Ofcom chief: only families with teenagers want fibre

Hand up over here

Due to thoroughly odd decisions made within BT, here in [postcode] EC2, broadband is a very odd thing indeed. I get 4MB/sec out of an older line and 11-ish out of an Annex H. Even bonding those up (with variable success, I should say) I can still max out the fast line with two different full-HD screens watching 2 different iPlayer sessions. No teenagers involved!

By Steve_Cassidy on 9 Nov 2011

Oh, FFS...

Yet again, the man achieves cranio-rectal hard dock. Basically, "If we pretend it's only teenagers who want it, we don't have to do anything. Again. Yay! Go us!".

By nichomach0 on 9 Nov 2011

Ofcom chief: only families with teenagers want fibre

Umm no wonder we have such a poor internet in this country, with silly comments like that from Ofcom, they clearly do not live in the real world.
My mother 70+ uses the internet quite regularly and when she had the old 512kbs second from blueyonder would regularly complain that the internet was sluggish, now she is on btinfinity mum uses iplayer and other on demand TV services.
So Ofcom get your facts right, I am sure as time goes by more and more silver surfers will be using the internet and will require and use high speed internet.
I now believe that 40mb should be the minimum for the entire country where ever you live,(oops I have just woken up from that dream)..

By Chrisfjr1300 on 9 Nov 2011

I have to agree with Steve, BT vision and Iplayer gets a lot of use for IPTV in our house by a pair of middle aged old gits. We expect to be able to surf/ download todays bucket of updates, shop, research days out, download iplayer programmes to watch offline whilst commuting at the same time which means that our BT Infinity gets used in a way a conventional ADSL would fail to support especially at over 6 Km from the exchange.
So for a change Ofcom appear to not to have a clue about anything they are supposed to regulate.

By gcanton on 9 Nov 2011

Wrong Again

My wife and I are both over 50 and have NO children. We are on Virgin's 50mB service.

Is this someone who's in charge of a company that thinks 'unlimited' is sonewhere between 500mb & 1gb.

By steven_h1 on 9 Nov 2011

Not surprised here.

Well another ignorant civil servant with a degree in Media Studies from Scunthorpe University, who is unelected and unaccountable heading up one of the key infrastructure quangos in the UK. Does he know anything about the technology? I doubt it, instead he must have opted for the faeco-oral super-specialisation instead at college...maybe even took an -ology in it! Well at least he has made his paymasters in the lobby firms happy. I suppose we should be grateful he can at least pronounce internet!

By vivek30 on 9 Nov 2011

"..."

(speechless non-teenager)

By mnj_lim on 9 Nov 2011

Even if teenagers are the current only reason (which they're not), they wont be teenagers forever and i bet they'll still want fibre/fast broadband if single and living alone.

By tech3475 on 9 Nov 2011

If only

I'd just like the chance to not subscribe to SFB!

I've lived in 4 different houses/areas since the dawn of (real) broadband (let alone Super Fast?!?!) and I'm still yet so have even the choice not to be stuck with less than 2meg on a 5KM peice of twisted copper!!! In two locations I've had a faster 3G connection than landline!!!!

Sort that out OFCOM and then you will really see what the take-up is!!!!!

By ITZ_Go_One on 9 Nov 2011

Ed Richards doesn't know what he's talking about

What is this guy on? He seems to have swallowed the dictionary of non-speak and uninformed platitudes at one of those many lobbyist lunches he's clearly been to to learn all this rubbish and nonsense.

Even if families with teenagers really are the largest group of broadband users, you don't have to wait 13 years from now for the UK to have any more - kids are born every year!

Who is this guy - a refugee from a mobile phone salesforce who couldn't cut the mustard? His picture would suggest so.

By SwissMac on 9 Nov 2011

Statistics

There are times I wonder why it is even worth rolling up my eyelids.

If an infrastructure is provided, the general rule is that within a short time, it will be filled to maximum capacity. If M25 is just one example, take a look at the rest of UK transport.

While I acknowledge UK is no longer a super-power, without future foresight and investment, the UK will struggle to be a third world country.

High Speed Rail... what a fiasco for the country that invented the railways! Edinburgh Trams!???

This man is a dinosaur... and needs to be changed for a visionary quickly.
His method is to quickly procrastinate; and we will get nowhere... fast.

By lenmontieth on 9 Nov 2011

Chicken and eggs....

My goodness, what a short-sighted statement.

