Broadband Policy Watch

UK broadband update (continued)

2012-01-05T23:28:00.001Z

The flurry of broadband announcements and activities I described in my last post of 2011 continued unabated in the run up to Christmas.

Firstly, the Countryside Alliance claimed that rural broadband had "stalled", following Freedom of Information requests revealing that (according to coverage by the BBC) of the four broadband pilot areas announced in 2010, "none had received any money from the Treasury, chosen a company to build their networks, or started work on them". Which to me seemed a rather unfair comment, given the complexity of the requirement, the processes involved in spending public money and that all four pilots are in fact currently at the procurement stage.

The BBC article reported that DCMS officials were both happy with the progress being made and confident that all was on track to deliver the Government's 2015 broadband targets. So this DCMS press release the following week was a bit of a surprise really, especially as reading between the lines it could be taken to mean that local authorities are to blame for the process allegedly "stalling", rather than the nature of the process necessitating the timetables currently being worked to:

"Today the Culture Secretary laid out a timetable for local authorities to complete their plans and ensure the UK has the best broadband network in Europe by 2015. Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt said: “Superfast broadband is fundamental to our future economic success. Businesses need it to grow, the public will need it to access new services. Some local authorities will find these to be challenging targets. But I will not allow the UK to fall behind in rolling-out superfast broadband. Superfast broadband is simply too important for creating the growth we need to allow the roll-out to be delayed. I am confident local authorities will be able to meet the timetable and provide their businesses and residents with the broadband access they need.” The Government published its strategy for rolling-out broadband in rural areas in December last year and announced how much funding had been allocated to each area in August this year."

Which again seemed rather unfair to me. In my view it would've been more appropriate to rebut the criticisms made by the Countryside Alliance by reiterating the view expressed by DCMS officials in the BBC article, rather than imply local authorities are the reason for the delay, when they have been working in accordance with the processes and timetables previously set out by DCMS and Broadband Delivery UK. I would imagine this is the part that caused the most upset, the February 2012 deadline was news to me and many others I suspect:

"Local authorities now have until the end of February next year to submit a draft Local Broadband Plan. A final plan needs to be agreed with the Government by the end of April. The local authority will need to have match-funding in place with this money coming from their budgets, European programmes or any other source. The Government cannot guarantee funding will remain available to areas that cannot complete this process by the end of April. The £530m has to be used within the Spending Review period so if projects are not ready in time, the funding may be used elsewhere to help provide the UK with the best broadband network in Europe by 2015. Once the plans have been approved, the Government will work with local authorities as they prepare for procurement and this work should be completed within a further three months. The Government will consider running a national procurement for areas not ready by the end of July."

So if the Government's considering delivery via a national procurement anyway, might some local authorities decide simply to leave it to them to sort out? Or is this the venerable public policy stalking horse putting in another appearance here perhaps? Further reports from the BBC about the rollout of fibre in Jersey and the launch of the B4RN project in Lancashire (more here) provided an interesting counterpoint to this DCMS release.

The following week saw another DCMS press release, this time announcing that fourteen cities across the UK would have the chance to become super-connected cities via a new £100m urban broadband fund. This added detail to the previous announcement made as part of Chancellor George Osborne's 2011 Autumn Statement, though this made reference to ten rather than fourteen recipients. Here's the detail from the DCMS release:

"As part of their proposal to the urban broadband fund, the cities will have to bid for a share of the £100 million and detail how they will use it. BT and Virgin will strengthen their networks in the winning cities to deliver 80-100Mbps broadband speeds. The city’s share of the £100 million can be used to provide coverage in areas where BT and Virgin will not go or services beyond what the market will provide. The bidding cities will have to show how they will use super-connected status to drive growth with a particular focus on SMEs and strategic employment zones. Proposals will also need to include plans for city-wide high-speed mobile connectivity and bidding cities will be expected to contribute to the cost by providing additional investment or using public assets. Proposals have to be submitted by February 13 2012 and the successful cities will be announced in the Budget in March. The Government will then work with the successful cities to produce fully developed plans and the money allocated to each city will be announced in July. The four capitals will become super-connected cities but will still need to produce a plan detailing their proposals."

Guidance for prospective bidders is available here. Finally also in December BDUK published a Prior Information Notice (PIN) for improved mobile coverage in rural areas:

"The aim of the Mobile Infrastructure Project is to improve the coverage and quality of mobile network services; for the five to 10 per cent of consumers in areas of the United Kingdom where existing mobile network coverage is poor or non-existent; and with the aim of extending coverage to 99 per cent of the United Kingdom population. BDUK anticipate that procurement will begin by spring 2012 and it is anticipated that businesses and consumers will benefit from improved coverage from early 2013 onwards.BDUK is currently developing the delivery model and procurement options for the use of the government funding, in order to develop or extend mobile infrastructure in areas where there is an insufficient commercial case. Given the early stage of the process several procurement options are under consideration, including, but not limited to: (a) the procurement of the appropriate support infrastructure to enable increased mobile network coverage and service quality, or (b) the procurement of increased mobile coverage and service quality as a service."

This follows on from the announcement by the Treasury in October of plans to invest up to £150 million to improve mobile coverage in the UK.

A busy end to a busy year. Let's see what 2012 has in store for us.

UK broadband update

2011-12-06T09:48:00.001Z

A flurry of broadband-related announcements and activities over the past couple of weeks. Last week's Autumn Statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (press release here) set out the Government's plans for further investment in broadband infrastructure, alongside new investments in roads and railways. These include the establishment of a new urban broadband fund:

"The Government will invest £100 million to create upto ten ‘super-connected cities’ across the UK, with 80-100 megabits per secondbroadband and city-wide high-speed mobile connectivity. There will be aparticular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and strategicemployment zones to support economic growth. Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff andLondon will all receive support from this fund, and a UK-wide competition willdecide up to six further cities that will also receive funding."

The Autumn Statement also referenced plans to improve mobile coverage across the UK:

"As announced on 3 October 2011, the Government will investup to £150 million to improve the coverage and quality of mobile networkservices for the five to ten per cent of consumers in areas of the UK whereexisting mobile network coverage is poor or non-existent, with the aim ofextending coverage to 99 per cent of the UK population. The Government willbegin procurement by spring 2012 with businesses and consumers benefiting fromimproved coverage from early 2013 onwards."

The Government will support rural broadband specifically by:

opening the £20 million Rural Community Broadband Fund to help ensure more rural homes and businesses receive superfast broadband. If it is successful the Government will consider extending it;
working closely with North Yorkshire County Council, one of the pilot areas for superfast broadband rollout, to ensure businesses and consumers get greatest benefit from the new service and to allow other local areas to learn from this experience; and
considering new approaches to make the roadside telecommunications network available to enable points of access for third party services such as broadband for rural businesses.

Commentary from the BBC here. Published to coincide with the Autumn Statement was an updated National Infrastructure Plan 2011, which explains more about the Government's plans on pages 65 – 72 of Chapter 3 ("The UK’s communications systems"), with some further detail in Chapter 2 ("Priority programmes and projects"). According to pages 26-27 of the plan, to enable the delivery of communications infrastructure, theGovernment:

remains firmly committed to ensuring the auction of 4Gspectrum commences by the end of 2012, in advance of the spectrum becomingavailable for new use in 2013. The Government will ensure the spectrum iscleared and interference problems are fully resolved ahead of use. Ofcom willlaunch, in the coming months, a further consultation on the auction process.Everything Everywhere and BT are already collaborating on a trial of nextgeneration 4G (LTE) mobile broadband services in Cornwall, and O2 have starteda 4G (LTE) trial in London;
will explore whether there is scope for enhancing mobilecoverage along transport corridors, in particular through better co-ordinationbetween the rail sector and mobile operators;
has announced superfast broadband funding allocations forover forty local areas across the UK, with Local Broadband Plans already agreedin nine of those local areas. Five local projects are currently in procurementas Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) pilots in Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Highlands& Islands, Herefordshire/Gloucestershire and Rutland. In addition, theWelsh Government is in procurement, involving BDUK funding;
is accelerating national roll-out of superfast broadband byderegulating overhead deployment and publishing advice notes on streamliningstreetworks and micro-trenching;
remains committed to releasing 500MHz of public sectorspectrum by 2020. Sharing of some MoD bands has already begun. Much of thespectrum under consideration may be suitable for mobile broadband;
has supported significant progress on opening up access toBT’s ducts and poles to support broadband rollout by competitors, and BT’s revised offers include prices that are substantially lower than the initialoffer in January (up to 60 per cent in some cases). BT recently announced thattheir £2.5 billion programme of fibre investment will now complete in 2014, oneyear earlier than originally planned, while Virgin Media has confirmed plansfor its premium 100 megabits per second product to be available across its entire network by mid-2012; and
wants to use the European Regional Development Fund to rollout superfast Broadband. It is issuing draft guidance next week, which takes aflexible approach to ensure local areas can benefit. Up to £100 million may beavailable and the Government will work with local partners to start making thishappen.

Further information on the £20m Rural Communities Broadband Fund (RCBF) mentioned in the Autumn Statement is available here, with details of how to apply here. The first application round began on 1st December 2011, prospective applicants must complete and submit an expression of interest and an accompanying data book by 31 January 2012. A second round is likely to open between 1 April and 31 May 2012 but this remains to be confirmed.

The fund is to support the provision of superfast services in the final hard to reach 10%, or those areas that won't be reached by existing BDUK funding allocations to local authorities. These existing allocations are intended to support the delivery of superfast broadband (defined as >24Mbps, i.e. above ADSL2+) to at least 90% of premises in each local authority area. The BDUK funding must also support the provision of at least 2Mbps services to 100% of premises. From the fund's FAQs:

"Solutions must be Next Generation Access superfast solutions (ie greater than 24Mbps). This is a requirement of the European funding that makes up part of the RCBF. Projects must demonstrate additionality i.e. – be clear about what extra things will happen as a result of receiving a grant because the main BDUK rollout programme allows for projects between 2Mbps and 24Mbps as part of the standard solution in the final 10% area."

Which rather suggests that to be successful in obtaining funds, community projects in this last 10% will most likely need to focus on FTTC/FTTH solutions, as satellite and wireless solutions (as far as I am aware) can't currently provide this bandwidth in the last mile? Such technologies should be considered instead as part of BDUK rather than RCBF projects, to deliver minimum 2Mbps connectivity everywhere?

Referenced in the Autumn Statement and National Infrastructure Plan was this new advice from DCMS on microtrenching ("an innovative deployment technique that is generally cheaper, less disruptive and quicker than conventional dig techniques") and street works, together with a new consultation on relaxing the restrictions on the deployment of overhead telecommunications lines (which closes on 21st February 2012). Both are intended to help streamline the installation of the new infrastructure necessary to deliver superfast broadband services, in recognition of the fact that reducing the cost of deployment is key to creating the right conditions for investment.

Also published last week by DCMS was a report outlining lessons learned from the four intial BDUK pilot projects (in Cumbria, Herefordshire, the Highlands & Islands and North Yorkshire, more here) announced in October 2010, as part of the Comprensive Spending Review. Lots to digest here, so I'll cover this more fully in a future post. In addition, this week saw the publication by DCMS of the non-confidential responses to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's open letter asking a broad range of questions about the communications sector published on 16th May 2011, as a precursor to the forthcoming communications review. A green paper is to be published early in 2012. As part of this process, DCMS commissioned this analysis on the contribution of the communications sector to economic growth and productivity in the UK, the results from which were published in September 2011. Again, this looks like something to cover in more detail in a future post.

Finally (!) last week, both Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards and Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, gave speeches at the 2011 European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) Regulatory Conference in Brussels. Neelie Kroes' speech described the importance of creating an open, competitive telecoms market, while Ed Richards set out Ofcom's views on the need to manage spectrum in a much more dynamic way than has been undertaken in the past:

"Ofcom’s approach to spectrum since our creation has the use of market mechanisms as its central premise. Many other regulators reached the same conclusion in parallel. The EU has made important moves towards liberalisation and promoted the use of market mechanisms."

He went on to criticse the reaction of the UK's mobile operators to Ofcom's proposals for auctioning 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum for the delivery of 4G mobile services:

"It has been very disappointing to witness the extent to which the incumbent mobile operators have chosen to entangle this process in litigation or threats of litigation. We recognise, of course, the need for companies to defend their commercial interests and to have recourse to the law in order to do so...But when litigation becomes essentially strategic rather than based on objective grounds, and when it has the effect of holding back innovation and hampering growth, it is legitimate to ask whether the overall legislative framework fully supports the public interest in this increasingly vital area...I think some major companies will have to reflect upon whether they have inadvertently jeopardised the benefits of objective, independent regulation in this area by virtue of their willingness to game the system. I am sure legislators would be all too willing to accept an argument which returns power in such matters to politicians, in light of the apparent inability of the current model to make timely decisions where the national interest is at stake."

He concluded that "straightforward long range planning will be replaced by adjustment and adaptation to the dynamism of technology and markets, combined with clear strategic coordination and pragmatism in delivery...these will be the defining characteristics of successful spectrum management." Further commentary from the Guardian, while this BBC article reports on some of the frustrations over the delays to the auction process and concerns over coverage.

A busy couple of weeks, all in all. Broadband policy announcements are a bit like buses it seems: loads come along all at once...

NextGen11 conference report day 2: securing the right investment

2011-11-28T14:23:00.001Z

Day 2 of NextGen11 (my report of day 1 here) began with a presentation from Rob Hamlin of Arqiva on the potential of wireless technologies to deliver broadband to rural and remote areas. Arqiva's LTE trials in Preseli (more here) demonstrate "the economic and technical viability of a neutral-host wireless network as a route to extending broadband Internet services to areas with no broadband coverage (‘notspots’) and those with speeds lower than 2Mbps throughout the UK, estimated at 10% of UK households." The Preseli trial was the first live LTE trial in the UK to use the 800MHz spectrum freed up by digital TV switchover and can deliver speeds of over 50Mbps. Arqiva's solution would offer wholesale access to all service providers and new entrants to maintain competition; the company previously offered this submission to the Welsh Assembly on the opportunities wireless technologies offer in Wales.

Next, Trent T.Holmes gave an overview of Thales' experiences of building and operating the Digital Region network in South Yorkshire. The ﬁrst phase of the network build is on track to be completedin December 2011. This will include 545km of new ﬁbre optic duct, 36 exchanges,and 1,359 street cabinets. When completed, the network will cover a population ofover 1.3 million citizens, 546,000 homes and 40,000 businesses. All four local authoritiesin South Yorkshire are already accessing Public Services Network (PSN) services across the network. News coverage earlier this year focused on the problems the project was experiencing in securing takeup, with some speculation that the project could be sold, but a more recently it was reported that a new ISP had signed up to deliver services via the network - hopefully a sign that things are looking up?

A further three parallel workshops followed, I attended the one on finance and procurement. James Saunby of GreySky Consulting offered advice on getting the best deal for superfast broadband deployments, for councils, communities, and suppliers. In particular, James highlighted the importance of gaining public sector commitment, as a major user of communications services. Delivering the requirements of the public sector over commercial superfast broadband infrastructure (rather than over separate dedicated networks) can provide additional guaranteed revenues throughout a region, making more areas commercially viable by helping to close the investment gap (an approach taken by Sunderland City Council, working with BT). While connecting the last 10% is challenging, James is confident it can be done, noting that securing revenues may not be as difficult as might first appear: if there is no other form of broadband available, take-up can be rapid, reaching 70% or even higher very quickly. "Self-dig" also has an important role to play in reducing costs, as being demonstrated in Cumbria, with scale being important too: combining community projects can make a collective exercise far more commercially viable than multiple disparate approaches, underlining the importance of planning and a strong business case.

Michael Armitage of Broadway Partners spoke next, offering some reflections on state aid issues and concerns, as well as investment opportunities. Michael suggested that the demand case is sufficiently strong to encourage investment, and that mechanisms are in place in the form of "long term, patient money" but these are not currently being utilised. He flagged the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) as an example of such a vehicle, in that it is is designed to help smaller higher-risk companies to raise finance by offering a range of tax reliefs to investors who purchase new shares in those companies. The right investors in this space are ones that are able and prepared to wait for a guaranteed return, as opposed to investors requiring a return in a much shorter period. Returns are sufficiently attractive if the interests of investors, beneficiaries, suppliers and intermediaries are properly aligned. A new perspective is required: one example of a "different take" on the current situation is to view business rates on fibre as an opportunity rather than a problem: they can provide a means for a local authority to service a municipal bond, issued to fund investment in NGA infrastructure, by providing a guaranteed income stream to service the debt? Lastly in this session, Clive Downing of NYnet covered alternative models for broadband delivery, including gap funding, design build operate (DBO), digital community hubsand public sector networks, covering the pros and cons of each.

