How much money could be saved if the ID Card fiasco gets kicked in to touch????

A new, faster way for Gordon 'Bungle' Brown to misplace our data and expose us all to identify theft.

That said I'm sure with a multi-billion price tag, that we'll all need to authenticate our access to the new backbone with our ID cards and biometric authentication, which naturally will be secure ???? Honest.

"wireless alternatives" require no physical Infrastructure releasing funds for Applications/OSAPs ...... Open Source Applications Programming.

The government can just squirt all our personal information to criminals over a fast connection......this has to be great news for the nation surely?

Also any truth in the rumour that Mclaren has been appointed the new head of Data Security for the government? What a twat!!

To think, if it wasn't for the short-sightedness of a certain female PM we would have had fibre to the door for years now and be a world leader in high-speed internet access. But no, that would have been anti-competitive and bad for the consumers. Instead lets let market forces drive others (e.g. Cable Co's - who all stopped expanding their networks years ago, then merged into one) to install high-speed networks.

Ah well, I'll just stick with my 16mbit line a while longer. ;)

because I just thought I read that acronym as BEER. :(

I do have 2 sensible point though.

1) "BT should not have an unfair advantage in retail markets in order to persuade it to upgrade its network,". You have to give BT (or whoever else) some kind of incentive because if you don't you know they won't make the choice to invest themselves. If BT did go ahead and build a brand spanking new network you know that the regulators would tell them they have to let everyone else use it and exactly how much they would be allowed to charge for said use.

I mean look at the post office and the debacle over allowing competition. The competitors don't compete in the entire market but can pick and choose the profitable sectors to enter whilst Royal Mail must still provide everything. Bang - there goes profitable business mail collections subsidising deliveries in rural areas, which has led us to the point where the posties are the ones delivering junk mail!!!

So you have 2 choices - tell BT either you invest and then charge anybody and everybody what the market will bear for access and the govt won't intervene or the government will support the investment but will then have an input in to what you are allowed to charge and will require certain targets to be met.

But hey - this is government and we'll probably just end up with BT paying and the government screwing them over...

2) If they are going to ban journalists for attending surely you could just attend as a private citizen? I mean I would like to see them try to justify why a taxpayer isn't allowed to see this process in action...

...Al Gore!

<< No, really. I KNOW the story. We really DO need a modern-day Al Gore for this. >>

Cheers,

SingHash

P.S.: I'm betting that amanfrommars and Webster Phreaky are actually the same person -- the difference lies in the amount of medication he's taking on any given day...

No doubt there will be a lot of talking and meetings and planing and stuff - which, if Crossrail is anything to go by, will mean the project starting in about 10 years time and needing a drastic re-think as the technology will have moved on a wee bit.

Then we will see the usual compromises and end up with a silk purse miraculously turned in to a pig's ear no matter who is running it.

Hopefully we'll all have gone wireless by then or getting fed down the leccy cables instead.

If you believe that...

Face it, if BT had remained nationalised or in a monopoly position we'd still be on freakin dialup.

Nationalised: We'd be better off

Monopoly: I agree

The Post Office, Rail Network and Telecoms all handled the transition to privatisations so marvellously. I personally can't wait for the privatisation of the NHS. Pay-per-bandage will ensure that end-users get the best possible treatment.

By Nu-Labour's standards anyway.

The National Programme for IT (NHS) is now costing an estimated 20 billion and there is very little to show for it...

to brag about my 100Mbps (yes that's 100 base T ) fibre connection here in Japan. I've had it for about 3 yrs already, and it costs about 20 of your british quid a month, including phone and cable TV.

hahahahahah

you are stuck in that cold and rainy techno backwater, and I'm not.

15 bn is that all!!!! that's peanuts. How much has the goverment just paid to prop up Northern Rock Bank?

£15 billion is not too bad. There about currently approx. 20 million broadband enabled households. Divide 15 billion pounds by 20 million households and thats only £750 per household. Spread that cost over say 5 years and thats only £150 per year, about £12.50 a month. I could live with that paying that. Now, get on with it, I want gigabit internet to my home so I can watch unlimited HD movies over the net.

@b4k4,

yeah your right in my country they did speed tests with 200mbps down and 80mbps upload speeds just to see how it performs...

oh yeah, 100mbps cost about €60 / month...