Perhaps if "superfast" broadband was available to all then technology would be developed that can utilise this.

On-demand high-def television is of course the most obvious of these, and I don't think it's just teenagers who watch television, whilst the oldies huddle around a radio.

I wonder how many of the great British inventions of the past 200 years would have been scuppered by civil servants like this smug-looking Richards fella?

By cookster on 9 Nov 2011

Why do we put up with these people? I'm just about the polar opposite of a family with teenagers and I'd love to even have the option of something faster than basic ADSL.

By Andersson on 9 Nov 2011

Build it they will come...

You could credibly have made the same argument about DSL 12 years ago, but most of the modern web would be unthinkable without it.

The demand will come if the bandwidth is there. Streaming video and high quality audio are still a challenge to DSL lines, especially in peak times.

Really if there is one part of Government where one might hope to find forward-looking attitudes it would be the telecoms regulator. Sadly it appears to be staffed with intellectual pigmies capable only of repeating the tripe fed to them by the corporate dinosaurs that have captured them...

By stuarthamlin on 9 Nov 2011

un-be-flippin-lievable!!!

There are too few expletives in the world to describe how woefully ignorant and stupid a comment Mr Richards has made.

By wittgenfrog on 9 Nov 2011

@all

I'm really sorry, fellow posters, but I cannot add anything that has not already been said. Thank you all. :)

By jontym123 on 9 Nov 2011

Please Write to Ed Richards Here

Maybe if this idiot received some of the above posts he might reconsider. I doubt it though.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/contact-us/

By jontym123 on 9 Nov 2011

Please Write to Ed Richards Here

Maybe if this idiot received some of the above posts he might reconsider. I doubt it though.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/contact-us/

By jontym123 on 9 Nov 2011

Oops! Sorry!

I refereshed the page and ended up with a double post (blush).

By jontym123 on 9 Nov 2011

Absurd

A mind-crushingly ignorant statement from the head of our functionally irrelevant 'regulator'.

Reminds me of Ofgem: They thought competition in the energy business would solve issues of pricing so they GAVE AWAY their powers - yet somehow forgot to wind themselves up and still manage to draw their hugely overinflated public salaries.

Other than shuffle piles of paperwork back and forth to each-other, (and make the occasional stupid public statement) what do these people actually DO for our money?

By Mr_John_T on 9 Nov 2011

The Regulator Ofgem

@Mr_John_T
I really wish that I could disappoint your reference to Ofgem being useless but they have just proved that in the news recently.

31 Oct 2011
Ofgem fines npower £2m for mishandling customer complaint.

While that sounds good at first, it also means that nPower will slap an extra 7% increase on the fuel tariffs all their consumers get.

By lenmontieth on 10 Nov 2011

Ehh!!!

As a 60 year old who has changed to Infinity (nearly 12 months ago; would have been 6 months sooner, but they kept putting the date back). What we need is more competition (or forced price reductions) so that more families can justify the cost over ADSL. I have been on broadband for 10 years (starting at 512Kb/s which was fast (by comparison to line dropping dial up modems). I went over to Infinity because my provider upgraded me from 20Meg to 24 Meg, but reduced my download monthly (after I was receiving less than 1Meg and an extra charge because of my downloads. I now get 26 Meg not perfect but a great improvement. If we do not look forward, then as another commentator said, we will degenerate into a third world country. W
The internet is now the center of communications and therefore should be at the heart of all decisions. Whilst speed is not the final arbiter of the game, without it we will soon not even be in the ground.

By JohnMyatt on 10 Nov 2011

It's all about money

It's all about money with me, I'd love fast broadband, but living on a normal wage, I find other ways of using what I bring in.

By Thexyone on 10 Nov 2011

It's all about money

It's all about money with me, I'd love fast broadband, but living on a normal wage, I find other ways of using what I bring in.

By Thexyone on 10 Nov 2011

It's all about money

It's all about money with me, I'd love fast broadband, but living on a normal wage, I find other ways of using what I bring in.

By Thexyone on 10 Nov 2011

Vision,or lack of

Good job he is not now heading up Apple,we would end up with the SloPhone and DumbPad.

By UK_Snapper on 10 Nov 2011

What about the pose factor?

There will always be the posers, the 'keeping up with the Joneses', those who need a personality transplant who will always want to show off by having the best car, the big house, the fastest broadband. I just want the infrastructure to be faster so that I can connect at my full (copper) speed at any time.

By JohnOfStony on 10 Nov 2011

only families with teenagers want fibre?