We then reconvened for a session on policy and regulation, with presentations from David Clarkson of Ofcom and Kate McGavin of DCMS. David outlined Ofcom's regulatory strategy and approach in relation to NGA, focusing on sub-loop unbundling (SLU) and physical infrastructure access (PIA) as mechanisms to promote investment, particularly in rural areas, and local loop unbundling (LLU) and Virtual Unbundled Local Access (VULA) as mechanisms to promote competition. In Ofcom's view, current generation broadband will continue to have a significant role over the next few years, something echoed by the current takeup rates of superfast services, with the regulatory framework therefore having to continue to support current generation access during the transition to NGA. People's propensity to pay for NGA services (or the lack thereof) remains a key challenge, underlining the importance of demand stimulation in driving investment.

Kate focused on market activity and the "arms race for speed" (something I've also covered here), broadband’s place at the heart of government policy and policy developments to enable roll-out. Whilst I commend the way many Government departments have joined up in recognising the importance of broadband, the Department for Education currently seems absent from this discussion. While the Government-commissioned report of the James Review of Education Capital published in April 2011 contained a number of specific recommendations on the provision of broadband for schools, including the recognition of the need to "leverage the value of existing public sector broadband networks, aligned with the roll out of superfast broadband and working with commercial providers, local authorities, and regional broadband consortia to establish a minimum bandwidth standard of 10Mbps for primary schools and 100Mbps for secondary schools", the subsequent DFE consultation document on the implementation of the James Review's recommendations contained no reference to broadband at all. Given the extensive reach of existing schools' broadband networks into rural areas, and the continuing importance of meeting schools' increasing broadband requirements, this would seem an opportunity to join up with wider broadband policy missed. However, it is very encouraging to see this recent acknowledgement by DFE of technology's potential for education. More to come in the new year, according to the speech.

I missed the next set of parallel workshops; following these, Crister Mattson of Acreo presented findings from a study into the socio-economic impact of fibre to the home provision in Sweden. 44% of all households and businesses in Sweden now have access to at least 100 Mbps broadband. The study found benefits in terms of increased economic activity (with increased GDP due to increased employment), savings in municipal and regional public sector costs for data and telecommunications and added value for end users, for example in terms of the increased value of residential premises resulting from the provision of enhanced broadband connectivity. Following a panel session on NGA leadership challenges, Mark Kellet of Magnet Networks gave an overview of the lessons learned from previous fibre deployments, in terms of provisioning and adoption; a key risk here is overestimating demand in the short term while underestimating demand in the long term. However, consumers' speed requirements are only moving in one direction...upwards.

The conference closed with a panel discussion on lessons learned and the way forward. For me, the key messages from this year's conference were the importance of planning, the need for sound business models and securing the "right" kind of investment, with technical issues and concerns being almost a secondary consideration once these foundations are in place. While concerns and frustrations remain over the speed and nature of NGA deployments in the UK, the overall mood seemed (to me at least) generally positive, acknowledging that we have come a very long way over the last few years, particularly in the recognition of broadband in both national and regional/local policy, to support economic growth and deliver a range of benefits for society.

However, we still have a long way to go. I think developments over the next 12 months will be crucial, meaning that NextGen12 is highly unlikely to be any less engaging than previous NextGen events.

NextGen11 conference report day 1: progress?

2011-11-21T11:40:00.001Z

The NextGen11 conference took place last week (on 15-16 November) in Bristol (presentations here). Here's my report, to follow on from my accounts of the 2009 and 2010 NextGen conferences.

The conference opened with a video address from Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and European Digital Agenda Commissioner, who made her position on the importance of superfast broadband very clear:

"...the Internet is an economic essential for everyone. From businesses small and large, to academia, to the creative industries, fast broadband is the digital oxygen allowing this ecosystem to thrive and boosting growth. It is hard to imagine a confident and prosperous Europe in 2020 without it."

She went on to mention the two current EU consultations (on cost methodologies for wholesale access and non-discrimination obligations), in the context of establishing the right regulatory environment to drive increased investment in superfast broadband, together with the funds being made available for broadband through the Connecting Europe Facility.

Neelie Kroes' address was followed by Chris Holden, President of the Fibre to the Home Council Europe. Europe is currently a long way behind other parts of the world in terms of FTTH penetration, with 4.6m FTTH subscribers: China has 46m. The UK, as of June 2011, has 4,500 FTTH subscribers and 567,300 homes passed out of 25m households. On the basis of current takeup, the UK will reach "fibre maturity" (10% takeup) after 2020. In Europe, unlike most other regions, incumbents are not currently the major providers of FTTH, and this will remain the case. Meeting the EU target of 50% subscribers with >100Mbps service requires maybe 80% availability, which seems very challenging, underlining the importance of "good old-fashioned marketing" to increase takeup and demonstrate the case for further investment. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the current EU consultations in this regard.

Suvi Linden, former Minister of Communications, Finland, and Commissioner, United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development, spoke next. The Commission provides an advocacy role for broadband, in the belief that "broadband connections are an essential element in modern society, like roads or electricity." The evidence Suvi presented of the impact of broadband on economic growth (from the Commission's report Broadband: A Platform for Progress) was particularly striking: each 10% increase in broadband penetration generates a 1.38% increase in GDP in low/middle income economies, and a 1.21% increase in high income economies. Suvi also described the targets set out in the Commission's Broadband Challenge, published in October 2011: that broadband should be universally available and affordable, with high takeup and usage as a result. She went on to describe policy developments in Finland, in particular, the Government's recognition that "broadband has become a basic service" and the consequential importance of ensuring universal availability. By the end of 2015, all permanent residences in Finland should be within two kilometres reach of a high-speed connection permitting at least a 100Mbps service; this will require partly subsidised high-speed connections for around 130,000 households in rural areas.

Next up was Bill Murphy, Managing Director NGA, BT. Bill described developments in Cornwall, where BT is rolling out a variety of next generation broadband services. 71 cabinets are now live with 2000+ customer connections, provided by 12 communications providers. Bill stressed that affordable, effective next generation broadband services can and are being delivered over copper via FTTC, that BT was also looking at FTTH and that there was no reason why the approach taken in Cornwall couldn't work elsewhere. He also flagged developments in Northern Ireland, where NGA is available today to 85% of businesses and 75% of lines are connected to a fibre-enabled cabinet (reaching 89% by March 2012), connecting 44,000 customers, with 1,200 more being added every week. More widely, BT plans to deliver ADSL2+ services to 90% of the UK, possibly more (including this exchange I hope?) and currently has more than 300,000 subscribers to its Infinity service, with c.50 external service providers using BT's fibre services. Alternative technologies under consideration to reach the last 10% include white space technologies (as being trialled on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, satellite (BT is working with Avanti in Cornwall) and 4G mobile services (also being trialled in Cornwall with Everything Everywhere, in St Newlyn East and the surrounding area of South Newquay, with around 200 participants). In reference to the current debate about BT's physical infrastructure access (PIA) offerings, Bill pointed out that PIA represents a small part of the cost of deploying fibre; we should "move on" and simply "get on and do something".

In answer to Bill's challenge, Keith Vinning of Fujitsu was next, providing an update on Fujitsu's plans to provide a wholesale broadband infrastructure in rural areas, as announced earlier in 2011. Fujitsu is not seeking to provide retail broadband services and is looking to deliver via the funding being made available by BDUK, subject to its inclusion on BDUK's procurement framework (more here) and winning business from local authorities purchasing via the framework once it's in place. On the subject of funding, Keith suggested that the £17bn committed to the High-Speed Rail project would be better spent on broadband (a view echoed here) and also explained that, like BT, Fujitsu is looking at a range of access technologies as it is simply not economic to deploy fibre everywhere. Successful PIA trials have been undertaken in Greasby in the Wirral, with services being provided to customers by TalkTalk and VirginMedia over BT's ducts and poles from the serving exchange to customers' premises. Overall, Fujitsu's experience of working with Openreach had been "positive"; while there remains work to do to "industrialise" processes to enable roll-outs at scale, the company is "optimistic" about the future. However, the limitations on what PIA can be used for remain a concern, particularly the fact that PIA can't be used to provide backhaul for wireless services in rural areas. Keith closed by stressing the importance of driving demand for superfast broadband, reiterating the importance of matching aspirations with the amount of funding available.

Keeping us from our lunch was futurist Rohit Talwar, but fortunately Rohit spoke eloquently and passionately about the potential of superfast broadband. He began by considering how to get politicians and society at large excited about superfast broadband, citing the approaches taken to infrastructure development by China and India. China has adopted the "build it and they will come" approach, whereas India waited for demand to emerge. China's economy is now three times the size of India's. Rohit argued that broadband is fundamental both to growth and the future well-being of society, given current economic turbulence, the "power shift eastwards", ageing populations and environmental issues and concerns. But we must always remember that what technology makes possible is what will drive demand, not the technology itself.

After lunch, Edgar Aker of the Prysmian Group flagged the importance of national policies and plans and the right regulatory environment in driving investment and competition in NGA. He commented that eastern Europe is leapfrogging straight to fibre provisioning for broadband, bypassing current generation services. This business case for rural broadband is key, with the FTTH Council Europe's FTTH Business Guide a key resource to support planning and development. This was followed by a panel discussion about the future Internet, with Dave Carter of the Manchester Digital Development Agency memorably demanding to know when we'd all have the flying cars he'd been promised in visions of the future in his youth...!

Day one closed with a series of three parallel workshops; I attended the one on technology choices for NGA. Simon Barrett of Avanti covered satellite possibilities and opportunities. James Enck of CityFibre Holdings outlined the company's plans to become "a new force in UK fibre infrastructure", following the acquisition of the assets of the troubled Fibrecity project (more on this here and here). Dinesh Patil of Telefonica O2 explained the huge impact smartphones continue to have on mobile networks and the steps being taken to accommodate ever increasing demand. For example, major sports events now create huge localised demand, as stadium crowds access live coverage and commentaries on their mobile devices. Next year's London Olympics are likely to be particularly challenging in this regard. Finally, Paul Sexton-Chadwick of The Cloud/BSkyB described how wifi is addressing the shortcomings of 3G mobile connectivity, particularly in the light of Ofcom's revised timetable for the UK's 4G spectrum auctions.

That wrapped up day one, my report of day two to follow shortly.

UK broadband update

2011-11-14T14:34:00.001Z

Speaking at last week's Westminster eForum: Delivering the UK's Broadband Future, Simon Towler of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) gave a thorough overview of recent broadband developments in the UK:

Ofcom's first infrastructure report (which the regulator is required to submit to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport every three years), published on 1st November 2011, shows that 58% of UK premises now have access to superfast broadband.
On 31st October, BT announced it was accelerating its fibre rollout, delivering fibre broadband to two thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014, one year ahead of its original target of 2015.
A few days earlier on 27th October, Virgin Media, as part of its third quarter 2011 results, reported that it was "on track for rolling out 100Mbps, the country’s fastest widely available broadband service, right across our network by mid 2012 with over eight million homes already able to access this superfast speed."
Coverage in the Guardian described a "broadband speed arms race", following an announcement by Openreach (the division of BT responsible for its access network) on 3rd October of the "early market deployment launch" of its fibre to the premises products in six areas; these will offer download speeds of 110Mbps, and upload speeds of 30Mbps, "with even quicker speeds expected in 2012 and technology capability of up to 1Gbps in the future".
Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt previously identified a "need for speed" in his May 2011 speech to Race Online 2012's National Digital Conference, something echoed by a recent survey by the Communications Management Association (CMA) which reported that businesses constrained by current broadband are demanding higher speeds.
In a similar vein, a recent study conducted jointly by Ericsson, Arthur D. Little and Chalmers University of Technology in 33 OECD countries quantifies the isolated impact of broadband speed, showing that doubling the broadband speed for an economy increases GDP by 0.3%.
This speech was where the Government first set out its targets that all homes and businesses in the UK should have access to at least 2Mbps and that superfast broadband (>24Mbps) should be available to 90 per cent of people in each local authority area by 2015. These will provide an important step towards the EU broadband targets, as set out in the Digital Agenda for Europe, that by 2020, fast broadband coverage at 30Mbps should be available to all EU citizens, with at least half of European households subscribing to broadband access at 100Mbps.
The definition of superfast broadband as >24Mbps derives from Ofcom's context and summary for its 2010 consultations on the wholesale local access and wholesale broadband access markets: "Super-fast broadband (i.e. broadband with speeds greater than 24Mbps) will provide consumers and businesses with higher speed and more capable services, which are likely to enable the use of a wide range of new and innovative applications. These could, for example, include super high definition and 3D video services, more effective teleworking and telemedicine. "
Allocations to local authorities were announced by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) in August, with the first three successful areas (Devon & Somerset, Norfolk, Wiltshire) being announced in May and two further areas (Rutland, Suffolk) getting the go-ahead in September.
Jeremy Hunt's May 2011 speech also contained the phrase "must be mobile" - something borne out by the findings of Ofcom's 2011 Communications Market Report, which described the UK as a "nation addicted to smartphones", with over a quarter of adults and nearly half of all teens now owning a smartphone and 37% of adults and 60% of teens "highly addicted" to them.
Mobile data rates continue to surge, as recently described by the likes of Cisco (also see here) and Ericsson.
In the UK it is the Government's intention that the private sector should lead the way, supported by intervention in areas the market alone will not reach. In addition to BT and Virgin Media's plans, earlier in the year Fujitisu announced its intention to work in collaboration with Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Cisco to deliver next generation internet services to 5 million homes in rural Britain (and is currently running an FTTH trial in Greasby in the Wirral, more here).
More recently on 3rd November, City Fibre Holdings announced its plans to invest up to £500 million to build further metro networks and pure Fibre-to-the-Premises networks in a unique citywide deployment, providing gigabit services in towns and cities across the UK, to connect 1m homes and 50,000 businesses, with rollout commencing in early 2012.
Openreach at the beginning of October made its second reference offer on physical infrastructure access (PIA, or duct and pole sharing), setting out lower pricing. PIA complements another regulatory element, virtual unbundled local access (VULA) which I've covered previously on this blog here and here. VULA allows competitors to deliver services over BT's new NGA network, with a degree of control that is similar to that achieved when taking over the physical line to the customer (as happens in the case of local loop unbundling, LLU). The Openreach products delivering the 110Mbps/30Mbps FTTH services mentioned earlier in this post are examples of VULA in action.
A consultation on new deployment of overhead lines for fibre delivery is "imminent", with new guidance on microtrenching and streetworks to be published by the end of the year. Wayleaves are also being investigated to help further facilitate and streamline broadband investment and deployment. A report on the lessons learned from the four superfast broadband pilots first announced in 2010 (Cumbria, Hereforshire, the Highlands & Islands and North Yorkshire) is also to be published before the end of the year.
Returning to mobile, a number of new technology trials are underway, including BT and Everything Everywhere's trialling of 4G/LTE mobile services in Cornwall, Vodafone's femtocell trials in the West Berkshire village of East Garston, for which it is now seeking 12 locations to take part in rural mobile coverage trials and the BBC, Microsoft and others' trialling of white space technologies in Cambridge.
Wireless and satellite technologies continue to be the most likely cost effective solution for the most remote areas; to this end on 3rd October the Chancellor announced an investment of up to £150 million to improve mobile coverage in the UK, to improve the coverage and quality of mobile services for the 5 to 10 per cent of consumers and businesses that live and work in areas of the UK where existing mobile coverage is poor or non-existent. The Government will aim to extend mobile service coverage to 99 per cent of the UK population, with the necessary procurement beginning in 2012.

This week sees the NextGen11 conference in Bristol which likely to reveal further announcements of interest. Watch this space...

US Ignite - building gigabit applications

2011-11-08T12:15:00.001Z

Further to my last post on gigibit test beds, I came across US Ignite, a project "to spark the development of gigabit applications and services in areas of national priority".

US Ignite will perform three activities:

Stitching together a national at-scale network testbed of cities and campuses with real users, which can be used as a platform to launch novel gigabit applications and services;
Creating novel gigabit applications and services by funding researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs working in areas of national priority; and
Developing a Public Private Partnership that will govern the contributions made by industry to this pre-commercial effort; coordinate developer community efforts; and convene the Partners for strategic planning and sharing of best practices.

