If Digital Region Broke The Mould - Would It Still Be Here Now?

[SpencerUk]

This article here is a very interesting read.

If Digital Region had the foresight to do this and literally be at the bleeding edge of the game, do you think it would have performed better?.

This is assuming of course a certain @alexatkin isn't taking half the networks bandwidth

[Hippojay]

No - it would have cost them even more. If FTTdp was available at the time, then it would have caused even more frustration as people find that there pole isn't enabled!

[alexatkin]

The thing is, some other countries it makes more sense to have things like FTTdp because their infrastructure is different.

A friend of mine regularly travels to Italy and he says their broadband is terrible. They still have patchy coverage of ADSL2+ and its particularly problematic as they seem to have relatively few exchanges and unlike over here their locations are kept secret. I don't think their distribution cabinets are half as well managed as ours (frightening to think) either, so just pushing fibre closer to the smaller distribution points might be more practical.

[SpencerUk]

What I was saying was if Digital Region operated at the cunning edge, it would have put South Yorkshire more on the map which may have...stress only may, have made advertising easier.

[Chalky]

My question is, wasn't Digital Region at the cutting edge when it was first envisioned? I'm sure I've read somewhere, like any other government project, the idea of Digital Region was being thought out several years before it actually happened?

[SpencerUk]

When the plans were put out in 2006 yeah but they never evolved or revised it because they were so slow to roll it out..the Network didn't go live until around 2010!.

[Hippojay]

I'm not sure what evolution should have been done? DRL is governed by ofcom and surely that's would have prevented anything too exotic, as it would have needed to be approved.

Unlike software, when specific hardware needs to be deployed, then keeping up with the latest and greatest is difficult.

[alexatkin]

Other than the line-card issue (which I think was a fault with the model), what exactly COULD they have done differently? Its not like their technology was vastly outdated or anything.

The only reason they failed was a lack of advertising and not absorbing the installation cost to get people connected.

A friend of mine wanted it from the day I got mine but he couldn't rationalise the installation fee. He waited and upgraded his Sky connection to fibre for no fee.

[ThEGr33k]

TBH the thing that would have likely helped would be advertising... I mean, any. Other than posters on the boxes I have seen none. I only found out about it because I wanted to know what the hell the new boxes were all about as I knew BT weren't pulling their fist from up their arse with Fibre here.

Shocking state of affairs!

And so they could have gone all Google and done Gigbit and would still have face planted the floor.

Sorry I am a little bitter ha ha. Going back to 5.5meg (when i get the MAC sorted) is going to be a full body slap!

[Zytron]

Up till a few months ago I didn't even see posters on the boxes, so _any_ advertising would have been good. I only knew about DR because I used to work in ISP industry ...