News - Hunt wants the UK to have fastest broadband in Europe by 2015

[HEXUS]

Offers an extra £300 million in funding.

Read more.

[crossy]

culture minister, Jeremy Hunt, claimed that the UK will have the "fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015."

Oh how I laughed at that. "rofl" doesn't cover it... That guy should get his own Saturday night show...

On a very positive note, Mr Hunt has laid out his intent to support private firms in delivering fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) from 2016 onwards, which would see speeds surpass the one gigabit barrier sometime in the future.

Good/great idea - just as long as it is firms and not just an excuse to go shovelling some more government money BT's way. Actually I'd like to see someone (or better still, more than one company) start seriously challenging BT and Virgin in this respect. Can't we persuade Google to start their network rollout to consumers over here sometime soon?

[DarthRager]

No thanks crossy, I don't want to be spied on more than I am already.

[tekgun]

"Can't we persuade Google to start their network rollout to consumers over here sometime soon?"
What so they have complete and absolute control over the internet...no thanks.

Where I live the only options for broadband is ADSL over the telephone line, I have just been regraded from ADSLmax to ADSL2+ and now get 15Mb down and 0.9Mb up. Not sure when, if ever I will see FTTC here though.

[abaxas]

Everyone capable of 2mb would be a start.

Not 95% of populace on 100mb, 5% can fork off.

[wombat]

I think most people would be happier just having decent availability of reasonable speed. Throwing some money at some private firms would be a good idea and I agree that doesn't mean throwing piles of cash to BT. If the government is serious about coverage then they'll have to stop pandering to BT and offer incentives to others.

There are options like WiMax to explore which would probably be quite suitable and cheap to implement in rural areas and smaller towns. I for one would love to have some alternative options. For most of us it is a case of having to rent phone lines for the internet because of ADSL or companies like NTL who push you into bundles or bump up the pricing if you refuse the telephone.

Frankly I don't see the need to compete for super high speeds for every household (and get your tin foil hats on, with our present and past government you have to wonder about motives lol). I'm stuck at 10meg which is plenty and I was happy enough with the 2meg beforehand (any big download hits traffic management anyway!)

[crossy]

I think most people would be happier just having decent availability of reasonable speed.

Frankly I don't see the need to compete for super high speeds for every household (and get your tin foil hats on, with our present and past government you have to wonder about motives lol). I'm stuck at 10meg which is plenty and I was happy enough with the 2meg beforehand (any big download hits traffic management anyway!)

I'm with you on this - 99% of 2mb+ availability across the country would be a far better thing to be proud of than merely that some folks (usually inside the M25 moat) can get 200Mb. I'll also agree with the speed comments - I think I was happier with my old 20Mb line than I am with this 60Mb - mainly because I've never come across an instance where I was getting anywhere near that magical 60Mb, whereas I definitely did get very close to the 20Mb line speed. Just glad I'm not reliant on ADSL - despite being in an urban environment apparently I'm only blessed with "about 3Mb" - which I'm pretty sure could be matched by mobile broadband.

By the way my comments about about "why can't Google get involved" were because they were apparently selling fibre to consumers in the US - I wasn't necessarily saying that I wanted them in particular to get involved - they were merely an example. My opinion is that there's still not enough competition in the actual provision of service - it's really only a choice between BT and VM. So hopefully if there is govt funding available, they'll be inclined to spread it around a bit.

[Biscuit]

I would quite like Google to get involved purely because it would mean there is more competition driving prices down and expectations up. If you don't like their policies then don't use them, competition is usually only a good thing for the consumer

[tickleonthetum]

It's all very well saying people will have access to super fast broadband, but it's no good if no one can afford it!!

I pay £14.99 for 8Mb Capless from O2, and that is as much as I can afford to spend on broadband, most everyday people I know think I'm mad to spend that much! Yes you can get low cost superfast options but what use is that when they come with a cap that means you've used your limit up within 24 hours of each month!

Where I live there is no Virgin cable access, no BT infinity and even if there was most people here couldn't afford it anyway!

My O2 = 8Mb (Get 5Mb) capless = £14.99
BT Inf1. = 38Mb 40Gb cap = £18.00
BT Inf2. = 76Mb capless = £26.00

There is an interesting articale on caps here: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91161/g...eally-getting/

When I can get 30Mb Capless for less than £15 per month then I will believe we are there!

My Value for money levels:

• All broadband should be capless
• Everyone should pay a token £5 for the router from the company if needed)
• Then price points should be:

30Mb = £14.99
50Mb = £20.00
70Mb = £24.99
80Mb+ = £30+

BUT, all companies should have to offer all the price points not just the most expensive...

Then extras should be bolt on such as:
5 email address = £1 per month
Static IP = £4 per month
Business Use = £5 per month
WiFi Hotspots = £1 per month (anywhere in UK)

[watercooled]

TooWay satellite broadband is now available in UK with decent speeds, although like any satellite service round trip time is inherently poor (something like 500ms). Maybe worth considering if you're in a remote location, but not for gaming.

[Flash477]

It's all very well saying that everyone will have the fastest broadband, but is that on paper or in reality? As at the moment there are plenty of people on 50Mb/s virgin plans, who are getting less than 10Mb/s.

The way to make the companies invest in their infrastructure is to only allow them to bill on the speed they provide. So if someone is on a 50Mb/s package, but only get 10Mb/s they should be paying around 1/5 of the price.

[Biscuit]

TooWay satellite broadband is now available in UK with decent speeds, although like any satellite service round trip time is inherently poor (something like 500ms). Maybe worth considering if you're in a remote location, but not for gaming.

Dont they use your phone line for the upload though?

[watercooled]

Not with current technology; upload is through the satellite too.

[GaryRW]

The way to make the companies invest in their infrastructure is to only allow them to bill on the speed they provide. So if someone is on a 50Mb/s package, but only get 10Mb/s they should be paying around 1/5 of the price.

Now that would prompt them to sort out the slower connections, or maybe just everyone's prices would go up....

[watercooled]

They'd want at least as much as the do now overall, so it would likely just mean huge price rises all round.

If someone is on a 50Mb/s service and they only get 10 then they should move to a lower package; in the case of VM (DOCSIS) you basically have a certain amount of bandwidth available in an area and customers are throttled to their package speed - whether you're on 10 or 100Mb/s you lock to the same channels i.e. same raw throughput so in theory (assuming VM don't prioritise higher packages) if you get 10 on a 50 package, you should still get 10 on a 10 package, but pay a lot less. But getting such low speeds on VM is relatively uncommon and is nearly always caused by over-subscription; distance from exchange doesn't matter and if signal is too low you usually just drop off completely, not lose speed.

[Dareos]

If you are not getting your bandwidth on Virgin, then you will get it credited back to your account, as long as its tested and proven by a tech, all you have to do is phone up.

Capless broadband is not really an option at the lower end, because you will get people abusing the system, torrenting/p2p, newsgroups and so on and this type of behaviour causes congestion on the networks, especially at peak times. Very few users (approx 5%) are ever traffic managed on VM (ie, they hit the cap and had a bandwidth reduction for 5 hours), and very few people have LEGAL reasons that fall within the terms and conditions of their contracts (those would be residential reasons, using the connection for educational and entertainment purposes, not for working from home or running a business) for downloading massive files every single night.

Its all very well to come out with these price structures and opinions on how it should be run, but unless you have experience of the costs involved, the legal ramifications and the technical problems that are likely to arise with the equipment, then it really has no bearing on the real world.