UK.gov tips £400m into digital investment pot

The UK government has today launched its £400m Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund, aimed at boosting Blighty's full-fibre infrastructure. The country currently has just two per cent fibre-to-the-premise connections – but digital minister Matt Hancock has said he wants the UK to go on a "full-fibre" diet in order to catch …

[Steve Davies 3]

Another pot of monet that will simply evapotate

in a cloud of hot air, meetings, jollies, freebies and hotel bills.

And achieve exactly zilch.

move along, nothing new to report.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Another pot of monet that will simply evapotate

Totally agree. The money should be ring fenced so it can only pay for actual hardware/cables in the ground - nothing else. So no one can 'expense off it', to enable their own hot air.

I meet these people everyday. Say a lot, do absolutely nothing practical (would never get their hands dirty), it's all charts and graphs. So much hot air and waffle regarding pure Fibre Broadband, when it's cables in the ground is where the money should be spent aka. B4RN style programmes.

Put the minimum of money in, to get community support growing, and let it grow/die by itself. Pull in clever people with the skills that aren't in it for the money, but in it, for seeing how a community can thrive/what a pure fibre network can do for rural areas..

Most of it is common sense, and things would be a lot easier if you could ban BT for 10 years in those areas, where they won't invest - where they sit back waiting for fcuking taxpayer handouts stating the usual "Fibre is expensive, Pointless G.fast is cheap"- the usual absolute bollocks".

Pointless G.fast is a road to ruin for this Country.

If BT get their way, because apathy will well and truly take hold, and we will all be stuck on bamboozled obfuscated "up to" shitty unreliable broadband out in "rural land", when it doesn't have to be that way. BT's "sit back/sit on hands approach - give me handouts" is just so bloody frustrating.

We have plenty of kids that could use such Community broadband schemes as an apprenticeship into well paid jobs, especially regarding Cisco routing skills.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Another pot of monet that will simply evapotate

Nope, not another pot of money.

It's the third - yes, the third - time that this pot of money has been announced as "new" money.

Shame on ElReg for falling for UK.GovScam

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/superfast-broadband-fibre-investment-government-digital-infrastructure-investment-fund-a7819631.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Create company to build infrastructure.

People invest in company.

Company goes bump.

New company buys infrastructure at reduced price.

People lose out.

That's why we have no new internet infrastructure building.

[m0rt]

I have had no sleep whatsoever, last night. I just couldn't so I just binge watched Roadies, funnily enough. (Good series. Made oi laugh). I still got emails.

Anyway this contributes to my tone when I say: These things are just horrible governmental marketing exercises that cost people real money. If you want to provide these services out of taxpayer money then sodding well do it as part of a nationalised service. Don't throw it at your mates for eff all.

And it has started raining. I swear, if I had ran out of coffee this morning I would be a danger to myself.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Company goes bump."

Why? Could it be that once the thing's priced up to offer a required ROI the potential punters go "That's nice but not at that price."?

[WonkoTheSane]

80% coverage doesn't help

When you live somewhere that is in the remaining 20%

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: 80% coverage doesn't help

The Remaining 20%?

Well, they might just make sure that all their buddies in the Old St/Angel area of London get decent speeds then they will declare 'job done', 'excellent value for money'.

[technoise]

Travel was a meat thing.

I've just been reading William Gibson's Neuromancer, and was struck by one sentence: "Travel was a meat thing." A dismissive view of physical travel versus digital communications. Why are we spending billions on HS2 to facilitate business travel when we could revolutionise our economy for a fraction of this cost by delivering high speed fibre to every home?

[m0rt]

Re: Travel was a meat thing.

"Why are we spending billions on HS2 to facilitate business travel when we could revolutionise our economy for a fraction of this cost by delivering high speed fibre to every home?"

Follow the money...then you will find your answer.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Travel was a meat thing.

"Travel was a meat thing."

The greens very sensibly used that argument during the "Do we need a new runaway at Heathrow" debate.

Who'd listen to those whackos though?

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

But what about Northern Ireland? Can't the DUP do something for them? Oh yes, they get a billllllion pounds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time someone mentions a DUP I can't help but think of this,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY

[Anonymous Coward]

Jee whizz, that will wire up Chipping Norton for FTTP. What about it for us plebs ?

Need a few noughts on the end there Chancellor to keep up with the Joneses Schmidts:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/germany_to_roll_out_100bn_gigabit_internet_network/

[TheresaJayne]

I live in the middle of slough,

My whole street has no Fibre available - not even ADSL CN21

I get Max 2mb Down 128k up

BT openreach say they have no funds to upgrade it , and the council will not let them upgrade the cabinet.

The cabinet next to me in the other direction has a DSLAM.

They claim also that there are not enough subscribers on the Cabinet to be cost effective to upgrade - there are 2 schools one side of the road meaning only half the subscribers on the street.

Nice to see that they can provide 80mb down on one street and 2mb on the next

[AMBxx]

I live in the middle of slough,

I think Betjeman had the solution for that in 1937.

[TheresaJayne]

I was trying to point out that it isnt just rural, I moved in a large town 2 roads and went from 200mb/s to 2mb/s

[Joe Harrison]

Nag them

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport had a target "to provide access to basic broadband (2Mbps) for all from December 2015" which they failed to reach and had to revise. Until last month I was only getting 1.0Mbps which is totally not acceptable in 2017 UK.

https://basicbroadbandchecker.culture.gov.uk/

"A subsidised broadband installation is now available if you cannot access an affordable broadband service with a speed of at least 2 Mb per second." They really don't want to give you a subsidy; I found that after lots of loud complaining the magical Openreach unicorn fairy did a surprise upgrade of my local cabinet instead.

If you are looking for evidence of your slow speed I can recommend going through an EE broadband online application then screenshotting, as EE seem to be the most conservative in promising what your speed would be.

[iron]

Emails grinding to a halt?

With FTTC I can play online games, stream programs on Netflix and download large files from multiple devices at the same time without any issues. If Andrew Jones' emails grind to a halt just because someone is watching GoT he doesn't need FTTP, he needs an ISP that actually gives him what he's paying for. Time he ditched* BT / Virgin / Sky / TalkTalk for a reliable ISP.

* delete as appropriate

[Anonymous Noel Coward]

Won't happen.

Hell, I only live about a mile from the exchange, but I can only get about 765 kbps (70 kB/s) down and 360 kbps (30 kB/s) up at the moment (which is a step down from my usual 3900 kbps and 900 kbps respectively), and have done for the last month.

You ever tried downloading an 8.5GB PS4 patch at that speed? It isn't fun...

[a_mu]

what speed will we get.

If we all have fibre to the house

bandwidth / speed can not limited by the fibre, but by the provider.

How will that work withe the 'up to' scheem we currently have to put up with,

Its bad enough now,

I have a link now that gives X baud, if I pay more, same link I can get Y baud.

now X is significantly lower than my up to speed, Y is more like it,

so why should I pay for Y , when I'm only getting X,

and its totaly at the control of the provider !

[John Smith 19]

"its £400m Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund, "

Wot, 0.4DUPes?

That'll have to be very tightly focused investment to deliver that result.

[EnviableOne]

Someone needs to ad DUPs to the units table

[John Smith 19]

" Someone needs to ad DUPs to the units table"

You're a bit behind the curve.

It's already there.