[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[David Lochrin]

On Wednesday 20 June 2007 16:11, Karl Auer wrote:

> >    Let's say the proposal is to replace all existing copper subscriber
> > connections with fibre of some sort.
>
> Good Lord, why? Copper can carry really good bandwidth - ADSL2+ and so on.
> Replacing fibre can happen as the infrastructure is replaced in the normal
> coarse of events.

   I'm not too interested in the exact technology at this point, rather in the sorts of bandwidth which might be achieved.  But assuming we're to achieve reasonable bandwidths in RARA and not just in the cities, it's probably true to say that most country areas would need fibre at least to local areas.

>> ugly issues of access-control, copyright, monoply content provision,
>> compensation, and so on.
>
> I'm sorry, but I think you've missed the point about "vision". It means
> defining where we want to be and why; it involves seeing the forest, not
> the trees. The problems you mention are trivial (yes, I mean that just so:
> trivial), it is just that self-interested players have made them loom large
> in our minds.

   Whoa!!!  I wasn't saying that these issues are real problems, only that they're seen as problems by governments.  Government now is so heavily infiltrated by, and dependent on, Business that the sort of "vision" that you propose and I would welcome just isn't going to happen.  The whole vision thing is constrained by too many business interests, free-trade agreements, etc.

>>    Our national propensity to avoid difficult issues is costing us big
>> money.
>
> It is costing us a great deal more than money. Like the dismantling of the
> rail system, the handing over of greenfields to shortsighted and rapacious
> developers, the privatisation of crucial common resources like power and a
> whole raft of other twentieth-century idiocies, it is costing us our future.

   Couldn't agree more - sad isn't it?

Cheers!
David