London, Home Counties and city centres) and have nots (everywhere else) - depending on where in the country you are. It's also a lot more convenient for the person concerned - try getting a car tax disk in person v's via the web.
What I'd argue is that Labour were right - you don't need "high speed" internet for eGov, anything more than - for example - 10Mb/s isn't necessary. I'd go further - a stable, consistent 4Mb/s could probably work okay. My definition of "high speed", by the way, is 50Mb/s and above, (in my case VM's 100Mb/s and 200Mb/s services). I'm on the 10Mb/s service and it's fine.

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Originally Posted by Hicks12

Now back onto publicly funding BT in general, one of the worst mistakes you could make tbh. ...If tax payer money does get spent then it should be spread evenly over any network that doesnt piggyback off BT, so like VM and a couple of others... and it should also be payed back later on because well BT or what ever would make a killing over the next few years since they would have expanded their customer base massively.

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Couldn't agree more about BT - lazy, and (to me at least) too busy trying to bulk up their bosses paypacket's at the penalty of the business, (busy firing the engineers last time I heard). And personally I quite like the idea of it being a "loan" rather than a gift - the latter (to my nasty suspicious mind) is more likely to be squandered in "fact finding" and "studies". I'd go further, give BT, VM etc the money, but insist on this buying a certain number of shares in the company concerned - after all, if it's good enough for the banks?
(Apologies for the fractured nature of the reply - need to shoot off back to work!)

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Originally Posted by crossy

You think you've got maturity problems? I misread the title on the first page of the piece ("A cunning stunt?") and thought that my inadvertent Spoonerism was, in fact, editorial on the ability of the minister concerned. :embarrassed:

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Deliberate potential spoonerism :mrgreen:

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Originally Posted by Hicks12

No offense intended but if you live out in the sticks with no internet then why should i or anyone else be paying for you to get it installed?

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Because we grow your food and if you hack us off, we'll not allow you to eat.

Gah, if the government, and thus the tax payer is the only entity which is driving innovation, then why doesn't the government just renationalise BT? It's not as if they ever let go of the tax payers teat in the first place.

When I hear "superfast broadband" I always chuckle a little, because I know in 5 years time we're going to look back on the speeds we're getting now, and wonder what was super about it. xD

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Originally Posted by abaxas

Because we grow your food and if you hack us off, we'll not allow you to eat.

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Damn, did see that one comming... but

My foods from everywhere but england ;). Or thats how most supermarkets role now a days.

:D