this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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So glad we privatised it really soaring ahead of other countries. To think we could of been the first fully fibre country at one point.
Germany checking in: The chancellors wife at the time having ties to the copper industry doesn't help either.
There's a trend with all the countries fucked over on broadband... ALL conservatives/neoliberals.
Same goes for economics.
Copper industry currently is driven by increased integration and increased electrification of EU.
Another thing to blame Thatcher for
Fuck Thatcher and Schmidt-Schilling!
Way back in 1999/2000 I was working for a division of the company I was working at before that wasn't based in the UK. As such, while there was a physical office near me, there was literally no reason to go there. I was on a trial of ADSL at the time (2Mbit, and that was amazing for the time) and so, working from home was actually faster than the office.
A few years before, I'd seen the BT engineers hooking up the office's phone lines via fibre (ISDN30). The single fibre ran 30 phone lines, an internet connection and a frame relay for private connection between sites with capacity to spare. I thought that was pretty cool.
I got to thinking back then. Someone (with money) should really connect normal people up to a fibre network. Because that one cable could do many things. You could send your cable tv over that fibre, internet, phone, a private connection to the office (VPNs did exist then, but weren't really the main way you connected sites), and likely other things too. That is, the business would be just laying the fibre and providing access points for ANY service to run bits over the line.
20+ years later we're kinda getting there (albeit OK not actual cable but streaming services. And there's no real need for frame relay any more. But really there's no reason they couldn't do TV with some multicast setup, and vpns are doing the same job).
I think yes, we dropped the ball over here.