Broadband for all - not political

[John]

why would cables be needed? Surely people can use 3G or something? Wirelss connections are surely good enough.

[John Rumm]

Fast and reliable, no need to use precious broadcast spectrum.

That can work in some cases, but not ideally suited in many others. You will need 5G to get useable speeds.

[John]

John Rumm [e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I think some speeds are something of a luxury for gamers. It Internet Banking, Email and basic surfing is the next Human Right then quite a modest speed would surely suffice. My WiFi receiver in my old laptop limits me.

[nightjar]

Not for everybody.

[alan_m]

But its only acceptable because there are no bottlenecks. On a highly congested system the problem is not a slow steady speed but lengthy periods where you may not get any response. This is not ideal when internet banking and you are transferring funds when the system appears to go dead leaving you unsure if the transaction has completed.

[Brian Reay]

For most people, most of the time, modest speeds are enough to do browsing, banking, etc.

It is gaming, video etc which needs the bandwidth.

While the idea of free high speed Internet is appealing, is it justified so people can watch Strictly and play computer games ?

The renta mob who will fall for this nonsense are the same people who will protest against RF exposure from telephone masts etc yet go home and sit for hours playing stupid games etc on their laptops.

[DJC]

My neighbours complain about poor broadband, personally I've never had any problem with my (3G only) mobile signal for internet access. A few months ago I had a conversation with someone who was having yet another attempt to round up support for FTTP in the village. Then I relised that what these people want is not an essential level service for a farm or home-based business but being able to watch netflicks all day.

[Jethro_uk]

I think some sort of streamed video needs to be included. Not necessarily HD, but bearing in mind the loss of broadcast provision (I'll admit I have not idea if you can get BBC via the air anymore).

[The Natural Philosopher]

how do you think signals get to the transitters?

[The Natural Philosopher]

FSVO 'usable' (sp)...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mmm. depends. With a thick client you dont need a lot of bandwith for games. I dont get killed by only having a 5Mbps link

Honestly I am running today on 1.3Mbps and happy to get it as yesterday had nothing...and its very useable for browsing. Streaming HD - not so much.

Took ages to upload a 160MB file though. Uplink is 300Kbps currently

[invalid]

microwave links in many cases.

[alan_m]

The local Virgin Media cable (distribution?) centre has an array of large satellite dishes and a mast full of aerials

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

Did you catch this crackpot scheme of thousands of satellites in low earth orbit making complete coverage without the latency of geostationary solutions? Space x has just launched 50 of them as a proof of concept test. My main worry with this is that i can see collisions with other junk and malfunctions causing more collisions. If you ever played Asteroids you will know hat happens when bits of stuff collide and it could make space flight impossible due to the debris up there. Then there is the radio pollution over the globe for radio astronomers and the reflections generated by so many object screwing up earth based telescopes, never mind the cost of keeping the thing running in the first place. Google, Amazon and others seem keen on this, probably because it gives them control over the internet, but really its a sledgehammer to crack a nut, surely? Brian

[Brian Reay]

Corbyn would have control of his ?free? internet......

[nightjar]

On 15/11/2019 18:37, John wrote: ...

You seem to be overlooking the fact that for many business applications upload speed is more important than download speed. I certainly wouldn't want to do a major update to a large remotely hosted e-commerce site at

3G, or even 4G speeds.

[Dave Liquorice]

That's sort of becoming a problem already but there is an awful lot of space up there and it has 3 dimensions. We being, land based, tend to think only in 2.

Power levels don't need to be high, your only looking at a hundred miles or so direct line of sight. Modulation scheme would almost certianly be some form of adaptive spread spectrum. The signal may well be not distinguishable from variations in the natural noise level. As far as reflections from the satelites messing up ground based telescopes, again I doubt that will be detectable through the problems looking through the atmosphere, that's what causes the stars to twinkle... The exception being if they have a flat surface that is orientated such that sunlight is reflected sunlight to the earth. Like the Iridium ones do but they are predictable....

Money isn't a problem for those organisations.

More importantly if gives them access to the *global* population no matter where they are. Be that in a city of tens of millions or a family group at an oasis in the middle of the Saraha Desert or a community in northern Siberia or Canada prehaps a couple of hundred miles from any other human settlement.

[John Rumm]

Gaming has its own particular requirements, although absolute speed is not usually that important for playing[1]. Low ping times are usually more important.

[1] Installing the things however can require huge downloads. In the not too distant past (got FTTP recently), installing a modern game would involve a week of continuous downloading before one could play it!

Remember this is a moving target. What was once acceptable, soon becomes restrictive, and not long after a major sticking point.

As more and more previously broadcast services move to online, bandwidth requirements are only going to grow.

[John Rumm]

ISTR he has just launched his second batch of 60... Ultimately he is planning thousands of them.

AKA The Kessler effect...

(although in Asteroids, the fragments don't in turn cause secondary fragments - only a missile hit from the player will do that)

[Terry Casey]

That's unusual. VM headend are fed by fibre rings these days and the dishes, in the main, have been removed.

For example, they used to be mounted on the platform in the centre of this view:

and these: are long since gone:

These are former ntl: headends whereas the Basildon one you showed was Telewest, and I've no idea how their network was configured although, after 12 years I would expect both halves to be singing from the same hymn sheet.