The UK Decides 10 Mbps Broadband Should Be a Legal Right (engadget.com) 260
British homes and businesses will have a legal right to high-speed broadband by 2020, the government said Wednesday, dismissing calls from the network provider BT that it should be a voluntary rather than legal obligation on providers. From a report: Ministers originally considered adopting BT's voluntary offer, which would have seen it spend up to 600 million pound ($804 million) giving 1.4 million rural residents access to speeds of at least 10 Mbps. However, in a statement today, the government confirmed that it now will go down the regulatory route as it provides "sufficient certainty and the legal enforceability that is required to ensure high speed broadband access for the whole of the UK by 2020." Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said: "We know how important broadband is to homes and businesses and we want everyone to benefit from a fast and reliable connection. We are grateful to BT for their proposal but have decided that only a regulatory approach will make high speed broadband a reality for everyone in the UK, regardless of where they live or work."
Good for them. (Score:2)
In fact as a cheap bastard I only just recently upgraded from a 10 Mbps to a 30 Mbps connection myself.
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Don't feel bad... I have 16 at home and it works just fine considering what I use it for (browsing, VPN, the occasional tv stream, etc.)
Funny thing - When I lived in-town, I had a 50mbps connection, and comparing my experiences now with what I had then, I don't see any real difference (okay, it was a 50mbps Comcast connection, but...)
All said, I suspect that unless you routinely suck down multi-GB files all day long, or use it to watch like three 4k Netflix/Hulu/whatever streams all at the same time? Even 3
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Don't feel bad... I have 16 at home and it works just fine considering what I use it for (browsing, VPN, the occasional tv stream, etc.)
Funny thing - When I lived in-town, I had a 50mbps connection, and comparing my experiences now with what I had then, I don't see any real difference (okay, it was a 50mbps Comcast connection, but...)
All said, I suspect that unless you routinely suck down multi-GB files all day long, or use it to watch like three 4k Netflix/Hulu/whatever streams all at the same time? Even 30mbps is kind of overkill. I won't turn it down, but at the same time I don't really use it, and the vast majority of people out there won't either (at least not for now, and this may change as cable-cutting becomes more prevalent and screen rez goes up.)
Since I recently switched to a faster plan, I've noticed the internet goes offline far more often than when I was at 15mbps. It's usually only for a minute or two- but it's several times a day. Internet never went offline when it was slower.
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If I were getting bumped off multiple times a day I would call my isp.
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>All said, I suspect that unless you routinely suck down multi-GB files all day long, or use it to watch like three 4k Netflix/Hulu/whatever streams all at the same time?
Like say a freelance/contract animator/texture artist/modeller artist or CAD engineer/ programmer who wants to live in the countryside and work remotely with clients? Who wants to use the latest versions of software including Linux distros, Windows updates, CAD/animation applications (3DMax, Maya). Each and every time a new release is gi
Re:Good for them. (Score:5, Informative)
For download speeds, anything over 10Mbps is fine for 99% of normal users
Indeed. At 10 Mbps my wife and daughter can each watch a different movie, and I can still get work done. That is enough for me.
Quibble: The UK is saying that 10 Mbps is an entitlement, not a right. An entitlement is what someone else is required to give to you ... although you still have to pay your bill to get your bits.
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If it works like this, aren't guns in US (or at least parts of it) an entitlement and not a right, too?
Of course not. Nobody is required to give you a gun.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Decent coverage of types of rights and how they are used.
If someone has a "right" to a service or product, then someone else is obligated to provide it. The fact that obligation is spread out across multiple people doesn't negate the obligation eventually will fall upon one. And that is how Socialism collapses. It is built on rights for people that are built in obligations of others, and eventually you run out of others who are able (and willing) to fulfill those obligations
Eddard Stark: 4k is coming (Score:3)
4k streaming is beginning to be a thing, and the displays and associated hardware are trending down in price, as per usual for newish tech.
10 mb/s isn't going to cut it indefinitely.
