The BBC earns £3 billion per year from TV License fees, but refuses to help boost broadband deployment to any notable degree despite the huge success and impact of it's iPlayer TV streaming service. And the digital divide of fast and slow internet connections within the UK is set to grow further as a result of the failings of Lord Carter (now former Communications Minister) of Barnes, and a lack of cooperation between BT and Virgin Media for wired connectivity, and Vodafone and O2 (headquartered in Spain) for wireless (mobile) access. What's more, these communications providers only plan to hook up major cities with the latest and greatest because it's more economically viable. What about our rural areas? The majority of which are still shockingly stuck at the tail-end of dial-up speeds of around 60kbps. That's 10 year old technology.
And the government isn't particularly aiming high either. They want to see the country hooked up to 10mbps. Let me put that into perspective. <sarcasm>10 MEGABITS PER SECOND!!!!!!</sarcasm>
So while the rest of that aforementioned connected world cruises by at a comfortable 100mbps residential connection as standard, our governmental and private sector fumbling, not to mention the gross misuse of parliamentary expenses (some of which could have been better used in helping to bridge the digital divide), is expected to see us stuck with a 2mbps average residential connection for the next 10 years! Now allow me to put that into perspective. 10 YEARS!!!!!!!
By the time we finally get Fibre To The Home on the same scale as the U.S., Sweden, or South Korea, world + dog will have long surpassed us in every aspect of internet connectivity.
Meanwhile, Sweden plans to test 100gbps this summer.
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