Rural Broadband

where are candidates Q pages
Not obvious set up here
I wish to ask all candidates to respond to idea that BBand users pay for connection speed, averaged over a month.
At presnt I have dial up on a rural line at 20K/sec.
If I pay full price BBand max spedd will be 0.2MB.
this is making me subsidise other users, not fair
regards samvado

Hi Samvado,
The administrator, Michael, has put up a post "Questions for candidates" and you can post on there to ask questions for the candidates. Alternatively, if you type "A question for all candidates - rural broadband services" then it will be listed in this way and the candidates should respond.
Kind regards,
Jane

samvado wrote:where are candidates Q pages
Not obvious set up here
I wish to ask all candidates to respond to idea that BBand users pay for connection speed, averaged over a month.
At presnt I have dial up on a rural line at 20K/sec.
If I pay full price BBand max spedd will be 0.2MB.
this is making me subsidise other users, not fair
regards samvado

I sympathise with you and with the many people in rural communities who share your broadband situation. I used to live in a rural community in N. Scotland, so I've experienced this myself. Your proposal that broadband users pay according to their connection speed would indeed be much fairer. Unfortunately, in the UK at least, this is not currently possible because the broadband carriers, (such as BT), do not charge providers like the Phone Co-op in this way. If you couple this with the fact that our profit margins on broadband are quite low, you can see that we do not have any room to manoeuvre.

So what to do? Well, we're in a regulated market and I therefore suggest that you write to Ofcom - http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/internet/ - to complain about the unfairness of this situation. I may be wrong, but I don't think it would be feasible to price broadband according to monthly average speed, so I suggest you ask that UK broadband is priced in steps which reflect the maximum speed available - for example, up to 512Kbps, 2Mbps, 4Mbps, 8Mbps - as in some other European countries.

Finally, I just want to mention that although the Phone Co-op is not a 'campaigning organisation', the board have actively sought to support rural communities in their struggle to gain access to broadband. Most notably by providing financial support to Community Broadband Network - http://www.broadband-uk.coop/

I suppose it might be possible to consider a system of rebates for customers for whom the service is systematically inferior, but I am not sure where you stop this once you have started. Not so long ago I was experiencing "outages" on average once a month, which meant a complete loss of service for most of a day. I did resent paying for a service I was not receiving, but there is an element of rough justice in any tariff.

In principal the idea of charging for average broadband speed makes sense, but as this is determined by the lines utilised and all lines are under the control of BT I would imagine that the "problem" is with BT and their charges to broadband providers like the Phone Co-op.
As with many things in our society there is an element of unfairness, but I am sure many people will put forward arguments justifying the way that broadband is charged. Maybe it is the only practical way of charging. Without further information I do not know.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it always comes back to the overall fairness of the system we live in. Even in the " perfect co-operative society " there will be times where individuals will not get what they want as it will clash with what is best for the community or broader society within which they work and/or live. At least in the phone co-op these views can be freely aired and as the board is there to represent the members decisions will not be solely based on profit maximisation, but on a more balanced mix of financial, social and ethical arguments.

Paul Grassick