back to article Universal Service Oh... forget the Obligation. BT offers to stump up £600m for 10Mbps

BT has offered to stump up £600m to provide ubiquitous minimum broadband speeds of 10Mbps by 2022. If the proposal is accepted, it will render the government's plans for a legal universal service obligation, allowing customers to demand speeds of 10Mbps, redundant. Under the plans, BT would provide 10Mpbs to 99 per cent of …

  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Currently, 1.4 million people cannot get 10Mpbs.

    and

    However, ... as many 6.7m Brits suffer sub-10Mbps broadband speeds

    Can't get -vs- haven't got

    There's a local around here who regularly moans about her broadband being crap. She's in the BDUK FTTP footprint so could have 330Mbps with minimal outlay, but she'd rather moan about it being crap than go and actually place an order for something better.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bluntly, everything has the caveat "UP TO"

      People don't want another compensation scheme that want PROPER, RELIABLE Broadband. People have had enough of bamboozled, obfuscated "UP TO".

      (Anyone that has tried to get compensation from the Electricity supplier for poor service will understand this fully. It's so much effort chasing these pointless compensation schemes, to get blood out of stone, than the time and effort it takes. They are a complete waste of fucking space, as are the regulators that run them). Importantly it is money that could be alternatively spent actually laying FIBRE.

      Everything BT do regards ADSL, FTTC/VDSL2 aka Infinity1/Infinity2/Pointless G.fast over BT's sweated copper carcass legacy infrastructure is "UP TO".

      I need to repeat that three times.

      "UP TO"

      "UP TO"

      "UP TO"

      It's dependent on:

      Cabling used: Aluminium/Copper twisted pair

      Line Length of the Copper/Aluminium.

      Quality of the connections on route/oxidation/dampness/exposure/age of those cables/connections.

      Quality of the home wiring, removal of extension wiring.

      Quality of Filter.

      Matching of modems, i.e Broadcom (Home Router) to Broadcom (Distribution Card) etc.

      Correct Firmware Updates (particularly G.fast)

      Low Level Noise ('pump noise'), Industiral locations.

      Quality of Power Supplies.

      etc,etc,etc.

      Any talk of hard and fast numbers like this (and then to spend 54 pages arguing over symantics) is absolutely ridiculous, and completely missing the point. There is so much that is subjective here.

      This seems to be a smoke screen so we all end up arguing about numbers and compensation, when the argument has been moved away from the technology, which is the important bit.

      We need to bring the argument back to the technology being used. Continuing to rollout Copper when so much has been paid in subsidies for Superfast "Fibre" Broadband is madness.

      All lines longer than 500m (250m as the crow flies) need to have a policy of pure fibre rollout, nothing else.

      There is no other realistic solution for these rural lines. Copper based "up to" 10Mbps is near here nor there.

      It's pointless and can't be transitioned to faster speeds as they become necessary, especially quickly. These 500m+ lines if we go this route will have no upgrade path whatsoever.

      1. Your alien overlord - fear me
        Facepalm

        Re: Bluntly, everything has the caveat "UP TO"

        At least with the electricity companies, they give you 240 volts as advertised, not up to 240 volts!

        1. Natalie Gritpants

          Re: Bluntly, everything has the caveat "UP TO"

          It is up to 240V, nominal 230V and a minimum that I can't remember.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Bluntly, everything has the caveat "UP TO"

            "It is up to 240V, nominal 230V and a minimum that I can't remember."

            When I measured at Tittleshall / Stanfield one sunday as my mother waited nearly an hour for her oven to warm up, we got 170V....she learned not to try cook in the afternoon when football was on TV

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Bluntly, everything has the caveat "UP TO"

              Exactly what I said happens, everyone arguing over minor semantics..and now electricity voltages!

          2. kyndair

            voltage

            EU standard is 230v plus or minus 20v, with mainland Europe being 220 plus or minus 10v and the UK sitting at 240 plus or minus 10v. The EU standard is written so that it just gives the range used in such a way that any electronics kit sold to an EU customer should be safe anywhere in Europe

            1. Zmodem

              However, ... as many 6.7m Brits suffer sub-10Mbps broadband speeds

              that would be every BT customer

            2. Richard 12 Silver badge

              EU standard is 230VAC +10% -6%

              216V to 253V, approx.

