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from the in-5-years-you'll-have-what-was-fast-5-years-ago dept.
All UK homes and businesses will have access to "fast broadband" by 2020, David Cameron has pledged.
The PM is to introduce a "universal service obligation" for broadband, giving the public a legal right to request an "affordable" connection.
It would put broadband on a similar footing to other basic services such as water and electricity.
Labour said it meant "another five years on the broadband back-burner" for those struggling with their service.
In 2010, the coalition government promised the UK would have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015.
Then, in 2012, a pledge was made by then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt that the UK would have "the fastest broadband of any major European country" by 2015.
He defined high-speed broadband as offering a download speed of greater than 24 megabits per second (Mbps). Communications regulator Ofcom defines it as 30Mbps.
Mr Cameron's latest announcement is aimed at ensuring consumers have access to a broadband connection with a speed of at least 10Mbps, no matter where in the country they live or work.
[...] Chi Onwurah, shadow minister for culture and the digital economy, said the government needed to set out how the new pledge would be funded and when consumers would "actually see the benefits".
"Five years after abandoning Labour's fully-funded commitment to universal broadband, the government's "superfast" broadband rollout is still being hit with delays and at the mercy of a single provider," she said.
The government has already given BT £1bn to extend broadband to some rural areas, although its record has been criticised, BBC reporter Rob Young says.
It is unclear whether more taxpayers' money will be available for this latest ambition, he adds.
BT says faster universal broadband needs to be "commercially viable". Virgin Media has argued against state subsidies.
In September, BT hit back at rivals calling for its break-up, as it announced a strategy to make the UK the fastest broadband nation.
It revealed plans to connect 10 million homes to ultrafast broadband (300-500Mbps) by the end of 2020 and raise the minimum broadband speed for homes that cannot get fibre to 5-10Mbps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @07:50AM
The same guy who demands mandatory web filters and heads a government trying to introduce warrantless snooping and secret courts? Welcome to the Stasinet!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @08:28AM
Yup, without good coverage people can escape surveillance, next up free mobile phones from birth.
The freedom you demanded is now mandatory.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday November 09 2015, @02:30PM
nonono --
This is a "Hey look, shiny!"
And if people like the shiny, then all of that filtering and monitoring and stuff they are getting negative attention for asking about -- will be built into these upgrades.
It's about the same time table to implement the other, so it can go in lock-step with a "high bandwidth for the masses" update. What better way to track people and also have the bandwidth to capture all of that from everyone (doubling the traffic, you know, if a copy is made for decryption later--it won't be on the fly, it'll be captured for later)... you need bigger pipes, because if you increase the speed as much as he is saying, then you need to do it again for the security apparatus.
And while people enjoy their new HD autoplay advertisements on the fast new backbone, the security apparatus will run so smoothly it won't cause issues with such ad playback to get people to start sniffing around for what else is going on.
Next they'll want IPV6 for everyone so every single device a person uses is permanently assignable and trackable. Not an old desire but more easily reachable with this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:49AM
Both North America and APNIC have run out of IPv4 addresses.
The IPv6 Privacy concern has largely been addressed with the concept of a "temporary address"