I work from home for my business, so was not greatly affected by the weather this last week and luckily, have a very good broadband connection through BT which on average keeps up around the 4.5MB mark, though I would like to have a better upload speed.
So it was with some interest that I read the coverage of Lord Carters Broadband for Britain plans and the various reactions to them. Seems to be very big on ambition and to my amazement still only talking about getting a minimum of 2MB’s (that is download only of course) to most users across the UK sometime in the next five years. What is strange about this is that the majority of UK broadband users already have an average speed above this. Maybe it was a printing error and it should have read 12 MB!!!
We will have to wait and see what technology is going to be used to deliver this to users, there is still a lot of talk about fibre, but as that is really unreasonable for every user, it really is about what will be used for that last ‘mile’ to the house.
Sure many companies will be able to offer fibre right to your door! But the majority will either have to continue to use their current copper lines or as has been suggested a local Wifi hub broadcasting from local fibre driven hub!
I still think that Ofcom need to tackle the miss-selling of broadband speeds, I still find it hard to believe that non of the ISP’s have been prosecuted for misleading adverts with regards to the ‘up-to-8Megs’ claims.
Still, if Ofcom is as weak as the other so called watch dogs (the FSA is a another good example), is it any wonder?
Some articles that I found during the week worth reading were:
Beasley's Place 