The important thing here isn't the 10 mb/s; it's the idea that connectivity is so important that equality depends on access.
Re:Eddard Stark: 4k is coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not argue about 8K streaming? 16K streaming? There will always be a higher resolution and there will always be people that will spend a ton of money to get it aso that they can brag about having more than you.
720p is a very fine resolution for pretty much everything. You dont need more. You just want more. Pay for your own wants.
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Because Slippery Slope arguments are fallacious. Not because they aren't true (they sometimes are) but rather because they aren't always true.
However, in this case, I would suggest to you that given that progress is almost always progressing, that Slippery Slope is indeed accurate.
As for your "need more" argument, we don't "need" tv or streaming or video at all to survive. We don't even need 360i either (mid 90's tech) on 13" CRTs, but instead most of us are on 48+" 1080P.
Pay for your own wants.
Sorry, that is not how socialism wo
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I have a 120 inch screen in my home theatre and I'm not even that excited about 1080p content for most things. And that's for physical media which is generally superior to any form of streaming (or cable).
There are plenty of charts you can google to see why this might be the case.
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I have a 204" inch screen [flickr.com] and I'm perfectly happy with many of the DVDs in our library, which are about (hand-waving) 1/4 res against 1080p. Many movies have been made where detail just isn't really a core issue of viewer appreciation.
But you and I both have 1080p anyway. Because for some things, it does matter. As does frame rate for action movies.
Marketing will bring 4K into households, just as it did 1080p. And many will upgrade, and many will elect to try 4K streams. And many movies will be made that ta
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Do you watch TV through binoculars? Unless you're sitting right on the screen, or it's huge, you can't even see '720' pixels.
At typical sizes and viewing distances, 20/20 vision means you have maybe 1080p eyes.
8K is coming too, and etc. (Score:2)
Are you aware of how many hifi systems process data at far more than the data density of a CD? And are you aware that like 20-20 vision applied to a 1920x1080 image, the odds of anyone actually being able to hear anything that far down (or deal with anything that loud) are pretty much zero? And even if they could, the amplifiers that drive the output transducers don't have that kind of dynamic range anyway, nor do the trans
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All I see from you and the parent post is that you don't use anything really bandwidth heavy above SD streaming.
Living in a household with multiple gamers(Me, GF, 2 kids), as well as streaming instead of cable TV etc, 100/100 is the absolute minimum I'd consider now for a primary connection, not to mention the work aspects. Which is why we're happy with our 1Gbit/s symmetrical for â90/month.
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In fact as a cheap bastard I only just recently upgraded from a 10 Mbps to a 30 Mbps connection myself.
And if you lived in the UK, you wouldn't have to do anything anymore because you have the RIGHT to get someone else to buy you internet service. The entire framing of this topic is absurd. "Good for them" might be, say, making it clear that if you pay for 10Mbps, you actually GET that, or the vendor that promised that has to make it right or give you your money back. That's not the same as having a "right" to something. That word has no businesses being used in this context.
Re:Good for them. (Score:5, Informative)
No, that is incorrect. This is the government deciding that, in the 21st Century, access to broadband Internet is a fundamental part of national infrastructure as the electric grid and telephone, and that there are minimum standards that must be met by providers as per the law.
You aren't getting a 10 Mbps connection for free, just like you aren't getting electricity for free. What they are saying is if you elect to purchase access to those universally available services, there will be a minimum standard available to you.
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What they are saying is if you elect to purchase access to those universally available services, there will be a minimum standard available to you.
Who is going to pay for the infrastructure?
Re:Good for them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is going to pay for the infrastructure?
I know what you want people to answer... "The government, it's a free hand-out, socialist state", etc.
And whereas, initially that is true, in the end, the person using that connection will pay for it. It will just take longer for the IPS to get their money back from installing the cable for a rural route not already served, than it would in a densely populated urban cluster. If it takes a company 10 years to recoup an investment they will be less willing to invest than if it takes 5. Sometimes they don't want to invest, or take risks in a longer term investments. The government is forcing their hand here.
