By: MarkJ - 22 November, 2009 (10:00 AM) - Score: 2572 - Fixed Line Broadband, Satellite, Wi-Fi, Mobile Broadband
The East of England Director for BT , Peter McCarthy-Ward , has warned that the government’s commitment to deliver a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps to virtually every household in the UK by 2012 (USC - Universal Service Commitment) could be missed in Norfolk. McCarthy-Ward was speaking at a Friday night conference on Shaping Norfolk's Future (SNF).EDP24 reports that Peter McCarthy-Ward said:
"I think there's a very good possibility of getting 2Mbps minimum across 100pc of Norfolk in three to five years, if we are imaginative in how we seek funding and if companies like BT are willing to work with organisations like yourselves."
"I think there's a very good possibility of getting 2Mbps minimum across 100pc of Norfolk in three to five years, if we are imaginative in how we seek funding and if companies like BT are willing to work with organisations like yourselves."
McCarthy-Ward continued on to warn that money from the European Regional Development Fund and the 50p per month tax on all fixed phone lines (Next Generation Fund) would not be enough to bridge the gap sooner. The Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk, Norman Lamb, promptly responded: "It smacks of a collective failure of ambition by all those responsible."
Chris Starkie, CEO of SNF, said he was not surprised by what McCarthy-Ward had to say. However Starkie added that he would like to "see a minimum of 10Mbps across Norfolk in urban and rural areas," though he did not make any specific proposals for how to do this. Happily everybody was in agreement that the current timetable is far too slow, which looks nice on paper but doesn’t actually get anything done.
Sadly some of the issues being faced in Norfolk are not unique and many regions around the country will face serious problems in their attempts to achieve the government’s 2012 target. We fear that in some cases this could lead to the adoption of satellite services as a quick-fix. However satellite hardware is costly, usage allowances are often very low, performance can be extremely variable and latency is always high.
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Comments: 5
Dylan FieldingPosted: 22 November, 2009 - 10:48 AM
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I think you should revisit satellite services as they often are the most cost affective problem. Modern systems are not expensive, certainly not in comparison to community wireless schemes which often go bust, and the quality and reliability of satellite services is often far better than their ADSL counterparts. The latency on the latest systems is negligible and has no impact on browsing and email. Negative feelings about satellite is a hangover from feedback on systems installed in the late 1990's. Systems on sale today are more than twice as fast.
MarkJPosted: 22 November, 2009 - 11:00 AM
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Could you possibly show us some examples, such as a satellite service that offers stable/reliable real-world two-way speeds of 2Mbps+, a good usage allowance and that is actually affordable for those on a low income. I have also seen no real evidence to support this claim: "the quality and reliability of satellite services is often far better than their ADSL counterparts," which might work if you compared against the worst ISPs like Tiscali but most would be able to outclass a satellite service and cost a lot less.
As for latency, it does rather depend on what you are doing, but with multiplayer gaming being so common today I highly doubt a gamer would consider 300ms negligible. On some satellite systems it can also cause problems with VoIP sync and other latency dependant applications. People today want to do more than merely email and web browsing.
I want to be proven wrong.
KJPosted: 22 November, 2009 - 11:10 AM
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"comparison to community wireless schemes which often go bust" - Do you mean the community wireless schemes that are currently providing 10mbit to the communities wirelessly?
"the quality and reliability of satellite services is often far better than their ADSL counterparts" - Oh please...prove him wrong I challenge you!
Dylan FieldingPosted: 27 November, 2009 - 11:33 AM
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About 70% of UK community wireless schemes in the last 5 years have run out of money as the users don't want to pay for the continual upgrading of the equipment that's needed to keep them running well.
Satellite platforms are only able to exist due to £ from government, military and broadcasting contracts that have stiff SLA's for mission critical ops. There's no way to run satellites/services on the money from consumer broadband services where everyone thinks they have a right to fast services for practically no cost.
Up times on satellite platforms is usually circa 99.97% +, it has to be. Consumers who report bad experiences on satellite frequently haven't a clue about how to manage their own PC's and LAN's and blame the satellite connection unfairly. Satellite technology is fantastic and enables comms where no other services can. I am biased, 14 years as an RAF satellite engineer!
anonymousPosted: 16 January, 2010 - 6:05 PM
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Broadband services with speeds above 2Mbps are very much everywhere these days, but they are not affordable like normal DSL is, for example i live near london in high populated area where the old BT lines run at about 7KM+ distance from the exchange and from that perspective the area is considered a no broadband spot.
However I can in the other hand get limited mobile broadband service(from quite a few mobile broadband providers) in the case of my provider it connects up with 3.6Mbps with my modem, however the traffic is highly limited in comparison to normal DSL.
In reality , is totally un-acceptable that I'm not able to listen to online radio, or access sites like youtube due to the data limits(costs) offered by mobile broadband.
I blame BT for not accommodating customers in last mile areas. The weird thing is that i got 3 other closer exchanges then the one I currently connect to.
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