back to article Faster BT broadband on starting blocks for Olympics - maybe

BT is hoping to complete roll out of its faster broadband network by June 2012, to ensure the framework is finalised in time for the London Olympic Games. The Financial Times reports today that the telecom giant's project, which it originally planned to implement by March 2013, has been hurried along by the Labour government …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    All talk...

    We are hosting the Olympic sailing events, and our 21CN / WBC dates keep getting pushed out further and further...

    Nice PR BT, but for a change, why not actually DO something rather than TALKING...

    1. Pete 6
      Badgers

      Well,

      BT's catchphrase was "It's good to talk", just practicing what they preach I guess.

  2. cwm
    FAIL

    Subsidy

    I object to providing a subsidy for BT while my broadband connection goes up and down like a yoyo. They seem to be turning it off for several hours every night at the moment. I'm not in a rural area. Perhaps they should fix their existing connections before making new ones.

  3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Down

    Perhaps a bandwidth that was actually enforceable

    Rather than the current "Up to" whatever Mbs levels companies brag about, but which can be down to zero.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Pirate

      This title intentionally left blank

      As regards connection speeds - the laws of physics don't need enforcing. They just need customers to understand what they are signing up for by reading the information they are presented with when they sign up.

      Throughput dropping at peak times can be a pain on crappy ISPs but it's a service. Like most services it is contended and therefore susceptible to issues at peak time. As long as the ISPs warn you about that in their T&C they are complying with the law. No-one ever said that services had to be fit for the purpose. The provider just has to make reasonable efforts and charge a reasonable price.

      As for the adverts - forget it. The only laws covering those are normal publishing rules. Intelligent people learn to ignore the fluff and guff of adverts.

      But the UK will get a decent, world-leading network infrastructure from core to customer when the customer is prepared to pay a proper price for it. Most of us are paying less than £20pcm (most probably less than £10pcm). You get what you pay for.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        What it needs.

        Is for the marketing departments that redefined 'unlimited' and placed the weasel word marketing behind 'up to' to be taken out back and re-educated with the BOFH's favourite piece of test equipment. I.E. the cattle prod.

        Then just to make sure they don't forget the lessons they learned, they should be taught them a second time.

  4. JohnG

    What's the point?

    If you actually get a higher access speed and you use it, you will likely fall foul of the AUP anyway.

  5. Da Weezil
    FAIL

    2 things...

    1. *IF* taxpayer cash is used, then this has to be reflected in price restraint, they cant have it both ways, if they want our cash to help them catch up on the years of neglect inherent in the BT network, then they cant go setting "premium pricing" for an upgrade effected with funding from the public.

    2. The cynic in me believes that the 21cn stuff might be completed in time for the folly 2012, Im sure that will only be a certainty in areas where the events are being held or where participants/officials/the media are quartered. The rest of us that have no choice but to fund this shabby network year in year out will be left waiting - as are most of us on Market One exchanges in the many areas where BT has a monopoly. I have to laugh when I hear politicians/OFCOM pontificating about the digital divide... They have helped cause this by short sighted or even deliberately biased decisions which mean that Market One areas are at the back of the queue while paying the highest access costs - usually being communities with lower average incomes.

    I guess its appropriate to have word of a pantomime at this time of year, especially where it features the ugly sisters BT and OFCOM.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UK held to ransom by Livingston?

    "We need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is" Livingston says.

    No we don't.

    We need well managed private sector companies to invest in the long term future of their own infrastructure.

    Without thieving confidential communications traffic using technology supplied by Amercia/Russian spyware crooks.

    And without using tax handouts to fill the gaps in a piss poor excuse for a sustainable business strategy.

    Muppet.

  7. Goatan
    FAIL

    TOO SLOW

    We are playing catchup to the rest of the world to still be behind the rest of the world. America has 100 Mb broadband and Japan has plans to go into the Gb range (if they haven't already).

    Why don't we simply put something awesome in place and make the rest of the world catch up to us?

    That would be a structure I'd happily pay tax for. As it stands I have to simply state I'm not happy getting charged for outdated infostructure.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Boffin

      Catch up? Sorta. Depends where you live.

      Very few countries can offer broadband to over 95% of the population. Clearly we lag behind in terms of raw speed in urban areas but we are one of the better countries in terms of breadth. You can move to almost anywhere in the country and unless you're going to a converted barn half way up Ben Nevis you can be pretty sure you'll get at least half a meg.

      Okay so that rules out iPlayer but half a meg lets you do all the important stuff.

      Our problems are two-fold:

      * Most people refuse to pay a decent price for their connection. That makes investing in the network very difficult since there's bugger-all profit in it. Worse still the regulator is strangling the one operator that is big enough to do the investment (with good reason but still - it's not helping).

      * IPTV is not a practical driver for high-speed connectivity in the UK. VM and Sky have been supplying us with hundreds of digital channels for nearly a decade now. This means it's hard to explain why billions of £s need to be spent upgrading to next-gen.

      Having written that I do think that BT/The govt/The industry is missing a trick. BT ought to be rolling out FTTP in urban areas right now and trialling FTTC in rural areas. I can't really blame them though. The RoI is just so poor in the UK that they have little choice but to continue milking their existing copper loop.