This quote sums up nicely the dilemma the project is hoping to address, the "chicken or the egg" broadband question:

"The US Ignite initiative aims to accelerate gigabit application development and use across the country by breaking a fundamental deadlock: there is insufficient investment in gigabit applications that can take advantage of advanced network infrastructure because such infrastructure is rare and dispersed. And conversely, there is little new investment in advanced broadband infrastructure because there are few advanced applications to justify it. US Ignite will break this deadlock by providing incentives for imagining, prototyping, and developing gigabit applications and by building out a pre-commercial high-bandwidth infrastructure on which people and organizations on campuses and in cities can innovate."

The project is still at an early stage, publishing a request for whitepapers from interested institutions and commercial partners. Further information in this blog post from the US Office of Science and Technology Policy; a project to keep a close eye on to ensure we don't limit our ambitions to the constraints of the present, as I've said previously.

US broadband test beds: exploring 1Gbps possibilities

2011-11-01T18:12:00.003Z

As I mentioned in my previous post, here is a quick overview of three projects in the USA trialling 1Gbps broadband connectivity for homes and businesses.

The first example is the high-speed optical fiber network developed by EPB offering services to over 100,000 homes and businesses in the metropolitan Chattanooga and surrounding rural areas. From an EPB press release:

"Powered by Alcatel-Lucent’s gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology, Chattanooga’s new network will accommodate speeds of up to 1 gigabit-per-second (Gbps), which is more than 200 times faster than the current national download speed average. Every home and business within EPB’s 600 square-mile, nine-county service area will be able to access the network, making it the most comprehensive product of its kind in the United States...EPB, Chattanooga’s municipal electric utility, is using its fiber-to-the-home network as the backbone for its Smart Grid which will provide increased power reliability, greater operational efficiency and more power management tools for the utility’s electric customers. In addition to its Smart Grid functions, the fiber-to-the-home network can also provide communications services to business and residential customers, including very high-speed Internet access, (high-definition) IPTV and phone services."

Important as the "smart grid" functionality described above is, the fibre infrastructure is capable of delivering much more: the 1Gbps broadband service for homes and businesses was launched in September 2010. This from Ars Technica:

“…(EPB) uses the fiber to power its own "smart grid" electrical program, and deploying the program everywhere adds value to the electrical system. But once the fibre's in place, it can be used for TV, Internet, and phone service without digging any new trenches; indeed, even upgrading the entire network to support 1Gbps service was relatively inexpensive, since it only required an electronics upgrade at central locations.”

A refreshing example of joined up thinking. EPB readily admit that takeup of the 1Gbps service is so far limited, it is sanguine about the future potential of the service. From the same Ars Technica Article:

"...(EPB) "hasn't been flooded with calls" for the service, says David Wade, Chief Operating Officer...Indeed, even this may be overstating current demand; only 6 or 7 Chattanooga residents and "several businesses" have ordered the high-end service, which launched with a $350 per month price tag...This doesn't particularly concern Wade. "We knew that the capacity had to be there before people could start creating applications that could utilize the capacity...It's like bringing electricity to the Tennessee Valley" in the early twentieth century, he said. (EPB was founded in 1935.) Before power arrived, there were limited applications for it, but stringing power lines to every home and businesses provided a huge boost to the local economy and spurred all kinds of additional use. Just as with electrification, EPB has decided to run fiber to every home and business, including the third of its customers outside the city, because the benefits of fiber connections don't decline with population density…While few customers buy the 1Gbps tier, many use slower EPB Internet services, but at least the network is ready for the future at relatively minimal cost.”

Customers' use of upload bandwidth is interesting:

"Network speeds are real—if you pay for 30Mbps, you get 30Mbps—and are symmetrical (the same speed in both directions). Chattanooga has also seen surprising use of its upstream connections, even though some question just how much uploading customers want to do. "If you're limiting upstream traffic, you're not going to see upstream traffic," Wade counters.”

In keeping with this spirit of innovation, a competition was recently announced to " to foster the development of gigabit per second Internet applications and business ventures" - more in this EPB press release.

The second example is Google's fibre to the home project in Kansas City, as mentioned on this blog previously here. Following Google's original project announcement in February 2010, it was revealed in March 2011 that Kansas City had been selected as the location for the initiative. The project's homepage is here and there have been some interesting announcements on both the Google Fibre Blog and the Gigabit City website. I was very pleased to see this in one of the sets of FAQs on the Google Fibre Blog:

"Q: What schools will receive free Internet service? Will you include religious and private schools? A: As part of our agreements with Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, Google will connect hundreds of educational and public entities as we build out our network. Each city will determine those locations."

This post suggests things are still at the planning stage, with a view to service launch in early 2012, while this one describes some of the demand stimulation activities being undertaken with local businesses (see here for details of further similar activities). So not much to report as yet, but definitely a project I'll be keeping an eye on.

Finally, the Case Connection Zone, a research project with the goal of bringing 1 Gigabit Internet connectivity to the neighbourhoods surrounding University Circle and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. According to this press release, the project served as a prototype for the Gig.U initiative (another project to watch) described in my previous post. The Case Connection Zone was featured in chapter 7 (research and development) of the US National Broadband Plan, published in March 2010:

"America’s top research universities continue this R&D effort today in their efforts to experiment with very fast 1Gbps networks (gigabit networks). For example, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, with 40 institutional partners, vendors and community organizations, is planning a University Circle Innovation Zone in the economically impoverished area around the university to provide households, schools, libraries and museums with gigabit fiber optic connections. Case Western expects this network to create jobs in the community and spawn software and service development for Smart Grid, health, science and other applications, as well as foster technology, engineering and mathematics education services."

Much more information in this presentation, this blog post and also on YouTube.

These projects offer an interesting insight into the possibilities offered by high speed broadband connections. These words, from the Ars Technica article about EPB's 1Gbps service in Chattanooga, neatly encapsulate the common philosophy and approach that underpins all three of them:

"...build it for the future, not the present, and then encourage people to grow new applications that take advantage of abundance rather than conform to scarcity."

That last bit feels the right way around to me: while we need to be pragmatic about the capabilities of the marketplace and the economic realities of rolling out next generation networks more widely, we also need to create space for innovation, rather than limit our ambitions to the constraints of the present.

A wider role for National Research and Education Networks (NRENs)?

2011-10-31T16:05:00.000Z

A new working group paper on broadband and science from the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Digital Development sets out the importance of national research and education networks (NRENs), in the wider context of broadband's role in supporting science and education communities.

Recommendations specific to NRENs include:

Research and Education Networks (RENs), the bodies set up in most countries – including developing countries – to manage and maintain e-Infrastructures, should be given high political visibility towards governments, regulators and academia given their role in the transformation of developing economies into knowledge societies.
National authorities and the relevant international organizations should promote affordable and fair access to broadband e-infrastructures via the establishment and consolidation of national, regional and global RENs, fostering cooperative environments that bridge the Digital Divide (non-connected countries and regions) and the Geographical Divide (disadvantaged non-central areas).
RENs should spearhead technological and service innovation in partnership with industry.
Broadband e-Infrastructures should be leveraged for public service, fostering the engagement of RENs in other public sectors such as e-Health, e-Government, e-Learning, e-Innovation and "e-Capacity Building".

The report positions NRENs as having a much broader focus than their traditional role of supporting the higher education and research community. In the UK, this is borne out in the way the JANET network has extended its reach significantly in recent years, through, for example, the provision services to schools via local authorities and regional broadband consortia, as well as engagement with the Cabinet Office Public Services Network (PSN) programme. See this presentation from a recent JANET Strategic Briefing Day for more on this.

Examples from the USA also illustrate this transition. The United States Unified Community Anchor Network (USUCAN) project aims to "provide community anchor institutions including public safety organizations, public libraries, K-12 schools, community colleges, research parks, and health care organizations with advanced broadband capabilities and services." The initiative utilises the capabilities and reach of the Internet2 national research and education network:

"The U.S. UCAN project was established under the auspices ofa federal stimulus grant to Internet2from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) BroadbandTechnology Opportunities Program (BTOP). Using this stimulus funding, Internet2is acquiring more than 10,000 miles offibre optic cable and will build a new nationwide network infrastructure withan unprecedented 8.8 Terabits of capacityusing emerging 100 Gigabit per second technology. This new infrastructure will serve as the underlying infrastructure for U.S. UCAN to offerits services to community anchor institutions nationwide. The new network which will be built throughstrong public-private partnerships,intends to complement and link togethernew regional community anchor networkscreated through BTOP funding as well as Internet2’sexisting regional network members and networkconnectors. The goal is to provide the high performance national networking capable offully supporting all 200,000 communityanchor institutions across the U.S. - three times as many institutions as theInternet2 Network serves today."

An ambition very much in keeping with the recommendations set out in the Broadband Commission's working paper, extending the reach and benefits of an existing NREN to a much wider community. Another US project of note is the Gig.U initiative, which comprises "a broad-based group of over 30 leading research universities from across the United States...Gig.U seeks to accelerate the deployment of ultra high-speed networks to leading U.S. universities and their surrounding communities." The project issued a request for information (RFI) in September 2011 which set out four goals as the first step towards Gig.U delivering its mission:

Promote the deployment of next generation networks across member communities to stimulate economic development;
Identify creative approaches to design, operate and finance self-sustaining next generation networks for member communities while evaluating the trade-offs between these different approaches;
Gain an understanding of how differences between member communities influence the level of private sector interest in working with any individual community; and
Consider ways in which multiple Project communities can work together beyond the RFI process to improve the private sector business case for next generation networks.

Again, lots in common with the Broadband Commission's recommendations in the above. An FAQ response sets out how the project relates to existing US research and education networks:

"The Project is focused on providing broader community connectivity to the member universities and communities. The existing R&E networks provide significant institutional connectivity to all of the member universities. This effort will neither duplicate nor compete with those networks. Rather, the Project will work with the R&E community and others with network facilities in the university communities, to develop new approaches to extending and upgrading existing network assets with a focus on higher speed retail offerings to places on campus that are not served by the existing R&E networks and to the areas surrounding the campuses. This will enable those who work with ultra-high speed networks on campus to be able to continue their work while home and create laboratories of greater connectivity throughout the university and surrounding community."

A slightly different kind of cross-fertilisation than that being undertaken by USUCAN perhaps, but very interesting nevertheless.

Of related interest are gigabit projects like Gig.U participant Case Western Reserve University's Case Connection Zone initiative, Chattanooga's city-wide municipally-owned fiber-to-the-premises network delivering 1Gbps services as well as Google's fibre initiative in Kansas City (some interesting ideas already here), all of which are test-beds and trail-blazers for exploring the capabilities and possibilities of high bandwidth services. More on these in my next post.

European broadband policy update

2011-10-28T15:46:00.000+01:00

Three recent developments to report from Europe: further funding for broadband, two consultations on access to telecoms infrastructure and forthcoming guidance on broadband investment models.

First, funding: €9.2bn will be made available from 2014 to 2020 to "support investment in fast and very fast broadband networks and pan-European digital services", as part of a package of measures to "improve Europe's transport, energy and digital networks", through a new fund called the "Connecting Europe Facility". This announcement implements the commitments made by the European Commission in the Multi-Annual Financial Framework proposals announced on 29 June 2011. More in this press release; an extract:

"The funding, part of the proposed Connecting Europe Facility, would take the form of both equity and debt instruments and grants. It would complement private investment and public money at local, regional and national level and EU structural or cohesion funds. At least €7 billion would be available for investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure. The Commission considers that this money could leverage a total of between €50 and 100 billion of public and private investment – i.e. a substantial proportion of the estimated €270 billion of broadband investment needed to meet Digital Agenda targets on broadband. The remaining CEF funding for digital infrastructure would support public interest digital service infrastructure such as electronic health records, electronic identification and electronic procurement."

Some commentary from Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, further illustrating the additional investment it's envisaged these funds will leverage:

"The Facility would stimulate innovation by using innovation, with funding for broadband infrastructure largely in the form of equity, debt, or guarantees. We would competitively engage new players — like non-telecoms utility companies, or construction firms. Where projects were profitable, public funds could be recuperated and reinvested. And, by giving projects credibility and lowering risk profiles, we could leverage other private and public money. Indeed each euro invested in broadband by such innovative financing could leverage gross private investment of between 6 and 15 euros. In concrete terms, this means that the Facility could leverage a total of between 50 and 100 billion euros. Under the Digital Agenda, our target by 2020 is to get coverage for every European to fast broadband of over 30 megabits per second; and to get 50% of households subscribing to ultra-fast speeds over 100 megabits per second. This proposal constitutes a substantial proportion of the investment needed to hit those targets."

But funding can't be deployed to its best advantage if the regulatory environment isn't right. Which provides a nice segue into the second part of this update: earlier this month the Commission issued two consultations on access for alternative operators to the fixed telephone and broadband networks of established operators. The first concerns non-discriminatory access for alternative operators to the infrastructure and services of dominant telecom operators. The second concerns the way national regulators calculate prices that operators have to pay for this wholesale access (cost-orientation remedies). Both form part of the Commission's aim to create a single market for telecommunications services in Europe, which requires a consistent approach to regulation and regulated pricing.

The consultation on non-discrimination explores what needs to be in place to ensure that operators with significant market power (SMP) don't abuse their dominant position, to create an open and competitive marketplace as far as possible. It makes for interesting reading, setting out the various ways operators can exhibit "discriminatory behaviour" above and beyond the prices they charge for their products and services. For example:

"…vertically integrated SMP operators may beincentivised to design their wholesale products in a way that favours their owndownstream retail arms, i.e. by using particular technical standards or otherproduct characteristics which their own retail arm can use as a wholesale inputwithout further costly adjustments, whereas the downstream competitors mayincur additional costs in order to be able to make use of such an input. It may,therefore, be argued that it would be important, under non-discriminationaspects, to ensure that alternative operators are appropriately involved in thedesign process of future wholesale products and have a sufficient ability toinfluence the decisions regarding particular product characteristics. In thisrespect, the question arises whether either the national regulatory authorityor an independent industry body should be involved in order to steer and mediatethis process.”

Clearly a complex, challenging set of issues, particularly as new NGA services are developed. The pricing consultation is intended to stimulate debate on how wholesale pricing should be set to ensure a level playing field across Europe to encourage investment and competition, particularly in the context of the current transition from copper to fibre. We are a long way from such consistency it seems:

"National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) are stillapplying divergent approaches when remedying market failures; in particular,when setting cost oriented wholesale access prices. Even where NRAs apply thesame cost model for the same access products, there are divergences in terms ofimplementation. This leads to a variety of access prices across Europe. Theprice for the local loop, for example, ranges from 5.21 €/month in Lithuaniato 12.41 €/month in Ireland. Consequently there is a lack of predictability andlegal certainty for (cross-border) investors, alternative operators andpotential market entrants. This constitutes barriers within the internalmarket. The resulting lack of competition also harms European consumers who arenot able to benefit from the choice of services and affordable prices which couldotherwise exist.”

Some interesting commentary from Neelie Kroes in her speech accompanying the publication of the two consultations:

"...we need next generation networks to deliver the bandwidth-hungry services and applications that will drive future growth. No-one disputes that need. But there is no agreement on how to foster the deployment of such networks. Unfortunately, we see that, for the time being, telecom companies are hesitant to commit significant funds to fibre roll-out. Most stakeholders consider that this is largely due to the existence of a competing legacy copper network; and that copper pricing plays a key role for fibre investment decisions. However, telecom operators are divided on the question of how copper access prices affect the incentives for fibre investment. Alternative operators consider that copper access prices are too high given that the assets are largely depreciated. And they argue that, as a result, incumbents prefer to make good, easy profits on legacy infrastructure rather than invest significant amounts in new fibre networks. Therefore, they believe that lower copper prices would create the incentive for incumbents to go ahead with fibre investment. On the other hand, incumbents argue that much lower copper access prices would erode broadband retail prices. And, as a result, make it difficult to charge the higher prices for competing fibre products which would be needed to cover the investment costs and risks. In other words, they consider it would be unattractive to invest in a parallel fibre infrastructure directly competing with a cheap copper network, at a time when many consumers do not yet appreciate the major difference, in capacity and service quality, between the two technologies. I think that there is some truth on both sides. And I also have the impression that, as it stands, it would indeed be difficult to build new fibre networks competing with cheap parallel copper networks."

She went on to outline two approaches to address this apparent impasse:

"First, a general approach that would, in principle and after a certain time, gradually lower the access prices for largely depreciated copper networks. Second, the possibility of derogating from or adapting this general approach where the incumbents credibly commit to invest in fibre networks in a relevant time frame, while at the same time promoting the switch-off of the old copper networks once the next generation infrastructure is in place. Indeed, I have seen evidence that the gradual switch-off of copper could reduce the cost to such a degree that new fibre investments break even in under 10 years. And thus align the interests of investors and long-term financing providers. The approach I have just described would lower copper prices in areas where incumbents' legacy copper networks persist for some time without significant fibre investment. But at the same time, it would create an incentive for incumbents to replace old copper networks with new fibre infrastructure. Clients could then be migrated to fibre, and benefit from better services and applications for which higher wholesale and retail prices could justifiably be charged. Such a mechanism should also reassure markets that investment in fibre is safe and profitable."

