Re: SHARON WHITE, OFCOM - WE NEED A FIRM DATE TO START THE LONG PROCESS OF SWITCHING OF COPPER.
@ Adam Jarvis: Who moved your cheese?
Your post is probably the most personally abusive that I have ever seen on El Reg, to the point where I think it says more about you than it does about me. I did wonder about putting "Report Abuse" to the test but decided against it so that as many people as possible can read your rant for themselves.
To respond to a specific point, you wrote Your answer Commswonk is to ignore the plight of customers with copper/alu lines longer than 500m, but if you had taken the trouble to read what I wrote earlier you would have realised that I clearly recognised that those at the end of long lines did need a solution, specifically by writing For the avoidance of doubt I fully agree that subscribers at the end of a "long line" are currently getting a raw deal, and that a workable solution has to be implemented to provide them with a better service, but there is no reason why that solution has to involve re-engineering all those for whom a mix of fibre and copper provides a perfectly satisfactory service, even on a time scale which you admit yourself would be long.
Please explain how that is - to use your words - to ignore the plight of customers with copper/alu lines longer than 500m...?
And this sentence is completely and utterly wrong: Yourself. Self interest, nothing else. It's you that is thinking of the few. (well just yourself by the looks of it). And all because you are individually obsessed by keeping AGE UK 's aid call device working on POTS line. So can we assume you have more than a singular vested interest in Age UK's Aid Call over POTS. Any such assumption is incorrect.
It's about time for you to learn to accept the the existence of opinions that differ from yours with good grace, even if you believe those opinions to be incorrect.
To expand on the "let's not ditch copper entirely" theme, it is worth bearing mind that AIUI BT's revenue on fixed lines is falling, with more and more residential users relying on mobile telephony and data. What do you think the outcome might be if fixed line costs were to be significantly increased by a mass conversion to FTTP; the demand for fixed lines would fall even further so that the conversion cost might never be amortised. Hardly a good outcome.
So - you asked me about for whom I was speaking; the answer is, I suppose, for those not emotionally consumed for a need for greater data bandwidth, and perhaps for those who do not have an inexhaustable supply of money to pay for an increasingly expensive service that exceeds their requirements by a large margin. I don't doubt that you may speak for a section of the data consuming community, but I'm not sure that you have the right to claim that you speak for all. You accused me of writing out of self interest; you aren't I suppose...