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Re: [LUG] Fwd: Parties in rural broadband pledge

 

On Tue, 4 May 2010, Julian Hall wrote:

'The three main parties in Dorset are in agreement that faster internet is essential for the rural economy. Labour's Jim Knight said BT had agreed to leave a fibre optic cable installed in the county after the Olympics but it needed to be made viable.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8657243.stm

BT agreed to leave the cable..... yessssss. That was a hard choice, do we a) go to all the time, energy and expense of removing the cable after the Olympics, b) leave it there and pretend to be generous.

I think it's a lot more complicated than that )-:

The cable is probably already there, or it not, it's being run for a purpose - and yes, it'll stay there after the event, but ... From what I remember (I attended a rather boring talk on it all some 6 or 7 years ago), there are various rules & whatnot in-place to govern competition - if BT were to simply cable up the country then it would be seen as anti-competitive, so they're not allowed to do it - but if BT can demonstrate a business use for it then it can be justified...

Or something like that.

Of-course it could all have changed by now, but ...

The reality is that the exchanges are already well connected - and those connections can be boosted at the flick of a switch - it's still the "last mile" that's the big issue - espeicially for properly rural areas. I'm in a rural town yet can get 8Mb... A friend down the road struggles to get 2Mb though because they're unlucky in the topology of the town and where BT routed the cable 30 years ago... I've seen this in big cities too - woe is the person on the other side of the railwayline...

Gordon

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