Comment

Comment on The BBC’s proposal to switch off Freeview is a threat to its universal service | Letter

20 years in the future where rural broadband infrastructure has improved to the point where everyone can get a guaranteed 10Mbps+ it might make sense but until then there will be too many people left with nothing if their broadcast TV disappears.

source

Sort:hotnew top

Codpiece@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
They’ll still have FM radios and fresh printed copies of yesterdays news.

source
tankplanker@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Most of the research pushing against the switch off is driven by Arqiva, who runs the transmitters, lol.

I cannot see how in 8 years the vast majority doesn’t have some sort of suitable broadband just to exist let alone replace an old freeview set that will likely need replacing in that time frame anyway.

We are already down to 3% of households now, and less than 50k households that do not get 10mbs+. In eight years we will have fixed almost all of that, and aged out a lot of the older demographic that has worse adoption.

Cost aspect I get and agree with, we should be ensuring people on pension credit and other low income benefits get free broadband anyway, its getting increasingly difficult to interact with Government and Local Services without it.

source
- Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I can watch 4 HD TV streams currently, I doubt my internet can manage that.
  
  source
  - tankplanker@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yes, thats clearly a common setup requirement for the majority of people on freeview who don’t have more than 10 Mbps broadband.
    
    There are always edge cases, they are rarely helpful in understanding problems like this as the cost to support them far out weighs the number of people it helps. I would suspect if you means tested this group most would fall outside of qualifying for assistance anyway.
    
    I used to run 3 4k streams plus social media use for 4 adults on what was often 65mbps. You only need a reliable about 5 Mbps for a HD stream for iPlayer, the 10 Mbps more than covers this for the majority of people in this situtation.
    
    source
- Denjin@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yeah, that’s still 50k who can’t reliably stream and those tend to be already the most isolated and often vulnerable people already, I see a lot of them trying to maintain their existing connections and 8 years will make a good bit of difference but there will be people who sadly slip through the cracks but I guess that’s always the way with progress.
  
  source
  - tankplanker@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If you look at the rate its dropping it will be close to zero in eight years.
    
    The people left could almost certainly get by with a 5G (or likely 6G by that point) setup properly, and the extreme edge cases left with sat based internet like Starlink.
    
    source