I could not see where it said they were stopping use of satallite just adding the streaming?

I don't seem to have a problem watching GCN+, Redbull TV, Eurosport, etc on the 'puter without fibre either.

Who needs it? The best entertainment and educational programs are usually to be found in the workshop but for the occasional BBC Iplayer documentary or YouTube instructional video I find that BT copper is more than adequate, although I must admit I am located only a couple of hundred yards from the village exchange and FTTC cabinet, others may not be so fortunate.

Satellite is ideal for broadcast, but less so for internet. My day job involves talking to a webcam all day, and it would be intolerable routed over satellite: you can't do much about the speed of light.

You only need 3Mbps for Standard definition TV, Netflix et al can use less if they detect your connection is poor. HD maybe 8Mbps, UHD maybe 16Mbps. Fibre isn't necessary for the individual customer, only for aggregation of multiple customers. Latency and dropped packets due to noise are more significant in practice.

Can anyone tell me what sort of digging there has to be at a minimum to a front garden in order to lay a fibreoptic cable? I've been deterred from choosing fibreoptic until now because of the mess Virgin (or rather their contractors) wanted to make of my front garden in springtime with all my bulbs just coming into flower.

They were turned away at the scene, though wouldn't have turned up at all if Virgin had notified them, as they should have, that the customer had cancelled the contract four days before the scheduled visit.

The BBC will in the near future get rid of transmitters to aerials and expect all viewers to use the broad band network instead saving billions of pounds in maintenance and renewal costs. Progress?

David

More to spend on programming? More appropriate use of spectrum. So yes, progress.

Or, to put it another way, says who?

Live in a village outside of Eastbourne, a cable company are installing cable throughout Eastbourne, I think the company is called Lightning, however there have been a constant stream of complaints about their work. The cable layers have dug up roads and pavements leaving behind an awful mess and the trenches are all topped of with lumpy tarmac, the trenches they have dug in the roads have left newly surfaced roads with uneven surfaces which will get worse with traffic and deteriorate further. It’s bad enough to get roads resurfaced these days with Councils so strapped for cash but to get a company come along and in my view vandalise the highway in such a way is totally unnecessary when BT have a network of cables already laid in ducting that could be shared. My personal view is that tv should remain on satellites and internet utilise the current infrastructure with upgrading where necessary. My view of Sky’s new tv project is like all Sky enterprises it is geared to massive profit for their shareholders and customer consideration is very low on their agenda, as always. Hopefully our village will be deemed too insignificant for them to vandalise with their cables. Dave W

Customers, loud and clear. Most customers don't want broadcast TV because programmes have to be watched at set times – the customer has to follow the schedules.

Recording is popular because it alleviates the scheduling problem. However, not all sweetness and light. The customer buys an extra box, studies the schedules, and has to set-up what's wanted for later consumption. Recorders have limitations: most can only capture two channels simultaneously and the owner has to make space by deleting old recordings. And the customer buys DVDs and another special box to watch them.

What most customers want is Video on Demand: programmes that can be watched at any time and in any order without having to wait for a broadcaster to schedule them. And most people today want to be able to watch TV on anything from a big fixed screen to a mobile phone. Some are also keen to watch high-definition services that cannot be transmitted by existing broadcast infrastructure without major upgrades, but can be accommodated by fibre-optic networks.

Terrestrial and satellite broadcasters are all losing customers and their outlook is bleak. In my family only one of the under 40s watches broadcast TV – eight others all stream programmes off the internet. If they want to binge watch an entire series in one sitting, they can. The move away from broadcast will continue, and at some point in the future, there won't be enough customers to justify providing it.

In similar vein, BT have announced the end of conventional analogue telephony, in 2025 (ISDN and PSTN). It's because replacing and maintaining the UK's ageing bandwidth-limited copper network exceeds the cost of replacing it with fibre-optics. And putting high-speed internet into every home opens the door to selling more services. It's also important for the ecomomy – failure to modernise UK telecoms has already damaged our business propects. There will be problems galore, but most customers will be delighted. As with moving from broadcast to video on demand, it's the majority who win, not the minority who are happy with what they have and just want to be left alone. That's me!

Dave

I think it was the term "in the near future" that raised eyebrows – well, mine anyway.

Rob

Seems incredible to me that they can do that. The roads must be "owned" by some body (local council, county council) and the cable layers (or anyone else) should require express permission to dig them up in pursuit of their profit-making business. Such permission should include requirements for properly restoring the surface afterwards, enforced by appropriate penalties and loss of succeeding permissions.