How Long Will It Take For The UK To Put In Enough Fibre Optic Cable To Let Us To Have Semi Acceptable Broadband Speeds In Our Own Homes?
Can you remember when dial-up modems linked your pc to the World Wide Web? Torment wasn’t it! It was slow and it tied up the phone line at the same time. Picture trying to manage an Internet Business with that technology. Well things have moved on a pace, but we are about to reach another barrier where we all have to dispose of the technology that we are presently using. Broadband has superseded from dial-up and supposedly you the can get 24 Mb/s Broadband speeds. Fast enough to enable people to Work From Home, or for local government to move people from the office, and relocate their Online Jobs to the suburban areas.
Nearly all broadband traffic passes down a pair of single twisted copper wires. These are capable of coping with 6 telephone calls and supposedly up to 24 Mb/s Internet speeds. Balance this with a pair of fibre optic cables – 2.5 million phone calls and broadband speeds in excess of 50 Mb to start off with. Both Virgin and BT are marketing fibre broadband in restricted areas of the country and that is the problem. If your Internet Business requires super fast speeds and massive download capacity then you are going toneed fibre broadband. Simple – just go and order it then.
And that is where the trouble starts. This is not a case of altering how we use the current infrastructure to boost the speed and volume of downloads. The twisted copper pair has attained its maximum capacity. The key ISP’s need to lay down miles and miles of fibre optic cable to utilize the new broadband technology. If you Work From Home that implies they need to to lay cable up your street, via your garden and into your home. If your company’s business revolves around Online Jobs then cable must be distributed throughout the office or factory. The cost is colossal and even if you can use the underground water or existing telephone channels, it will take years to roll out.
The other issue is that only key urban areas will get the new fibre cables because corporations like BT and Virgin need to make profits and dividends for their shareholders. Presently the USA is about 16th in the world as regards broadband access, but this is with an average speed of 3.9 Mb/s. The UK still has 1 in 10 households with less than 2Mb/s speeds. Unless the UK Government brings in a national plan for fibre broadband, we will sadly lag behind countries like South Korea who intend to improve their national network to 1Gb/s by 2012.
Anumber of people will say that it’s not essential. Others don’t fancy it at all. Nevertheless for those of you who do possess a “state of the art” Internet Business , using faster internet is the only course to compete worldwide. Unless governments wants our knowledge based industries to go the same way as our manufacturing, coal and steel industries, the country must invest in tomorrow. Sure a small business where you Work From Home distributing goods may not demand super fast speeds, but if you are a web developer or your business has high tech Online Jobs, then it could be a major competitive factor on your future success. Personally I would crave for anything above 5 Mb/s, never mind 50 Mb/s from Virgin Media or that South Korean utopia of 1Gb/s!!
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