Britain's Victorian-era copper cables WON'T be able to support demand for faster internet.

I think we already knew that.  Which is why companies across the country are rolling out fibre to the home.  But I also suspect that "demand" is often driven by a percieved need for ever-faster broadband, whether the customer actually needs it or not.

All the time I was working from home, I had an utterly obsolete 20M down, 1.1M up ADSL2+ line.  And it actually proved fast enough to remotely connect to the company's network and work as normal.  I put off upgrading, in case something went wrong.

Now the office is open, I dared to upgrade to a cheap 39M down, 9M up VDSL.  But the difference really isn't that obvious.

A fibre company is currently going around my town, digging up the pavements and installing fibre.  Their slowest option is 100M down, 100M up.  The question is, do I want to pay more to upgrade to it?

I do like the way that the Daily Fail doesn't seem to know the difference between tristed pair phone cable, and mains flex, judging by the illustration.

I can remember the days of 56k dial up internet. And that was on a good day and with a following wind. The average achieved speed was about 30k in London and about 15k in Somerset but only in dry weather, about 2k if it rained.

And today's "Spot the error prize" goes to..................you have won a luxury weekend holiday for two at Mrs. Glum's International Guest House, Gas Works Street, in Scunthorpe. (No dogs or children allowed). Included is a free pint of brown ale and  a cheese sandwich, at the Scunthorpe Working Men's Club.

Z.

Oddly we knew this in the 1980s and the UK could have probably done conversion to fibre as the GPO had it well researched back then. I know there were even studies into blowing fibres into plastic tubes that could be strung like overhead lines.. But privatization of BT and then local loop unbundling have all pulled in the opposite direction, leading to a succession of short term but in the moment cheaper technical fixes at either end of the existing wires.

However before we smile and look too pleased with ourselves, there is a similar problem looming with the LV mains cables in the streets of many towns, as the transition from gas and also to electric transport will also require a lot of replacement.

The other poorly considered problem of the everything over IP world is that to maintain emergency comms even at the level of receiving a phone call in an all-fibre network during a power cut requires a surprisingly large no of back up batteries, and one per customer. With LED lights we now use more electricity to illuminate the living room with a Wifi signal and maintain the internet, than we do to illuminate all of downstairs with visible light. (Fibre terminator, hub and router are about 20-25 watts total.The LED lights for diner lounge and kitchen total about the same, but are not on anything  like 24/7).

Mike.

I find 500Mb/s very useful from Virgin (which is not actually FTTH but coax and DOCIS2). BT has fibred my area, but prices for 500 M are unknown and not advertised. I use this speed quite often for software and video files (which many may not), but I can remember trying to download Cubase years ago (10GB or so) and it never completed correctly in 24 hours! It takes a few minutes now. Simple stuff (this forum) takes no resource, but sophisticated work really does need bandwidth.

The point about landline backup is not really necessary unless there is no mobile coverage available, and I virtually never use my landline anyway. The power consumption of the router etc is about 12W, about the same as one useful LED bulb. The consumption at the ISP and server farms is probably similar per user.

The fact that ADSL more or less works is fairly amazing really, but we have hung on far too long. It has been the fibre transceiver cost that has made the economics change, not the fibre cable which has always been quite cheap. I worked on it some 25 years ago, and I had a 20 km roll of bare fibre for test purposes (single mode), it weighed half a kilo or so, it is the strength members and sheath that costs money.

Regarding emergency backup for voice calls, the company installing fibre in my area doesn't even offer a land-line phone replacement as an option.  Their web site points you in the direction of a large VoIP call provider.  There is no provision for battery backup.

I only use the land-line for freephone calls these days, anyway.  The phone providers have priced themselves out of the market, when compared with mobile phones.

yes, but note that mobile phone base stations are not battery backed up like a traditional land line either, so they too go out after a very short time, just a few hours typically, in a power cut.

In a very local power cut it is not of course the outbound calls that are the problem, as the mobile handset can stay switched off to conserve battery until need to use it arises, so long as it boots quickly when required.

The harder problem is the receipt of incoming calls, as like radio the receiver has to be on all the time just in case - which is really a giant leap backwards. I really do not see why a lower power fibre monitor could not have been developed for low bandwidth emergency signalling, it could also have been the mode to fall back to when there is no traffic, making the whole network much 'greener' into the bargain.

It is not insoluble, but there is a bit of a head in sand attitude in some quarters.

Mike.