[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On 28/07/10 15:31, Julian Hall wrote:
In NY you can go from A to B via D and C which are mostly in a straight line, around sewers,gas mains, tubes etc built in straight lines, on regulated level through relatively clean geology. In London (and most old cities in the UK) there is no such thing as a straight line, excavations can discover Roman or later remains that need to be excavated and examined, creaking sewers have to be rebuilt, WW2 bombs defused, and then the gas and electricity, and sky virgin etc can come and cut through cables etc. just put in. Roads re-built just after the war now have lorries 50% heavier than the weight they were built for so slump and crack conduit and pipes and water mains burst and flood things. And when you've got said cable from A to B via C,D,E,F and G then you need to pay for some of the most expensive land in the world to put your little boxes to connect the wire/cable to. If the Luftwaffe had been up to the job we might have had the clean slate that has benefited so many other nations - the Germans benefited greatly from having their major industrial cities wiped of the face of the earth. Someone said earlier that selling BT was a good economic move. Unfortunately its left us with a crippled dinosaur that we can neither afford to buy back nor force to do anything good and any money we try give it to do some real investment will end up straight in the pockets of shareholders. BT will do the best it can for its shareholders - and that means dragging its feet over technological improvements to get the best return on its investments and making life as difficult as it can for its competitors while seeming to remain within the law. The only way to make it buck its ideas up is to provide competition. And no-one wants to try and replicate BT's infrastructure for the reasons given above so privatising BT has effectively put UK comms into a permanent 5-15 year lag behind everyone else until cherry picking competition leaves us with the tattered shell of a company holding lots of loss making rural lines for the taxpayer to bring up to 'date' for about 10 times the price BT was sold for.On 28/07/2010 14:10, tom wrote:You can't really use the fact London is over 400 years old to excuse lack of development in the intervening time surely?On 28/07/10 12:58, Julian Hall wrote:This doesn't work either - do you compare New York - which is a modern grid based town to London - which was designed in 1667 by Wren.On 28/07/2010 12:47, Mark Evans wrote:I wonder how the figures would change if the study only compared capital cities? That might be a more level playing field as you'd expect capital cities to demonstrate the best available in each country.On 27/07/10 17:07, John Williams wrote:Exactly, while it might be unreasonable to expect us to be in 1st place,one has to wonder just how we end up behind so many poorer countries. Some like Japan and South Korea you can expect to have better infrastructure due to far denser population and smaller area.Japan is actually larger than any country in the EU.Interestingly a country of comparable size with the UK is Romania, which has been previously mentioned in this thread. Though with aconsiderably smaller population.JulianPopping a few thousand connections under the road in NY probably costs 5% of the same in London.The important question to answer therefore is 'Why is this the case?'I used to work for BT - when they come up with privatisation we laughed at the prospectus info - the running costs were based on US prices and seriously underestimated - I sold my shares at £4.40 before the other investors caught on. Much as I hate BT you have to realise that its a lot more expensive here to dig up roads, pavements etc than it is in a less developed country. In Romania you can just [ut in the cable you want - here you have to make sure you dont accidentally dig up the old stuff while you put the new stuff in - and a lot less motivation to do so when you've got revenue streams already in place. Its a lot harder to improve a just past state of the art system than it is to start from scratch.NY would have the same issues I would think so why are they so much cheaper?Julian
Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq