Re: Lottery fund and ADSL

"Simon" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> With the coffers of the lottery swelling to the sum of 3.1billion
> how much would it cost to upgrade all the exchanges in the UK ?

About 5000 remaining exchanges at about 250k each = 1.2 billion. If
BT put up half then 0.6 billion, a small sum in national
infrastructure terms.

However the really grievous failure has been the slowness in enabling
the approximately 2000 exchanges with urban and suburban populations,
the count now only being about 1300.

> I think all those without an ADSL enabled exchange should fill in
> one of the lottery grant forms.

The government could avoid explicit funding by offering BT something
of value. A nice way would have been to have given them a chunk of
the 3.4GHz radio spectrum they just auctioned off, in return for
getting the country broadband enabled by a combination of adsl and
wireless.

--

Mark W. Lewis, North Somerset, UK

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003 11:41:36 +0100, "Mark Lewis"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>> With the coffers of the lottery swelling to the sum of 3.1billion
>> how much would it cost to upgrade all the exchanges in the UK ?
>
>About 5000 remaining exchanges at about 250k each = 1.2 billion. If
>BT put up half then 0.6 billion, a small sum in national
>infrastructure terms.

But many users will still be too far from the exchange to use a DSL
service.

>However the really grievous failure has been the slowness in enabling
>the approximately 2000 exchanges with urban and suburban populations,
>the count now only being about 1300.
>
>> I think all those without an ADSL enabled exchange should fill in
>> one of the lottery grant forms.
>
>The government could avoid explicit funding by offering BT something
>of value. A nice way would have been to have given them a chunk of
>the 3.4GHz radio spectrum they just auctioned off, in return for
>getting the country broadband enabled by a combination of adsl and
>wireless.

How much did that auction actually raise?


--
Hiram Hackenbacker