Jeremy Corbyn has promised that if Labour wins the election, every home will receive a free fibre broadband connection. If nothing else, this shows what a central part of our lives the Internet has become. So much can be done with it and – increasingly – so much cannot be done without it.
If I needed to be reminded of this fact, a potent reminder hit me this morning in the form of a Zen outage. My connection is still down as I write this on my iPhone.
We have been “with” Zen for a number of years and have generally been happy with the quality of the service. We are still on copper, not fibre, but that suffices for our modest needs.
A complete outage is rare though not unheard of. When one happens, my iPhone serves, euphemistically speaking, as a lifeboat. With it I can check Zen’s alert page to find out whether the problem is at their end or mine and, if necessary, call Zen support. In the meantime, I can use my phone to surf the Web.
Nonetheless, because I spend so much time online and tend therefore to take an Internet connection for granted, an outage induces feelings of helplessness and despondency. I have to make an effort to be patient, not to keep turning the router off and on again and not to keep trying to make my computer connect.
It’s all very curious because when I first started using computers, the Internet had not yet been heard of. Your computer was a world in itself with no connections to anything else. Thinking about that now gives me slightly claustrophobic feelings!
The first opening into a connected world came with bulletin boards. A BBS was an ordinary desktop computer connected by a modem to the telephone system. With your computer and a modem of your own, you could dial up a BBS and interact with it. Most BBSs were single user, that is, they accepted only one caller at a time. Communication between callers was by means of messages left in the various “rooms” or forums on the BBS.
Despite the limitations, the BBS became very popular and some supported very lively communities. Eventually, a form of networking was developed which enabled people connected to one BBS to send messages via the network to other BBSs. Given the enthusiasm of “sysops” (short for system operators) and their callers, the BBS might have developed still further but it was not to be: the advent of the Internet killed the BBS.
For a few years I ran a BBS of my own and attracted a small but faithful following. From time to time, we would meet in person in a nearby pub and spend a companionable evening together.
Those days are gone, perhaps regretted in some ways and remembered fondly, but will never return. Instead, we have the Internet with its seemingly unlimited resources and ability to connect people all over the world.
Well, we do when our Internet connection is working, as mine is not just now.
So I will bestir myself and do what I should already have done, namely the morning chores, and perhaps by the time I have finished, the connection will have been restored and my “window on the world” will be open once more.
Afterthought
Would we be better off with a fibre connection? I’m not sure that we would. More importantly, however, I cannot avoid the notion that fibre is already old hat. Surely, the future is with universal wireless connectivity – isn’t that what the arrival of 5G is telling us?
You can already acquire a wireless router connecting via your mobile phone network that requires no wires (or fibre) and can be carried with you from place to place. I think that is where the future lies. Maybe someone should mention this to Jeremy.
SilverTiger at home and abroad 
When I first heard of Jezza’s free (nationalised) broadband for all, I thought it was a wonderful idea – an idea that would help revolutionise the lives of those with low incomes and those living in remote areas. But…
There’s always a but. I don’t think that I would like to trust the State with all of my (completely innocent) web data, and indeed my connectivity – especially not a Socialist one. We are already well on the road to Orwell’s world of 1984. indeed, in some ways we have even surpassed it. In Orwell’s masterpiece, the screen was an imposition, whereas we have joyfully accepted it. Amazon can update the books on your Kindle, if you give it permission, so history could very well be rewritten without our knowing it. Russia and China control their inter- (or should that be intra-?) net very tightly.
I would rather keep on paying to have private internet provision, but if Jeremy Corbyn’s plan did come to fruition, private providers would wither away. Perhaps those on a low income should receive a free service provided by private companies bidding for the business at auction.
As they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
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Your interesting comment contains two main points, I think: 1. The utility of the plan and 2. The question of surveillance.
On the first point, just as smart phones have become a must-have tool for living, so an Internet connection is (or very soon will be) a necessity. Many businesses now have online billing and payment only and government services are increasingly available online by default. A time will soon come when anyone without an online connection will be at a serious disadvantage and will have to use Internet cafes or public library computers. “Internet for all” (whether via fibre or some other channel) will become a necessity if the whole population is to have equal access. So the plan has my vote on that score.
*How* it is best achieved is a different question. I rather fear that, given the amount of time implementation will take, a system using fibre will be virtually obsolete by the time it is completed.
With regard to surveillance, well, we live in a surveillance society, whether we like it or not. Whether our broadband is supplied by government or by commercial companies, whatever surveillance measures the government enacts will be included as, indeed, it is already. (UK ISPs are required to store a backlog of our online activities in case the police or other agencies decide they want to look at them.)
We can only guess what future surveillance measures might be enacted. Personally, I don’t think the colour of the government makes any difference to this. Is surveillance any the less in countries led by right-wing governments? I see no evidence of this.
We live in a paranoid era when governments and security agencies have used crime and terrorism to frighten the public into accepting or even demanding closer surveillance. I don’t see this changing for a very long time, if ever.
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