iPlate launched while connection falls over

No, it must be just a coincidence. Even BT would not be that devious and underhand, would they?

On the day the BT iPlate (a little gadget that's supposed to improve your ADSL performance by an average 1.5 Mbps) goes on sale, my connection is playing up big time. Spent most of the morning so far just checking and restarting my router, repeatedly trying to get key websites to appear in my browser, and generally harumphing around out of sheer frustration. 

OK, I get my broadband connection from the ethically sound Phone Co-op (who buy wholesale from Fused Networks or somesuch), and not from BT, but the dark mysteries of Openreach presumably sit behind it all.

Roll on fibre! I don't know about you, but is it not time that UK consumers and SMEs took the bull by the horns and took control of the shambles that is telecoms in the UK. 100Mbps up and down is what I want for my monthly fee please, and I really don't see why I can't have it. Increasingly other places in Europe have it, so why not here in the UK? BT (the incumbent) seems quite happy sweating the copper network for every last drop of profit it can extract from it, and is not keen on getting fibre deployment moving (and looking at it from their perspective you can see why), but that does not help us users one jot. BT needs to take care, else it will find itself surrounded by small "Islands of Fibre" springing up all over the country, and hey presto! no more monopoly. I can't wait. 

In fact I've been developing the notion of community owned fibre for my locality over at ColneValleyFibre.net. Sign up there if you're local and keen to get involved, or interested in investing in a profitable community owned utility cooperative.

BT is missing the point - again

I'm getting increasingly interested in the whole broadband/FTTH debate. On the BBC news site today, talking about the long heralded BT fibre test at Ebbsfleet, where BT appears to be offering performance that will merely "burst" to 100 Mbps down and only 2Mbps upload, a BT spokesperson had the nerve to assume they had a clue about what us consumers want and need by saying that the speeds would be "Higher in fact than anyone currently needs"!

What utter rubbish. How does BT know what we might need in terms of speed. I know for a fact that the paltry 0.3-1.5 Mbps that my "up to 8Mbps" connection delivers is not what I need. If i want to download a 2GB movie file I'd like to get that file as quickly as possible. 100Mbps sounds pretty useful to me.

BT really is doing itself no favours with its current stance on this whole issue. Why doesn't it actually take the time to talk to its customers, and then respond by doing something really excellent and useful, rather than bleating about the cost of fibre roll-out, and capping the performance even in its own trials! Fibre can deliver at least 100Mbps up and down. Think what that sort of upload performance could do for online entrepreneurial activity, to say nothing of two way video calling, e-care services, and community safety issues. Just what they are doing in Neunen with 100Mbps up and down.

Make no mistake, BT is not at all interested in delivering a world class solution into the UK. It is interested in lining its own pockets and those of its investors by sweating the copper asset to the last. Even the Ebbsfleet trial is using a fibre topology which is inherently anti-competitive, militates against unbundling, and delivers a second class service to consumers.

Fibre - done right - offers some fantastic benefits to consumers, business and our communities at large. Make no mistake, if we wait for BT to deliver, we will be waiting for some time to come, and we will end up with a second rate service. 

If you want something doing properly, do it yourself. There has never been a better opportunity to communities to take control of their own communications technology and build a network of community level, community owned fibre networks. 

Bye bye BT.

Reflecting on the global credit crunch

I've been thinking about the "credit crunch" that seems to be rolling around the world's financial markets creating all sorts of havoc.

For me this whole debacle highlights the critical flaws in a global financial system which appears to be essentially founded not on trust but on greed. Had the financial institutions that originally exposed themselves to the risks of the so-called sub-prime lending market acted responsibly and with due regard to their customers and other stakeholders, rather than being driven by naked greed, the financial markets would not be in the situation they now find themselves in. Greed has failed, and has exposed the fact that there is little or no trust between these financial institutions, so all the financial institutions are now unwilling to lend to their fellow institutions for fear of skeletons in the closet.

Instead it appears that it is down to the taxpayer to bail out these people, as governments in the UK and the US seem to be pouring public money in to create desperately needed liquidity in the markets.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, so please correct me, but it sort of feels like yet another market failure, and one right at the heart of the capitalist machine.