Some of the really rural, out of the way, places, they may never make their money back. They will most places eventually though. Most of the UK is fairly densely populated. Even rural areas in the UK aren't usually too far from an urban hub. It's not like the US Midwest where you can sometimes drive an hour without hitting a major population centre.
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And whereas, initially that is true, in the end, the person using that connection will pay for it. It will just take longer for the [ISP] to get their money back from installing the cable for a rural route not already served, than it would in a densely populated urban cluster.
A longer payback time equals a higher opportunity cost—the difference between what the investors could have made from any other business and what they can make from offering Internet service to rural customers over the same time period. Due to this regulation, the person using the connection is not paying that higher cost, which means that the difference is externalized onto the ISP. This increases barriers to entry and drives marginally-profitable service providers out of business, reducing competiti
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Absolutely, it's lost investment opportunity elsewhere, or they would have done it themselves. If it were the MOST profitable option to make money, they would have done it themselves. They're only being forced to do this because it is not something they would do voluntarily.
That said, they will make their money back from this. It's a forced investment, but one that will ultimately yield them a profit. I don't feel sorry for the ISP.
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They're only being forced to do this because it is not something they would do voluntarily.
The key thing is that the ISPs aren't forced to provide rural Internet service—they can choose not to provide Internet service at all. And some of them will. Which makes matters worse for every non-rural Internet consumer.
That said, they will make their money back from this.
Either that, or go out of business. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're losing money in an accounting sense, just that the money can be more profitably invested elsewhere. Why invest in providing Internet service when you can get a higher return doing something else? Either wa
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The key thing is that the ISPs aren't forced to provide rural Internet service—they can choose not to provide Internet service at all. And some of them will. Which makes matters worse for every non-rural Internet consumer.
This is Britain, and specifically BT. They have no such option available to them. If this were the US and a similar measure made, I don't think Charter, or TWC, or Comcast would drop completely out of a market just because they were told they had to give everyone access. If they would, another monopolistic cable company would gladly step in.
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I don't think Charter, or TWC, or Comcast would drop completely out of a market just because they were told they had to give everyone access. If they would, another monopolistic cable company would gladly step in.
You are assuming that they are already have a monopoly with no realistic threat of competition from other Internet providers, in which case it is also safe to assume that they are already charging whatever the market will bear and pocketing the difference. That is a problem which should be addressed by lowering barriers to entry and encouraging more competition—exactly the opposite of the proposed regulations.
It is not the giants like BT or Comcast that are most impacted by these rules, but rather the
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The UK ISP's have to buy their connectivity from BT's OpenReach. They are the company that handle the provision of fibre-optic connections to exchanges, which ISP's lease and resell onto home and business customers:
In the words of BT OpenReach
https://www.homeandbusiness.op... [openreach.co.uk]
"We’ve already given more than 27.1 million homes and business premises access to fibre broadband. And we’re adding around 20,000 each week."
The only other alternative is Virgin Media who bougtht up Telewest and NTL back in
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There is an area between Hayes Ks and Colorado Springs that's a little over 300 miles without a major population center. a very sparsely populated almost the size of the UK.
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I know what you want people to answer... "The government, it's a free hand-out, socialist state", etc.
Yes, I wanted to hear "The government", but not "it's a socialist state". While it's true that the UK may be a socialist state, I have no problems with that.
I would have problems with this if the government would decide that something is a basic right, but then forces someone else to pay for it.
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Making this a priority in terms of national infastructure doesn't make it a "right" any more than this was done for rural electrification or phone service.
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Making this a priority in terms of national infastructure
A government mandate that companies provide a specific service is much much more than "a priority". It's a mandate. It's the government telling businesses what they must sell.
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Definition of civil rights for English Language Learners
: the rights that every person should have regardless of his or her sex, race, or religion
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They tried that with healthcare. Didn't work. #deathpanels. Believe me folks a hundredandeleventyone.