A "fibre switchover/copper switch-off" is an interesting idea, especially in the light of the new funding to be available from 2014, as mentioned earlier in this post. The wholesale pricing consultation also makes reference to the Commission Recommendation of 20 September 2010 on regulated access to Next Generation Access Networks (NGA), which contains the following acknowledgement of the challenges in driving NGA demand at paragraph 23:

"The deployment of FTTH will normally entail considerable risks, given its high deployment costs per household and the currently still limited number of retail services requiring enhanced characteristics (such as higher throughput) which can only be delivered via fibre. Investments into fibre depend for their amortisation on the take-up of new services provided over NGA networks in the short and medium terms. The costs of capital of the SMP operator for the purpose of setting access prices should reflect the higher risk of investment relative to investment into current networks based on copper."

Recent results from Virgin Media indicate that take-up of higher bandwidth services is increasing, but it seems there is much that needs to happen to drive investment, from a regulatory as well as demand perspective. The need to drive the marketplace to deliver something it wouldn't necessarily deliver by itself, ahead of current customer demand, or perhaps to deliver it much earlier than it would otherwise, seems to be the Commission's bold goal here.

I don't disagree with the ambition, or the importance of fibre in the longer term, but I do wonder how realistic this is in the light of current funding, roll-out plans and customer demand? This roadmap from BT provides an interesting counterpoint, demonstrating what FTTC services may be capable of in future.

Finally (!), a new guide on broadband investment models, commissioned from Analysys Mason, will be available shortly. Discussed at the first Digital Agenda Assembly in June (see this presentation) and also at the DG Regio European Open Days (see this presentation), the guidance will provide advice on planning broadband investments, identifying five investment models:

Bottom-up: group of end users oversee the contract to build and operate their own local network
Private design build and operate: managing authority provides a grant to private sector to assist in deployment of new network
Public outsourcing: single contract for construction and operation of network, but public sector retains ownership and some control
Joint venture: ownership of the network is split between the public and private sector
Public design build and operate: public sector owns and operates a network without any private sector assistance

The guide will be illustrated from findings from operational projects across Europe matching these models. It's due to be available by the end of this month.

More from Australia: the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society's Annual Report and Symposium

2011-09-20T23:22:00.002+01:00

For more on the potential of broadband in general and the National Broadband Network in particular, the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society's Annual Report and Symposium presentation is well worth a look.

Three slides from the presentation caught my eye. They capture the importance of concurrency (multiple simultaneous accesses to multiple applications, something I've discussed in this previous post) very well, and also nicely illustrate the wide range of applications that next generation access can support:

"The killer application is...all the applications" - a great quote. The next slide shows the 2007 vision of the connected home, together with its cumulative bandwidth requirements:

...while the next predicts what the same home's requirements will be in 2015:

Interesting to see both increasing requirements of 2007 applications (for example, video streaming requirements are predicted to increase from 400kbps in 2007 to 12Mbps in 2015) as well as new applications and technologies like e-education and femto-cells driving up bandwidth requirements too. This advice from the Info-communications Development Authority of Singapore shows what'a already possible today where higher bandwidths have been deployed.

Some of the new applications next generation access will support we know or can guess about, others we don't know about yet. Social networking is an example of an application which few foresaw, made possible not only by increased bandwidth but also the "always on" nature of broadband connections, as opposed to the days of pay per minute dial up connectivity. Some current applications provide a good signpost for what increased bandwidths will deliver, in terms of making possible ever richer layers of data and interactivity; Google Earth is one such example. However, I'm sure there are plenty of interesting surprises in store for us ahead.

Australian report captures schools' broadband possibilities

2011-09-20T22:11:00.003+01:00

A recent report from the Australian Government on the role and potential of its National Broadband Network provides an excellent summary on the potential broadband offers for education and the particular requirements of the sector.

Chapter 4 of the report is devoted to education and echoes the reports Delivering Personalised Learning and Building a Broadband Entitlement prepared by the UK National Education Network. A few quotes:

"...ubiquitous, high-speed broadband has the capacity to significantly extend the reach, availability and quality of educational services, particularly in regional areas and enable more intensive and immersive online interactions, resulting in higher quality outcomes for students."

"...educational institutions have ‘enterprise’ rather than ‘consumer’ requirements, meaning they need very high quality and scalable connections in order to maximise the potential of broadband for students and teachers...In general terms educational institutions are not like surrounding residential users. One educational enterprise connection may support 1000 or more users (students, teachers and administrative staff) capable of generating as much traffic as 1000 homes. Educational institutions also have different needs to residential consumers—educational institutions require high symmetry and high bandwidth, they have low latency and peaks in demand. Connectivity between institutions is important, in addition to connectivity to external sources such as the Internet. Educational needs require access to capacity at a reasonable price to enable permanent networks to be created and to cater for the potential increase in demand which is likely to result as innovations are more widely adopted."

The part about having enterprise rather than consumer requirements is spot on. The report groups the benefits the NBN can bring to education under the following headings:

Enhanced classroom-based education
More educational institutions connected
Richer online resources available
Remote linkage to experts and institution
Sharing and interacting with other schools and campuses
Access to more curriculum options
Increasing student and teacher retention in rural areas
Enhanced education outside the classroom
After hours home education
Involvement of parents in children’s education
Participation by students who can’t make it to class
Education in the workplace & the community
A more efficient education system

A pretty definitive list painting a very compelling picture. The report also identifies a number of issues in relation to broadband provision for education, particularly availability and affordability:

“...the main barriers to bandwidth usage are restrictive pricingstructures and contractual arrangementsin which schools, particularly in rural areas, are required to pay high rates for the volume of data thatthey use. While the Government’scommitment to uniform national wholesale pricing for the NBN is likely to remove the disadvantage thatrural schools face in this area, thenature of educational institutions is that they need to provide connectivity to many users simultaneously.Educational institutions therefore needaccess to high bandwidth connections within a pricing structure that allows for large volumes ofdata. Close attention will be requiredfrom the Federal Government and NBN Co during the NBN’s design and implementation to ensureeducational institutions are able to accesshigh capacity and highly scalable connections that meet their enterprise needs at affordable, predictableprices.”

Schools in rural areas of the UK face similar challenges. The report is well worth a read if you want to understand more about broadband's huge potential to transform teaching and learning.

Key facts from Ofcom's 2011 Communications Market Report

2011-08-23T11:18:00.002+01:00

Some interesting nuggets from Ofcom's 2011 Communications Market Report, published earlier this month.

On Internet access and broadband take-up:

For the first time household internet take-up (78%) has exceeded PC ownership (77%) as a small proportion of households went online using mobile phones only.
Take-up of broadband has continued to increase and in Q1 2011 stood at 74%. Virtually all homes with a computer are now connected to the internet.
Take-up of mobile broadband continues to rise and now stands at 17%.
While the majority of mobile broadband connections are purchased in addition to a fixed broadband connection at home, 7% rely solely on a mobile broadband service.
Dial-up internet connections, along with four/ five channel analogue terrestrial TV services, are now almost extinct.
Among those aged 65-74, five years ago only four in ten had internet access at home (42%), but by 2011, this had risen to over half of this age group (55%). However, still only a small minority (26%) of those aged 75+ have the internet at home in Q1 2011 (up from 15% in 2006).

An interesting contrast between broadband take-up in urban and rural areas:

Broadly speaking, higher levels of take-up in rural locations tend to run alongside higher levels in urban areas. Fixed-line services are the only deviation from this pattern, where take-up is higher – sometimes substantially – in rural locations. That said, there are some variations in take-up by location: broadband take-up among homes in rural areas is higher than in urban areas in England and Scotland, which is likely to relate to higher-income households in rural areas. In Q1 2011, rural areas in England had the highest level of broadband take-up, at 84%.

On the increasing importance of TVs and mobile phones in providing internet access:

At the device level, a range of television screens now incorporate an internet connection, and during 2010, 10% (1 million) of television set sales incorporated a connection to the internet. Services available on TVs with an internet connection include applications that access on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, other ‘over the top’ content services such as LoveFilm and YouTube, and social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook.
More than three-quarters of households have home internet access: The ownership of a PC has always been a constraint on the take-up of home internet services, with the cost of the PC preventing some households from getting online and others saying they do not have the knowledge/skills to use a computer...However, the mass-market emergence of internet-enabled phones and internet services designed specifically for mobile phones (such as mobile applications) means that increasingly people are getting online through mobile phones. For the first time in Q1 2011 household internet take-up (78%) exceeded PC ownership (77%) as a small proportion of households went online via mobile phones only.

On increasing mobile broadband usage:

In addition to increasing take-up of internet services on mobile phones it appears that the intensity of use has increased significantly...the volume of mobile data transferred over the UK’s mobile networks increased by 67% during 2010, and increased forty-fold between Q4 2007 and Q4 2010. This suggests that the use of 3G/HSPA networks on smartphones is having a similar transformative effect on mobile internet use as that which happened in the early-mid 2000s on fixed-line networks with the migration from dial-up to broadband.

On superfast broadband:

Over half of all UK households are passed by super-fast broadband. Virgin Media’s cable service offers speeds of at least ‘up to’ 50Mbit/s to 48% of all households, with around 15% of households able to get an ‘up to’ 100Mbit/s service. BT’s ‘up to’ 40Mbit/s fibre-to-the-cabinet service was available to around 20% of households by July 2011 and Ofcom estimate that 57% of UK homes were able to receive super-fast services in July 2011.
Take-up of superfast services is increasing. Ofcom estimate that around 2% of residential and SME UK broadband connections had a headline speed of 30Mbit/s or higher at the end of March 2011, more than five times the figure for a year previously.
Ofcom consumer research indicates that take-up of super-fast broadband changes use of the internet. More than half of those taking up super-fast service say they have increased the number of standard-definition or high-definition TV programmes or films they watch over the internet (54% and 63% respectively), while many also claim to have increased the amount of online gaming (37%), video calling (39%) and file sharing (40%).
Value for money was the most important consideration when choosing a super-fast service: Even though super-fast broadband services are generally more expensive than slower services...value for money was the most important single reason for consumers choosing their current super-fast broadband service...Nearly half of all respondents said that good simultaneous performance on multiple devices was a reason for taking super-fast broadband, indicative of how households are increasingly using WiFi connectivity to provide internet connections to multiple devices, including desktop, laptop and tablet PCs, mobile phones, games consoles and internet-enabled televisions.
There is strong evidence that the take-up of super-fast broadband changes the ways in which consumers use the internet, as users benefit from the improved experience of services which benefit from faster speeds and the higher quality of service typically offered by super-fast services.
The largest increases in reported use relate to streaming TV programmes or full-length films; nearly two-thirds of respondents said that they had increased their levels of streaming high-definition content and more than half had increased their streaming of standard-definition content...There were also notable increases in some services which are less mainstream, including file-sharing and online gaming.
The lowest increases were for those services where use was already high, and which typically benefit less from having faster speeds: sending and receiving email, purchasing goods/services/tickets and banking.

Driving demand for NGA services

2011-08-02T21:19:00.001+01:00

Some really interesting presentations from the workshop on financing and facilitating broadband projects held during the first Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels on 16-17 June 2011.

The experience of Italian communications provider Fastweb in rolling out 100Mbps services provides particular food for thought in the light of current UK developments. From the report of the workshop:

“The lack of demand for switching to high speed services was identified as one of the most substantial challenges to the deployment of NGA networks by different stakeholders. The level of demand is a crucial factor shaping operators' business case. In particular, Fastweb's experience in FTTH Point-to Point deployment in the co-investment model illustrated the slow take up of the 100 Mbps retail product despite the price being comparable to the traditional offer.”

...which corroborates what I've heard elsewhere; that where next generation services are available in the UK, takeup is as yet very slow. It also underlines the need to communicate the benefits of next generation broadband in terms of the services and applications it makes possible, rather than to simply focus on headline speeds which will only excite a minority of people?

More on profiling broadband usage and the 2Mbps universal service commitment (USC)

2011-07-08T14:17:00.001+01:00

Analysys Mason's report for the Broadband Stakeholder Group on the potential of wireless and satellite to deliver next generation broadband, published last October, makes for interesting reading.

The report considers wireless and satellite provision in the light of three usage scenarios up to 2016 (or one year beyond the government's target for the UK to have the best superfast broadband in Europe):

Scenario A (mobile broadband evolution): "represents demand in a world in which the retail business model for satellite and terrestrial wireless broadband access is similar to mobile broadband today. Demand is constrained by the existence of prepaid subscriptions and relatively stringent usage caps in monthly pricing plans."
Scenario B (fixed broadband evolution): "represents demand in a world in which the retail business model is similar to fixed broadband today. Demand is less constrained than in Scenario A due to large (or unlimited) usage caps and predominantly pay-monthly subscriptions." (This is in Analysys Mason's view the most likely traffic growth scenario.)
Scenario C (accelerated IP-video evolution): "also represents demand in a world in which the retail business model is similar to fixed broadband today. However, Scenario C considers the impact of an even greater change in consumer behaviour, with a large proportion of the content viewed being on-demand video delivered over IP networks. Almost all TV content is delivered in HD."

...which offers some parallels with the FCC's profiling of broadband usage which I've covered previously. What's particularly interesting is the extrapolation of maximum bandwidth required per home from each of these scenarios:

“There are large differences in the average busy-hour bandwidth required per home in our three scenarios: Scenario A requires 85kbit/s, Scenario B requires 700kbit/s while Scenario C requires 1.5Mbit/s. These differences reflect the current uncertainty over future demand that exist within the broadband community. However, the peak bandwidth demand per home in all of our scenarios is assumed to be driven by the number of simultaneous video streams that a household may consume. We have assumed that the maximum average bandwidth requirement per home is that which is needed to deliver 2.3 video streams. Scenario A assumes that all streamed services are in standard definition (SD) which gives a maximum bandwidth of 4.6Mbit/s per household. Scenarios B and C assume that viewing is in high definition (HD), which gives a maximum bandwidth of 18.9Mbit/s per home. We therefore believe this that, despite the uncertainty over the average bandwidth required per home, there is no pressing need to implement technologies that can deliver significantly in excess of 20Mbit/s peak bandwidth per home before 2016."

The figures of 85Kbps, 700Kbps and 1.5Mbps per home provides an interesting comparison with the calculations mentioned in the conclusions report from BDUK's theoretical exercise last year:

"All networks are shared resources, engineered to accommodate busy-period loads. Operators size networks on the basis of a backhaul allocation per customer, which enables them to offer service levels for anticipated customer experience during the day, e.g. “2Mbps available 90% of the time during peak three hours of the day”. A typical backhaul allowance from suppliers when designing solutions was 30-60Kbps per customer, which is consistent with mass-market products available today. However, as the choice of backhaul infrastructure in these solutions was influenced by environmental, customer density and economic constraints, BDUK saw a wide spread in allocations: e.g. from <20Kbps for a wireline connection where backhaul would be very expensive to provision, to >200Kbps for wireless backhaul where the low density of customers on a mast meant that a significant per-customer backhaul allowance was available. These examples would result in a significantly different customer experience in peak hours of the day, but this experience is also dependent on the allowance for data transport between the operator’s point of handover and the internet as well although this is generally a commercial decision for the CP."

This also provides an interesting counterpoint to the current debate over the appropriateness of FTTC vs FTTH services? Though the report does later acknowledge that technologies other than wireless may provide a greater degree of future proofing:

"It is important to note that, although in Scenario B the cost of deploying terrestrial wireless technology in rural areas looks attractive compared to FTTC/VDSL, the latter may provide a greater degree of future-proofing. Our hypothetical terrestrial wireless networks have been dimensioned to support exactly the amount of traffic expected in each scenario in 2016. If the bandwidth required by each household continues to grow then new base stations would need to be added continuously to keep up with demand. A network based on FTTC/VDSL, by contrast, is likely to offer a certain amount of headroom to support future traffic growth depending on the lengths of the VDSL sub-loops. If the sub-loops are capable of supporting higher speeds than the 20Mbit/s peak bandwidth required in Scenarios B and C it may be that once FTTC/VDSL has been deployed in a particular area, further investment will not be required for a considerable number of years. If this is the case, it may be more cost-effective in the long term to deploy FTTC/VDSL in some areas where our 2016 snapshot implies that terrestrial wireless is a lower-cost option."

