Viewing 10 posts - 41 through 50 (of 50 total)
  • Broadband tax for all telephone account holders
  • Teetosugars
    Free Member

    Hang on so your saying GSM Antennas only can work if they can see each other??

    davidrussell
    Free Member

    [devils advocate]

    Why should I pay a tax to a company that used to be nationalised to provide new services to those that only have a service because it was nationalised in the first place?

    Does that mean i’ll have to start paying a train tax because they are starting to resurrect the old derelict British rail branch lines of the 60’s?

    [/ devils advocate]

    davidrussell
    Free Member

    what i’m rather clumsily trying to say is that its not nationalised any more and thats the choice that was made, and we have to live with the consequences.

    Network rail are picking up the tab for upgrading the rail infrastructure and passing costs onto the consumer in the form of higher fares, not a tax as such but if you dont want to travel by train you dont have to.

    so, what form will the tax take and does it only affect broadband users or actually those with fixed-line telephony?

    If it was up to me i’d horse my landline and live off the mobile, using the fixed line only for broadband but I can’t do that.

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    aracer
    Free Member

    Hang on so your saying GSM Antennas only can work if they can see each other??

    Kind of. In reality you’ll get a signal when the antennas can’t “see” each other in an optical sense, as things which are opaque to light aren’t totally opaque to radio waves – just kind of translucent which means the radio waves will be attenuated, hence you can’t go through lots of that sort of stuff. Also you can sometimes get links by reflection. What you won’t get is any sort of over the horizon reception – you don’t get that with anything higher frequency than HF, for which the available bandwidth is far worse than the worst dial-up (HF goes up to 30MHz – GSM is 900MHz or 1800MHz, ie UHF).

    woodey
    Free Member

    This is about addressing what is called the “Digital Divide”, all major developed coutries are doing the same things. The main reasons are:

    1) Key research bodies (eg. OECD) have clearly showed the correlation between the economic success of areas and the access of businesses and citizens to broadband. Many businesses in our rural areas may start losing out to competitors abroad if we fall behind. It is also important in attracting inward investment (ie. jobs) to poorer areas.

    2) Education: Access to broadband is increasingly important for children (not just at school, also for homework). If a kid in london has access to broadband at a decent speed and his counterpart in a rural area only has access to dial-up (always sh*t performance) the rural kid will be increasingly disadvanted in the coming years.

    3) Goverment services: More and more of these will become exclusively online, many will be time sensitive and dial-up is NOT sufficient.

    And on another note we have across England, in general, the fastest broadband speeds in Europe: FACT

    El-bent
    Free Member

    It’s the lack of ambition that really grates on me about this levy. While South Korea, Japan and erm France power ahead with 100MBit Broadband in cities, we’re still talking about a maximum of 50Mbit by 2017.

    Welcome to the country of free enterprise. Did anybody really expect that PLC’s or Privatised companies were ever going to spend that kind of money to provide services when they can get by on the current infrastructure, offer poor services and fleece the customer at the same time, with the only people who benefit are their shareholders and those in the boardroom?

    These sort of services, such as Rail, leccy, mail etc, should be just that: services. Not for shareholders or profit. They should be funded by the Government. The public and businesses that use these services should be making the profit.

    Ever since the utilities got privatised, our infrastructure has been left behind compared to similar European economies.

    woodey
    Free Member

    “Ever since the utilities got privatised, our infrastructure has been left behind compared to similar European economies. “

    Sorry mate, but that is so wrong….

    El-bent
    Free Member

    Sorry mate, but that is so wrong….

    A single line answer doesn’t prove otherwise.

    And on another note we have across England, in general, the fastest broadband speeds in Europe: FACT

    Not for long.

    mrmichaelwright
    Free Member

    teeto – what aracer says, any kind of radio wave is effectively line of sight unless it is transmitted at brain boiling power or low enough wavelength to be reflected by the atmosphere (that’s why the world service still broadcasts in LW). in urban areas it can be reflected by denser materials like buildings

    it’s also why the emergency services (and any radio comms users) had to spend an awful lot of money putting in repeaters after the change over to digital as digital signals make the problem worse by having a very finite cut off level for power. you either get it….or you don’t. same goes for analogue TV/digital TV.

    and as for being able to ‘use’ the internet with dial up, that has certainly not been my experience and don’t forget that using dial up ties up your phone line

    aracer
    Free Member

    any kind of radio wave is effectively line of sight unless it is transmitted at brain boiling power or low enough wavelength to be reflected by the atmosphere (that’s why the world service still broadcasts in LW). in urban areas it can be reflected by denser materials like buildings

    Not quite. Upping the power doesn’t help the radio waves make it round corners. Meanwhile only a very limited range of frequencies (from ~2MHz to ~30MHz) get reflected by the ionosphere (skywave). Lower frequencies will follow the earth’s curvature (ground wave), though this is shorter range than skywave. Higher frequencies, including GSM, will still be reflected in urban areas, though as I mentioned before this won’t help them over the horizon in rural areas.

    That’s the noddy version – it’s rather more complicated than that, but I’m not an expert. I have worked with people who are amongst the best in this field though.

Viewing 10 posts - 41 through 50 (of 50 total)

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