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Sunday, February 08, 2009

Dave Burstein on Brit broadband

First, lets see where he's coming from - the US has a pro-net neutrality, interventionist incoming FCC chair, competing networks offering fobre or DOCSIS3.0 to the majority of the country, and educated consumer advocates (including Dave himself!). So his view on bandwidth caps tells you where we stand: "I'm one of the few who said Comcast's 250G cap was reasonable in 2008, because there is a cost of bandwidth.  But every policymaker in D.C. knows that the 20, 40, and 80 gig caps are a blatant attempt to discourage “access to content of your choice.”" The question of what level of monthly cap is acceptable is one that regulators must grapple with - mobiles currently offer caps as low as 1GB!

But on to the UK - he notes that Virgin is charging a premium for DOCSIS3.0, and then discusses Ofcom's views: "OFCOM talk of “super-fast broadband” is an attempt to fool the British people. BT's 1 up, ? down is 50-90% slower than what's building in New York, Boston, Paris, Geneva, and Amsterdam. That looks to be the only choice for half the country unless Ed demands more from BT. Red queen language that's beneath Ed Richards."

Well, quite - no doubt Ed is earning his salary working on how to squeeze BT into promising VDSL all round?

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