So the technologies considered in the report are pretty much reaching their limits in terms of bandwidth provision by 2016, if Analysys Mason's annual traffic growth projections from 2010 to 2016 (28% for scenario A, 40% for scenario B and 50% for scenario C) are correct. Analysys Mason also predict that demand will remain asymmetric, with fully symmetric services only being required by a small minority of residential users.

The report also confirms that wireless and satellite technologies are potentially a cost effective way to deliver the 2Mbps universal service commitment (USC):

"At the time of writing the technical definition of the universal service agreement (USC) was still being agreed by industry. Consequently, we have not considered the USC in detail. The current suggestion for a USC download service is “Access offering throughput of at least 2Mbps for 90% of the time during the busiest 3 hour period daily”. We understand that this requirement refers to a 90% chance of a particular user being able to receive 2Mbit/s during the busy hour. We believe that the performance of the networks we have modelled is likely to be commensurate with this requirement (the level of over-provisioning we included in our Erlang C calculation is sufficient to ensure a 98% probability of an on-demand video stream starting with 5 seconds). Furthermore, we believe that the average bandwidth per home in our lowest wireless demand scenario for 2016 is higher than the average bandwidth provided by a typical fixed broadband network in 2010."

Erlang C calculations are a new one on me, it seems this is a metric which can be used to determine the bandwidth and contention needed to deliver the required services acceptably:

"We have used an Erlang C calculation as a way to approximate the over-dimensioning that would be necessary to support the type of traffic that we have modelled. Erlang C is typically applied to call-centre dimensioning. The inputs include: average demand (calls per hour); average duration of calls; total number of call-centre agents. Outputs include: average time to wait before a call is answered; proportion of calls answered within a specified time. We have used an iterative approach to modify the calculation so that it can be applied to video streaming. The inputs are the average number of concurrent video streams and the average duration of a video stream. The parameters are the average delay from the time a video is requested to the time that the stream starts, and proportion of streams that start within a specified time of requesting. The output is the total capacity required to the specified inputs given the specified parameters (which we use as an estimate of the over-dimensioning factor). We have assumed the following parameters for acceptable quality of services: average time to wait before a stream starts is 1 second; 98% of streams start within 5 seconds of requesting."

Useful metrics to build into service level agreements underpinning deployments based on BDUK funding allocations perhaps, especially in relation to ensuring satisfactory delivery of the USC? More detail on the USC in BDUK's request for information for last year's theoretical exercise:

6 BDUK baseline definition of 2Mbps USC

In completing their responses, suppliers or supplier teams are asked to identify the theoretical improvement in speed of individual post‐codes. As well as quantifying the improvement in maximum potential speeds, suppliers will need to confirm in their responses whether the service meets this technical definition, or identify any variation from the standard and the impact on the customer experience.

6.1 Baseline consumer definition

BDUK has created a customer‐facing definition for overall experience of broadband provided under the USC, to explain to the public what they should expect from the policy.
The customer experience of USC‐defined broadband is expressed as:

enabling users to conduct effective home working, for example:
watching good‐quality (i.e. low level of interruption) Standard Definition video stream, e.g. iPlayer, most of the time
providing acceptable basic video conferencing, e.g. Skype, most of the time
enabling users sufficient to provide access to online Government services, e.g. tax self‐assessment form
The following assumptions are assumed to be met:

in‐home wiring is not a limiting factor
service delivered on an up‐to‐date computer and up‐to‐date browser and driver software
no other active network devices in‐use within the household
access and data transport network is not subject to contention and loading in excess of that anticipated through prudent network planning and management
6.2 Baseline technical definition

BDUK has also developed market‐facing definitions for USC. Different technologies have different access and data transport capabilities, so currently BDUK is maintaining several variations on the definition, until it is able to determine the minimum acceptable standard required to meet the policy objective.

In this document, BDUK presents its baseline definition for 2Mbps USC:

Connection capable of at least 2Mbps download speed measured at CPE
Access offering throughput of at least 2Mbps for 90% of the time during the busiest 3 hour period daily
Access offering throughput of at least 256Kbps upload speed for 90% of the time during the busiest 3 hour period daily
Access to an ISP such that end‐to‐end latency, jitter (packet delay variation), and packet‐loss between CPE and ISP's internet gateway is adequately controlled to maintain 2Mbps throughput and customer experience for different packet sizes under peak‐time loading.
Access to an ISP product whose data volume limit, throttling and packet prioritisation policy is made transparent and is in line with current market practice, but in any case no less than 5GB per month.
Access to an ISP product with an install and monthly charge comparable with typical, comparable retail reference price, e.g. BT Retail.

In conclusion, Analysys Mason report that wireless and satellite are potentially cost effective options for rural broadband, but in many ways a more interesting conclusion is this one:

"Although there are huge uncertainties about the level of demand in 2016, under three credible scenarios the peak demand for the average household is under 20Mbit/s. We think it unlikely that new residential applications requiring significantly in excess of 20Mbit/s will emerge before 2016. We therefore believe that the economic case for delivering higher bandwidths in the next five years is uncertain. We believe that private-sector investment in fibre, terrestrial wireless and satellite technologies will deliver incremental increases in bandwidth over the next five years that reflect the underlying demand from consumers. Given that the lack of clarity over what the average level of demand will be in 2016, and the complex interplay of other factors which ultimately determine which technology is most cost-effective for a particular location, we believe that a cautious approach to public intervention is required."

Food for thought? I think this kind of analysis is extremely important, as it move the broadband debate from the theoretical to the specific. For more of my thoughts on this, see these previous posts on telehealth and domestic broadband requirements.

In defence of frameworks

2011-07-07T21:56:00.001+01:00

An interesting outcome from Adrian Wooster's recent survey of opinions on BDUK's framework for wholesale broadband infrastructure - not a popular approach it would seem. I was one of the 14% of Adrian's respondents who think that BDUK's proposed framework is a good idea, and, in keeping with Adrian's request on his blog, here are my reasons.

I think a key advantage of frameworks is the opportunity they present to simplify and speed up public procurements, as well as offering value for money. See this recent example for how JANET's Telecommunications Framework saved the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) a significant amount of time and money.

Having been involved in several full EU procurements in my time at Becta (we established a number of procurement frameworks for the education sector, with the outcomes of the recent James Review acknowledging the importance of our ICT Services Framework - see page 62 of Sebastian James' report; the irony of this endorsement coming in the week following Becta's final closure was not lost on me), frameworks offer a means to short-circuit what can be an extremely lengthy and expensive process for purchasers. Which could mean significantly quicker deployments once BDUK's framework is in place.

Which isn't to say that frameworks aren't without their problems. While a framework can assist a potential purchaser, the purchaser still needs to approach any framework properly. A framework is simply a pre-selection exercise. Purchasers still need to draw up their requirements properly and tender them through the framework - it's certainly not a case of "just pick one of these suppliers and all will be fine". So a framework procurement should be approached like any other procurement, in terms of the amount of preparation and planning the customer should undertake to draw up their requirements, and the diligence with which the customer should scrutinise suppliers' proposals.

I fully acknowledge the concerns about frameworks discriminating against smaller companies. This is something we were confronted with at Becta regularly. Unfortunately, I don't know of any easy way to mitigate this. Prime contractors need to be of sufficient stature to be able to undertake the level of business that it's envisaged will go through the framework. Our approach at Becta was to encourage smaller suppliers to work with framework providers as a route to market, and vice-versa to encourage innovation, but in truth both we (and our framework suppliers) could have done a lot more to facilitate this.

The role of the informed customer is crucial in this context. The customer can create a situation where framework providers can (are required to?) work with smaller local concerns for mutual advantage. Unfortunately, because provision on this scale is complex and difficult, it's not surprising that telcos can and do play the "don't you worry your pretty little head about all this, let us do it all for you...just sign here" card, which can be very hard for local authorities and bodies struggling to get to grips with this area to resist.

However, for authorities that have grasped the nettle of broadband provision, and understand its opportunities as well as complexities, ways can be found to work together. Kent seem to be particularly progressive in this regard in my opinion. The JANET LLU reports I've mentioned previously on this blog are an excellent example of how telecoms provision can be de-mystified with a little work. Local bodies and authorities need to approach the market by saying "this is what we want from you" (commissioning), rather than by asking the market simply "what are you prepared to sell us?"

In my view, frameworks are good at delivering commodity but not very good at encouraging innovation. Which is why the informed customer role is so important, to provide a bridge between the framework suppliers, local circumstances and smaller, innovative concerns who have a lot to offer in this space, as numerous projects around the country demonstrate.

It comes down to how well a framework is conceived in the first place and subsequently how well it's used by those purchasing through it. Like any tool, a framework can be designed and wielded well or badly. If the tool is well designed, great. But if the tool doesn't reflect the requirements of its potential users, that's a problem.

BDUK pilot project tender notices - all four now issued

2011-06-10T14:54:00.001+01:00

This week has seen the publication of contract notices by two more of Broadband Delivery UK's original four pilot projects, the Highlands and Islands and Herefordshire. The contract notices published previously by Cumbria County Council in March 2011 and NYnet (for North Yorkshire) in May 2011 mean that all four original pilots (as announced last October) have now gone to market. Wholesale provisions and related requirements for open, equitable and transparent access to all service and communications providers are common threads across all four notices.

One of the successful second wave bidders, Devon & Somerset, also issued a contract notice in March 2011, prior to its award of £30m additional funding by BDUK on 27th May 2011. The contract notice is divided into two lots, lot 1 being "Delivery of fast broadband to 4 rural areas as detailed within the ITT" and lot 2 "Delivery of fast broadband to 2 rural areas as detailed within the ITT":

"Funding contributions have been successfully sought from the European Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) and Devon County Council's own resources, and tenderers must note that the RDPE physical infrastructure element of this project (Lot 1) must be completed by March 2012. Delivery of lot 2 must be completed by midsummer 2012."

It will be interesting to see how these five procurements will fit with BDUK's proposed procurement framework (see 8th June 2011 Industry Day slides at bottom right). Slides 20-28 illustrate how local procurements (such as the ones above already underway?) will proceed in parallel ("parallel call-off negotiation") with the implementation of BDUK's framework - "Local projects will drive much of the development of the final solution design and call-off contract development".

Does this mean that these local procurements, which will be seeking bids from suppliers likely also to be seeking to become suppliers on BDUK's framework at the same time, will be able to plug into BDUK's framework once it's complete?

BDUK second wave funding allocations - doing the maths

2011-06-10T13:53:00.004+01:00

It's interesting to analyse the funding allocated to the three successful Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) second wave bidders. According to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport's press release, issued two weeks ago today, funding allocations "are in the region of" £30m for Devon and Somerset, £15m for Norfolk and £4m for Wiltshire, with exact figures to be finalised in coming weeks.

BDUK's bidding guidance for the second wave, published earlier this year, had this advice for bidders:

"The Local Broadband Plan will need to identify the potential phasing of any capital funding sought from BDUK. The bid for funding should sit within a BDUK advised notional grant of £60 per premise, which can be flexed to take account of factors such as topography, population density and network architecture. BDUK is currently agreeing a funding allocation approach and expects to be in a position to confirm an indicative budget for BDUK funding allocations to local bodies on submission of their bids. BDUK would also be able to provide an indicator of what type/scale of requirement its modeling suggests may be feasible, within an overall budget that includes an assumption of additional public sector funding (arranged by the local body) and private sector funding (from a successful supplier) available."

So what's the origin of this notional grant of £60 per premise? Well, according to official government figures, there are currently 26m households and 2.1m businesses ("enterprises registered for VAT and/or PAYE in March 2010") in the UK. As we know, BDUK funding is intended for the final third of premises which won't be reached by the market's roll-out of next generation broadband. From the BDUK bidding guidance again:

"It is estimated that the private sector, given their currently published plans, will cover approximately two thirds of premises with access to superfast broadband by 2015. This leaves approximately one third of premises (or approximately 9 million premises) potentially within scope for public sector intervention in superfast broadband. We estimate that up to 1 million of these would prove too costly to rollout superfast broadband by 2015 and so are potentially out of scope for intervention in superfast broadband."

The total amount of funding available to 2015 is £530m, which a potential extra £300m available to 2017 if required; £530m divided by 9 million premises (the final third) gives approximately £60 per premise.

So how does this fit with the funding allocations made to the three second wave winners? According to official government statistics, the number of households and business premises in the three successful regions break down as follows:

Devon & Somerset: 882,000 households + 52,691 business premises = 934,691 total premises
Norfolk: 370,000 households + 21,569 business premises = 391,569 total premises
Wiltshire: 188,000 households + 11,049 business premises = 199,049 total premises

Some caution required, as the above figures relate to 2008; the household figures are available here (Table 406: Household projections, by district, 1991-2033) and the business premises figures are here (go to Topics > Physical Environment > Commercial and Industrial Floorspace and Rateable Value Statistics). The business premises figures are based on five different types of commercial and industrial premises: retail premises, offices (disaggregated into commercial, and 'other' office types), factories, warehouses and other bulk premises.

So, if we apply the final third principle to these regions, we end up with 311,564 final third premises in Devon and Somerset, 130,523 in Norfolk and 66,350 in Wiltshire. Which is very interesting, as if you divide the respective funding allocations (to recap: £30m for Devon & Somerset, £15m for Norfolk & £4m for Wiltshire) by these figures, only one region (Wiltshire) matches the £60 per premise figure suggested by BDUK. The others are much higher - £96.29 per premise for Devon & Somerset and £114.92 per premise for Norfolk.

Of course, another (and much simpler) way to analyse this is to divide the funding allocations by £60 to indicate (?) the number of premises the grant is intended to support. For Devon and Somerset, this results in 500,000 premises and 250,000 premises for Norfolk (for Wiltshire, the result is the same as the previous calculation, obviously).

Which leads me to two possible conclusions: either that connectivity per premise is significantly more expensive in Devon, Somerset and Norfolk (doubtful), or (more likely) that significantly more than a third of properties in Devon, Somerset and Norfolk are beyond the reach of commercial superfast broadband roll-outs. Wiltshire provides a good fit with the final third model, whereas more than half of premises in Devon, Somerset and Norfolk will require intervention if superfast broadband services are to reach them. Percentage-wise, this equates to 53% of premises in Devon and Somerset and 64% in Norfolk. Final Two Thirds, anyone?

So, do BDUK's funding allocations provide a metric to illustrate differing degrees of rurality across regions? Interesting food for thought, you can find a spreadsheet summarising my calculations here.

At home with broadband - the importance of concurrency

2011-06-08T21:31:00.005+01:00

I came across two excellent videos today, illustrating broadband's huge potential to transform life and work for households of the future.

The first, At Home with the NBN, shows the range of applications and facilities that Australia'sNational Broadband Network will make possible:

The second, published by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, provides a neat three-minute overview of the transformational power of broadband:

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development's recent report, Broadband: A Platform for Progress, is also well worth a read, in particular its (non-exhaustive!) listing of more than one hundred studies examining the economic impact of broadband.

Both these videos complement this great illustration (which I've used many, many times) of the "all Internet household":

This was produced by EDUCAUSE for their pamphlet Broadband's Promise for America. It clearly shows how concurrency (multiple simultaneous accesses to multiple applications) will be the key driver for increased bandwidth requirements. A related EDUCAUSE report, A Blueprint for Big Broadband, provides a further useful summary:

"The Aggregation of Multiple, Simultaneous Uses Will Make Big Broadband Networks a Necessity: Many recent studies discuss why broadband is necessary for individual broadband applications (discussed below). While these examples are certainly accurate, the most important point is that consumers will require a multiplicity of these services simultaneously. It is the aggregation of several of these applications in the home that will drive the future demand for broadband.

Consider the following real-world scenario: A home in middle America may include dad watching a live HDTV football game; daughter using the computer to access streaming video of a college course lecture; son playing a real-time interactive game; mom engaged in a videoconference for her home-based business; grandma, visiting for the holidays, downloading an episode of Masterpiece Theatre; and grandpa hooked up to an uninterruptable medical video feed to a remote monitoring facility. While all these uses are taking place, the home appliances are being monitored and video home security devices are sending video feeds back to an emergency alarm center. Together, this single home could easily consume 150 megabits of bandwidth with only the uses we can imagine today. Homes of the future will likely include even more imaginative products and services.”

All these materials help to move the next generation broadband debate from the theoretical ("next-gen broadband is important") to the specific ("next-gen broadband enables new applications a, b and c"), and are therefore hugely useful.