To put it bluntly - that's bollocks! What about those of us who work from home and whose kids have left home? I NEED not WANT fibre.

By trgzbaby on 10 Nov 2011

Clueless

Ofcom are obviously as clueless as BT, maybe it's stuffed full of ex BT execs. BT lost a couple of years refusing to install ADSL, then made a mint. Now they're rolling out fibre - waheh. Then look at the small print, where we are (Surrey, should be prime targets) 22Mb is the top - I get 50Mb from Virgin now. It needs to start at 100Mb just to tempt me, and 100s of thousands of others.
In short, clueless

By MarkShurmer on 10 Nov 2011

Decent UPLOAD speeds please!!!

I can live without high-speed downloads so long as someone does something to force the broadband companies to give us decent UPLOAD speeds! Upload speeds 10% of download speeds is NOT acceptable! It's currently the only reason you would need to upgrade to super-fast broadband.

By grahamft on 10 Nov 2011

It's the Telly, Stupid

As all the above posters have already noted, before too long iPlayer (and equivalent competitors) will soak up all the bandwidth you can throw at them, regardless of age group.

By dick_pountain on 10 Nov 2011

Smug grinning idiot

First off the photo itself makes me want to remove that smug grin off his face. Looks like the typical arrogant twonk who doesn't know what he is talking about.

Maybe there would be better take up if they weren't laying it in the already cabled up Virgin Media areas.

As Mark Shurmer mentions above - if BT are laying fibre in the VM cabled areas, they need to offer a faster speed than VM to be tempted away and possibly some kind of tv package.

To say that it is only larger households with teenagers does show how clueless he really is, sadly I am not surprised!

By scgill on 10 Nov 2011

Ed's facts are wrong!

I am 70 and, like many of my friends, the childen flew the nest long ago. We have fibre broadband because it provides the type of digital service that meets our needs - non fibre services are too slow.

Richards attended the Portsmouth Grammar School. He went up to the London School of Economics gaining a degree in Economics. As a result some people have nicknamed him two brains.

Ed Richards was previously a Senior Policy Advisor to Tony Blair and before that Controller of Corporate Strategy at the BBC. He has also worked in consulting at London Economics Ltd, and as an advisor to Gordon Brown MP. Effectively, he is an Economist with strong Political links and clearly transparent agenda to play down the need for fibre broadband. Unfortunately for him the "real facts" are getting in the way of his plans. No doubt we will soon here stories based upon the principle of "Don't confuse me with the facts - my mind is made up".

His speech is pure nonsense!

By Chevalier on 10 Nov 2011

Wake up and smell the coffee!

I am in the 70+ age group (although I'm reluctant to admit it!) and have been craving for decent download AND upload speeds ever since I started to use broadband in 2003. I can't wait to take advantage of the new FTTC service which is scheduled to be available in this area in early 2012. At present, Skype is unreliable, streamed video is intermittent (and very frustrating) and it takes hours to upload videos to YouTube and Vimeo et al. Ed Richards' comments on the "low demand" for high speed broadband are almost unbelievable - except perhaps for the "willingness to pay" issue in these difficult economic times...

By Bobwel66 on 10 Nov 2011

Is it just me?

... or does this line in his speech clarify things a little?

"As an approach to promoting superfast broadband take up, ‘having more teenage children’ seems a little long term, and a little distant from reality"

Surely what he's saying here is that this appears to be a major correlation factor in their findings? He's not, therefore, saying that ONLY families with teenagers want high speeds, just that they appear to be the largest grouping, so far.

By mikejdcastle on 10 Nov 2011

Pray do tell......

I was just wondering at what age is Ed Richards planning to give up the benefits of technology. When will he suddenly feel the need for warm cardigans, an ample supply of Wurthers Mints and some self warming cosi toes slippers?

By Hobbit25 on 10 Nov 2011

Utter Nonsense

Who does this guy think he is we in remote areas have to put up with a pretty poor service and to read this guff makes you wonder if these people know what the services are like outside the big cities.

By ericmcnulty on 10 Nov 2011

Footnote

At the end of his speech

We will remain open to new ideas and fresh thinking at all times. If the facts change, then we will change our minds but for now, this is our approach.

Can't take up SFB because we are not in a cabled area nor have BT plans to lay fibre in our area. A bit of a catch 22 situation we will add SFB when there is a demand but there is no proof there is a demand because people haven't taken it up...eh?!!

