to not want to pay 50p a month on top of my phone bill to pay for other people's internet when there are OAP's who have to choose between food and heat in the winter?

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

Isn't food/gas/electricity more important then internet access? I don't mind paying 50p but there are more important things that people need then high speed internet.

Hello, Five

Broadband does use a phone line if you don't live in an area with cable.

You do have choice Fluffy, don't have a fixed landline phone.No levy; problem solved.

hello hunker.

Hello, Aitch

Sorry, I hijacked rather - to the OP I say yes, other things are important, but how would you put 50p onto a phone bill and pay for food and heating for old folk?

This is useful and feasible - let's do it.

Hello Hunker

Honestly, I don't mind about 50p, I would rather the essentials were sorted out for people first though (gas/electricity supplies to rural areas, help with the cost of school uniforms for low income families etc).
No one died because they can't get broadband!

Thank you

Oh, I didn't realise you were talking about death as the benchmark.

Do people often die because they can't get school uniform?

Gas?

What's that, and no I don't need it and haven't heard anyone complaining about lack of it here either.

You know what I mean

Why would you want to run gas into rural areas when we're trying to look for alternative sources of energy - gas is hardly the future of energy, is it?

You might as well build coal bunkers for people on benefits with your ill-judged charitableness.

But Fluffy - the government already helps people - quite a lot. Even though it doesn't always feel like that. If you look at public spending figures, you can see how much goes into funding benefits, the NHS, etc. etc. The figures are enormous. This 50p is really a drop in the ocean to do some necessary updating.

No-one died yet because they don't have broadband. But that doesn't mean that in years to come our emergency services might not use high-speed internet access as part of their response package - e.g. you might call an ambulance on the internet, rather than phone. Etc.

The internet is just massively massively important, Fluffy. The government would be mad not to try to keep abreast of its technological advances.

Fluffy - the interest is increasingly become an essential - even for those of us on low incomes.

I am doing an OU course - online - that will improve my job propsects immensely. I couldn't have done it had I not had internet access.

DH has applied for 4 jobs this week which had "send an email to" in the advert

I'm about to do an Asda shop for some bits that are cheaper at asda than any of my local supermarkets..........and they'll deliver which is good as with no transport of our own we couldn't get there.

I currently "save" about £8 a month by getting paperless statements for several of my accounts with various places. (not a lot - but soon adds up)

For the last year (before DH and I got back together) the internet was my only source of company when the DS's were in bed.

I now pay many of my bills online - I do live close enough to town to go and pay some there if I wanted - but if I was more rural then it would have been a problem.

I have received NUMEROUS things off (essential stuff for DH before we got back together) freecycle recently - which I wouldn't have got for him if I had no access

Have a loook around you in the next week and see how many advert in papers/magazine/TV don't say "ring x,y,z" - but "log onto www......." for more information.

I know there's more things but I need a fag

So, in answer to your OP, yes, YABU.

Next!

Look what has happened to generations of technological underinvestement in transport, particularly the railways, in the UK. Disaster.

Good governments must, as part of their overall activity, try to keep abreast of technology.

So invest the 50p into building more wind farms.

I can see your points, really I can but shouldn't the government clean up the mess the country's in before it starts planning this? Despite it's efforts, there are still children living in poverty in this country, surly there are better things to invest money in.

Why is it being added on to phone bills instead of paid for out of general tax revenue.Sorry silly quetion

Why are the public being charged so that broadband can be rolled out and BT et al make more money ?

The government is trying to clean up the mess the country's in.

Sheesh.

But it also has to look ahead to the future. If we just dealt with the here-and-now without - errr - planning things, we'd be in a mess.

Look at FAQ's post. A very eloquent explanation of why everyone needs high-speed access to the internet.

This government can't tell it's arse from it's tits though, their screw ups are legendary, isn't this going to be just another white elephant? We 'invest', it gets wasted. What makes you all think it will be different this time? Why not invest into something that will really benefit someone's life? More community centres with internet access, then people can get together, old folk will have somewhere to go for a nice (cheap) meal, teenagers will have somewhere to go in the evenings? If you all want to make a diference then why not this?

Maybe they could scrap the totally useless ID card scheme and use the money from that.

This NGA (Next Generation Access) will be an optical fibre rollout AFAIK. At the moment most of the country's broadband and telephone is provided over copper cables (with the exception of Virgin/Cable).

The new digital network will mean that everybody will benefit in terms of speed - not just those in remote areas.

It's not just internet and voice calls which are made over the network though - OAP Carecall type systems, alarm monitoring companies, cctv, warden call etc. these will also be improved with the rollout of fibre (assuming they will be rolling out fibre of course!)

However, I repeat: I get your point about people in need. I do.

katiestar - sadly, one of the disadvantages of capitalism is that if something doesn't make a profit, it's not worth doing. There is a limited (short-term) profit to be made for providing broadband access to rural areas.

But these people have as much of a right to access this service as any other part of the country. So the government has to step in and take responsiblity (or rather, we do - because we pay the government).

Yes, it's annoying, because in the long term, BT etc. will profit from public investment. But it was ever thus, I'm afraid.

"A very eloquent explanation "

well it was until I interrupted my train of thought to announce my intentions to go and smoke a fag

I really object to the argument that you ought not do one worthwhile thing because there are other worthwhile things to do.

Nothing would ever get done if that logic prevailed.