Digital Region is going to be switched off

What an unbelievable waste of money this has been and anyone who knows anything about broadband delivery could see it coming so why did all the local authorities throw money at it?

I'm sure many of you won't even know what this is but if you remember a few years ago when almost every pavement in Barnsley spent a period with a foot-wide strip missing from it this is what they were installing.

The problem was we never needed it in the first place. Virgin Media had already covered a large chunk of the town with "super-fast broadband" and it was inevitable that BT would fill in the gaps and also provide coverage in the same areas as Virgin.

When Digital Region services launched they were already less attractive than Virgin Media, and BT arrived as a competitor a matter of months later with both of these offering faster speeds at a lower cost. Most Digital Region ISPs wanted some fairly hefty set-up charges paying as well, so there really was no incentive for people to choose them. I considered going to one myself at my old house when I was off both Virgin and BTs fibre network, but when I saw that BT Infinity would be available a few months later (think it was something like November 2011) I decided to hold out and wait for that.

I just can't believe none of the decision makers for this project were made aware of how it was destined to fail, or they did know but didn't want to put themselves out of a job.

Story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-23713493

I also reckon the loss figures they've admitted to are actually a small fraction of the actual loss, covering 80% of South Yorkshire with fibre optic cables would surely run into hundreds of millions, maybe even over a billion. They were at it for absolutely ages.

 

But do you think we'll win tomorrow?

 

Errr, yeah, why not

 

I maybe ought to sign up to other forums related to the subject matter of my posts instead of using this forum for everything!

Anyway...fracking

 

"Excuse me how much is your broadband?"
"It's a £125 setup fee and then £70 a month"
"Bye"

 

Well. If DR hadn't started there is no way on earth I would have got fast broadband cos it would have taken BT 100 years before they came anywhere near our house. The fact that DR kicked a private company into actually delivering something that wouldn't have been touched for years has turned out well for me. Could only get half meg connections until it arrived. Now get a nice 36 meg. At least public funds look after the masses as apposed to town centres only.