              Anything below about 210V at the socket implies an electrical fault that could cause a fire and/or property damage and needs immediate investigation.

              At 170V, if your wiring appears ok, call National Grid because either somebody lost a neutral, or your supply cabling is already on fire.

            3. Halfmad

              Re: voltage

              kyndair

              voltage

              EU standard is 230v plus or minus 20v, with mainland Europe being 220 plus or minus 10v and the UK sitting at 240 plus or minus 10v. The EU standard is written so that it just gives the range used in such a way that any electronics kit sold to an EU customer should be safe anywhere in Europe

              ^^ UK voltage has been 230V plus or minus 10% for years.

            4. cd / && rm -rf *
              Headmaster

              Re: voltage

              "EU standard is 230v plus or minus 20v"

              Nope. It's 230v +10% / -6%.

              So 253v max, 216v min.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If the universal service obligation is 10mbps and BT are offering to give everyone 10mbps then why cancel it?

  4. Anonymous Noel Coward
    Pint

    I'm not holding my breath.

  5. Blitheringeejit
    FAIL

    Same Old...

    The government said it will work with BT over the coming months to develop the proposal bend over accommodatingly and let BT dictate the technical detail in which the devil will live - which , if it is accepted, when the gummint accepts it (however awful it is), will be legally binding.

    FTFY

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Simply...

    It's literally condemning everyone rurally to 10Mbps max for the next 20 years.

    "Here are some crumbs, make do".

    (it's probably even second equipment being pulled out exchanges/cabinets along the M4 corridor, to be retrofitted rurally).

    The argument needs to centre firmly on the technology FTTC v pure Fibre being proposed (where), not compensation schemes. "up to" numbers and compensation are irrelevant - it's a smoke screen, to hide the technical issues of the underlying Copper v pure Fibre (especially on lines longer than 500 metres (250m as the crow flies) / Exchange only lines.

    You don't need a "Pen pushing" compensation scheme if you roll out pure Fibre.

    1. inmypjs Silver badge

      Re: Simply...

      "condemning everyone rurally to 10Mbps"

      Rurals can have whatever speed they want. The problem is they want some other fucker to pay for it.

      Us other fuckers are being condemned to pay for rurals getting not less than 10Mb/s, I would rather it were lower.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Simply...

        "Us other fuckers are being condemned to pay for rurals getting not less than 10Mb/s, I would rather it were lower."

        Maybe you could grow your wheat in your window box so you can produce your own flour for your morning toast out of the money you save?

      2. Jamie Jones Silver badge

        Re: Simply...

        What about you townies getting all our lovely fresh water?

        Until you stick a rain collector on your tiny roof and make do with your polluted city-air-percolated water, stop moaning!

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Simply...

        You're lucky historically, rural Welsh folk didn't all think selfishly like you.

        Object, regards the costs/disruption of constructing a clean water aqueduct 120 years ago and make you pay the true full cost of getting clean water to you in cities like Manchester, Birmingham etc.

        In the case of City of Birmingham, 73+ miles by several pipes, form a gravity fed aqueduct all the way from Mid Wales to south side of Birmingham, carrying fresh Welsh mountain water over two days to supply the City of Birmingham's population.

        Luckily for you, the Victorians saw it as a civic duty to bring clean fresh water to the masses from mid-Wales.

        It's a shame Severn Trent never thought to return the favour and deliver back a Fibre Broadband pipe from Birmingham back to Ryhader/Powys, as a way of saying thanks, however symbolic that might seem.

        Most farms now has direct contracts with Supermarkets. It's all done online. Decent reliable broadband is an absolute necessity. You sound like you'd be the first to complain if the shelves were empty at your local supermarket of eggs, chicken, beef, milk, Pembrokeshire Potatoes etc.

        1. Cynic_999

          Re: Simply...

