Last time I heard, they were so poor they got more money from the EU than they paid. Category Greece and Spain. Meanwhile we're only paying...
That's always been wrong http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/europe/09/eu_budget_...
France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
31–40 of 87 posts
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#32Ultimately I think Internet access will reach utility status (like water, electricity, telephony), meaning it will be a given (in the developed world at least and hopefully more and more of the developing world as time goes on). It's still priced as a premium product and there's no reason for this other than regional monopolies over the last mile. The one thing that confuses me about the France proposal is how they p…
Telecommunications has been headed in the other direction. State monopolies get privatised and lose their monopoly status.
I don't think your other examples are standardised in the way you suggest either. Control of electricity becomes less and less centralised.
I wouldn't want internet to be treated as one-size-fits-all. With competition, if one company tries to block certain features, you can change to another. Also, having a government carrier makes it easier to regulate. This makes it easier for the state to mould the network to its convenience, something the Australian government have tried to do repeatedly. The most effective opponents to this are a handful of small private internet service providers.
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#33I'm working in bringing high speed broadband to rural areas in the U.S. We are putting all energy in securing funding right now. You can't imagine how hard is for a start-up to secure funding for it. It has been exhausting. I applaud any initiative by the governments to invest in high speed internet.
I'd be interested in hearing more about what you're doing and how (I have similar dreams). Shoot me an e-mail if you get a free minute (xhr@io2g.com).
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#34Ultimately I think Internet access will reach utility status (like water, electricity, telephony), meaning it will be a given (in the developed world at least and hopefully more and more of the developing world as time goes on). It's still priced as a premium product and there's no reason for this other than regional monopolies over the last mile. The one thing that confuses me about the France proposal is how they p…
[deleted]
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, people doing internet things overestimate how game-changing fast internet is. I don't care how fast the internet is, people are still going to want to meet each other for dinner, see grand-babies in person, etc. Faster internet doesn't obviate the need for travel.
Cut even 1 trip in 50 and you can avoid building a lot of infrastructure. Netflix vs video rentals is one clear example of less trips, but there are plenty of others.
1) Cutting 1 trip in 50 is actually a lot;
2) A 2% reduction in travel doesn't do much when e.g. U.S. air traffic alone is growing 2-3% every year and car traffic is increasing at 2-4% each year.
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Most rural areas throughout Europe and elsewhere are struggling with That sounds like Tucson, where I used to live. Now I'm in New York and getting 50 Mbs down and 5 up for $20 – $30 less than I used to get 12 down and 2 up.
That sounds really good. It's not like that in Toronto. We have a communications oligopoly in Canada though.
It's coming to Toronto http://www.beanfieldcondoconnect.com/index.html
It's more then an oligopoly, there's a government mandates to provide equal service to the north that also drives up prices.
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#37Not many people remember, but the Clinton admin offered $200 billion in credits and tax cuts for US telcos to roll out fiber nationwide in 1996:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/29/what-goes-around-teledesi...
TDLR: through mergers and good lawyers, the telcos were able to get the $200 billion of Clinton tax credits in return for nothing. Obama is trying again with a $100 billion plan
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#38Germany and UK were not even able to get in the ranking of the FTTH Council Europe… They do both not have 1% of all and at least 200.000 households connected to fiber… what a shame
The internet in UK (London, Virginmedia) is terrible; whenever I need to download and especially upload something (some video, hires pictures, system backups) there is serious swearing involved.
In comparison, _eight_ years ago in Bucharest I had 100/100 Mbps, just like anyone else.
At least Virgin realised they suck at it and sold the Broadband division to UPC/Chello, but that's not much reason to be optimistic.
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#39It's about time to massively rollout FTTH in France. Paradoxically I think its deployment has been hampered by a good early ADSL coverage and the associated low prices on ADSL (with uncapped data). These low prices have decided the operators to only make minimum investments on their networks and to further seek to make profit in mobile where data plans are capped and where profits are better. Moreover the entry of a…
Don't forget FTTLA, which is vastly available in the most densely populated urban areas - it is not as fast as FTTH when there are a lot of households connected to the last amplifier, but i'd say roughly 20% of households could have access to it. On the other hand, FFTH is available for maybe 0.5% of the country (I mean, even in Paris itself, not one building in twenty is connected to it...) I think you are right wit…
I only pay 32€ every other month, and I have more bandwidth than I need.
Re: France to invest €20B in high-speed broadband for the entire country
#40Thats a much better idea than a railway no one cares about to birmingham