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Not entirely convinced that Gordon's superfast broadband will do the business. Sure, it might help the government monitor, control, censor and tax - but it's introduction would probably be the usual mix of banal inefficiency, wastefulness and incompetence. That coupled with the dead hand of British Telecom co-ordinating the wiring should lead to nothing but yet another expensive, farcical, chaotic governmental fiasco.

More window dressing with no clear dates given, all about YES answers and no real detail. Nice to listen too, but who will implement it. We all know about past IT led government projects and the money that ends up in private companies hands with no clear results - the NHS IT project is a very good example of this (only 13 acute trusts out of 169 have received the full patient administration systems promised under the National Programme, while 拢6.1bn of the project's budget is spent - Guardian)
Maybe I have Monday morning blues, but the proof of the pudding will be in when all this happens, if ever!

Digital democracy? Are they having a laugh?

First, you don't need super-fast broadband connections just to reply to a simple email, but whenever I've emailed my MP about things that have concerned me, I have never yet received a reply.

And then we have the famous petitions site on the No 10 website. There have been some very popular petitions there, but I don't believe that the government has taken the slightest bit of notice of them.

Digital democracy is not about technology, it's about the government's attitude. And so far, I see no evidence that they are even remotely interested.

The other thing about this announcement is that it clearly shows the government doesn't really understand the technology.

Most home users won't see the full benefit of super-fast broadband even if they had it today because data only moves at the speed of the slowest connection between the content provider and the user. Where the speed bottleneck occurs will merely shift upstream. Ultimately, it depends on the connections out of the content provider's servers and the speed of those servers.

For instance, how many simultaneous users could iPlayer sustain if the content to each was being sent out at 50 mbps?

Yeah - reinvent democracy to mean something where the voice of the masses (and leading industry experts) falls on deaf ears while powerful lobbyists write legislation that contravenes basic human rights. Where being accused of illegally downloading copyright material is enough to presume guilt. Where important Bills that need to dodge Parliamentary scrutiny and debate in order to sneak into legislation can do so.

Not to mention what can be achieved if you moonlight on the yachts of oligarchs, are connected with and dine with the Rothschild family, and you've resigned from office twice amid scandal "allegations". How Lord Mandelson ever became a Lord and was let loose to write British legislation begs belief. Perhaps he would more aptly be named "Lord Untouchable".

I'm confused. If this is about ensuring no one is excluded from government services, I'd love know which online government services will require a 50Mb+ broadband connection. Are we all going to have 1080p video with 7.1 surround sound piped to our PCs to tell us how to recycle more or to remind us to fill in our tax returns?

The web works very well at 1Mb if you're just reading text and filling in a few government forms. So why exactly am I being asked to pay for rural and disadvantaged people to have fast broadband? So they can watch iPlayer and YouTube? Hardly emancipating stuff.

#6, James Rigby:

"I'm confused. If this is about ensuring no one is excluded from government services, I'd love know which online government services will require a 50Mb+ broadband connection. Are we all going to have 1080p video with 7.1 surround sound piped to our PCs to tell us how to recycle more or to remind us to fill in our tax returns?"

Close, but in the wrong direction. They want us to have high-speed broadband so that they can install cameras in all our homes and stream the video feeds to their central monitoring centre. Have you never read "1984"?

This is straightforward. In December the Northern Ireland government signed an 拢18m deal to get a further 128 exchanges or 1100 street cabinets and paths to those cabinets upgraded with fibre. It is about 拢16k per street cabinet.

There are a total of 18,000 street cabinets to install in rural Britain and 2,000 very small rural exchanges to replace.

The Northern Ireland (or EU sponsored) deal leaves BT in full control. The challenge is not the upgrade, but how much control you can extract from BT Group and an Industry determined to protect their existing legacy revenues streams from the ravages of proper internet connectivity.

