News Ofcom begins 10Mb/s USO roll-out process

Doesn't go far enough by a long way. The UK is pretty much a laughing stock compared to other countries for broadband availability and price.

 

Initially, I misread that headline as 10Gb/s and got all excited. 10Mb/sec is a pretty low hurdle to clear, I'm kind of amazed they're not setting the bar at something more realistic for modern use, like 30 Mb/s.

 

You poor, poor people. The UK is most definitely a laughing stock on that front. It's a tiny, rich country... the broadband should be much better than what it is.

 

If only we could all just spade a bit of sand out of the way to lay new fibre.

 

That would be swell, would it not?

 

Even 10Mbit clears the deck of a lot of use cases previously impossible on something like ~2-3Mbit, whereas there's not really a lot you can do with 30Mbit that you can't with 10.

That said, too little, too late.

 

To be fair this includes Assendofnowhere Village with its population of two pensioners and three dogs and if you include such economically unviable places then most countries (excluding city states since they don't have such areas in the first place) on the planet are no better.

But yep, if you are going to invest in broadband infrastructure it would make much more sense to do it properly the first time, because the way they are handling this they'll just have to do it all over again in a couple years.

 

UK Infrastucture in general tbh... not just telecoms/internet...

Most of it's still more or less Victorian... The few bits that aren't as old Brunel's stovepipe were only updated because some germans decided to blow it up in the 1940s...

Not helped by a combo of Nimbyism, the ballache that is getting anything of note done to/in listed buildings and/or national parks [and houses that are within their confines] and the prevailing attitude of 'Do the bare minimum? oh no, that sounds like too much... can we not do less?'


Likewise the US... 'We're #1*!... GO USA!'

*except education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. etc.

The US at least has a plausible get-out of having a lot of 'nowhere' to be in the middle of...

 

My healthcare in the US is excellent and no more costly than the UK. However, my wife works for the Cleveland Clinic, which is the only reason it’s so good.

 

Erm, the internet situation in the UK is pretty goddamn good to be honest. Dozens of different companies to choose from, and as a result I get 200mb Fibre for £28 - awesome value.

 

Dozens of companies to choose from?

More like two.
Openreach piggy backers and Virgin.
Remember that all the Openreach piggy backers like BT, Sky, TalkTalk, PlusNet etc can never engage in genuine competition with each other due to them all being limited by whatever Openreach does.

So even in areas with some economic value you are limited to the slow poke 76 down 18 up from Openreach or if your street won the Virgin bothers to put cables in lottery 350 down 20 up.
(yes, I'm aware that there are some extremely geographically restricted areas where real fibre exists, but ain't no one moving hundreds of miles for that).