Virgin Media's snubbing of rural communities 'a travesty' says ex-BT CTO

Virgin Media's snubbing of rural communities 'a travesty' says ex-BT CTO - 16 Feb 2015 - Computing News: ""Somebody like Virgin could put a ‘village pump' [i.e. a hotspot] in and stand back and watch what happens", he said. Referring to Scandinavia's example again, he believes a fast broadband hotspot could simply be installed in the village, while locals work on the infrastructure.

"I think the UK has missed a big trick, because absolutely none of the BT UK funding has gone to the rural community - it's all gone to BT", he added.
"And this just seems to me to be a travesty. We put Wi-Fi in with no funding whatsoever, whereas BT wanted £140,000 to put fibre into the village. If Virgin are going to do anything radical, they could have done something like that."

Cochrane is also concerned that, with an ongoing emphasis on fibre to the cabinet [FTTC] rather than FTTH, "the big worry is the fantastic waste of money of putting in fibre to the cabinet with copper, and then in five years rip it all out and put in fibre to the home, and start all over again." 'via Blog this'