Government to introduce Data Comms as New Build Requirement ?

["Nigel Giddings" <nigel.giddings@xxxxxxx>]

This is an extract from a newsletter I receive, original source 'The
observer'

Builders fight for wireless UK=20

Every new house will soon have high-speed internet access from most
rooms, if proposals to change Britain's Building Regulations go ahead.
The aim is for all new homes to be easily connected to the internet by
broadband.

Widening access to broadband is a key government objective. Under the UK
Online programme, backed by Tony Blair and John Prescott, the government
aims to have 'the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the
G7 by 2005'.

But the Government, the computer industry and developers are battling
over the best technology to use. New proposals for building regulations,
published last year, envisaged installing ducting in every new home that
would allow cables to be easily installed from the street. This would
mean the owner could install wires for a computer network without
drilling holes in the wall or ripping up floors.

Developers were horrified. They have been offering computer ducting as
an optional extra for years, but the cost has deterred buyers in all but
the highest end of the market, where the wiring is used not only for
computers but also to distribute audio and TV signals.

Adding the ducts to every new home would add =A370m a year to the
industry's costs, they claim.=20

At the end of last year Abrocour, a company set up specially to make
providing computer technology as simple and almost as cheap as white
goods such as the oven and dishwasher, and backed by several of the
country's largest house builders, unveiled an alternative that replaces
the expensive wires with radio technology. It is much cheaper to install
than cables and the signal instantly extends to every corner of the
property, even the garden.

The system, known as Wi-Fi, is the latest hot technology in computer
networking. In the home, the standard Wi-Fi unit consists of a
transmitter unit and a broadband modem connected to the phone line.
Wi-Fi equipped computers around the house can then connect to the
internet and with each other just as if they were wired in.

All the builder has to do is install a suitable box for the wireless
transmitter at a central point, such as under the stairs, so the radio
signal will penetrate to all parts of the house or flat. The phone line
runs to it and to an ordinary phone socket.


The developer would offer wireless computing to buyers on the same basis
as other domestic appliances, possibly offering a range of options.

However, getting Wi-Fi can be a nightmare for the technically
challenged, so Abrocour engineers set up the system as well as deliver
the hardware.

'The customer rings a number they find in the welcome pack and we put in
the wireless router and the PC and set up the system,' Sethi explains.

The company is also working with other major developers, including
Taylor Woodrow, Barratt and Gleeson, and major IT companies including
BT, Microsoft, Intel and HP.

The Observer=20



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