          "

          In the case of City of Birmingham, 73+ miles by several pipes, form a gravity fed aqueduct all the way from Mid Wales to south side of Birmingham, carrying fresh Welsh mountain water over two days to supply the City of Birmingham's population.

          "

          The solution is blindingly obvious. Stick a laser or two inside the pipeline, and use the water as an optical conduit to supply Internet in return.

      4. Spider

        Re: Simply...

        In principle yes.

        However, since BT are slurping up taxpayer cash that us rural yokels are forced to fork over as well then yes we'd like the USO met.

        Although if we're all only paying for those things we have access to then city dwellers will of course be happy to shoulder the disproportionate amount of tax cash that gets funnelled to city based public transport, roads, arts, hospitals, schools.......?

        or we could just demand that those corps that take public money paid by all of us live up to their obligations they agreed to to get it?

  7. Chris G

    We are BT, we are your friends

    If BT are willing to spend €600 million on guaranteeing a minimum of 10 Mb/s, then that's what the government is going to get and not a byte more without somebody paying for it.

    They can see that when everyone has the 10, BT will not be obligated to provide more or better,

    Unless of course a customer with a mere 10Mb/s would like to avail themselves of a faster deal which will cost just a little bit more,or a lot more.

    On a side note, I was helping an 84 year old friend to get his internet working on Saturday, he was shafted by two local companies to get his Aspire connected, one charged him €200 for a new hard drive because aparrently the old one couldn't connect, the other switched off everything in Dos.

    While I was fiddling around I found his router was connected and running at 54 Mb/s (allegedly needed replacing with an expensive proprietry item)

    This is Ibiza mostly a third world island but the internet works.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We are BT, we are your friends

      Already the case, apathy sets in.

      It's already so difficult for consumers to work out why their broadband is slow. The BTWholesale speed test (let's not even mention it based on Adobe Flash still) is a complete waste of space, doesn't give any useful information whatsoever.

      Would most non-technical consumers feel confident enough to argue, and request a USO of 10Mbps (if they had broadband in the 4-8Mbps range), most will just accept what they have.

      This is exactly what BT want.

      A USO of 10Mbps is such a marginal objective (most won't bother because it will be too much hassle for very little marginal gain). This means BT can do this with existing infrastructure, i.e. replacing 0.5mm copper with 0.9mm copper/maybe a few extra cabinets. This is BT spending as little as physcially possible to shut up the few technically literate complainers.

      It's a complete waste of space.

  8. James 51

    If there was a 'every person who doesn't have 99.99% up time of 10mb gets it for free for a year automatically with mega bucks fine if we find out you've been fiddling the books' instead of form filling compensation that might work.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Better - pro-rated "up to"

      The contract says "up to 10Mb" and your max. peak is 5Mb, you pay "up to" half.

      And if half of the time you only get 2.5Mb, knock an additional quarter off.

      That'd sort out the "up to" crap within a few months.

      The telcos know how much capacity they really have, and by now they also know the quality of almost all the copper and aluminium wiring in the country. They should have no difficulty in advertising what customers in each street can really get.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Better - pro-rated "up to"

        Yep, but try proving that when your speed drops to 5Mbps for 1-2hrs of the day, and a different times/different days. How long is that going to take you? So many factors at work, and BT have things they can do, before it comes to paying compensation, but will only do, ultimately as a last resort.

        BT were willing to a have a protracted 10 year battle with Ofcom through the Courts, on the decision regards Openreach. Do not think they don't have a whole army of people in place to make sure complaints like that never stick. The idea of a compensation scheme based on "up to" speeds is a complete fcuking "merry-go-round" waste of time. Can't believe it's even being put forward as a solution.

        It will help no one in terms of actually getting the speed they need, but you may get £10 for the inconvenience.

        Let's no forget, even though it's not for profit, Ombudsman Services make more per customer, than the customer, in terms of compensation - making the complaint.

        It's a self serving system, in which lot's of people make money from people's misery, instead of doing what is actually needed, laying fibre in the local loop to the doorstep, so people have real choice.

  9. Peter27x

    Is the Broadband USO similar to the Voice USO, which brings a level of availability etc. By sidestepping the USO are BT trying to get off the hook for providing a guaranteed service level (rather than just the guaranteed bandwidth)?

