Sunday 31 January 2010

Snails pace delivery of broadband planned by Tories


Shadow chancellor George Osborne said a [technically ignorant] Tory government would deliver speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to the "majority" of homes by 2017. For mathematically challenged Tories that is SEVEN Years from now, and not all homes would be included.

South Korea already has the most successful broadband rollout in the world. Something our own politicians could learn from. The Korean government provided $1.5bn to create a backbone network and another $1bn in loans to ensure companies took broadband to rural areas.

Our Knuckle head Tory shadowy chancellor said cabling in rural areas could be paid for by private investors or part of the licence fee.

Both Tories and Labour really are clueless when it comes to moving this country forward, as for the Lib-Dems they are still working on what “clueless” means.

The plan is not “should be” but MUST be (at the very minimum) 100MBs download and 10Mbs upload for every home by the end of 2012. The South Koreans are already planning 2GB/s broadband for everyone in the 2012 timescale. Who says our politicians are clueless and lack vision and ambition for our country?

Homes are looking for HD TV; television on demand; immediate download of movies and music; and support for a whole range of new internet enabled devices.

Remember, Gordon Brown in his first attempt at bankrupting big business with the £20Billion auction of 3G licences, failed to see that in only a few years we would be running out of mobile bandwidth.

The plan would be to create an integrated structure for super-fast broadband that would cover every home and business in the UK by 2012. There are a number of ways to do this:

1. Tell BT that they either create the infrastructure of they lose it.
2. If BT are unwilling or unable to make the investment themselves then other companies would be invited to make bids.
3. The Government could fund the whole project AND take All the profits.
4. A group of companies with or without government support could fund it together. Companies and government would takes profits according to their original investment.

Unfortunately, Tory ideas of the BBC funding broadband or Labour’s idea of a 50p tax are the sort of ideas one would expect from the calibre of politicians the country is electing these days.

Everyday, it appears that we are getting closer and closer to becoming an Idiocracy. You definitely have to watch this movie and make judgements as to whether you think we are moving closer to this political utopia or back to a more sensible way of getting things done.

No comments: