It seems that requirements to replace our current Electricity and Gas meters with Smart Meter’s may drive the upgrading of the national broadband network that just straight forward consumer demand.
The current government has allocated £10bn to fund the replacement – maybe some of this is coming from the UK Intelligence budget and this might be another surveillance method that this government can monitor what your doing, or am I being paranoid – which will please the communications giants like BT.
However, I wonder just how much this will actually drive the promised upgrade – all UK homes to have 2mb broadband – to a faster Internet connection? We constantly hear about Government IT projects running over on both Budget and Delivery, the NHS and the Inland Revenue being just two examples.
It becoming a bit confusing just which project will deliver faster broadband for the UK, there’s BT’s own 21CN project, the UK Governments own Broadband plans and now Smart Meters.
I just hope that with some many people poking away inside the connection cabinets that my own Internet speed – today monitored at 4.85MB from Readings South Exchange – drops as everyone else’s gets better.
Yes, there is rightly a need to give everyone in the UK a better Internet connection, but sometimes things don’t always work out for the better.
Communications Consumers Council Statement
Beasley's Place 