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Meh

      Sort of. In fact the voice USO does not guarantee everyone a telephone line just for asking. BT will cover the cost up to a certain level (about £4,000 I think) but after that will levy excess construction costs. A broadband USO would presumably be the same.

      So the only difference it makes is that instead of BT being able to flat out refuse they have to give you a quotation and go ahead with it if you accept. So instead of 'No, can't do it' you get 'Sure thing, you'll have to pay £15,000 toward it though).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's the apathetic nature of this 10Mbps USO. It's too little, too late.

        So AndreuC, if you had 7Mbps on a good day, 3.5Mbps on a bad wet, windy day, would you pay £15000 to get the USO of 10Mbps? (we're still unsure if this is "up to" 10Mbps or a minimum of 10Mbps 24/7). Then there is the matter of contention between customers. A typical lack of technical detail, as always.

        And to achieve this, BT does the minimum - options may just be upgrading the aluminum to Copper, improving connections, replacing sections of 0.5mm copper to thicker 0.9mm copper, or LR-VDSL.

        Would you pay? or stick with what you have. I'd be apathetic at best, to even bother, especially LR-VDSL, which would likely be just as intermittent over poor cabling.

        1. AndrueC Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: It's the apathetic nature of this 10Mbps USO. It's too little, too late.

          Would you pay? or stick with what you have.

          £15k for a 10Mb/s minimum - no way. I should point out that the figure there is totally pie in the sky. Also I don't personally need anything more than a couple of Mb/s (though I actually have 60Mb/s).

          The problem here is 'universal service' usually comes with caveats no matter what the service is. The same holds true with mains electricity - if you live in a really remote property you will be expected to cover part of the costs. The idea that you can ask for a 'decent' internet connection and expect to have it installed absolutely anywhere in the British Isles for free is a non-starter. Human technology, engineering skill and economics mean that eventually the provider has to draw the line.

          The problem is that the line right now is possibly (probably) excluding too many people. But at what point do we finally accept reality? At 0.5%? 0.1%? I suspect the answer is that most of us accept the reality of the situation when we ourselves are getting what we want.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: It's the apathetic nature of this 10Mbps USO. It's too little, too late.

            One of the problems I have with the Welsh Superfast Cymru Programme, is the fact that in order to just meet 24Mbps contracts, it was in BT's Interest to do lots of expensive manual work on copper cabling, replacing 0.5mm copper with 0.9mm copper.

            When you have a upgrade programme called "Superfast Fibre" Broadband it seems somewhat deceitful of BT to putting lots of time and energy into replacing 0.5mm copper with thicker 0.9mm copper, to "just" meet a target when the impetus of the taxpayer (like for like) funding was to lay actual "Fibre". In essence, remove copper - not lay new copper.

            To the non-technical, most expect Fibre to mean only laying new Fibre, not using new sections of slightly thicker copper too, to satisfy contracts.

            It would certainly be good to find out the extent of new copper laid by BT as part of this programme.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    99%?

    As long as the 1% is in urban areas where people have a choice of infrastructure providers, and as long as that 1% is defined in law backed by heavy penalties, maybe this is OK. But where BT are the monopoly infrastructure provider there absolutely needs to be a regulatory requirement for them to act to deliver decent service, which mainly means rural areas they can easily walk away from saying they represent "1%" and can therefore be abandoned.

    But no matter what, the only thing that will make BT do the right thing is proper, penalty-equipped regulation. A deal excluding regulation is not only capitulation, but condemns the UK, especially the rural area increasingly dependent on digital services, to third rate status. How many Reg readers have horror stories after trusting BT's statements once too often?

  11. Dredd100

    Common sense

    There is more to this issue than just line speeds. I had an issue where the cab I was connected to was 2.4km away, I could see a cabinet from my office window. There was drop wires, and all the infrastructure was there, all they needed to do was hook me up to the newer cab.

    I had inconsistent speeds of 2mb! Not only that, because the line was aluminium for over 80% the quality was awful.

    My complaint went up to director level and yet still, because my PSTN service was working with no problem, they wouldn't do anything.