The more folks that have access to higher bandwidth broadband services, the more these scenarios will become the norm. And who wouldn't want that?

Wholesale provisions in public broadband procurements

2011-05-26T11:37:00.000+01:00

It's interesting to note that a number of recent and current broadband procurements include provisions for wholesale broadband access, often combining public sector broadband requirements as well. The information in this post was sourced from tender notices published in the European Union's Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) database, which is is publicly available.

This from Cheshire:

"Cheshire and Warrington SuperFast Broadband:…provision of Superfast Broadband Services to all businesses by and households by 2015…Superfast Broadband infrastructure provisioned will be future proof in terms of capacity and speed and be able to exceed both national as well as European targets. Superfast Broadband Services should offer parity in quality, cost for rural and urban areas. It is expected that the offer of access to wholesale services on the Superfast Broadband infrastructure be made to other operators in an open, transparent and non-discriminatory manner...The strategic partner(s) should consider how Superfast Broadband services could support public bodies in the region that currently operate over 1,000 Public Sector sites with disparate ICT network connectivity in line with the government agenda is to create PSNs (public sector networks) to support converged, fast, secure and reliable communications to lower the cost of public service delivery.”

From Cumbria:

"Provision of Strategic ICT Services in Cumbria: Lot 1: ICT services excluding wide area networks; Lot 2: wide area networks and superfast broadband...provision of both a wholesale superfast broadband network and provision of public sector enterprise network(s)...Lot 2 includes two distinct requirements, which the Authority may seek to procure under two separate contractual arrangements with the Contractor to reflect the different requirements:
i) The provision of a wholesale broadband network;
ii) A managed enterprise network service for the Authority and its Partners.
The wholesale broadband network will be partly funded by the Broadband Development UK (BDUK) programme of work, and is therefore subject to state aid notification requirements which include the requirement for the Contractor to offer wholesale services to other retail service providers on a transparent and non-discriminatory basis for at least 7 years…the Contractor will either have a retail capability, or will partner with retailer businesses...The design, build, operation, maintenance and upgrading of a wholesale broadband network to provide wholesale service that a retail service provider might provide to business and residential consumers, including public sector organisations…the Contractor will also provide network connectivity and ancillary services to the Authority’s enterprise managed ICT service described in Lot 1 (e.g. wide area network services between the Authority’s premises including but not limited to offices, schools, libraries and other Authority premises, and potentially those of Partner organisations including - but not limited to- Police, Health Authority facilities such as hospitals and clinics, fire and rescue service locations).”

Devon & Somerset:

"Rural broadband project: Lot 1: RDPE funded areas (delivery of fast broadband to 4 rural areas as detailed within the ITT); Lot 2: DCC funded areas (delivery of fast broadband to 2 rural areas as detailed within the ITT)...Devon County Council is…seeking to enable access to the additional capacity, technical capability and geographical coverage that exists in the current physical network infrastructure, without the need to replicate a new network across the county. Somerset County Council has also indicated that its public service network supplier is willing to engage in discussions regarding open access to ducts and poles as part of the "rural broadband project" solution...The primary objective is to provide NGA compatible broadband connectivity to communities within specific geographical areas. Each area is defined by its rurality, some level of economic deprivation, current poor broadband connectivity but relatively high levels of business activity.”

Lancashire:

"Lancashire Superfast Broadband Project: The partner will own the superfast broadband network and in doing so will have responsibility for maintaining and upgrading the superfast broadband network, ensuring a sustainable arrangement. The partner will be required to ensure open, equitable and transparent access to the superfast broadband network...The superfast broadband network will be required to be open to all service and communications providers...It is anticipated that the superfast broadband network will be completed within 2.5 to 3 years from the commencement of deployment followed by a minimum operating period of at least seven years during which period of time the Partner will be required to offer wholesale services and access to other operators in an open, transparent and non-discriminatory manner...The proposed contract period assumes a design and construction period of 2.5 to 3 years, followed by an operational period of 7 to 10 years. There will be an option to extend the contract up to a maximum of a further 5 years.”

Rutland:

"Digital Rutland: co-funding and provision of next generation broadband and end user services in the County of Rutland: The intention is to deploy technology neutral next generation broadband infrastructure so as to maximise broadband reach in the county, addressing the issues of "white spots" and areas that market providers will not penetrate on a commercial basis in the near future…Operation of an open provider model leading to a range of communication providers in the market place for both wholesale and retail markets…Increased demand and consumer choice in communication providers leading to competition for ISP provision and cheaper applications and services.”

embc, East Midlands:

"UK-East Midlands Public Sector Network Framework procurement of PSN compliant Broadband a)Infrastructure and b) Services: Expressions of interest are invited to develop and deliver an East Midlands PSN compliant a) Infrastructure and b) services, for the period of a) Infrastructure 7 years plus options to extend by 3 years to 10 years, November 2011 to November 2021 to allow for return on investment required to ensure the coverage of the required quality and reach, and, b) Services 4 years November 2011 to November 2015. It is anticipated that suppliers would ,where appropriate, build upon the existing infrastructure and services investment made by the emPSN partners and customers in meeting the varying needs of the public sector and their partners in the East Midlands, and nationally. It is anticipated that any new infrastructure will facilitate the deployment of broadband in the surrounding area, for example by integrating digital hubs into the solution design. This might include the design and provision of community hub infrastructure to enable community broadband provision, along with provision of wholesale data transport products from these hubs. The contract must also ensure that the use of this new infrastructure is compliant with State Aid guidelines for the provision of next generation networks, including ensuring wholesale access and the monitoring and claw-back of super-profit where the network is used for this purpose...The following contracting authorities shall be able to use the contract: Education sites, including schools, tertiary sector and lifelong learning; Local Authority sites, other unitary authorities and the wider public sector; third sector and Institutions of higher education and colleges of further education in the region, and other sites within the East Midlands and nationally to meet the needs of those public-sector organisations which have business needs within the region.”

Do such wholesale provisions potentially offer a mechanism for community networks to plug into a wider local authority or regional infrastructure? For example to purchase backhaul provision?

BDUK's Programme Delivery Model

2011-05-26T10:40:00.008+01:00

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) last week published the first version of its delivery model, its purpose being "to bring forward network infrastructure upgrades and to improve the accessibility of services in locations where there is a weak commercial investment case".

It's an interesting read, illustrating how rapidly broadband policy has evolved since the publication last December of the strategy document Britain's Superfast Broadband Future, and even since BDUK's second wave bidding guidance published in March. Here are what I think are the most significant new developments.

The delivery model includes more detail of the range of advice and support available from BDUK:

Section 7.8.1, page 23 – Broadband Project Toolkit – “a toolkit (guidance, standard documentation and templates) that will provide material from the development of a Local Broadband Plan, through to the procurement or sourcing phase and up to monitoring of the delivery phase.”
Section 6.3.2, page 16-17 – Programme Milestones – “November 2011 - Report setting out the lessons learned from Superfast Broadband Pilots and the Government’s approach to investment in broadband until 2015”
Section 5.4.2, page 14 – benefits measurement framework: “BDUK and Defra have jointly commissioned the development of a usable analytical framework based on a robust and coherent set of indicators. This will also include guidance for local bodies on the use of this framework. The framework will allow monitoring to be undertaken on a consistent basis across the country, and is intended to be finalised in the second quarter of 2011.”

Also interesting are BDUK's intentions to put in place a procurement framework to streamline implementation for both purchasers and providers:

Executive summary, page 2: “BDUK will seek to put in place a procurement framework for the most common commercial delivery approach (investment gap funding) that further projects can call-off where appropriate. In addition, BDUK will procure a separate framework for local bodies to allow consumers and businesses to access broadband services through satellite where it is not economic to use alternative solutions.”
Section 7.2.5, page 18 – BDUK activities overview: “BDUK has developed an overall sourcing approach to Programme delivery. This allows local bodies in early projects to lead their own procurements, with BDUK support to develop a standardised approach. For subsequent projects, BDUK proposed to create supplier frameworks from which local bodies can call-off broadband services. If the early projects demonstrate that there is insufficient competition in the market place then BDUK will consider putting in place overarching bilateral contracts with suppliers, with provisions to ensure a degree of sub-contracting where appropriate. BDUK will also procure a framework contract for local bodies to call-off broadband services for a limited number of customers for delivery by satellite technology.”
Section 13.2.3, page 48 – commercial & procurement approach overview: “Early projects will lead their own procurement processes, and BDUK will work with these local bodies to identify the best ways to simplify and standardise procurement routes. BDUK will seek to put in place a procurement framework for the investment gap funded approach that further projects can call-off from where appropriate. In addition, BDUK will procure a separate framework for local bodies to allow consumers and businesses to access broadband services through satellite where it is not economic to use alternative solutions.”
Section 13.5.3, page 51 – procurement options: “BDUK will prepare for the development of framework contract(s) which local bodies can utilise for subsequent projects based on the investment gap funded model. Local bodies proposing different commercial models, including where a procurement for broadband services is combined with a procurement for public sector enterprise network services, will be expected to undertake their own separate procurements. BDUK will expect that local bodies in England using the investment gap funded model will generally wish to procure through a BDUK framework. It is likely to be a more efficient method of procurement for both local bodies and suppliers, and will be consistent with BDUK’s umbrella State Aid notification.”
Section 13.5.4, page 52 – procurement options: “Where local bodies intend to procure local broadband services in combination with a procurement for a public sector enterprise network then it may consider combining the procurements under one OJEU, potentially with different lots. BDUK will work with the PSN Programme to develop guidance on issues to be considered when using this approach.”

Whilst there is clearly a lot of commonality across local authorities and regions, which lends itself to the framework approach, the challenge will be enabling sufficient capacity for innovation in the development of local solutions. It isn't a case of "one size fits all". Open (wholesale) access is key to BDUK's plans, to provide competition and choice and also address State Aid requirements:

Section 4.3.1, page 9 – investing in economic infrastructure to maximise growth opportunities: “Stimulate investment in networks that offer wholesale access”
Section 11.3.5, page 39 – outputs from local broadband projects: “The retail price of broadband subscriptions will be set by retail service providers (i.e. internet service providers). It is intended that the contracts for wholesale broadband services between local bodies and suppliers will provide for open access to any retail service providers who choose to buy it to ensure ongoing competition in line with the rest of the UK market. It is intended that broadband subscriptions will be available at an affordable price to customers.”
Section 12.5.5, page 43 – retail access platform: “To address the potential outcomes, BDUK will encourage, as State Aid dictates, open retail access that is allowed to grow as more homes and businesses are able to access broadband services. This will be achieved by embedding the associated commercial and technical provisions within the core requirements outlined in section 12.3 above. BDUK will explore further with industry whether any further actions are required to ensure that sufficient open retail access is available for local broadband projects.”

It's encouraging that the model includes a renewed emphasis on the potential to re-use existing public sector infrastructure, as well as recognition of the Cabinet Office Public Sector Network (PSN) programme, JANET and other education networks:

Section 4.2.2, page 9 – facilitating local delivery: “Provide advice and guidance on making use of available or planned networks for public sector use.”
Section 4.3.6, page 10 – investing in economic infrastructure to maximise growth opportunities: “Principle 9: Facilitate the re-use of network infrastructure in which the public sector is investing:
Work with the Cabinet Office Public Sector Network (PSN) Programme to encourage the re-use and re-usability of public sector networks which form part of the PSN;
Ensure that best practice advice and guidance is disseminated from previous and current local body contracts for PSN and other wide area network projects; and
Ensure appropriate linkages are made with other public sector investments (e.g. Grid for Learning and JANET) on a national and regional basis.”
Section 7.11.3, page 26 – links with other government policies: “The Broadband Delivery Programme is also discussing with the Department of Health and the Department for Education the opportunities and benefits for individuals to access services over Superfast Broadband, particularly for individuals in rural and remote areas.”
Section 8.2.4, page 27 – activities for local bodies – overview: “Re-use of public sector enterprise networks. Local bodies should identify where it is possible to leverage on the value of existing planned investments in infrastructure or services which provide enterprise networks for public sector use.”
Section 12.8.3, page 45-46 – use of enterprise networks in the public sector: “Local bodies will need to gather adequate data on the assets that are available for re-use, whether under a single contract, or under multiple smaller contracts. This could usefully include information on public sector investment in route upgrades by network operators over the last 5-10 years. The provision of broadband access to education establishments in particular means that a significant number of routes have potentially been readied for fibre rollout.”

Also good to see more about BDUK's intentions in relation to State Aid, which weren't described in any detail in the bidding guidance published in March:

Section 7.8.4, page 23 – broadband project toolkit: “The toolkit will contain…advice and templates for state aid applications.”
Section 13.2.4, page 48 – commercial & procurement approach overview: “BDUK will seek an umbrella State Aid approval from Europe for the programme of procurement activities, so that BDUK acts as a competency centre assuring the European Commission that individual projects adhere to the principles of the umbrella notification.”

...which should be of considerable assistance to local authorities and other bodies developing local broadband plans. Finally some interesting comments on demand for superfast broadband:

Sections 9.2.5 & 9.2.8, page 32 – the importance of demand: “While access to Superfast Broadband is available to nearly 50% of the population through the Virgin network and a growing percentage of the population through BT’s fibre to the cabinet investment, national take-up is still very low…The Broadband Delivery Programme is supporting a survey being undertaken by the Communication Management Association (part of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT) to Federation of Small Businesses members to better understand their demand for Superfast Broadband.”

"National take-up is still very low"...this is something we need to consider carefully I think. I wouldn't suggest for a moment that we shouldn't as a country be developing our broadband infrastructure, but this fact should make us pause for thought.

We tend to focus on stimulating demand, which is clearly important, but shouldn't we also be investigating where current broadband infrastructure is a constraint, for homes, businesses and public services? Some instances are clear, like poor availability in rural areas, but others are less well defined and understood. For example, the constraints current broadband provision places on delivering public services like healthcare. We need to understand better all the things that we can't do (but would like to do) with our current infrastructure.

I think we should look to organisations like Australia's Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society (IBES) for assistance here:

"IBES is a cross-disciplinary research institute dedicated to innovations in products, services and end-user experiences that maximise the benefits of new broadband technologies to Australian society. The Institute's activities covers a wide range of fields including Education and Learning, Health and Wellbeing, Business and Service Transformation, Network Deployment and Economics, and Smart Communities and Infrastructure."

As I've said before on this blog, the broadband debate needs to move on from the theoretical ("broadband is important") to the specific ("next generation services enable applications x, y and z, which can't be delivered over current generation services for reasons a, b and c").

If we develop and share our understanding of the breadth of new services and applications that next generation services will support, this can only help to stimulate demand? As in "I want some of that too"?

Some observations on Fujitsu's rural broadband proposals

2011-04-15T21:35:00.000+01:00

Like many others, I was very interested to read about Fujitsu's plans, announced earlier this week, to build a fibre network to deliver next generation broadband to 5 million homes in rural Britain.

This is to be welcomed and was widely covered by the media. For example, here's what the BBC had to say:

"Much of the system will be built on BT infrastructure, such as underground ducting and phone poles, which it has been forced to open up to competitors. Fujitsu wants £500m of government money to help fund the project. That would account for the lion's share of the £530m the government has set aside to stimulate rural broadband projects."

Similarly, the FT offered this:

"Fujitsu’s planned £2bn high speed network, based on optical fibre cables, would cover 5m homes in countryside areas scattered across England, Scotland and Wales. Those communities have been at serious risk of never receiving superfast broadband because of the greater cost of building high-speed networks in the countryside compared with towns and cities. Fujitsu’s plans are contingent on it securing at least £500m of the £830m of public funds that the government last year said could help pay for superfast broadband in rural areas."

But here's what Fujitsu's press release actually said:

"Fujitsu, one of the world’s largest technology and communications companies, today announced plans to work in collaboration with Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Cisco to deliver next generation internet services to 5 million homes in rural Britain. The collaboration and subsequent Fujitsu build of a new superfast, fibre optic broadband network is a ground breaking and innovative alternative to BT Openreach and provides an opportunity for any community or local authority looking to access a proportion of the £530 million earmarked by the UK Government to drive investment in superfast broadband in rural communities. The Fujitsu open access wholesale network will be underpinned by Cisco’s world leading technology. Virgin Media and TalkTalk intend to access wholesale products via this network in order to retail next generation services to customers in remote parts of the UK. The network will also be open to other service providers on wholesale terms."

Which part of the above paragraph demonstrates that Fujitsu's proposals are "contingent upon it securing at least £500m" of the funds available to local authoirties and local enterprise partnerships via BDUK? None of it, at least as far as I can see. Perhaps the BBC and FT are privy to information about Fujitsu's plans that I'm not? Or is this simply a case of sloppy reporting? Given the potentially huge landscape changes that Fujitsu's announcement could create, it would've been helpful for key media like the FT and BBC to report it correctly?

