You need to remember not everyone is interested in having the fastest connectivity
It isn't just about
fast connectivity it's also about sustainability. Quality goes up, power usage goes down.
Everyone is going to be a mobile user for emergency use come Digital Voice switch over anyway as you no longer have a guaranteed phoneline to each house.
People need to pick up and move with the times.
and might be more interested in the look and amenity of their home, street and area.
If you've got nothing better to do then look at a telegraph pole on your street then I think you're beyond help.
The reason they go for poles and big ugly large phone masts is they want to maximize profit, end of. You can bet the directors of said companies don't have new poles put up outside their expensive houses.
Correct - or because it's not feasible. Outside my house I already have 2 underground networks which intersect each other in the pavement several times. If you have more networks doing this then you're going to hit a point where you physically can't get in more lines.
What about all of these houses that have "utility" poles - e.g. Their power is also pole fed, often shared with BT. People seem happy to have electricity coming into their house via a cable? Drive around areas in Essex with £750k+ properties, all electricity pole fed, and none-upgraded VDSL on the pole.
None-mains gas properties? Happy to have an absolutely huge gas tank sat at their property boundary usually painted some garish colour, people accept the appearance and move on.
"So force BT to open up their lines to everyone"
Yeah - that's a chunk of why BT wouldn't invest, because why spend the millions putting the money in to give it away to someone else for a pittance in rent?
"So only have one network in each area"
OK - So whats the plan here? have a national gov run network which is then wholesaled? Yeah - GPO was in a state when it was privatized. Royal Mail is a state. Water companies are a state. It's easy for a central body to sit and underinvest, then when the big money is needed sell it on for someone to make profit post investing.
The whole "Nationalize BT" argument doesn't really work and infuriates me. Because once the initial rollout would be done then you'd have them sweating the assets until it's literally worthless, it'll get sold for a pittance and then the customers will end up picking up the tab once the wheels fall off (Water is about here)
We do not have good enough regulation for privatization, and state-owned is always a bloated inefficient mess. They'd be better doing some company with "UK GOV PLC" as say 75% shareholder and <corp entity> having the rest, then profits and dividends get paid to the gov when times are good, and can block them when things aren't as good (Looking at you Thames Water)
The solution we have currently isn't perfect - I think there are far too many altnets building and hopefully consolidation will correct a chunk of that - but if people are expecting networks to be retrospectively be put underground - I have bad news for you.
Putting networks etc. underground in greenfield sites is easy. When you do this in an area what has god knows what under ground - which isn't marked, mapped, labelled or detailed anywhere - who in their right mind is going to voluntarily dig through this to lay ducting to properties? (Which then you have to have permission from the home owner to dig a trench from the toby/ducting to their property) - again, more construction time, effort and cost.
If you want a goal quickly, doing it via poles is very fast, cheap, and doesn't use a huge amount of labour.
You can bet the directors of said companies don't have new poles put up outside their expensive houses.
When you start looking at the £1m+ housing, you'll find that when rebuilt / developed / extended there's generally no issues in digging the entire building out - because the person who wants the work doing will pay to correct any of these issues found.
Where's the incentive to deploy a ducted network to properties for them to never take up service?
VS I can put a pole in, which can serve a similar amount of properties, which is cheap, permitted development so I don't need planning permission, and minimizes local disruption - and once it's built I can connect end customers up easily, without any additional construction requirements
Erh no, that was the other BT, BT Cellnet
T-Mobile:
"
T-
Mobile launched their
3G UMTS services in the Autumn of 2003"
Orange:
"The first to market will be the 3G Mobile Office Card. Targeted at Corporate and small business customers, it will be available to buy in the UK from 19th July (2004), complete with a flat rate tariff structure and offering speeds of up to 384 kbps."
"We" as BT Group includes EE (T-Mobile / Orange UK).