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10Mbps isn't that bad, for most home use for 2017. You may not be able to stream 4k. But you can still stream 1080p video for a TV. while browsing a website.
That being said... My main concern is this speed is good baseline for 2017, however if it going to be country wide, it will probably need to be upgrade to faster speeds as time goes on, without major infrastructure redesign.
Having cable modems since 2001 My speeds have been constantly increasing.
2001 1Mbps
2004 2Mbps
2007 5Mbps
2010 10Mbps
2013 15Mbps
2016
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10 Mbps, is not super fast by the standards of a lot of Slashdot users, but it is serviceable.
In fact as a cheap bastard I only just recently upgraded from a 10 Mbps to a 30 Mbps connection myself.
I paid for 15mbps (and got 10) as recently as a month ago. Only just switched to 100mbps (really only getting 85mbps). 10 is definitely usable, although, obviously a lot slower than ideal. 95% of uses though you don't realize how slow it is.
Right... (Score:2, Insightful)
I understand that the people who come up with stuff like this have good intentions in mind, but at some point they can just as easily start to argue that plantation owners ought to have a right to have a certain amount of cotton picked for them.
Also, since this is the UK, a right to broadband is pretty fucking useless considering you're only free to use it unless you want to look at por
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Force (Score:2)
In reality - you know, where we all actually live - the only rights of any kind that exist are those rights for which someone(s) will impose force to ensure the availability thereof.
It's all very fine to talk about what should be; for instance, IMO, no government should impose on informed, adult personal / consensual choices - but they fact is, they do, and they can't be stopped from doing so by any practical means. Because this, a
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Consider terminating electricity or natural gas utility in the middle of winter because of non-payment. Then consider what level of service utility is necessary to maintain a functional citizen that won't disrupt society.
No man is an island. If you think otherwise please stop taking advantage of all infrastructure for even 1 month and get back to us with your considered opinions afterwards (assuming you are even alive).
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> I have no idea of how you flush your toilet, do the wash, and bathe.
I pay my bills.
It's the same as my house payment, car payment, and the money I give to the local grocery store.
Someone thinks they can make a buck by providing something I need or want.
It's not a "right". It's a service everyone pays for.
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It's not a "right". It's a service everyone pays for.
Right, but you don't pay based on use. A household's impact on the sewer system is estimated, and then everyone pays a share of what it costs to provide the infrastructure to everyone. You don't only pay for the infrastructure you use, you pay for the infrastructure that every customer in your district uses. If everyone else costs more to support than you do, then it sucks to be you, right? But the flip side is that if you should move to the other side of the district, you too will be protected by this soci
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That's funny.
Individual liberties are a product of the European enlightenment and Xian humanism. They are not an American invention.
It's really deranged that you would seek to attribute modern liberal democratic ideals only to Americans in order to push some socialist agenda.
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Individual liberties are a product of the European enlightenment and Xian humanism. They are not an American invention.
While that's true, America is at least in its own propaganda the most individualistic nation in the world. As far as I can tell it's true, and it's not a good thing.
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Being an economic powerhouse, innovation hub, and a damn nice place to live is not a good thing?
If it's not being done sustainably, and it is not, then it is not a good thing. It is a temporary situation leading to ruin.
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I fail to see on a philosophical level how anything can be a right if it requires someone else to provide it for you.
I think we can all agree that one of the main purposes of a modern government is to protect it's citizens. We expect the right to safety from lawbreakers. That's something you don't provide yourself (not completely anyway), it's "given" to us out of the money we pay in taxes.
We expect the right to pursue happiness and a pleasurable life. The laws and social institutions we have help protect us from others violating those pursuits. That's "provided" by the government. We expect the right to have access
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I fail to see on a philosophical level how anything can be a right if it requires someone else to provide it for you.
This is what human rights are all about, in practice; there is no such thing as a natural right, unless you count "do as thou wilt". We give up that right so that everyone can have the freedom not to have to suffer the consequences of everyone around them doing whatever they want to do.