    If Openreach/BT use common sense and put more capacity in local cabs so they are taking the distance down to sub 500m, a lot of these problems would be sorted.

    I almost ended up paying £6000 to get fibre to the prem installed, instead, I realised it was cheaper to just move house!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Common sense

      The problem is, if you go the G.fast route to get all those line lengths down below 500m (and that won't help where you have Aluminum, which will need upgrading to copper), it means up to 24 additional G.fast nodes per FTTC cabinet, to get the same edge coverage of the FTTC cabinet, but at near blanket 100Mbp+ ultrafast speeds. It doesn't offer room for expansion, because the copper is already sweated to achieve 100Mbps+.

      That is a lot of tech to install, a lot of firmware to get right, a lot of power supplies to install. Self Power might become an option but that's nowhere near at the moment. Each of those 24 G.fast nodes would require connecting to the mains grid (not cheap, time consuming, external contractors etc), worse case.

      Expanding G.fast piecemeal is an expensive way of doing things too, long term, due to the higher on-going maintenance costs of G.fast, it will end up a can of worms to fault find, because your starting off on the wrong shoe.

      Rurally, G.fast is never going to happen whatever headlines BT want to push out, regards 1Gbps over 30m of perfect copper etc in a lab/test environment etc. The UK tests of G.fast to date, have been carried out over new infrastructure, separate from the existing local loop to avoid cross-talk inteference.

      So most of trials themselves aren't real world trials "as such", but they have been sold that way to the press.

  12. Mike Scott 1

    So why are BT making this kind offer?- Well I suspect it isn't to make things better from consumers, it is for themselves. Seems like they are giving themselves an extra 2 years to do something they were being forced to do earlier.

    I'm on the receiving end of this dither, on a good day we get 4Mb up, 150Kb down, with no prospect in sight of improving our EO line. For some bizarre reason our line is about 3Km long, where there is a perfectly good fibre enabled exchange 200m the other way. What really sticks in the throat is the lack of economical alternatives, and being marooned on full price line rental, and full price 'ultimate' broadband ADSL. If they could even do the decent thing and make that half price, or £1 per Mb, it would help my mood. However, I'm pretty sure I'll still be grumbling away in 5 years time on the same rubbish service, after this followed by others at 6 monthly intervals are rolled out.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re-routing a line to a different (nearer) FTTC cab.

      It does seem odd that BT won't deal with the persistent poor connectivity issues by connecting them to a different cab, if that option is possible, which at times it must be. i.e. premises is 50/50 between upgraded/non-upgraded cabs etc.

      At least in the short term, and when there is cabling in place. BT seem adamant that they won't redirect circuits/cabling to newer FTTC cabinet that aren't the traditional route of that line. They won't give anyone special treatment to solve an issue in this regard.

  13. jason 7

    At the other extreme...

    I have a customer that has Virgin 300Mbps cable and keeps moaning to me that it drops on occasion to just 100Mbps. He sits all day running speedtests on it. He plagued BT when he had ADSL2 and Infinity. When I went to do some work there I pulled out 6 redundant BT Homehubs as he would demand another one if it ever dropped in speed or 'got a little slow'.

    The rub is he is running a web dev agency off it and then wonders why he isn't getting industry grade internet while paying just domestic customer rates.

    Nightmare.

  14. myleftnut
    Coat

    Why does it have to be BT?

    If it's a piece of piss to provide rural broadband at high speeds cheaply why haven't we got a massive queue of companies willing to do it? I seem to recall we (as in the UK people) sold BT into private ownership & now we're crying that a private company aren't doing "the decent thing"

    Charge people for what they use & how far it has to be shipped ... like every other product? Live in the sticks? Pay for your own broadband. I'd love a view of rolling hills & have quiet lanes to drive around, but my inner city house with decent broadband speeds doesn't have them. Choices eh?

    1. AndrueC Silver badge

      Re: Why does it have to be BT?