Fujitsu's announcement is also particularly interesting in the light of the current dispute over the costs set out in BT's reference proposals for duct and pole sharing, intended to reduce the cost of rolling out next generation access networks, as reported here by the BBC (hopefully correctly this time). Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey had this to say in a DCMS statement welcoming Fujitsu's proposals:

"I am delighted that Fujitsu along with Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Cisco share the Government's vision. The collaboration between these companies was exactly the sort of ambition and innovation the Government wanted to stimulate by removing barriers to broadband rollout. Fujitsu and their industry partners are pledging a substantial investment in the UK and it represents a deep commitment to the future success of this country.”

Fujitsu's announcement includes the following in relation to BT's infrastructure sharing proposals:

"The plans rely on the remedy imposed by the regulator Ofcom, on BT Openreach, to provide access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms."

Should this be taken to mean that Fujitsu think access has been provided on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms", and will proceed with their plans on this basis, or that access has not yet been provided in this manner and needs to be before they do so? My guess is the former, given the use of the past tense "imposed" in the above sentence?

A further perspective on the dispute was provided by the Managing Director of business ISP Fluidata in an ISPreview article:

"The rural piece being supported by Government in the form of BDUK is to help build new networks across the country to support high speed internet access. These companies are using this as an excuse that BT has the commercial edge and hence there is no point bidding for these projects. One could argue however, that on the whole these businesses never have had such an appetite for low density populations and instead want access to BT ducts in urban areas where their networks need expansion. In the case of Sky and TalkTalk being involved I think this is much more opportunistic rather than serious as neither has ever been directly involved in infrastructure apart from housing routers in exchanges as part of their LLU networks. Building out the last mile is certainly a different kettle of fish and something I can see companies such as theirs outsourcing going forward. That leaves the likes of Geo and Virgin who have their own networks and, from what I believe, give no access to BT to any of their own ducts or poles."

Wihile another view was put forward by Fibrestream, arguing that duct and pole access is essentially a red herring, as it's better to build a new fit for purpose infrastructure rather than utilise ducts and poles that may not be appropriate anyway:

"...in the 21st Century, FttH Overbuilders, led in terms of actual network deployment by NextGenUs UK CIC with its pioneering community-centric social enterprise economics, have little interest in legacy BT assets. The reality in rural areas is that ducting may not be available or even present and the condition of poles may be an impediment to shared access for FttH reuse in any event, regardless of squabbles about actual access costs."

So who to believe in all of this? Fujitsu? Ed Vaizey? Alternative providers? Fibrestream/NextGenUs? Fluidata? BT? Ofcom?

I for one am now totally confused about who's "in the right" in all of this. However, I am sure about one thing: the longer it takes to resolve this dispute to the satisfaction of all parties, the less chance this administration has of reaching its target for the UK to have the best superfast broadband in Europe within the lifetime of this parliament.

BDUK’s second wave process – a few questions

2011-04-07T21:25:00.000+01:00

A few things have occurred to me in relation to the current BDUK bidding round; chiefly, why do rural areas need to demonstrate demand for NGA broadband?

Given how widespread NGA rollouts are across urban areas, it seems highly likely to me that operators would be extending their services to rural areas if it was cost-effective for them to do so. After all, this is what happened as current generation broadband services rolled out across the country, when all exchanges were eventually enabled (if not unbundled) as a matter of routine, rather than on the basis of demand registration and trigger levels. The difference this time around of course is that NGA upgrade costs are significantly higher than those experienced during the deployment of current generation broadband, with return on investment periods significantly longer as a result.

I don't dispute the importance in principle of demand registration and stimulation activities. They can demonstrate to suppliers that there is significant demand for their services in rural areas. They can also help in relation to state aid approvals, registering demand in the absence of market delivery to help make the case for public intervention. But surely suppliers are fully aware of the pent-up demand for broadband in rural areas already, given the levels of takeup of current generation broadband across both urban and rural areas?

The various rural broadband events I’ve attended over the past few months have demonstrated that it’s more a question of demand containment than stimulation in rural areas, with a great deal of frustration felt by audiences who are still waiting for reliable current generation services. The reasons suppliers aren’t investing in rural areas are the inherent costs in doing so and the resulting likelihood of little or no return, based on the economics of provision and customers' (understandable) pricing expectations. The lack of investment isn't due to doubts about the level of demand?

If it was being proposed that rural populations should have to pay more for their broadband than urban populations (and by more I mean significantly more, as I recognise that folks in rural areas, served by exchanges where BT is the sole operator, like mine, already pay more for their broadband, as well as having less choice/competition than folks in urban areas), then the purpose of demand registration and stimulation would be much more apparent. It would demonstrate to suppliers and investors the extent to which rural areas want broadband (which is, to state the obvious, a lot) and could also indicate the amounts rural communities were prepared to contribute, both collectively and individually.

But such differential pricing isn't being proposed under current policy, and I don’t mean to suggest that it should be either. The scorecard approach being put forward by the government (to describe what having the “best superfast broadband in Europe” actually means) quite rightly covers a range of aspects such as competition, choice and affordability, as well as bandwidths and coverage. From Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future:

“A network that can provide superfast broadband to half the population but nothing to everyone else is not best in Europe; a network that can provide superfast broadband access to everyone, but at prices that few can afford is also not best in Europe; a network that provides superfast broadband that few are interested in using will not be best in Europe.”

My inference from the above (in addition to the fact that the last statement is highly unlikely) is that superfast broadband prices should be directly comparable across rural and urban areas, especially given that there are areas of rural as well as urban deprivation? So, if services are to be as affordable as possible to as many as possible, why single out rural populations to ask them whether they want broadband or not, and if they do want broadband (which we know they do), how much they would be prepared to pay for it?

I don’t for a moment think that it would be fair to suggest that rural populations should pay significantly more than their urban counterparts for broadband, above and beyond the current differences, particularly given the acknowledgement at policy level of the importance of broadband to everyone, rural areas included. The government’s strategy clearly recognises the need to ensure both the universal availability of 2Mbps broadband as well as the widespread availability of NGA, stating that the drive to deliver the former shouldn't be separated from the drive to deliver the latter.

Don't such policy objectives demonstrate in themselves that the demand case is proven?

BDUK second wave funding process underway

2011-03-14T16:37:00.002Z

Following the "annoucement" by Chancellor George Osborne of £50m for superfast broadband on Friday 4th March 2011 (this figure was first announced when the government's superfast broadband strategy document was published last December - see this press release), the bidding process for the second wave of Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) projects is now underway.

The first four pilot projects were announced as part of October's Comprehensive Spending Review. This set out that "£530 million will be invested over the Spending Review period to support the UK’s broadband network and to incentivise the roll out of superfast broadband in areas that the private sector would not otherwise reach." At the same time, four pilot projects were announced, in Cumbria, Herefordshire, North Yorkshire and the Highland and Islands.

So this £50m is the second tranche of the £530m total to be made available, via a bidding process managed by BDUK, guidance for which is available here. The process is open to local bodies (tier 1 local authorities and local enterprise partnerships), which will have the prime responsibility for ensuring the appropriate delivery of broadband in their areas. Central to BDUK's approach is the development of a local broadband plan, documenting the approach to be taken and the outcomes to be achieved. In addition to developing the plan, local bodies are responsible for the following:

securing investment – from BDUK, as well as from additional public, private and European sources;
design, procurement and implementation;
ensuring the appropriate state aid approvals and clearances (with support from BDUK);
demand registration and stimulation;
monitoring outcomes and benefits realisation activities.

BDUK state in their pilot projects FAQ that "we have indicated that we will allocate £5m to £10m to each project, but the final number has yet to be decided and would be subject to a process of due diligence." So a not unreasonable assumption would be that a similar level of funding (with the above caveats) will be availble for projects successful in this second wave? BDUK's bidding guidance is silent on this, also on the number of awards to be made in this second wave ("BDUK will select a number of successful bids"), other than to say that:

"The bid for funding should sit within a BDUK advised notional grant of £60 per premise, which can be flexed to take account of factors such as topography, population density and network architecture. BDUK is currently agreeing a funding allocation approach and expects to be in a position to confirm an indicative budget for BDUK funding allocations to local bodies on submission of their bids. BDUK would also be able to provide an indicator of what type/scale of requirement its modeling suggests may be feasible, within an overall budget that includes an assumption of additional public sector funding (arranged by the local body) and private sector funding (from a successful supplier) available."

The guidance also flags the importance of securing funding additional to that being made available by BDUK:

"BDUK wishes to see local commitment to the proposed project. All bids must therefore include a local financial contribution towards the overall costs of the measures put forward. Bids must identify whether the local contribution will come from local authority sources or external partners such as health authorities as well as the private sector. They should also describe whether any local contributions are in the form of a pure capital contribution to the overall subsidy or whether they are based on guaranteed public sector demand as an ‘anchor customer’ for the project. BDUK would welcome capital contributions from local bodies towards the cost of their broadband projects based on an ‘invest to save’ business case (for example, through the achievement of lower transaction costs as a result of increased customer interaction via the web). The greater the overall contribution towards the costs (both in terms of capital and revenue funding) from local authorities and other local bodies as well as other external organisations, the more positively the bid will be considered in the assessment process."

This reinforces that the funding available through BDUK will not of itself be sufficient to provision superfast broadband; rather, it is the intention that the funding should provide a stimulus to support additional public and private investment, including from European funding sources. There is also an expectation that bidders in this round will be at an advanced stage of readiness in terms of their capacity to make use of the funding:

“Local Authorities and other Local Bodies who are considering submitting a bid as part of this award round should have already undertaken much of the preparatory groundwork to develop a Local Broadband Plan, prior to the issuing of this guidance. Key plans should be in place which have been developed in collaboration with a range of stakeholders including local communities and reflect both requirements for speed and coverage.”

Re-use of existing broadband infrastructure is also an important consideration for bidders:

“Local bodies should consider the re-use of existing public sector networks as part of the solution where they provide an efficient means of improving household connectivity. Where appropriate, local bodies should describe how they intend to use their existing investments in public sector networks as well as how partnerships with the wider public sector (for example police and health) can be used to leverage the best superfast broadband upgrades for their community.”

It's interesting to compare the bidding guidance's advice in relation to state aid with what's said in the government's strategy document, published last December. Here's what the strategy has to say:

"BDUK is working with the BIS State aid unit and engaging with the Commission to understand the scope for a UK wide State aid notification and clearance. Previously approved umbrella schemes (e.g. in Germany) appear to have been based on a fairly prescriptive and regulated framework and it remains to be seen if the level of flexibility required by the UK’s current policy of decentralisation can be made compatible with the Commission’s requirements for an umbrella approach. Since BDUK will recommend standardised commercial models and templates, local bodies taking the lead on broadband will be encouraged to innovate, and projects will be tailored and based on a range of possible commercial and delivery approaches, solutions and models to take account of specific local objectives, funding sources, etc. In the meantime and pending approval of any umbrella scheme in the UK, BDUK intends to develop a single State aid notification for the Superfast broadband pilots and to promote a more consistent approach to State aid notifications to help reduce the Commission’s case load generated by the UK. To this end, BDUK is developing a State aid template notification. This template will greatly reduce the effort and uncertainty for local bodies’ state aid notifications. BDUK will also be producing supporting guidance on key issues such as the re-use of public sector networks, and intends to provide other tools (e.g. central mapping data, recommended commercial/delivery/sourcing/ procurement models and processes), support and expertise."

In contrast, BDUK's bidding guidance states that one of the responsibilities of bidding local bodies is "managing applications for State Aid clearance, with support from BDUK", with bidders advised to consult the EU's revised state aid guidelines on broadband networks (more on state aid in this previous post), applying to the EU for clearance if necessary. The nature of the support BDUK will provide to bidders in this regard isn't specified any further in the guidance, nor is any reference made to the approaches to managing state aid issues described in the government's strategy document.

So...does this mean that the UK wide umbrella scheme and state aid template notification mentioned in the strategy document are no longer being considered? Or is it more simply that these measures won't be in place in time to support this second funding round? Or am I putting two and two together to make five here?

Local bodies intending to submit bids as part of this funding round need to inform BDUK of their intention to do so by 25th March 2011. The closing date for the submission of bids (in the form of a local broadband plan, a template for which has been provided by BDUK) is 18th April 2011, with the announcement of successful bids on 27th May 2011.

Ofcom spectrum developments: boosts for 3G, white spaces, spectrum trading, LTE/4G services…but whither WiMAX?

2011-03-01T17:09:00.001Z

Following on from my previous posts about Ofcom announcements on wholesale local access and wholesale broadband access, it seemed like a good idea to take stock of where we are in terms of spectrum developments, and how these will support current and future mobile and wireless broadband services.

There have been several strands of activity over last six months or so, focusing mainly on how to deal with the network congestion created by the ever increasing use of mobile broadband, to ensure that spectrum (a finite resource) is utilised as efficiently as possible. Here’s my timeline of recent Ofcom announcements in this area:

September 2010: Ofcom publishes a statement on boosting 3G signal strengths, on the basis that “this has the potential to provide benefits for customers through improved voice capacity, data throughput and in-building signal availability by making more effective use of currently available base station technology. We believe that in practice this will have no adverse effect on the operation of services in adjacent spectrum bands.” Commentary from eWeek Europe: “The limit is to be upped by 3dBm, from 62dBm to 65dBm – meaning operators can increase the power of their transmitters from 1.5kW to 3kW. However Ofcom was actually hoping to boost the level to 68dBm to provide some future proofing, but some operators were concerned that their network infrastructure would not be able to cope with such a large jump…It is clear then that the thinking behind the idea is to help mobile operators better cope with the strain being placed on their networks, by the increasing use of smartphones.”
November 2010: Ofcom announces a one-month consultation (press release here) in relation to the potential to use white spaces, the unused spectrum between TV channels, to deliver wireless broadband services: “…the technology…could be used for a wide range of innovative applications. For example, technology manufacturers have suggested that it might wirelessly link up different devices and offer enhanced broadband access in rural areas. The technology works by searching for unused radio waves called “white spaces” between TV channels to transmit and receive wireless signals. Compared with other forms of wireless technology, such as Bluetooth and WiFi, white-space devices are being designed to use lower frequencies that have traditionally been reserved for TV. Signals at these frequencies travel further and more easily through walls.” The consultation focused on the geolcation mechanisms necessary to identify what spectrum is available where, to ensure that any new services don’t cause interference, with Ofcom proposing a “geolocation database” containing live information about which frequencies are free to use at a given location. Ofcom’s intention is that a regulatory and technical regime in place to support white space technology will be in place by the end of 2011.
January 2011: to encourage more efficient use of spectrum and better service delivery, Ofcom announces it is to open up 2G spectrum for 3G services, to provide increased coverage and higher speeds: “Ofcom has today introduced a new measure that will help mobile phone operators to increase mobile broadband speeds, deliver improved in-building coverage and widen mobile broadband coverage in rural areas. From today the airwaves used by mobile phone operators for 2G services, such as making phone calls and sending texts, will be available to provide 3G services, such as mobile internet browsing. Mobile phone operators could previously only use a limited amount of spectrum – the airwaves that mobile phones and other wireless devices use to communicate – to deliver 3G.The remainder of their spectrum holdings was licensed in the 1990s with a condition that it could only be used for 2G services – mainly voice calls and text messages. This spectrum could in future be used to meet the growing demand from smartphone devices and the like for 3G services.”
February 2011: Ofcom announces its spectrum trading consultation, which includes proposals to optimise the efficiency of current spectrum usage and enable consolidation across operators, in relation to the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands: “Spectrum is of particular importance to the mobile phone and mobile broadband industry, which relies on it to carry information between customers’ handsets and mobile masts. There are 80 million mobiles in the UK and more than 12.8 million of these are smart phones, used by people to access the internet. This is placing big demands on mobile spectrum. Under the proposals, which cover spectrum at 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz, operators with a greater need for spectrum will be able to make offers for spectrum from those who need it less. It is hoped that this added flexibility will help operators to respond more quickly to demand.” From the consultation document: “Spectrum is a valuable and finite resource. Its use underpins about 3% of UK GDP and is worth over £40bn a year to the economy. Spectrum trading is an important mechanism for securing its optimal use for society. Trading allows spectrum to migrate to those that can generate greater benefits for citizens and consumers. Spectrum trading promotes innovation and growth by opening up opportunities for businesses to gain access to the radio frequencies that they need. The ability to trade spectrum is therefore critical to securing maximum benefit for society…Spectrum trading enables licence holders to transfer some or all of the rights and associated obligations they hold under a licence under the Act to third parties…Generally, the more flexibility we allow in spectrum trading, the greater the potential benefits to consumers; we create a wider range of potential opportunities for trades to occur that further the efficient and optimal use of the spectrum.” Commentary from TechEye: “Over the past two decades, mobile phone companies in the UK have traditionally acquired blocks of licensed spectrum. The more spectrum an operator holds, the more telephone conversations and internet traffic it can carry over its network. However, not all operators hold the same amount of spectrum, and the level of demand for mobile services also differs from area to area. By allowing operators to trade their spectrum, Ofcom believes that there will be greater opportunities to use it more efficiently. It's also an earner for trade. Under the plan, Ofcom would act as the intermediary for spectrum trading, with the power to permit or reject trades. The consultation is set to take six weeks, and trades are expected to begin in the summer.”
Looking to the future – 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) services: Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards set out Ofcom’s timetable for the next generation of mobile services (which will operate in the 800Mhz and 2.6Ghz blocks) in a speech to the FT World Telecoms Conference in November 2010: “We aim to publish a consultation on our assessment of likely future mobile competition and detailed proposals for the combined auction, including details of any measures we propose to take to ensure effective competition, by the end of February (2011). That consultation will end in May. A statement on future competition and details of the combined auction, together with draft auction regulations, in early autumn of 2011. Final auction regulations in place before the end of 2011. Bidders’ applications invited, eligibility checks and bidding itself to commence in Q1 2012. Depending on how long bidding lasts, result known and licences issued in Q2 2012. The spectrum itself we expect to be available from the beginning of 2013. The process of release completed, we hope, by the end of 2013. Networks up and running shortly thereafter.” So, if all goes to plan, such services could potentially contribute to the government’s target for the UK to have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015/within the lifetime of this parliament? Especially given the speeds these new services promise? Germany was the first European country to begin a 4G auction in April 2010, closing after a month with the four existing operators dividing the available spectrum between them for a contribution of €4.4bn to the German economy.

