Abo wrote:
Nigel Cliffe wrote:
Gizmo. wrote:
"Pd" wrote in message
id...
In an article on the BBC today, BT are apparently reluctant to
upgrade the UK's telecomms network:

"The current telecommunications system was never designed to
carry data and many have called for an urgent fibre upgrade.
BT has argued that with costs of up to £15bn to roll out such a
network it needs to be convinced of demand and have assurances
from the government that it will be able to recoup its
investment." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7202396.stm

Needs to be convinced of demand? Are they really that completely
bereft of anything like an understanding of the internet? Of
course there'll be demand, for HD films and TV, decent quality
video chat etc etc.
Why should BT stump up the "£15bn" ?

Or, in very rough terms, there are about 15 million households in
the UK with internet access. So that means everyone (broadband and
dialup) with internet access has to chip in £1000 for the
"upgrade". So, convince ALL the neighbours that the £1000+ bill
added by
their ISP is reasonable ?
If not, make an estimate of how many might pay extra; perhaps
1/3rd ? So that's now £3000 each....

But does it work like that, though? Since the fibre network will be
a BT asset wouldn't they be able to cook the books to spin the cost
out over three years. Plus they're unlikely to upgrade the whole
country in one go, so it could be nine years before the final cost
hits them.

By which time, if not sooner other providers will be clammering at
OFCOMs door saying it's unfair that BT is doing this & that they want
to use it, paying minimal costs, whilst Virgin or son of V will be
claiming that it's unfair practices affecting their trade.

On 2008-01-24, kraftee wrote:
Now BT (note not British Telecom now) are asking for reassurance that
if they do make the investment (which the goverment refused to let
them do) that they will be able to recoup the cost & make adequate
profit before OFCOM come along & make some such ruling that what BT
are doing is unfair working practices against the other providers,
which they would claim under any & all situations.

Let us put it simply would you spend £15billion if you thought someone
would be able to come & take away any profit which you could earn if
you did so.

That's one way to put it. Another way to put it might be, would you
take a risk with GBP15 billion of your own money if you thought you could
persuade the government to underwrite that risk instead?

I think you end up at the same place no matter how you put it.

Dennis Ferguson

Funny but this argument has been doing the rounds ever since Maggie
(god bless her, well somebody aught to!) turned around & told the then
British Telecom (goverment run as I remember) that they couldn't put
any fibre network in the ground as it would be better handled by
private industry & we all know what happened to those.

If at that time BT had started putting fibre in, with a rolling program, and
with their monopoly on the ducts, they would be the only game in town by
now, having amortised the cost as well.
With the price of copper it would almost have paid for itself.
They would also have built up enough financial clout to compete
with embryonic Sky and Virgin for sports coverage, now of course
Sky has a virtual monopoly.
And only a few areas have fibre/cable broadband.
Politicians are good at hot air and sound bites, but useless at
managing anything, not that it stops them dabbling in things
they know ought about.

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:10:30 -0000, "kraftee"
wrote:


Funny but this argument has been doing the rounds ever since Maggie
(god bless her, well somebody aught to!) turned around & told the then
British Telecom (goverment run as I remember) that they couldn't put
any fibre network in the ground as it would be better handled by
private industry & we all know what happened to those.
Nothing at all wrong with Lady Thatcher this country has been totally
ruined by the two useless conservative PM's that where elected to
succeed her and even more so by the so called New Labor government
that we have today that succeeded them .
Let us put it simply would you spend £15billion if you thought someone
would be able to come & take away any profit which you could earn if
you did so.

Like with many other things in this country to day it is time we put
the clock back a few decades because if it carries on going down hill
at the speed it is going today there will be nothing left for anyone .
Getting out of the EU quickly would be a damn good start and getting
rid of this shambles of a government that is in the habit of loosing
our private details, failing to declare donations to the
party,allowing the world and its Brother to enter and stay
here,failing miserably to keep law and order you name it they are
guilty of it .
Total scoundrels the lot of them .

wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:10:30 -0000, "kraftee"
wrote:


Funny but this argument has been doing the rounds ever since Maggie
(god bless her, well somebody aught to!) turned around & told the
then British Telecom (goverment run as I remember) that they
couldn't put any fibre network in the ground as it would be better
handled by private industry & we all know what happened to those.
Nothing at all wrong with Lady Thatcher this country has been
totally ruined by the two useless conservative PM's that where
elected to succeed her and even more so by the so called New Labor
government that we have today that succeeded them .
Let us put it simply would you spend £15billion if you thought
someone would be able to come & take away any profit which you
could earn if you did so.

Like with many other things in this country to day it is time we put
the clock back a few decades because if it carries on going down
hill at the speed it is going today there will be nothing left for
anyone . Getting out of the EU quickly would be a damn good start
and getting rid of this shambles of a government that is in the
habit of loosing our private details, failing to declare donations
to the party,allowing the world and its Brother to enter and stay
here,failing miserably to keep law and order you name it they are
guilty of it .
Total scoundrels the lot of them .

Couldn't agree more, no matter which side of the fence you are looking
at. Only problem is who do you vote in next as they are all as bad as
each other.

