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Public networks - a waste of our money?
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Are publicly funded networks a 'good spend'? Or are the lessons learned ignored and mistakes repeated?
I'll keep this brief ...she lied!
It is impossible to ignore the fact that in the UK neither the incumbent, nor the competitive marketplace encouraged by Government action, has provided what is required with broadband - ubiquitous and affordable access, preferably comparable to other countries.
So, the Regional Development Agencies and Government departments have regularly tried to solve the problem by injecting cash and making lots of noise with big projects.
Have they worked to solve long-term or even short-term problems AND seen a return on investment for those communities they served? With our money?
If you know one that has, let us know. We seem to be able to name plenty that haven't.
There are some in the near past - let us think.....
Project Access which started out as a good looking scheme of a figure 8 of fibre optic around Cumbria (that includes the ever-popular Lake District for you Southerners!) with wireless infill.
£20million of public funding later and it was reduced to 'all the exchanges enabled' (hadn't BT already done that job anyway? I thought it was only on the lead RDA's patch in the South East that BT had refused to enable the last exchanges....? I may be mistaken however), 20+ miles of fibre to sink estates in a town most of us daren't venture into (Workington), and an almost exact replication of the CLEO schools wireless network (also publicly funded) which had spare capacity and which now appears to be suffering from the inevitable interference of a duplicate network next to it.
Ask yourself which bits of that are a good idea and worth £20million of your taxpayers' money......
Check out the case studies too. Are any of them actually about businesses and individuals who use this Project Access network, or are they about community networks, satellite provision and pre-existing public sector networks? Ah well, the launch day only cost somewhere between £20 and £50k....and now they have a whole team in Penirth (at a cost of probably around £1 million over 3 years) expounding the virtue of broadband without being able to directly sell their very own Project Access for fear of once again getting the backs up of our virtuous telcos who take them to Brussels at every opportunity. Like with Project Atlas in Scotland...but I digress.
Even more recently there is the Norwich wi-fi scheme. Is it even legal? But more worryingly for tax payers in Norwich (£1.1 million out of pocket after EEDA spent regional funds on this project) is the statement recently from Kurt Frary of Norfolk County Council, "Obviously it's a pilot and we'll be taking it away." This in almost the same breath as admitting that even though it's a poxy 256k connection (unless you're public sector in which case you get 1Mbps download and a minimal upload - like you are even allowed a laptop to use in public places and would know what to do with 1Mbps - sorry but would you??? I'll set you a challenge.....), there has only been one negative comment and the service is being well-used. So, let's spend yet more public money expanding it over the next couple of years then fail to find a buyer and rip it out. After all, by then, we'll ahve fibred the public sector and what on earth do consumers want bandwidth for apart from e-gov??
Nice to see that our RDAs are spending money going directly in competition with the likes of the Cloud etc and leaving communities such as South Witham broadband to bring connectivity to those areas with NOTHING.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that in the UK neither the incumbent, nor the competitive marketplace encouraged by Government action, has provided what is required with broadband - ubiquitous and affordable access, preferably comparable to other countries.
So, the Regional Development Agencies and Government departments have regularly tried to solve the problem by injecting cash and making lots of noise with big projects.
Have they worked to solve long-term or even short-term problems AND seen a return on investment for those communities they served? With our money?
If you know one that has, let us know. We seem to be able to name plenty that haven't.
There are some in the near past - let us think.....
Project Access which started out as a good looking scheme of a figure 8 of fibre optic around Cumbria (that includes the ever-popular Lake District for you Southerners!) with wireless infill.
£20million of public funding later and it was reduced to 'all the exchanges enabled' (hadn't BT already done that job anyway? I thought it was only on the lead RDA's patch in the South East that BT had refused to enable the last exchanges....? I may be mistaken however), 20+ miles of fibre to sink estates in a town most of us daren't venture into (Workington), and an almost exact replication of the CLEO schools wireless network (also publicly funded) which had spare capacity and which now appears to be suffering from the inevitable interference of a duplicate network next to it.
Ask yourself which bits of that are a good idea and worth £20million of your taxpayers' money......
Check out the case studies too. Are any of them actually about businesses and individuals who use this Project Access network, or are they about community networks, satellite provision and pre-existing public sector networks? Ah well, the launch day only cost somewhere between £20 and £50k....and now they have a whole team in Penirth (at a cost of probably around £1 million over 3 years) expounding the virtue of broadband without being able to directly sell their very own Project Access for fear of once again getting the backs up of our virtuous telcos who take them to Brussels at every opportunity. Like with Project Atlas in Scotland...but I digress.
Even more recently there is the Norwich wi-fi scheme. Is it even legal? But more worryingly for tax payers in Norwich (£1.1 million out of pocket after EEDA spent regional funds on this project) is the statement recently from Kurt Frary of Norfolk County Council, "Obviously it's a pilot and we'll be taking it away." This in almost the same breath as admitting that even though it's a poxy 256k connection (unless you're public sector in which case you get 1Mbps download and a minimal upload - like you are even allowed a laptop to use in public places and would know what to do with 1Mbps - sorry but would you??? I'll set you a challenge.....), there has only been one negative comment and the service is being well-used. So, let's spend yet more public money expanding it over the next couple of years then fail to find a buyer and rip it out. After all, by then, we'll ahve fibred the public sector and what on earth do consumers want bandwidth for apart from e-gov??
Nice to see that our RDAs are spending money going directly in competition with the likes of the Cloud etc and leaving communities such as South Witham broadband to bring connectivity to those areas with NOTHING.
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