    2. N2

      we will still

      Be playing catch up in ten years time because we have an outdated organisation whos intent seems to be to drip feed the UKs Internet market with technologies that are just about good enough. Good enough isnt good enough any more.

      Unfortunately, we need to get rid of BT along with their heel dragging attitudes & the governments useless ideas, but until a fibre to the door infrastructure can be achieved, whoever pays for it, Im afraid we are stuck with the outdated copper wire put in well before the last century expired.

      And as for 21CN the benefits for anyone living 3.5Km or more from an exchange are almost non existent.

  8. Myopic Aardvark
    Unhappy

    Yes, of course they will

    In select areas of London. The rest of the country can probably go swivel.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Badgers

      Which london?

      Hopefully it will be all the "London" within the M25,

      not just selected Post Codes,

      or the inner london boroughs who cant afford to pay for it!?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Cheaper backhaul first

    As JohnG says, Faster Broadband is only half the equation, usage caps being the other. Without a corresponding rise in the usage cap it's like getting pocket money/salary/pension in a lump sum once a year i.e. great fun while it lasts.

    Hopefully BT are designing the backhaul capacity to keep pace with the last mile speed, and if all goes well the monthly caps will be raised along with the speeds offered (ideally at the same price of course). Anyone got any industry knowledge on the way ISP-BT backhaul charges are heading under 21CN?

    Paris as she's reportedly got last mile speed.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Boffin

      Backhaul? Get thee behind me!

      Backhaul prices for 21CN will probably depend on how many ISPs stick with the managed version (the equivalent of IPStream) and how many opt for unmanaged (the equivalent of DataStream). On paper the unmanaged version looks better than DataStream but then DataStream was dire.

      On paper 21CN looks quite good. It even has provision for multicasting. Unfortunately the initial implementation is having issues. ISPs are having capacity problems. Hopefully it's just teething trouble but it's not looking very clever.

      Then there's GEA for FTTC. That's another BT product that looks very good on paper (including yet more multicast provision) but time will tell. I haven't heard much about how the LLUOs are getting on with that.

  10. JaitcH
    Thumb Down

    BT was great now an embarassment

    In the Second World War (1939-1945 for the youngsters hereabouts) the Post Office Telecomms was leading edge and contributed many technical solutions.

    To think that it has degenerated into what BT is today is symptomatic of what ails government endeavors these days - they can't even lay cable on time.

    They should subcontract the work to China and let them show BT how to get the job done at a much cheaper price. Perhaps they should also supply the fibre, they undercut most competitors.

    As for the Olympics ... the Chinese have already shown how to do it. Money on that the UK fails to better them.

  11. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Badgers

    France still looks like the model to follow

    You can bet *their* state run telephone company was the model of centralsied management. Nevertheless it managed to roll out the minitel system and seems to have opened *proper* competition to 3 seperate large scale service providers through full scale local loop unbundling.

    AFAIK no French subscriber needs to pay for a voice line service if they don't need it

    Let's be frank. The issue is who lays and who pays for the local loop. Other suppliers already locate their hardware in BT exchanges. It's a fact of life. But why can't they take over the last mile support as well? In reality *all* major suppliers probably outsource the work to a bunch of infrastructure companies who actually pay the people to do it. Nothing to BT for "maintaining" your line as it's not their problem any more. If you don't want a voice service from your provider (your VoIP or have a mobile) you don't get one.

  12. William Old
    FAIL

    HM Gov still can't make their systems standards-compliant... :-(

    This is just so much hot air... the Government is paying only lip service to REAL progress with its "Digital Britain" White Paper.

    For example, the page http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx contains a link to a copy of the final version of the "Digital Britain" report that is in a closed, proprietary format that I can't access (MS Word), but the links to a Rich Text Format version and a Portable Document Format version are dead. Is this part of the ongoing support by HM Government of Microsoft's predatory and criminal monopolistic practices, or might there one day be some way that I can access a *readable* copy of the report?

    And when I tried to use the DFCM&S "contact us" page to ask how I could access a copy that I can actually read using Linux, I was wrongly given the message "Please enter a valid e-mail address" when I tried to submit this with the perfectly valid address with the local part "dfcm&s" - because the ampersand is perfectly acceptable within an e-mail address - see RFC2822.

    Of course, if you are a Government department, and your Web site is horribly broken due to being hosted on a Microsoft platform with huge security holes that make it vulnerable to content using the ampersand ("&") character, then there's no hope of conplying with Internet technical standards. I wonder when HMG are going to get their web sites fixed to make them accessible to taxpayers other than those who also paying the Microsoft Tax (Windows)?

  13. Foxhill

    hrmm?

    No information on TalkTalk upgrading everyone up to 'whatever they can get' in January for free? Don't they send you press releases anymore? Tut tut

    1. darren.b
      Pint

      lulz

      BT have pulled this line for years - where have you been?

  14. Adey
    Happy

    very funny

    I think i'll stick with the 48Mbps (measured) connection I already get from Virgin.

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