Queen’s Speech: what’s in store for 2016-17

And, although this is all well and good, not at the expense of the Human Rights Act, which they intend to scrap.

Yes Sue , I think that should be more publicized ,as although cameron is putting it about that it is “constricting ” to BB it is in reality stopping them from imposing near slave conditions for employees. I thought we had got rid of “sweat shops ” but it will come back in a “Bill of Rights ” that are heavily in favour of the “Rights ” of BB , its the worst thing I can think of , its like the devil being able to make the rules of society under the cloak of —“its good for business ” certainly will be but hell for employees not 2016 but Georgian values of 1816 . What next Third world child labour ?

If you are charged without your permmision write or phone talktalk and accuse them of theft
threaten them with going to the news papers
tell them you will see them in court
using this method i had £136 refunded

I still question why some think there should be a universal entitlement to superfast broadband, whatever the cost. People make choices as to where they live knowing the upside and downside. Many may not have mains drainage. Many may not have mains gas and have to use expensive electricity for heating. Many may not live near a bus service. Many may be a long way from a hospital. Why is broadband so much more important to have than these more basic essentials?

Some things are “nice to have”. Others are much more of a necessity.

Well said malcolm .

B. Barnes do you honestly see many ISP,s getting together ?? never happen this side of the year 3000 . The only thing you get is —takeover of one company by another , do you think shareholders are going to go for this , ??? , show me the humanitarianism between companies , the comradeship of “lets pool resources ” , this is 2016 just look to America to see cut throat competition between companies and you want altruism from them ? Have you ever watched the stock exchange or how it operates -cold -hard – business facts no sympathy for the weak . Yes its a nice dream but reality ??

Well Joe 100Mbps is fast in many peoples eyes when they only have 5 or 10 Mbps but I get your point . Way back in time when high frequencies first started to be used in radio transmission “ultra high frequency ” was actually VHF frequency and I have the original 30,s radio/electronic bound volumes to prove it , like Wireless World etc . Then because of much talk about it the government introduced definitions of radio speed transmissions that took account of more modern electrical revelations , these were constantly updated into the 50,s/60s and used as electrical standard expressions . But now we are dealing not with government involvement ,nor even professional intellectual input but with commercial companies who,s rule book says -advertise and use words that are nearly breaking the rules of technical reality , you see Joe ,its not governments that rule us now but BB and “anything ” goes ( well nearly anything ) remember the saying and the most truthful comment of this age — it PAYS to advertise .

Duncan – If your copies of WW go back to the 1920s you will see adverts for ‘distortion-free’ horn loudspeakers, which of course is impossible. Misrepresentation in marketing has a long pedigree.

Ah! but you have to qualify that wavechange . I have a large amount of professional THD testing equipment like HP industrial stuff and have been building and testing audio power amps/pe-amps etc for many decades . Distortion values like 0.001 % exist nowadays and lower for high quality audio chips (small signal ) but in those days audio was only in its infancy stage and if a wireless loudspeaker could reproduce audio frequencies up to 5 Khz it was really something most cheaper ones were lower . As well as that wirelesses for the public had large amounts of hum/distortion so you had a vicious “top cut ” control right across the primary of the output transformer and the output valve anode , this induced cries of -“what a lovely mellow sound ” well it would be on a frequency limit of a couple of Khz or less . So “distortion free ” wasnt a “lie ” in their eyes in those days because their expectations on high quality audio reproduction was very low . That cannot be compared to the blatant lies coming from makers of cheap audio equipment nowadays , those people know full well audio specifications of high quality reproduction . No the pioneers of audio had to start somewhere and that was the limit of applied technology in those days. This applies to all aspects of scientific/medical/etc discovery since the beginning of time.

I can remember when dial-up was “fast”.

We were probably among the first to take up the internet at home on dial-up. Pages were fairly simple and as there were very few others using the service it was more than adequate. It did get gradually slower and slower though to the point it was painful.

We were probably among the first to take up broadband, and that was also “fast” at first. It did get gradually slower but still not that slow. As others have moved to “super fast”, it seems to have improved and we have no problem with a download speed of 7.8 Mbps.

You are making me nostalgic, Alfa. While clearing out the loft recently I found my old 14.4 kbps modem that I had used for dial-up in the early 90s. I can still recall the distinctive sounds it made when making a connection and not being able to use the phone while online until I had a second line installed. In these days it was strongly recommended to state the size of images and pdfs on websites so that users could decide whether they should download files.

I’m more than happy with speeds of below 10 Mbps but most of my neighbours have switched to fibre broadband. Multi-users, TV, gaming and downloading films and music seem to be the drivers for faster broadband.

I was at a meeting yesterday and learned of a local initiative supported by the council and BT to promote superfast broadband. Apparently ‘superfast’ refers to a minimum speed of 24 Mbps. I did not see a single reference to ‘up to’, so we might yet see honesty in the industry.

I very much support the efforts in the case of banks and telecom suppliers but with energy supply there will still be many people who do not switch for various reasons. Perhaps the solution is for the companies to compete for market share and for everyone to be able to buy gas and electricity at the same price. Let’s start to care about people other than ourselves.

The CMA report on energy switching concluded that a large number of those who do not change their tariffs know how to, know what the savings would be, but choose not to. I would not want to impose a course of action on people who are quite capable of making their own free choice. No more than making all supermarkets charge the same for food.

We should care about those unable to help themselves, and put process in place for them. For those perfectly capable of making their own judgments, and who exercise their right to do so, we have no right to interfere.

Maybe it means ‘up to 10 Mbps’ in the terminology of most ISPs, which means that no further expenditure is needed.

To be serious, I wonder if the Universal Service Obligation has been properly costed.

I am a little bit worried that there seems to be no consideration of band-width hogs and whether we will be talking of the technical ability to receive 10mbs and then a caveat for other factors.

Still early days to worry.

The other more certain concern is that the bigger you build the pipe and speed the more content providers are going to fill it with videos and films in greater and greater resolution. You will appreciate that I do not wish to pay for an enormous infrastructure so people can watch films. I think that firms like Netflix and the BBC should pay for excess usage fees and reduce the amount subscribers in general pay.

That “dry ” sense of humour in the first paragraph deserves an- I agree .

Just wait till the complaints pour in —I cant get 4K-UHD films (25Mbps-MINIMUM ) .The public will never be satisfied , I blame it on advertising -“why be content with “ordinary ” HD when you can have UHD to go with your newly purchased pricey 4K TV ” .IT never ends diesel , when all you need for normal browsing is a few Mbps . I have never downloaded a film , the Internet isnt a Playstation for me , its an information retrieval and communcations network .