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Re: [LUG] Fwd: UK 'misled' on broadband speeds

 

 On 28/07/2010 10:26, Henry Bremridge wrote:
On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 08:45:09AM +0100, Neil Winchurst wrote:
On 27/07/10 17:34, Shaun Orchard wrote: I don't know about the spread of
the population is South Korea.  However, the point is that, yes, BT does
have a difficult job. But it is made much worse by being a private
company with shareholders to consider. And that is the problem for this
country.

Other countries such as South Korea just get the job done however easy or
difficult it may be. While the UK situation continues we will always lag
behind many other countries. Yes, I understand about the ageing copper
network. This should have been improved years ago.  And how long have we
had a private company running the show???

There is a cost to everything and while South Korea has been very
successfully managed as a country there are costs:
- compulsory military service: 21 months with no conscientious objectors
   allowed
- compulsory basic medical insurance with citizens required to buy
   additional medical insurance if required. Tried to find out the cost of
   this but the only figure I could find is
   http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2010/01/healthcare-system-in-korea.html
- South Korea spends about 4.6% of its annual budget on schools vs 5.6% in
   UK (source www.cia.gov)

If you want to push your MP to pass a law mandating faster broadband then
please advise where the money is going to come from. I cannot imagine many
people would agree to cutting education or the NHS to pay for faster
broadband access.
You could argue that faster broadband has great advantages for the education sector due to students of all ages having greater access to the information required for their studies. By that logic it could be part funded by the Education department. Equally you could say that streaming video from the BBC is taking up an ever increasing chunk of bandwidth and compel the BBC to collaborate with BT on improving the infrastructure. Maybe then my BBC Tax - oops sorry, Television License Fee - would go on something more meaningful than overpaid 'celebrity' wages.

In the end I think a combination of different factors and contributors will need to all throw some money in the pot and collaborate for the good of all of them - and by a happy accident us as consumers.

Julian

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