On 2008-01-24, Mike wrote:
For the past few years internet users worldwide have been reaping the
benefits of the dot com crash where assets such as fibre costing
billions were sitting there doing nothing and owned by financiers who
didn't know how to make money from them so they sold them on at a
fraction of their original cost. All that surplus capacity, sold off
on the cheap is rapidly running out due to ****wit ideas like youtube.

I don't think so. It may be that not much fibre has been buried
underground since the 1990's, but the amount of bandwidth you can get
through a single existing fibre pair has increased dramatically since
then due the continuing, fantastic increase in the density achieved by
WDM equipment. WDM equipment isn't exactly cheap, but it is usually
way cheaper than burying more glass in the ground. It is the case,
however, that WDM seems to be nowhere near as effective for existing
undersea fibre, but prices there have risen enough that people are
starting to spend to lay more of it.

I don't think the problem with building big Internet services is
transmission bandwidth, there's lots of that and it is still fairly
cheap. The problem is that big routers haven't gotten cheaper anywhere
near as fast as transmission bandwidth, so buying routers has become
a considerable fraction of the cost of a service (and, of course, big
ATM switches are really, truly expensive even compared to big routers,
so if your DSL service uses them for backhaul there's a good chance
that is why it is short of bandwidth).

In any case, this has little to do with what BT apparently wants to do,
which is to bury fibre where there is none now. Whether there is lots of,
or a little, bandwidth where the existing fibre is now makes little
difference to the cost of new stuff.

BT in their approach are no different to anyone else - but they are
taking a long term approach and what they don't want is some tit of a
politician pulling the rug from under their investment and handing it
out to the 'competition'

A possibility they seem to be responding to by trying to persuade the
same tit of a politician to guarantee them a return on their rather
risky investment. Risk-free investments are wonderful if you can
find them.

Dennis Ferguson

Dennis Ferguson wrote:
On 2008-01-24, Mike wrote:
For the past few years internet users worldwide have been reaping the
benefits of the dot com crash where assets such as fibre costing
billions were sitting there doing nothing and owned by financiers who
didn't know how to make money from them so they sold them on at a
fraction of their original cost. All that surplus capacity, sold off
on the cheap is rapidly running out due to ****wit ideas like youtube.

I don't think so. It may be that not much fibre has been buried
underground since the 1990's, but the amount of bandwidth you can get
through a single existing fibre pair has increased dramatically since
then due the continuing, fantastic increase in the density achieved by
WDM equipment. WDM equipment isn't exactly cheap, but it is usually
way cheaper than burying more glass in the ground. It is the case,
however, that WDM seems to be nowhere near as effective for existing
undersea fibre, but prices there have risen enough that people are
starting to spend to lay more of it.

I think the problem there is that undersea cables need repeaters, and if
the repeaters weren't designed for a given modulation you are, so to
speak sunk.

I worked on an undersea repeater some years back. Dreadful project..one
factoid that may or may not be true, is that they had to relay lots of
cables in the coastal shallows due to them proving extremely tasty to
sharks...

I add this because its amusing, and it just shows that sometimes things
are not as simple as they seem...



I don't think the problem with building big Internet services is
transmission bandwidth, there's lots of that and it is still fairly
cheap. The problem is that big routers haven't gotten cheaper anywhere
near as fast as transmission bandwidth, so buying routers has become
a considerable fraction of the cost of a service (and, of course, big
ATM switches are really, truly expensive even compared to big routers,
so if your DSL service uses them for backhaul there's a good chance
that is why it is short of bandwidth).

In any case, this has little to do with what BT apparently wants to do,
which is to bury fibre where there is none now. Whether there is lots of,
or a little, bandwidth where the existing fibre is now makes little
difference to the cost of new stuff.

Sensible caching could reduce core backbone loads on 'broadcast' type
material.

Its the last 4 miles of fibre we probably want tho. Rather than copper,
That the current bottleneck.


BT in their approach are no different to anyone else - but they are
taking a long term approach and what they don't want is some tit of a
politician pulling the rug from under their investment and handing it
out to the 'competition'

A possibility they seem to be responding to by trying to persuade the
same tit of a politician to guarantee them a return on their rather
risky investment. Risk-free investments are wonderful if you can
find them.


I think that is less than fair - I am no fan of BT, but I can think of
at least one project - the M25 thames crossing, that was just about
clear of debt when the government 'regulated' it down to the point where
it will never actually make a profit.


Then theres the opposite side of the coin, where the channel tunnel has
been essentially broke since it was built, and the market price of a
ferry crossing is still way less than what they would need to charge to
make it profitable.

Dennis Ferguson

PeterC wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:14:04 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I would be willing to bet I am the only Clare net customer IN our
village,

Have you been on Little Britain?
Nice one ;-)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

NO I bloody didn't you spamming ****.

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:35:21 GMT, PeterC wrote:

"The Lord hath revealed His will, and I was not rebellious.

god, I hate religions!
--
Peter.
You don't understand Newton's Third Law of Motion?
It's not rocket science, you know.