Posts by JPA

BT threatens to pull plug on better broadband

£29 billion? Not needed

It's fascinating that a telephone company should be trying to create a broadband network using the knowledge that it "gained" from inheriting a point-to-point network.

I have a patented design for a UK and Ireland encompassing fibre-optic network which would cost £1 billion tops. But who's going to listen when the 800 pound arthritic gorilla needs feeding?

If there's a serious player who wants to build an ultra-high capacity network out there, then someone tell me who it is.

No, I'm not crazy. No, I'm not kidding.

Fasthosts update: still above water

Bullcrap

My dedicated server has been down for two days, despite fasthosts claiming that the service has returned.

So whatever fasthosts have put in that press release, let me assure you that its not true.

BT feels the need for 50Mb speed

Andrew Crystall

I don't have a link. I have two patents (one for UK and one for Eire) for a unique design of ultrahigh capacity fibreoptic network for the UK and Eire markets. (I suppose unique is redundant since its a requirement for patents) that would cost a fraction of the ludicrous cost that BT was then proposing. And still proposing now.

I costed the proposal based on information from a leading company specialising in laying fibre-optic cable and on (what was then) the highest capacity routers then available (10 TB)

The key part of the design is that it addresses the fact that mesh networks don't scale and are hideously expensive to setup and maintain, and why telecoms networks based on them don't deliver guaranteed bandwidth.

When it was last discussed (I made it to New York just as the telecoms sector cratered in 2001) I said 7.5%. I suppose 5% is still reasonable. Or a few million for me to walk away into the sunset, as I don't have many delusions of Bransonian grandeur.

No, I'm not kidding about any of this.

Irony of ironies

BT is spending GBP10 billion for a backbone whereas I patented a design of telecoms backbone which would have a much higher capacity, would enable fiberoptic to homes and businesses and would guarantee bandwidth from one customer to another with extremely low contention, would be much cheaper to maintain and upgrade and would cost GBP250-400 million tops.

But no-one is interested in engineering a backbone properly - after all, how could BT possibly be wrong?