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Clean water has to be provide for you.
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Well, someone must provide you with freedom of speech for it to be a right.
This, as they say, is so wrong it's not even wrong.
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This, as they say, is so wrong it's not even wrong.
Well, what's a right until somebody else recognizes it? If I put you in a cage with a hungry lion or a cannibal you might think you have a right to live but as long as they don't is it anything other than a self-delusion? A philosophical mind trick to say they might kill you, but they have no right to kill you? What makes your imagined rights any more valid than the cannibal who thinks might makes right, some kind of argument that boils down to axioms of reciprocity and that all are created equal? Those are
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He's talking about the difference between negative 'freedom from' rights like 'the government is not allowed to censor' versus positive rights - you have a right to get something.
Positive rights convey an obligation on someone else, in this case to BT to upgrade their exchanges. Negative rights do not.
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He's talking about the difference between negative 'freedom from' rights like 'the government is not allowed to censor' versus positive rights - you have a right to get something.
"The government is not allowed to censor" is not a right. It's a restriction on the government, which supports the right of "freedom of expression".
Positive rights convey an obligation on someone else, in this case to BT to upgrade their exchanges. Negative rights do not.
This is a distinction without a difference. For example, in order for you to have the freedom of expression here in the really real world, someone else has to be willing to protect it. You can think anything you want (so far) but speech has consequences, and you can't reasonably claim to have freedom of expression unless someone will protect you from the undue o
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OTOH, If there's no one to provide the 'right', like no available doctor to treat you (in the case of a 'right to healthcare'), no amount of government intervention can guarantee that right.
Exactly. In the classic case you have a state which in theory guarantees a lot of positive rights - free food, free house, free everything but doesn't grant many negative ones - freedom of speech, freedom from torture, right to due process, habeus corpus etc.
In practice you starve to death on a collective farm and if you complain about it you get arrested, tortured and sent to a concentration camp where you also starve to death.
See - Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Eastern Europe in the Cold War.
The lack of n
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Stop getting your history knowledge from bad fiction.
There was no free food, free house or free anything back then in the socialist countries. In fact, there was no social safety net at all for able-bodied people. They had a constitutional right to a job and an actual duty to work. This means that if a person couldn't find a job, it could ask the government to provide one, but having a job - any job - was basically compulsory.
Then again, a couple of years after the war nobody had to starve anymore. The food
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There was no free food, free house or free anything back then in the socialist countries.
http://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/... [stanford.edu]
The Soviet Union advocated a conception of human rights different from the notion of rights prevalent in the West. Western legal theory emphasized the so-called âoenegativeâ rights: that is, rights of individuals against the government. The Soviet system, on the other hand, emphasized that society as a whole, rather than individuals, were the beneficiaries of âoepositiveâ rights: that is, rights from the government. In this spirit, Soviet ideology placed a premium on economic and social rights, such as access to health care, adequate and affordable basic food supplies, housing, and education, and guaranteed employment. As it acted on these guarantees during the postwar decades, the Soviet system evolved into a giant welfare state. The Kremlin proclaimed the achievement of such rights, and the benefits that Soviet citizens received from them, as evidence of the superiority of the Soviet Communist system to that of the capitalist West, where the importance of civil and political rights was emphasized, while the notion of economic and social âoerightsâ was viewed much less favorably.2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Personal property was allowed, with certain limitations. Real property mostly belonged to the State.Health, housing, education, and nutrition were guaranteed through the provision of full employment and economic welfare structures implemented in the workplace.[16]
However, these guarantees were not always met in practice. For instance, over five million people lacked adequate nutrition and starved to death during the Soviet famine of 1932â"1933, one of several Soviet famines. The 1932â"33 famine was caused primarily by Soviet-mandated collectivization.
I.e. in theory many positive rights. In practice mostly famine, shortages and bread lines.
