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UK Government to Shut Down GSM Networks

Posted by Zonk on Sat Apr 01, 2006 06:50 AM
from the worrisome-most-worrisome dept.
Privacy Politics
An anonymous reader writes "Mobile Gazette is reporting that the British government wants to shut down the UK's GSM networks next year and re-use the frequencies for gambling terminals and a new citizen surveillance program extending the use of the new compulsory ID cards. Although we should perhaps welcome the move away from old-style 2G mobile phone networks, there are perhaps a few worrying things about the new "Big Brother" citizen monitoring that the government is proposing to put in."
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  • Or someone needs to go V for Vendetta on those guys.

  • April Fools (Score:2, Insightful)

    by puggsincyberspace (588856)
    This has to be another april fools joke.....

  • I know this is Truthday, and Big Brother tells me the Prollies will love this doubleplusalot.

  • Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taskforce (866056) on Saturday April 01 2006, @06:58AM (#15041162) Homepage
    The worrying thing is, I didn't bat an eyelid, and totally expected this from my government, until I got to the comments reminding me that it was April Fools Day... (Despite a full knowledege that it was April Fools Day, when I saw the words UK and Government in the same sentance I entered paranoia mode)

    • Re:Ouch (Score:1)

      by MK_CSGuy (953563)
      I didn't bat an eyelid, and totally expected this from my government, until I got to the comments reminding me that it was April Fools Day

      For me the eyes-burning pink-colored css-styled atrocity that is today's main page was kind of a giveaway.

      • Re:Ouch (Score:2, Funny)

        by carou (88501)
        For me the eyes-burning pink-colored css-styled atrocity that is today's main page was kind of a giveaway.

        After games.slashdot.org, nothing would surprise me.
    • Shutting down the GSM networks would pretty much kill every mobile phone out there - so that shoulda been a dead giveaway to.

      Well, that and the fact that the ID cards aren't cumpulsory - yet ;)

      [note to self, spellhink mistaxe]
      • well maybe 15% are 3G. That's not far off the 25% or so of TVs which were digital prior to the announcement that the analogue signal would be switched off - which has now reached 70% or more...
        • True, but the key difference is that TV's dont tend to get imported from overseas on a daily basis - we constantly have people coming in from overseas expecting to be able to use their cells, on the other hand. London is one of the major financial capitals
    • Dude, how could you forget that it's April Fools? Everything is pink!

      And besides, the only thing that made this story unbelievable was the gambling terminals thing. The rest is totally plausible and non-ridiculous.
    • You do realize that V for Vendetta was a movie, right?

      ...Or was it?

  • Why do they bother? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by minuszero (922125)
    They'll never beat the ol' Spaghetti Tree Hoax of '57...

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/a pril/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    Apparently the supermarkets sold out for fear of a shortage.
  • subject.
  • a "stupid" moderation option ? I would love to just for once, mod people stupid when they actually reply seriously on any story on slashdot today. Please Taco ? (Jupp, this reply could also be seen as a "serious" reply, but bear with me)
    • hell, I think that should be an option year round. You know 80% of the posts around here would get it.

  • Wouldn't surprise me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dyftm (880762) on Saturday April 01 2006, @07:46AM (#15041270)
    It wouldn't surprise me if I saw this story in a couple of years time, but not on april fool's day. We really are the lobsters slowly being boiled.
    • >lobsters slowly being boiled.

      you're thinking of frogs, dude. lobsters don't get slowly boiled, they get thrown right in the pan of boiling water.

      frogs, however, apparently don't notice they're being boiled if you turn the heat up on them very slowly. h

  • Oh come on (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by BlueLightning (442320)
    If you're going to make up an April Fools hoax at least make it remotely plausible. Only a total muppet could believe this story.

    • Re:Oh come on (Score:3, Insightful)

      by VJ42 (860241)
      The only reason not to believe it is because our government would never be able to roll it out so quickly, otherwise given the authoratarian and stupid nature of "New" Labour it hits quite close to the mark. Infact some official probably read that and thou

    • Re:Oh come on (Score:2, Insightful)

      by isorox (205688)
      If you're going to make up an April Fools hoax at least make it remotely plausible. Only a total muppet could believe this story.

      You obviously don't live in the UK. It's a bit of a stretch, but not that much less believable than doing away with parliament
    • If you're going to make up an April Fools hoax at least make it remotely plausible.

      Well, here in the USA, the government is taking away spectrum from a well established industry:

      http://www.atsc.org/faq/faq_general.html [atsc.org]

      Oh, and they are requring everyone i

      • i dont mind screwing with poular entertainment for the sake of emergancy communication.

        at least it's not goin the other way shafting first responders to line some fatcat's pockets
  • The title was believable. Well... I belived it :(
  • come on... British are miles behind... In America the Big Brother system work 25/8 and there aro no GSM phones... Only GTA (General Theft Audible)
  • This is just like that famous book, Fahrenheit 1987 by Joel Chandler Harris [wikipedia.org].

