Hacker Khan
Yurt Dwelling, Yoghurt Knitter
RE: the first bit in bold - how many of those are essential and worth spending what could end up being over £100 billion on?
RE: both bits in bold - is there anything in the things you've listed that can't be done with regular/standard broadband and actually requires fibre broadband? Why will people "rely on a fast broadband connection" when all of what you've listed can be done on standard broadband?
I occasionally have to transfer data to one of the offices that I've been working for. On a big job this could be 300+GB in total. I'm on standard broadband at home and can transfer the data in an hour or two. If they need anything iquicker than that I'll separate that bit out and send it first for them to look at and then send the rest. I can also use my current broadband provision for video calls/Skype etc without issues. These things don't need fibre broadband and I would guess that for over 95% of the population this will be true. Why not focus on getting decent standard broadband to everyone rather than spending however many extra billions it will cost to go full fibre? Whenever I speak to someone that has fibre broadband they normally tell me how great it is because they can download a film in X seconds. Well great, but do we as a country need to spend £100 billion (+/-) so that 95% of the population can save 90 seconds downloading a film?
To me they are all essential.
As others have said its about future proofing. In 10 years time Skype and what we use the Internet for now will be about as relevant as Friends Reunited is now.
And as for waiting for 2 hours to transfer that data then imagine how much more productive you would be if you could do that in 5 minutes and didn't have to spend time splitting files up. Or how any employers would choose where to base themselves, in areas where it takes 2 hours to transfer data or 5 minutes.
If all you think the major benefit is is to quickly download a film then to me that is kind of missing the point of how the Internet will be so integrated into society in 10 years time.
Type in 'growth of Internet use' into Google and look at the trend. That ain't going to slow down any time soon.
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