People had a duty to work wherever the state told them to, and in practice the state had no obligation to feed them. Hence the deaths from collectivisation.
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You have a problem with reading comprehension, eh?
First, how is what I have written different from what is written on that Stanford website?
Second, how is what happened in 1932 relevant to "Then again, a couple of years after the war nobody had to starve anymore"? How do you explain that the life expectancy plummeted after the breakup? Oh, by the way, how do you explain the fact that Russia suffered regular famines before communism was even invented?
I've actually lived in the GDR and visited the USSR back i
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> Well, someone must provide you with freedom of speech for it to be a right.
No. Someone does not. That just happens naturally without anyone messing with you or a government existing.
This makes more sense if you understand that the law represents the powers that government grants itself or limits placed on that same government.
The Bill of Rights doesn't define your rights. It defines limits placed on government.
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> Well, someone must provide you with freedom of speech for it to be a right.
No. Someone does not. That just happens naturally without anyone messing with you or a government existing.
Really? What natural force will protect your nose from someone's fist if they take exception to what you say, and decide to prevent you from saying it? What we mean when we say that you have freedom of speech (or expression, etc.) is that it's against the law to exercise violence against you for expressing yourself, and there are legal punishments for those who do so (which might even be applied.) The threat of legal punishment is the reason why some people who would like to break your nose because you beli
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Sorry, but if I'm in the desert with one canteen of water, I am NOT required to share it with some moron who was stupid enough to go out there without any. Your scenario of kidnapping etc isn't really on point.
I will share, if it won't kill me to do it. But he doesn't have a 'right' to my water.
Legally in the USA, west of the Mississippi, he does have a legal right to access my _well,_stream_or_waterhole_ (not canteen), but not for a herd of cows, just for himself and his horse (old law).
BT blows goats (Score:2)
I'm enjoying my 150/150Mbit connection back here in the States, even though I am 16 miles out from the center of town at half the price BT charged me for their crap connection.
A Right? (Score:2, Troll)
How can something that costs other people money and time be a legal right? This talk is insane.
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How can something that costs other people money and time be a legal right? This talk is insane.
Honestly, it really does not cost that much. ISPs love to exaggerate how much providing service actually costs them. They hem, haw, whine, and complain. It's about time someone stuck it to them.
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Free lawyers are worth what you paid for them, maybe less. That's not a good example, unless you like plea bargains when you're innocent.
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How can something that costs other people money and time be a legal right? This talk is insane.
In "ebil commie" places like the UK, the Internet is considered basic infrastructure, like roads, electricity, and running water. These things are considered necessary (at least by the vast majority of people) in order to be a part of modern society.
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You don't have to be a socialist to view roads as infastructure.
Republicans were the original party of "roads".
The whole effort doesn't have to be described in terms where you get a free handout.
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I know, right? Like clean air, water, adequate food, shelter, protection from dangerous animals, protection from other humans, ability to get health care instead of dying in the gutter....the list goes on and on.
That talk really is insane. All these things cost other people money and time, and it's just not right to abuse the rest of society like this.
----------------------
And since some asshat will jump on and claim that the internet isn't like one of these other things, consider this: How do you pay for u
I wonder... (Score:2)
I wonder if it will be a true 10mbps or if it will be like my service where I'm subscribed for 25mbps but get at most 8mbps (at 3am on a weeknight)
Good move! (Score:2, Interesting)
10M is "high speed" ? (Score:2)
I recently upgraded to 1Gbps (symmetric) and I would say that is "high speed". But 10Mbps seems decidedly on the average-to-slow side. Is this some politically-motivated lie to make people believe the 2rd rate speed they will be getting in 2020 is "great"?
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I recently upgraded to 1Gbps (symmetric) and I would say that is "high speed". But 10Mbps seems decidedly on the average-to-slow side. Is this some politically-motivated lie to make people believe the 2rd rate speed they will be getting in 2020 is "great"?