    I love it when governments get ideas from my favorite Sci Fi! But I think a lot of other people on slashdot really like that book, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't wait

  • Email Day (Score:2, Insightful)

    by graystar (223824)
    April fool's day is a good day to bury bad news.

  • no joke (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fermion (181285) on Saturday April 01 2006, @09:25AM (#15041493) Journal
    Especially the gambling thing. We seem to be increasingly turning to sin taxes, not as a means to make it more expinsive to 'sin', but as a means to facilitate the behavior that many find unethical. The fact that many high and mighty alleged christian condone this behavior remind me of a person who got angry at the moneychangers in the temple.

    One example of this is the Texas State lottery, which exist under the guise of increasing funding to education. Of course funding for education, as a percentage of the Texas budget, has fallen considerable over the past 15 years even as lottery revenue has grown. So what is the new proposal? Well a official named Strayhorn want gambling machines. Now this is the lady that attempted to start the process of a state religion for Texas by attempting to rescind the tax exempt status of a church, the denomination of which has existed from the birth of the United States and in many ways reflects the values of our founding fathers, as many of these men had input in it's creation. Combine this with the fact that the demonination has no profit motive, unlike the megachurches that infest Texas, and one wonders if Strayhorn is primarily concerned with well being of the average Texan or the a personal campaign of religious zelotry in which those that disagree with her liberal view of gambling are ignored.

    To be clear I am not concerned if people gamble or not. I do not see how we can justify lottery machines in an time when we no longer have cig machines. How can one say that we can enforce the 18+ limit on tickets any more that cigs? I am not sure that having gambling machines in every corner is a net benifit. Like illegal drugs it take money to feed the habit. But, at the end of the day, in a capatilist conservative country like ours, built on a the standards of minimal government and private enterprise, I suppose the government is in the best position to effecintly run a gambling bussiness.

  • OMG: Another (Score:2, Funny)

    by phorest (877315) *

    Blair lied, cellphones died!

  • I love the 'lame' tag! Sums the whole story up really.

    • Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Trogre (513942)
      Funny, I don't remember anything too obvious or lame on 4th of January this year.

      • Me neither, grandparent poster? What are you on about?

      • Re:Is it me? (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Ha Ha! This is an American based website. You may not have known that in America, people commonly say April 1st, or shorten that to 4/1. This is also the convention used in China, India, and throughout most of the world.

        • Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Offtopic)

          by shreevatsa (845645)
          Of course not! India has always been using the dd/mm/yyyy format, and 4/1 means 4th of January.

          It is true that in China, 4/1 means 1th of April, but that's because they use the yyyy-mm-dd format, which is a logical order (most significant–least si

        • Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Informative)

          by johnw (3725)

          This is also the convention used in China, India, and throughout most of the world.

          Nonsense. Middle-endian dates are pretty much unique to the USA (which despite what some of the inhabitants seem to think is not "most of the world").

          Apart from the USA, th
    • yep. I think I'll go back to bed until tomorrow.

    • So it isn't true?

      Damn, 8th time that happened to me today

    • Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Funny)

      by TangoCharlie (113383)
      It's you... because as far as I know, it's not the 4th of January in the UK.
    • >its gone 12 noon and as such april fools day jokes are *redundant* (owing to the custom of stopping at noon)

      I do not think this word means what you think it means.
      • from dictionary.com

        entries found for redundant: Chiefly British. Dismissed or laid off from work, as for being no longer needed.
    • Stopping at noon? That sounds like and April fools joke. Here in the states, April fools lasts all day. Not everyone can get their fool on by Noon.

      And to quote Alan Jackson, "It's five o'clock somewhere." So at a minimum, us GMT-5 folks could get anoth

      • Re: stopping at noon (Score:2, Informative)

        by SpaceJunkie (579366)

        The UK thing is that if you are unprepared enough not to have played your joke before 12 noon, then you are yourself the fool.

        Its all part of the tradition here in the UK, and why breakfast jokes are some of the most common, ie switching the salt and suga

      • Stopping at noon? That sounds like and April fools joke. Here in the states, April fools lasts all day. Not everyone can get their fool on by Noon.

        Actually April Fool's Day is now held on April 3rd, in line with new EU standards. Didn't you see that on th
    • firstly, we do not have an American flag as a representation of our government (that's only for a section of North America)

      I would not be so sure. At least until the country is governed by a government lead by Antonio Bliar.

    • I thought Emperor Blair announced these new measures to protect our freedoms from terrorists last week? I'm sure he wasn't lying because naturally he never lies, and I would report anyone who says he does to my nearest Blair Re-education Facility.
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