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The digital divide widens across the UK
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Today, March 31st 2006, the digital divide across the UK widens as BT begins the programme to 'upgrade' around 5300 exchanges to finally bring its ADSL offering up to full strength.
Some broadband punters around the country will undoubtedly be
celebrating today as BT finally begins to catch up with its LLU
competitors by turning the appropriate knobs to bring its ADSL offering
up to its actual capabilities. It is called MaxDSL which is of course
true, as that is the maximum speed ADSL has always been capable of
since the outset. Over very short distances, ie less than 1km of copper.However, many others are looking at the figures given by BT and frustration is growing at the failure to keep up with other nations, such as Denmark, Holland, Japan, Korea, Finland etc. FTTH by 2010 with unlimited capacity and bandwidth? Only if you emigrate it seems.
This BT press release shows that only 78% of BT lines will actually be able to support 4Mbps. 42% of lines will be able to support 6Mbps, whilst it is only those who live within spitting distance of an exchange who will get the full 8Mbps.
ABC is once again watching the digital divide, or rather rift, open ever wider in this country.
At the end of 2005, everyone was crowing that now 99.6% of the UK could get 'broadband'. However, it can only be called that if you lower the bar sufficiently to manipulate the statistics to suit what can be delivered. ABC does not feel that 512kbps, or even asymmetrical 2Mbps, deserves to be called "broadband", because it will not deliver voice, video and data to a reasonable, usable, standard to the consumer, and the upload speed of 256kbps is insufficent to make broadband the enabling tool that other countries now enjoy.
Today, we are looking at DSLMax provision meaning that:
Up to 7% (according to some recently obtained statistics from a Government agency) of lines are unable to get 2Mbps
22% of lines in this country AT LEAST are now unable to stand a chance of 4Mbps
58% are unable to get over 6Mbps
And according to the Point Topic data, around 94% of lines will not support MaxDSL at 8Mbps.
For those feeling hard done by, we suggest you fill out the Notspot Survey. A Notspot is not only an area that cannot get any broadband service at all, but an area where the required broadband service is not available, or is unreliable. http://www.notspot.info - tell your friends and neighbours to complete it also!