You can stream a movie (just not in high def) at 10mbps or 1000mbps and not be able to tell the difference. Most web pages won't perceptibly load slower. (slow ones obviously will). You can have a phone call over 10mbps and not notice a difference to 1000mbps.
Yeah, you can't download HD. Large files take much much longer to download, and there are some complex web pages that will be slower. 10mbps is really the absolute minimum you would want in a modern society. Ideally, you would definitely want muc
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I am not objecting to 10Mbps, I am objecting to calling it "high speed".
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But 10Mbps seems decidedly on the average-to-slow side.
If 10 Mbps is "average", what's the problem? This isn't meant to be the legal right to download HD movies in 3 minutes; it's meant to be the bare minimum that a household needs to be part of modern society. 10 Mbps should be enough to do things like pay your bills and manage your bank accounts (considering what web pages are like these days, it may very well be the bare minimum).
I fully support this move, but even I think that there has to be a reasonable limit.
relativity (Score:2)
Pff 1gbps? What are you poor?
I recently upgraded to 10Gbps (symmetric) and I would say that it is "high speed". But 1Gbps seems decidedly on the average-to-slow side. Are you telling some politically-motivated lie to make people believe that the 2rd rate speed you are getting now is "great"?
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Pathetic.
Spying included? (Score:2, Insightful)
Good precedent, or dangerous precedent? (Score:2)
How this would be a dangerous precedent, I think, is if the implementation of a
The thing that interests me (Score:2)
Choosing to regulate any corporate thing is a departure from the Neoliberal ideology that has ruled the UK (as elsewhere) for the last 40 years.
I wonder if this is really a tacit acceptance of the utter failure of that approach, or if they just saw the reaction to Ajit Pai in the US and thought they could do without that kind of grief right now.
He's gonna do it all in 1 week (Score:3)
So, the US FCC removes protections from the internet in the US and within a week England votes to make broadband a right?
I realize the cord was only cut 240 years ago, but isn't it time that we stopped acting like the teenage rebel?
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They're passing a law for legal rights to the modern internet here, not rights to pure luxury to allow you to torrent files 24/7 like a small independent nation.
Besides... https://help.netflix.com/en/no... [netflix.com]
Internet Connection Speed Recommendations
Below are the internet download speed recommendations per stream for playing TV shows and movies through Netflix.
0.5 Megabits per second - Required broadband connection
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The point is that it's an extremely low goal to aim for. BT will use ADSL, a technology that is being phased out in other countries, to deliver speeds that were crap 15 years ago.
Years ago the government gave BT a pile of cash to give everyone broadband. They didn't deliver. At the time NEC offered to give everyone fibre to the home with the money, but their bid was rejected because corrupt politicians were in bed with BT.
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10 Mbps is a complete joke, you'd be lucky to get two Netflix streams on that without stuttering.
two stutterless netflix streams should be a legal right?
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what this regulation really means,
1/ people,including poor, who live in areas where a connection is easily obtainable cheaply are forced to pay higher for faster connections to subsidize those who choose to live in remote hard to connect areas. maybe healthy countryside living in rural areas, with full facilities, should also be legal right?
2/ consolidate position of now regulate
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people,including poor, who live in areas where a connection is easily obtainable cheaply are forced to pay higher for faster connections to subsidize those who choose to live in remote hard to connect areas
Just as people in cities pay to subsidise the electricity and telephone connections of people in rural areas. Because we benefit quite a lot from having people paid low wages to produce food for us.
consolidate position of now regulated established monopoly suppliers, by raising barriers to new competitors.
This does absolutely nothing to new competition. The only company affected by this is the company that already has a near monopoly on the telephone network, which was built using public funds, and has been heavily regulated since it was privatised. New competitors are free to do whatever they want (modulo othe
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Maybe it was broadband in 2010. Today you should be able to get at least 100 Mbps. Many of the areas we're bringing broadband to are receiving 1 Gbps symmetric.