By Hobbit25 on 10 Nov 2011

great and the good

look at Ed Richards' declared list of interests (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/how-ofcom-is-run/of
com-board-2/members/ed-richards/)- you can see that he got the job as one of "Tony's Cronies"!

By stewie on 10 Nov 2011

An old teen

I am 60 and have (and need) fast broadband. Older people play games and download as well.

By aderussell on 10 Nov 2011

Happy Bunny

Well i've got BT FTTC, 37Mb+ download, 7.5Mb+ upload (as I run my own web & mail servers the upload is the important bit - BT Business Infinity, just so you don't think i'm a cheapskate;-))Also got two teenagers who couldn't care less about network speed as long as their Android phones work... The PS3 worked fine on ADSL2+, no better or worse on Infinity, the only comment i've had is that game updates are faster

By ilambert64 on 10 Nov 2011

Forgot to say

Could have gone the Virgin route over 2 years ago but the shocking contention ratio and the poor upload speed ruled that out for me

By ilambert64 on 10 Nov 2011

To quote David Cameron ...

PRAT!

By nigelmercier on 11 Nov 2011

billwhite

Is this gut living in the real world and if so who pays him to make statements of the sort we have just read. At 76 and with a wife a bit younger we find ourselves living with access to the internet hardly faster than dialup. There are no teanagers in our house most of the time and to get any service I have had to upgrade my bt connection to Business. From 3.30 - 7.00pm when the kids go home we get no service or it is interrupted so often that it is pointless trying to do anything at all. No chance of Infinity but have registered. When will people in authority try to talk to real people who would love to live in the 21st century with some of the technological advantages that there are but which regretably are not available to a great many. Why not appoint someone to his job who is older and unbiased and who really wants to sort out broadband in this country rather that making stupid unconsidered pronouncements.

By wfwhite on 11 Nov 2011

Man with Head in a Bucket of Sand

If I was to use BT in my home I would be stuck with about 3 mbit/sec. I can get faster by using a 3G HSPA+ dongle at 7.6. But why would I suffer this when I have 32.6 mbit/sec via fibre / co-ax Virginmedia.
And of course BT have rolled out their fibre in this area, as part of their plan to entice customers off a fibre system to their own. Could have spent this on upgrading a non-fibre area. Or taking fibre to the villages that suffer from under 1 mbit/sec.

By roberttrebor on 11 Nov 2011

ps

No Teenagers, just me & the wife, 55 / 59.

By roberttrebor on 11 Nov 2011

Contention in the household..

It seems to me that he is saying is that contention issues (with teenage) children) within the household are the most common cause of customers wishing to upgrade their broadband speed. Ignore the deliberately spun headline and read his words.

He was an idiot to linger on this, since he left himself wide open to the journalists, but he didn't actually say 'only families with teenagers want fast broadband' that was journalistic licence.. again.

By pinero50 on 12 Nov 2011

VERY angry of Tring!!!

Hi,

I live in a part of the world where this government are pushing through HS2 - a 33 billion pound rail link that is predicated on the need to move people rather than data around the country, how absurd!!!

If any of this money was diverted to enabling fibre to the door of both business and domestic users we could see a digital economy boom in the UK.

Uploading data in this country is still a tortuous process. Moving our customers to the cloud for more efficent, cost effective infrastructure is limited by the lack and cost of a proper high speed, say 1gb service. It takes days to migrate 50 to 60 gb of data. This is clearly not good enough, and the thought that ofcom has no conception of the explosion in data transfer over the coming few years is very worrying.

It is time to start a movement to get this country the data speeds it deserves so that it can stay at the head of the digital revolution, so that more than a few people around silicon roundabout can have access to the sorts of speeds that have been available in other countries for over 15 years.

Anyone interested?

By AkemanSolutions on 13 Nov 2011

incredulous

This is a prime example of an idiot paid vast sums of money, and who are completely out of touch with reality! No wonder this country is in such a state!

By incredulous on 14 Nov 2011

What ese do you expect?

To quote the Ofcom web site on dear Ed
......Previously Ed was Chief Operating Officer, responsible for Strategy, Market Research, Finance, HR and other functions.

Strategy responsibilities included Ofcom’s strategic thinking on the communications sector and covering economic issues and consumer policy.

Ed was previously Senior Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) for Media, telecoms, the internet and e‑govt and Controller of Corporate Strategy at the BBC.......
Need I say more?

By dwgp2 on 27 Nov 2011