fibre optic line petition sign all

[TiG]

Upgrading physical installed technology from the exchange to the home to cable is stupid, not cost effective and really doesn't benefit anyone at all. Fibre from the exchange is sensible but I can't see any reason why anyone would want to have fibre to the house. Why do you want 100 Meg/Gig connections to your house?, nothing is going to sustain you this kind of transfer. In respect

Sure its fine in new housing estates, but you've got to remember that all our legacy kit would need ripping out and starting again, There is no reason to Force this onto BT. BT isn't a public service, its a commercial company and at no point would they be able to make this money back due to the monopoly commission stopping them getting the money back.

As for comparing to third world countries, how many of them even have any fixed infrastructure?, by understanding was their opinion was ignore all fixed and go mobile data. Cost of implementation is much lower and doesn't burden them with huge costs of digging stuff up.

Backbone is where fibre is at, i can't see the justification for the local loop being required to be anything special.

TiG

[Zak33]

There is no reason to Force this onto BT. BT isn't a public service, its a commercial company and at no point would they be able to make this money back due to the monopoly commission stopping them getting the money back.

Backbone is where fibre is at, i can't see the justification for the local loop being required to be anything special.

TiG

both points very valid.

I'm suprised how many houses still suffer bad connections, but I tend to blame the ISP's more than BT's network, (look at Orange and Virgin/NTL for low happyness factor and uber drop out)

And guess what.....? It all boils down to costs. I pay £25 per month for Zen and £25 per month to Orange for my mobile.

I could up my mobile phone contract with Orange by £5 to the £30 for FREE broadband.....and I don't?

Why....? I hear the shouts....WHY DONT YOU SAVE £20 per month Zak....are you MAD?

Cos I believe the REASON my Zen line rarely drops, and the REASON it's so stable, is because I PAY for the priveledge.

And to get this uber cable infrastructure that is being bandied about I don't think would give me that much better service.

I'd love to see thr Board Room meeting at BT:
MD stands up, acting Head of Project Cable Overlay

"SO guys....we need to rip out every inch of the billion trillion miles of copper cable, and replace it, this Thursday, with Fibre Optic. Keith...tell me.....is your dept ready"

[aidanjt]

I agree with much of what you're saying TiG, the point of the petition is for the government to give BT incentives to implement a fibre network with the idea of FTTH later.

It's a long term solution, not a quick stop to omgz-im-going-so-fast bandwidth. And it's not *that* expensive, if it was you wouldn't have huge trunks running across the atlantic.

[Splash]

@Splash: Why should the government put pressure on BT to upgrade their network to something half decent?.. Well, they sold off BT along with that very same infrastructure included and made them the biggest monopoly in the country, that monopoly means that they can sit back and rake in money without reinvestment and continue to do so as long as they please, which they're doing anyway. It was the governments irresponsible selling of publicly invested and run services, it's their job to regulate the same if they're incapable of regulating themselves, that's why you have ofcom in the first place.

You just answered your own question in my eyes. Since the government sold off BT THEY NO LONGER CONTROL IT. BT are controlled by market forces now, simple as.

It boils down further for me - the main reason I'm not signing this is not because I'm fundamentally against BT ripping out the copper and replacing it with fibre meaning downtime for hundreds of thousands (dare I say millions?) of customers, it's because I'm frankly sick of this "I want, therefore I should be given" culture that seems to revolve for a large part around pointless petitions that ill achieve nothing. The government has already demonstrated that these achieve nothing, what makes you think that this will be the first?

[aidanjt]

I didn't have any downtime when the fibre backbone was being laid down in Ireland, why are you confused about this, where does all this FUD come from?.. I mean, come on, Ireland, if it's economically viable for this island, it's more than viable for the mainland UK, which is frankly, more densely populated.

And should people get what they demand?.. why yes they should, it's the people who should run their governments, not the other way around, when you have the government telling the people what they will do, that's a dictatorship, not a democracy that we supposably have.

[Splash]

So I should expect no downtime if BT were to rip out the copper to replace with magical fibre? Hell, sign me up!

And if I want a 60" plasma TV provided in every home (and I'm sure people would sign a petition for it) for free would it be reasonable for me to expect the government to make Dixons provide them? I think not - this is the reason why there is a government rather than just allowing random people to make these decisions.