10 Mbps is a complete joke, you'd be lucky to get two Netflix streams on that without stuttering.
Don't come to Canada then, because once you get outside of the big cities like Toronto, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and so on, or even on the outside edges of them? You're lucky if you can get 5Mbps/1Mbps service. In my own area, the fastest you can get is 25Mbps/1Mbps on cable, 3Mbps/512Kbps on DSL.
Re: 10 Mbps isn't broadband (Score:2)
This is nonsense. I'm a good 2 hour drive away from Toronto and I get 40 Mbps. Higher speeds are available but I don't want to pay more.
I have relatives just as far from Toronto but in a completely different direction who also get 30 Mbps+.
Also have relatives in a different province, nowhere near any major city, who get similar speeds.
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You are confusing your own luck with the general expectation. You can be in the boonies of any country and get a decent connection if you happen to be lucky enough to be located near a backbone. There's much more empty space that that in places that aren't Europe.
I ditched the idea of a multi-acre lot in the next suburb outward of my city because they had crap internet service.
Forget about being 100 miles or 200 miles away from a major city.
Re: 10 Mbps isn't broadband (Score:2)
The "general expectation" is that unless you're way off in the boonies, you are going to get decent internet speeds. I'm far enough out from the closest small city that fast internet isn't universal out here; if I were another 10km further north I would not have access to cable or ADSL. People out in that area can still get decent wireless speeds, but those have monthly data limits so it's not ideal.
Sure, there are definitely people in Canada who do not enjoy the same level of service that I do ... but h
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I live about 40 miles out of Vancouver (used to be able to get downtown in under an hour before the traffic got bad) and only just got cell service last month. Now instead of dial-up, I have a 4G connection which seems to give me just over 10/1 Mbps with a 250 GB cap. Seems wonderful after dial-up and I understand that lots of small communities get the same deal.
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And 95% of UK ppl have 24+Mbps already. This is est. the minimum in rural areas, etc.
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You'd be shocked at the number of people *PLEADING* for a 3-6Mb ADSL connection. In houses that *HAD* a 3-6Mb ADSL connection. And, when the ownership of the house turned over, AT&T (and other incumbents) said "Sorry, no more ADSL" (which equals... no internet).
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
I'd survive today with a 3/1 Mb DSL connection. Enough to stream SD. Enough to adequately RDP to a cloud service, which is how I'd do all my development were I so unfortunate. But, for a lot of people, and we
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Re:And more than that should be illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
snip...
and whats with the red TARDIS it the title?
I heard the next Doctor was going to be a female - does she change the colour?
It is red phone box, red was the default colour for the telephone boxes provided by what it now BT (formerly British Telecom and prior to that the General Post Office), the Tardis is a Police Box.
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The last mile cost is negligible. Practically all new last mile installations are Gbit capable already.
Let me highlight the problem there... There is a huge difference between the hypothetical 500 house subdivision that is cheap and easy to wire (well fiber) for high speed and rural where it can be miles between houses, think 20-40K per mile (per customer) not even sure the charged bill could pay the interest on this kind of cost. Note that this cost doesn't include right of way, leasing space on poles/utility operations - probably not digging under roads if need be... These costs can be a lot higher (plus
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No. It's used by people that can fend for themselves upset at the idea that elitists think that everyone should be treated like children.
Entitled is the right word. You aren't owed anything by anyone.
That's quite apart from whether or not taking care of people is the civilized thing to do. The real problem is that you can't have everyone be takers. You can't just rob the "wealthy".
There are't enough "wealthy". More people need to be willing to step up and provide. Otherwise, you run out of other people's mo
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I think you are conflating two different things that has led to a poor comparison between two entirely different system environments. Baseband versus broadband are signaling techniques, not measurements of speed. The speed of a digital communications medium can be measured in bits per second, so you could have a 10 Mbps baseband signaling system (such as 10BASE5, the broadly implemented DIX then IEEE Ethernet LAN specification from the late 1980s), or you can have a 100 Mbps baseband signaling system (suc