Beyond superfast broadband on the way (From The Oxford Times)
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Beyond superfast broadband on the way
12:00pm Tuesday 20th November 2012 in News
TALKS with prospective broadband providers are due to start this month as councils prepare to improve connections in parts of Oxfordshire.
The county council has started “competitive dialogue” with providers ahead of implementation of its Better Broadband Programme.
The scheme includes a £10m investment from the county council, along with £3.86million in national funds, in the Broadband Delivery UK’s “superfast broadband” programme.
It will aim to extend and improve the broadband infrastructure to parts of the county which currently suffer from poor or unreliable connectivity.
The council is also working to deliver “beyond superfast” connectivity for the Enterprise Zones of Harwell and Milton Park using £2.1m from the Government’s Growing Places Fund.
It has also joined forces with the city council in preparing a bid for £5m from the Government’s “super-connected cities” fund.
A report to yesterday’s county council growth and infrastructure scrutiny committee said: “The programme will enter into competitive dialogue with prospective partners in November 2012, with an expectation of a signed contract in the spring of 2013 and completed roll-out by 2015.”
The meeting was held at the County Hall in New Road.
Comments(7)
aitchpee
says...
4:08pm Tue 20 Nov 12
broadband.co.uk/.
I'm afraid the commercial ventures such as Virgin aren't that newsworthy, but they do have a role in helping stimulate demand for better infrastructure to support superfast broadband.
rob_w2010
says...
6:46pm Tue 20 Nov 12
Pavinder Msvarensy
says...
4:42pm Wed 21 Nov 12
aitchpee
says...
5:45pm Wed 21 Nov 12
18 or 20Mbps is fine today but you have to look forward at what the demands will be in five or ten years time, because otherwise the whole process will have to be repeated when there is a realisation that even 24Mbps isn't capable of supporting concurrent digital television, telephony, cloud computing and other streaming services for homes and businesses in the county, let alone an antiquated copper infrastructure that will have been in the ground for up to (and over) 50 years. And that's before we even consider future bandwidth-hungry services that haven't even been invented yet!
If my home is anything to go by, we already use every bit of bandwidth we can squeeze out of our connection, and that demand is only going to increase, not remain static.
Please don't get fooled by anyone trying to fob you off with anything less than a future-proof network. It's called Fibre To The Premises and it really is the only way to go!
MBuckingham
says...
7:43am Thu 22 Nov 12
Pavinder Msvarensy wrote:Pavinder,
Hi Aitchpee I checked with virgin and Ntl did not (as you say) cable certain rural areas. But in 3 market tests I checked out their non fibre optic BB and in Chinnor and Woodcote you can get 20mb and in Bloxham 18 mb through your phone line with Virgin at the moment with no upgrade. Now unless you have ten computers in your house all playing online games or downloading movies at the same time then that speed is plenty fast enough for every "normal user". you can get away with streaming movies and the dodgy footy with less that 4mb so I don't know why all the fuss and £millions needed when the service is already there.
Please come to my house in Stanton Harcourt and show me streaming movies working on my 0.7Mb "broadband link". The rural villages really do need money from somewhere to supply even moderate broadband speeds.
Malcolm Buckingham
Pavinder Msvarensy
says...
7:30pm Thu 22 Nov 12
Pavinder Msvarensy says...
1:27pm Tue 20 Nov 12