BT to Expand 5G to Entire UK by 2028 Using Drones, Satellites, and Portable Cells, Will End 3G Service by 2023

[400]

I am not sure where it is better(public or private) because in the US people complain a lot about AT&T, Comcast, and health care prices, but either way I meant the infrastructure itself is government owned and then the telecoms can rent it from the government and sell it to the people, then you pick the better telecom based on service

But you rely on the government to role out a tech that customers want, and then governmental red tape and overspend, and seeing their resource as a piggy bank (as with GPO). Political influence will be huge and scope for political damage massive. Just look at the NHS, political football for generations.

OK, many customers say that they don't get what they want now, but a government controlled org I fully expect to see far less options.

BT can do all this yesterday, off the shelf kit and skills are there. A toss up between the 2, BT is better than I would expect any government run telco in the UK. That does not mean I do not think they are making mistakes.

 

[weckart]

BT will do whatever brings the biggest return to its shareholders. If that coincides with what its customers want, then great. Most likely, it won't and since BT is basically the national infrastructure privatised, it creates huge barriers for new entrants to the market since those are reliant on tapping into BT's existing hardware. There is a similar story in Kingston-upon-Hull where the local telco has an effective monopoly and is similarly slow to react to changes in the market. This is why a lot of people would rather that the government intervene in this just to end the stasis.

tl;dr: The govt. should have broken up BT years ago.

 

[bigchrisfgb]

BT and EE have been saying they will connect 99% of the country for about 15 years, and never do. Where I live, in the outskirts of Newcastle, there is multiple places where you can not get any EE signal at all, and we aren’t even talking about the more rural areas.

 

[thebeans]

https://www.satphone.co.uk/satellite-phone-handsets/ it isn't new tech.

Indeed. I’ve seen those many times. But those are satellite phones. We are talking about cell phones. You can’t just beam a cell signal down from a satellite and then have a conventional cell phone beam back up. Doesn’t work that way. Too far.

 

[thebeans]

Guest you’ve not heard of Iridium…

The PTT satellite phones? Yea, nothing new there. Satellite phones have been around for ages. But that is the key. They are satellite phones. This is talking about cell phones. How can a cell phone be a strong enough transmitter to reach that far?

 

[polyphenol]

Two points:

Three has by far the largest frequency allocation for 5G. Are BT trying to limit how much advertising capital Three can make out of this?

And, when it comes to satellites, could we see very small cells based on technology that is more or less a satellite phone and a femto-cell? I suggest that would be most appropriate for filling in gaps that are otherwise difficult to cover - especially if bandwidth usage is like to be relatively low.