DIY broadband springs up across the UK
IF YOU WANT something done properly, you should do it yourself, which is exactly what an increasing number of UK communities are doing when it comes to setting up their own broadband, rather than sitting around waiting for the big networks to get their act together.
A report on the state of broadband in the UK by the Communications Consumer Panel managed to map over 40 local broadband projects, many out in the sticks in rural areas where the likes of Virgin and BT are but legend and myth.
The projects run the gamut from schemes laying down fibre for just 30 homes, to more ambitious, elaborate community efforts planning to connect 550,000 homes.
The report's author, Roger Darlington, noted he was surprised at the sheer number of do-it-yourself broadband projects, but noted the phenomenon "reflects a certain amount of frustration that people are not seeing super-fast broadband rolled out as fast as they would like". In other words, people want super fast broadband... super fast.
The quaintly-named Bradnet project, which aims to connect just 30 homes in a very small hamlet somewhere in Hampshire, is being helped along by the local County Council along with funding from the European Social Fund. In Cumbria, too, villagers are enthusiastically picking up shovels and laying their own fibre networks as their women-folk bake pies and dance gaily around may-poles (maybe).
Birmingham, which doesn't quite have the advantage of being able to claim quaint provinciality, is teaming up with the Community Broadband Network and the Walsall Regeneration Company in an attempt to copy the Dutch OnsNet scheme, which enjoyed significant success as a community-owned fibre project in Europe.
However, it's South Yorkshire which can lay claim to the grandest 'build your own broadband' effort, with a bold move seeking to connect 550,000 homes to Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) technology within the next three years. Regional Development Agencies and local councils are both mucking in, with the help, of course, of European Commission cash. Some houses should already be linked up by the second half of this year, apparently.
Meanwhile, big boy of broadband, Virgin Media, has started upgrading its cable network to 50Mb, whilst BT, living up to its 'all talk' label, has said it will plug £1.5 billion into developing fibre networks, but hasn't actually started anything yet. µ
L'Inq
BBC
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Isn't this a damning reflection on Ofcom, and their total lack of regulation in this sector?
Digging a fiber is not that difficult, but how they get their services on the fiber: Internet connection, VoIP, IP-addresses, services?
If you have 30 households on fiber, you will need at least a 100 Mbps Internet link. Getting a 100 Mbps Internet link in a remote area is quite expensive ...
Well well well the good old UK or Treasure Island as it is known to the vast majority of corporations. I bet once you have laid your own cables the ISP's would be all too happy to provide there usual overpriced subscription service, after all you have done half the work for them. We seem to pay more for nearly everything compared to other countries with a similar GDP and Global standing. Many of our essential economically inelastic products (Gas, Water, Elec, Telecoms and food) are provided by foreign owned companies who have no National interest, furthermore their primary goal as with all companies is maximising profit. It's about time we all woke up to what's going on, allowing corporations and in particular foreign corporations to dictate prices in so called competitive markets (oligopolies) which in reality seem to be not much different than monopolies, instead of 1 dictating the price you have 4 or 5 large companies which decide the price between them! and make exorbitant profits at our expense, while investing the bare minimum back into the UK! while we sit on our arses moaning that everything has gone up in price and the service has got worse. Lets not forget that many of these companies have been caught price fixing on numerous occasions and have proved time and time again that they cannot be trusted in charge of essential services. People had to die in train disasters before proper action was taken to rectify years of infrastructure under investment and neglect. Is there really no link to the prevalence of MRSA and other infections in our Hospitals and the fact that this has occurred in the era of contact cleaning? I know some of this has stretched the topic slightly but as long as we are at the whim of private companies people will suffer for their profit.....
...and just how is the average working UK household supposed to stop companies doing this.
It's up to Government to do that, but we all know how much the UK government fails to do what they say they will and how much money they wastes every year.
There was a Channel 4 dispatches program about it the other week.