Building Britain's Digital Future:
High speed through technology; this will reinvent democracy?
Why are so many people protesting?
1. More than 10,000 Britons are demanding a parliamentary debate on the Digital Economy Bill (which is currently going through the House).
2. A protest is also being organised for this Wednesday. Apparently people fear the bill is being rushed through Parliament in the so-called 鈥渨ash-up鈥� period.
3. The Open Rights Group is encouraging people to write to their MP. They claim that the Bill is unlikely to see proper debate.
4. Although the Bill has seen substantial debate in the House of Lords, it is likely to short shrift in the Commons. In the Lords鈥� third reading, Lord Erroll said the Bill was 鈥渁 complete and absolute abuse of parliamentary process鈥�.
Lord Erroll clarified that the debate over
1. how to protect online copyright and
2. what some regard as free speech
was being driven by big businesses. "Small business is not getting a look at this bill at all. That is the problem which I, Lord Whitty, and some others have with this bill."
Malcolm Hutty a spokesman for EuroISPA, representing ISPs across Europe, said details (such as thresholds for alleged file-sharing transgressions) were still not clarified and needed to be clarified for Ofcom. Without such clarification, Hutty said the Bill would remain controversial...and even unworkable.
A spokesman for ISPA UK, representing @ 70 ISPs that carry about 90% of UK internet traffic, said its priority remained the removal of Clause 18, which is that clause deals with preventing access to specified online locations for the protection of online copyright. A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, which is sponsoring the Digital Economy Bill, said details of the new provisions were not yet available.
It is not clear whether MPs will be able to make changes to the bill before it becomes law (Isn't this what MPs are for - to recommend changes before a Law becomes a Law?). But not to fear: The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills said they would have their own little debate among themselves.
Erroll said, "We have no idea what the new provisions look like, and it seems to be an abuse of parliamentary process." (or in this case non-process)
It seems likely that the Bill will wash ashore in the final days of is Parliament without much in the way of examination.
What? Isn't this bill important?
MPs will get little chance to "interact" with the legislative process of this Bill?
Mr. Brown is essentially willing to let Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, change copyright law through secondary legislation, which requires no Parliamentary approval? Well, I suppose Lord Mandelson should be good at this kind of thing.
Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, claims 99% of ISPs are "broadly supportive" of the bill. What about BT and TT (TalkTalk) - two of the largest ISPs in the UK 鈥� I can hear them complaining clear across the Atlantic, all the way here in Canada. The ISP Association, which represents ISPs in the UK has loudly crticized the bill as backwards looking: "ISPA members are extremely concerned that the bill, far from strengthening the nation's communications infrastructure, will penalise the success of the internet industry and undermine the backbone of the digital economy.鈥�
It seems that the UK Government rather than running headlong (which is highly dangerous) should be consulting with people who know what they are doing in order to reform the licensing framework so that legal content can be distributed online to consumers in a way that is efficient, effective and legal.
p.s.
鈥淏ump Game鈥� - guiding pregnant women through the various public services available to them.
This is insulting. Please get rid of it. Creating life, carrying life, delivering life deserve a name better than the 鈥淏ump Game鈥�.

Think we should close parliament and use the money saved to have a truly democratic country.

The system of parliamentary representation is so outdated.

We don't need to keep voting for the same old people and the same old parties. In the "i" generation, iMatter really applies to all people and not just to the "elected" and unelected ancients that rattle around in Westminster.

We don't have to have politics and politicians as we do now.

We can change the old system for the better.

The music industry needs innovative business and service models to meet the needs of consumers who are fickle, demanding and, unfortunately, used to content that's free - including digital music. Shouldn't the industry be speaking with one voice as legislators tussle over the Digital Economy Bill?

"And to make sure nobody was left out, he explained, a 50p per month landline levy to help fund super-fast broadband was a vital component of the plan."

This 拢6 a year levy - it will be used to build infrastructure to rural areas, right? Once this infrastructure is in place, it will be owned by private companies, right? Will we get a share of the profits generated from this infrastructure, or will any profits go straight into the pockets of the telcos?

The term "super-fast broadband" is thrown around quite a lot in these feel-good speeches, yet last time I checked, Lord Carter's definition of "super-fast broadband" was 2Mb. I know that most UK homes seem to have 8Mb to 24Mb connections, but these rarely achieve 70% of their stated theoretical maximum speed (interference, signal attenuation, distance from exchange etc). I have one friend whose connection falls lower than 1Mb when the street lights come on - and he's paying for 8Mb. I know that Virgin have a handful of customer's on 50Mb and there are small 100Mb trials being conducted in small areas, but these connections still throttle the upstream to well under 2Mb. This "asymmetrical" infrastructure is geared towards connections "consuming" rather than "producing" content. One could (if paranoid enough) suspect that this has been purposely orchestrated and maintained to keep the general populace from producing content.

I produce software. I wish I had more upstream as it would enable me to produce software that would utilize it (the upstream) in new, innovative and creative ways. Check out the speed of broadband in Romania:

Digital Britain? Super-fast broadband? Sure...

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