      If it's a piece of piss to provide rural broadband at high speeds cheaply why haven't we got a massive queue of companies willing to do it

      We do have a few of them. And in some respects they have it easier. Some are not-for-profit. Others are willing to use local labour and come to local agreements over way leaves. None of them have to wholesale their network so can take 100% of the returns (BT has to share those with ISPs which is a bit of a burden). Unfortunately the truth is that some areas are just very expensive to cater for.

      Anyone that doesn't currently have access to a decent service (by which I'd say 40Mb/s or higher - sod 10Mb/s) it's because there's something about your area that makes it a right sod to upgrade. BT (and other providers) would upgrade in an instant if they could. The fact it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean you're being ignored or that they all hate you. It just means the economics are that bad.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why does it have to be BT?

        By 'that' bad...

        You mean an approximate £1.6Bn* (was projected nearer to £3Bn) annual minimum pre-tax profit before BT will even contemplate those rural plebs...

        Yet money was found easily to buy EE.

        "sit on hands, wait for handouts" has worked so well up to now, why change?

        *Lower due to cost of dealing with Italian accountancy scandal (most would call it internal widespread fraud by any other name).

      2. therealmav

        Re: Why does it have to be BT?

        Anyone that doesn't currently have access to a decent service (by which I'd say 40Mb/s or higher - sod 10Mb/s) it's because there's something about your area that makes it a right sod to upgrade

        Bullocks. I live a mile from the centre of town and get 3Mb because I sit on an 2.5km EO line. Just round the corner is a nice new fibre enabled cabinet.

    2. Awil Onmearse
      Trollface

      Re: Why does it have to be BT?

      20km from the nearest real urban centre out in the woods in Sweden with and 1GB FTTP. Suck it up, 3rd-worlder ;-)

      The much-touted "Somalia" business-model is notoriously bad for critical infrastructure.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Simples Really.

    Monthly charge for the speed you can get, for example 1 quid per 10Mbs.

    Speed checked by independent means

    Then all the people who only get < 10Mbs pay less than 10 quid.

    The telco's think, hum, give them 38Mbs, we will coin it in big time.

    Simple?, Fairer?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Simples Really.

      The problem is BT really don't mind that scenario. If they could get rid of you they would, because they see no profit in you, well certainly none in terms of giving you a free infrastructure upgrade, that's been made very clear.

      They really wish they didn't have a legacy rural customer base, at times.

      Pricing it that way, just gives BT an excuse to do even less for you. It's also not fair because the cost of providing Broadband to the exchange/cabinet is exactly the same (equvalent of providing a local water pump, in days gone by).

      The fact the signal deteriorate in quality over copper between you and the cab, is well your problem, and why Openreach needs to be completely separate from BT.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lol. Virgin 200 Mbps is awesome. And under 40 notes a month and unlimited.

    Some people are just winners.

    Stop living in shitty no mark provences. You get what you deserve.

    1. cd / && rm -rf *

      "Lol. Virgin 200 Mbps is awesome. And under 40 notes a month"

      https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/31/virgin_hikes_bundles_prices_again

      Suck it up, bitch.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Its the UK. Nothing will happen except a big fat corporation making some more money which they will avoid tax on. I'll eat my hat if BT could be arsed to upgrade my local cabinet to fibre. They'll probably stick a packet of bran flakes on it instead.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    4geee

    I'm expecting the £600m to be routed back into the EE 4G network.

    Improved rural 4G would meet this 10 Meg broadband speed - coupled with a sensibly priced 4G SIM with unlimited data and geofenced to the subscribers address (just like copper & fibre chain you to a building)

    Meanwhile BT need to improve their rural 4G for the Blue Light Emergency Services Network that replaces TETRA Airwave over the next few years so any 4g expansion helps their 10 Meg broadband and their ESN rollout.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wales has some answers.

    Two things in the news, one, whitespace links for internet access, and also a guy using satellite.

    In addition there is a system using 2.4Ghz link to a antenna in the top of the church, then down to a 76Mb BT fibre box. Each outlying node provides a local wifi system to the neighbours.

    All the above in rural Wales.

    Finally, the ex CTO of BT said that we are just putting a finger in the dyke (no sarky comments please) in the provision of internet, not fit for today, definitely not for tomorrow.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like