I'm as loathe of our current political climate as the next person (and probably more so than that bloke down the pub) but this particular request has nothing to do with the government.

[darrensen]

I have signed up. All my firends in europe have always had a better connetion than me and it's very frustrating that BT dont keep us up to date!

Thanks for starting this topic!

Darren

[aidanjt]

So I should expect no downtime if BT were to rip out the copper to replace with magical fibre? Hell, sign me up!

Who said anything about pulling the copper up?.. It's not as if there's going to be an interference problem. We didn't have the pull the copper up.

And who said anything about freebies either?..

Please, enough FUD, I've had enough to explode and it doesn't taste nice.

[Splash]

I'm going to agree to disagree with you Aidanjt. You're a sensible bloke, I just see things differently to you. And it's still not the government who should be getting petitioned, it's BT.

[aidanjt]

Ok, we'll agree to disagree then

Not that I think the government would act on the petition if successful anyway, but it's nice to think they would, eh?

[peterb]

A couple of additions - I was talking to someone at BT at a trade exhibition, and he said that the current policy is that fibre will be installed at greenfield sites in the near future - presumably as 21Cn is rolled out. The termination point will effectively be a hub, with a battery backup to maintain it during power cuts. It will be powered by the customer. It will of course be connected to BT's 21Cn intranet, which will have gateways to the public internet - it will be up to ISPs to set their download speeds (as now) but it will enable high bandwidths to servers connected to the BT network, provinding content such as HDTV.

There was also an article on Radio4 at lunchtime, when Ben Verwaayan was interviewed. He effectively stated that BT would eventually roll out fibre to the home, but as an industry analysrt pointed out, it will be the high poulation density areas that get it first, as BT has to make a return on its (not insignificant) investment - so it won't be happening overnight! So perhaps the petitioners are pushing at a (slowly) opening door anyway.

[Lourdes]

Well, when streaming HDTV becomes popular you will need a lot more than 24mbps to get full quality...

Blu-ray is 48Mb max. Current 1080P streaming content is a fraction fo that. Apple 1080P trailer for example are 8-9Mb and look excellent.

So no, not really.

[aidanjt]

Well, you're contradicting yourself there, Blu-ray/HDDVD *is* 1080p/i, and it's required minimal sustained transfer rate is 48mbps, that's two times more than the *theoretical* maximum for ADSL2+, which you'll only get close to if you live next door to your exchange. The majority of people will be *lucky* if they get 6mbps, for many 56k is still the only affordable 'option'. Hell I live less than 2km away from my exchange and all I get is 4mbps stable ADSL over a real copper line.

Real high quality 1080P H.264 encoded video saturates a lot more than 8-9mbps, now, even if you had an ADSL2+ connection to just meet this high bandwidth requirement (living next door to your exchange, which by a small miracle has had the ADSL2+ DSLAM equipment installed), this is assuming that there's only 1 computer in the house, and your internet networking use is solely for downloading HD video streams and that the router your ISP provided is half decent (which it never is), then yeah, in that case ADSL2+ is just dandy.

And in the off chance you don't quite get sarcasm. So yes, really, you need more than what ADSL2+ can deliver for HD over the internet.

[SiM]

Blu-ray is 48Mb max. Current 1080P streaming content is a fraction fo that. Apple 1080P trailer for example are 8-9Mb and look excellent.

So no, not really.

8-9mbps? Is that vbr? So at times you would need more than 9mbps anyway.

If you add in lossless sound your talking more like minimum of 12mbps. Assuming HDTV streaming becomes popular the high contention ratios would result in the inability to properly stream too.

My adsl2+ Be connection is actually around 12mbps anyway so it would struggle. Hardly no one gets above 20mbps...

[TiG]

We aren't even at SD video on demand real time downloads let alone HD-DVD or Blueray. Just look at the format at the current setup on this on Sky online's service. (or here at the review, the format isn't even close to HD)

The BBC is only just trialling it, and do you really think that Broadband is the best medium for Multicast film distribution?.

I certainly don't myself, lets make best use of the technology that suits these mediums.

TiG

[aidanjt]

You can only fit so much crap through the air. A proper telecoms infrastructure can easily cope with it however.