HDTV/3D TV News
The government could be turning to the likes of Freesat to step up and help provide the minimum broadband for all service of 2 Mbps, as a way of delivering on its promises made in the provisional Digital Britain report.
This comes from the culture minister, Andy Burnham, who has pin pointed the core set top box as a means to achieve broadband coverage.
The core set top box is equipment used for the switchover programme which will be given out to some people under the Digital Switchover Help Scheme.
Around ten per cent of the population have not made any provision to switch to digital, and it is therefore being assumed that these people have no broadband either.
With consumers turning to Freesat and its terrestrial rival Freeview for digital TV services, a broadband connection could be put into these set top boxes too and thus help the government achieve its broadband goal.
The inter via satelite suffers from a delay due to the distance the signal has to travel so VOIP such as Skype would be useless, and you usually only receive the internet from the satilite. What you send goes down a phone line, so as you need the connection via the phone anyway, what is the point. Just do it by phone and avoid the delay the satelite would introduce.
I don’t think the culture minister, Andy Burnham, understands the technical requirement for an internet connection.