So that’s where we are currently, which makes me wonder where all of the above leaves WiMAX? Still in the running, according to PC Pro:

“WiMAX may look to be dying off, but broadband potential could mean there's still life in the system yet, according to the company running it in the UK…Instead of opting for WiMAX, the UK’s mobile carriers are expected to move to Long Term Evolution (LTE) for the 4G services that are increasingly required to meet the data demands from smartphone users. The two technologies have been seen as rivals, but UK Broadband says WiMAX could still have a role to play in filling gaps in the UK wireless data market and be a viable broadband alternative, even if mobile phone companies choose to roll out LTE…Although LTE looks likely to be the technology of choice for internet-to-smartphone communications, the fact that even O2 - which is running trials of LTE in Slough - admits that 4G services won’t arrive in the UK for “years rather than months” suggests WiMAX might still have a window of opportunity in the UK.”

Similar commentary from MuniWireless:

“Today Britain has one remaining license-holding WiMAX operator – UK Broadband – who has been busy over the last two years converting its wireless infrastructure from pre-WiMAX TD-CDMA technology to the latest 802.16e mobile WiMAX. The company now holds an impressive block of nationwide spectrum between 3.5GHz and 4.2GHz, along with higher frequencies for microwave backhaul. Business focus has switched away from consumer to local government, education and healthcare verticals. There is no doubt that PCCW (the Hong Kong company that wholly owns UK Broadband) executives have been studying Clearwire’s progress in the US, where indicators suggest a shift towards wholesale, leaving the consumer business to Sprint. If UK Broadband is prepared to monetize its spectrum holdings through wholesale arrangements with other carriers, and invest in sufficient infrastructure in UK cities for bandwidth-intensive business segments such as wireless CCTV and Internet connectivity for public safety and public transportation, then it stands a real chance of success with its WiMAX strategy.”

UK Broadband is now the only remaining license-holding WiMAX ISP in the country, following the closure of Freedom4 and the subsequent sale of its licensed spectrum and assets to UK Broadband, which looks like a company to keep an eye on. But what about unlicensed WiMAX services – do these still have a role to play? This article suggests that they do, while his press release from wireless vendor Proxim provides one example of how unlicensed WiMAX products are currently being used. This one illustrates how Cybermoor uses unlicensed WiMAX and this one describes the product bundles Proxim prepared to support rural broadband grant programmes in the USA and elsewhere.

All of which is good news – the more the merrier?

The increasing importance of online video in education

2011-02-23T12:52:00.001Z

Further to this previous post on the tremendous potential of next generation access for education, some interesting new research by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the USA reveals the increasing extent to which teachers value video as a teaching resource.

Deepening Connections - Teachers Increasingly Rely on Media and Technology is the title of the eighth annual PBS teacher survey on media and technology use. The survey is based on a representative sample of 1,401 teachers across the USA. From the introduction:

"Teachers value digital media as instructional resources that help them engage student interest, promote creativity and differentiate instruction. Increasingly, teachers are turning to the Internet to access content that traditionally has been distributed via television broadcasts. Educators are not limiting their searches to classroom content. They also are seeking ways to improve and grow professionally. Teachers increasingly are using the Internet to access instructional strategies and opportunities for professional development, collaboration and inspiration."

Streaming and downloading of content by teachers is surging:

“The Internet is giving new life to video content for classroom instruction. Teachers’ streaming and downloading of video content traditionally distributed via television broadcast or DVDs increased significantly for yet another year in a row, now just narrowly behind DVD use…All of the momentum is on the side of the Internet. Seventy-eight percent of K–12 teachers report that they access video content on DVDs—a figure that hasn’t budged over the past several years. In contrast, the percentage of teachers reporting that they stream or download video content increased from 55 percent in 2007 to 76 percent in 2010.”

Teachers are also becoming much more strategic in their use of video, something that streaming lends itself to very effectively:

“Streamed and downloaded content could be easier to integrate and customize for instruction. In fact, teachers’ use of short video segments (from three minutes to less than five minutes in length) increased this year, with 29 percent of teachers reporting this is the average length of video segments they use, up from 22 percent in 2009. Use of longer segments of 10 minutes or more was down significantly this year. Teachers seem to be using video more strategically to introduce, supplement and reinforce content and to engage students in learning.”

However, inevitably, some technical challenges remain:

"There is a downside to the popularity of streaming video content over the Internet. Problems with streaming video include skipping, pausing or constant buffering, indicating that computing devices or technology infrastructure, or both, do not yet have the capacity to handle teachers’ increasingly Internet-dependent instructional activity. Most teachers (78 percent) encounter difficulties at least some of the time, with a quarter experiencing problems often or always..."

...reinforcing the importance of reliable, high quality next generation broadband for education, particularly in relation to supporting concurrent accesses (multiple users accessing multiple applications simultaneously). The value teachers place on access to video is clearly demonstrated:

“Teachers’ increased use of video content is matched by increases in their perceptions of its benefits. The majority of K–12 teachers (82 percent) continue to believe that video content is more effective when it is integrated with other instructional resources or content. All other perceived benefits of video use in the classroom increased significantly this year. A majority of teachers believe that video content stimulates discussions (68 percent), increases student motivation (66 percent), helps teachers be more effective (62 percent), is preferred by students (61 percent) and helps teachers be more creative (55 percent)…Many teachers also believe that video content stimulates student creativity (47 percent), directly increases student achievement (42 percent) and is more effective than other types of instructional resources or content (31 percent).”

Reliable connectivity is required to support management and administrative tasks as well:

“In another sign that instructional activity is migrating to the Web, about 40 percent of K–12 teachers report that they use Web-based content management systems. More than twice as many teachers (84 percent) report that their school or district has some sort of data management system to store and track student assessment data electronically. Most teachers who have data management systems available (83 percent) make at least some instructional decisions based on this data. Teachers report using data management systems to track assessment scores (76 percent), refine the curriculum (71 percent), develop individual education plans (62 percent), or get professional development or feedback (54 percent).”

These findings also reinforce the need to support multiple concurrent accesses, as well as demonstrating the opportunity of providing access to personally-owned (i.e. unmanaged) devices in a way that doesn't compromise network performance or security:

“K–12 teachers believe that laptops hold the greatest education potential among popular portable technologies, with 81 percent of teachers saying laptops would enhance education...But a majority of teachers (53 percent) believe that more recent entries into the consumer market, such as iPads, Kindles, Sony Readers, and other pad-like devices and e-readers could be valuable in education as well. iPod Touches and MP3 players and iPods garnered support from teachers as well. As much as teachers perceive the educational value of digital resources and recognize some potential in smart, mobile devices, students’ ability to use these devices at school is severely limited. Most personal student devices are off limits during school, with teachers reporting that cell phones, game devices, and MP3 players and iPods are largely banned.”

UK evidence corroborating PBS's findings includes the unexpectedly high demand for online delivery of the Teachers digital TV channel, as opposed to the broadcast version: between February and May 2010, Teachers TV videos were streamed over 1.6 million times. Sadly, the contract for Teachers TV has now been terminated, though all of the 4,000 programmes will continue to available online. The PBS research also underlines the huge value and potential of the British Universities Film & Video Council's (BUFVC's) Box of Broadcasts (BoB) service.

BoB is an off-air recording and media archiving service available to staff and students of member institutions of the BUFVC that hold an ERA+ license. This TV scheduling service allows users to record TV and radio programmes that are scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days, as well as retrieving programmes from the last seven days from a selected list of recorded channels. After a programme is recorded, users watch it in a similar way to the BBC's iPlayer. BoB stores recorded TV and Radio programmes in an archive indefinitely for all users to enjoy – a distinct advantage over other TV catch-up services, the archives of which are time limited. The BoB archive currently offers thousands of TV and radio programmes covering all genres.

The benefit of such a service being readily available to all teaching staff both within the institution and at home is clearly apparent. However, an institution’s broadband connection must be able to support multiple, concurrent use of the service if access is to be reliable and effective. The benefits of ensuring that all teaching staff can use such a service reliably whenever they need to are plain to see, but this requires NGA levels of provision, particularly if multiple simultaneous accesses from many classrooms are to be supported.

But who wouldn't want to support that? The USA clearly has such ambitions in its sights, as evidenced by this speech by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski last year. His recognition of some of the specific advantages and opportunities broadband offers to education is refreshing to see, especially when many broadband strategies recognise education as a sector that stands to benefit from the technology but fail to examine how or to what extent. His honesty in acknowledging that there is still much to do to deliver faster speeds to schools across the USA is also good to see - compare that with the remarks made in the UK's Caio Review in 2008, though to be fair we have come a very, very long way since then, in broadband policy terms.

But all the same, still some useful signposts for UK broadband policy here perhaps?

Conference report: Broadband North Yorkshire, 19th February 2011

2011-02-22T00:25:00.002Z

Last Saturday I attended the Broadband North Yorkshire conference, organised by Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, in the light of North Yorkshire's selection by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) as one of four pilot areas to trial the deployment of superfast broadband.

Following Julian’s introduction, and a video message from Foreign Secretary William Hague (MP for Richmond, Yorkshire), Richard Flinton, Chief Executive of North Yorkshire County Council, set out the context for the county’s selection as a pilot. 30,000 people only have dial-up access currently, with 120,000 only able to receive a broadband service of less than the USC commitment of 2Mbps. Notspots and slowspots are not confined to the county’s rural areas, some locations in York’s outskirts also receive poor services. Current commercial superfast broadband plans include York, Harrogate and Filey but nowhere else.

Richard described broadband as a key economic enabler for the county and flagged the importance of tourism to North Yorkshire’s economy, reporting that a recent survey revealed that 90% of people now expect broadband to be available at their holiday destination. Lack of broadband access is a contributory factor to young people migrating away from the area; broadband takeup rates where services are available are as high as or higher than anywhere else in the country. Richard set out the NextGen North Yorkshire vision:

“Our vision is to bring the advantages of high-quality broadband to 100% of businesses and citizens in North Yorkshire by 2015. We want to enable all to participate in the digital world so that they can carry out their business when and how they wish.”

North Yorkshire does have a key advantage over other rural areas though – NYnet’s core network, which already connects 90% of public sector institutions across the county. Richard described this network as the platform to take forward North Yorkshire’s broadband ambition, especially as the network has already been used to provision a number of remote communities with broadband – see this previous post, with further details here and here. Richard closed by announcing that the council was making an additional £750,000 available to provide grants for 15 rural broadband projects.

Next up was Robert Ling from Yorkshire Forward, who provided an overview of BDUK’s role and activities to date, flagging Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future as the key text in this regard – though the full strategy document doesn’t appear to be available at the moment. The government’s intention is that by 2015 two thirds of the population should be served directly by the private sector, with the final third the focus of BDUK’s activity and funding. BDUK is providing £530m to 2015, “with a further £300m in 2016 and 2017 if required” and is also looking to leverage other sources of funding such as the European ERDF and RDPE programmes as well as private investment. Just as BDUK Chief Executive Robert Sullivan did at the recent broadband conference in Herefordshire (another BDUK pilot area), Robert flagged the importance of developing a local broadband plan. Local involvement is crucial, according to Robert: “this is your money, this is your broadband”.

The next session was called “Connecting Communities”, and included input from Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor for the Daily Telegraph, Natasha Innocent from Race Online 2012, Carl Wolf from Science City York, Penny Slatter from the Post Office, Rachel Fraser, BBC Learning Public Affairs Manager on the First Click media literacy project, Trish Quinn, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Directgov, Dr Richard Pope from the Airedale NHS Foundation Trust and Barry Dodd from the Yorkshire Enterprise Partnership. Some key bullet points from this session:

Matt Warman predicted a "revolution in healthcare" brought about by next generation broadband, which will make the digital divide more "painful and palpable" for those lacking access. He also argued that it's more important for rural areas to implement nextgen broadband than cities and urban areas, because the technology will make a much greater difference in such areas than in places like London.
Natasha Innocent outlined Race Online 2012's "inspire, encourage and support" strategy to increase the takeup of broadband and online services. She stressed the importance of communicating the benefits of broadband, in stark contrast to the current broadband advertising which generally relates solely to speed and price.
Carl Wolf flagged some of the innovations taking place in North Yorkshire, such as a company in Helmsely (this one I think?) which has licensed a technology developed elsewhere in Europe which can strip out the core from a copper cable, replacing it with fibre at significantly reduced installation costs (more details here). Other opportunities are created by the University of York's significant investment in film and TV production, as outlined in a recent speech by the Chancellor of York University and former Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke.
Penny Slatter described how the Post Office can help to grow the demand for broadband and help communities by offering "mediated access between customers and Government; converting multi-channel interactions to electronic submissions" and by "supporting universal access to online Government services." The Post Office intends to be the "high street digital channel for customers to interact with Government supporting universal access to services".
Dr Richard Pope demonstrated how Airedale NHS Foundation Trust are employing telemedicine to deliver healthcare to prisons in a far less disruptive fashion in a five year project involving 15 prisons, as well as a set-top box based service for use in homes, which has been warmly received by patients.
Barry Dodd underlined the importance of nextgen broadband to competitiveness through two examples: companies worldwide collaborating online to design an electric car to be built in the UK, and the fact that broadband access provides a new means to access expensive software (via rental rather than license purchase), making complex and expensive software available to both large and small companies on a usage basis.

Discussion sessions followed, I attended the public sector and education workshop. Whilst an interesting discussion ensued, it struck me that current generation broadband services, which are widely available and used, aren't yet being exploited to their fullest extent in support of the delivery of public services. Whilst we have made some progress we still seem to be a good way behind countries such as the USA in the delivery of services such as telemedicine. Which doesn't help the investment case for nextgen services very much. It's also very significant that around 25% of the UK population can access current generation broadband, but chooses not to do so. My guess is that a significant proportion of this number will be elderly, so a technology which could assist them by helping them maintain their independence and their ability to live in their own homes for longer is to be welcomed? But such individuals are unlikely to be brought on board by any retail offering I think, meaning the public sector will need to think creatively if it's to improve the quality of life for a growing proportion of the population at the same time as reducing the cost of care to the public purse.

Lunch was followed by input from NYnet and industry on the way forward. David Cullen, Chief Executive of NYnet (a company wholly owned by North Yorkshire County Council) underlined the challenge of delivering ambitious broadband targets in the largest rural county (3,000 square miles) with a dispersed population (an average of 7.5 people per square kilometre). NYnet's core network offers a huge opportunity already, the challenge is to make this more available. The deployments in Gillamoor and Newton on Rawcliffe/Stape (community wireless provision utilising schools' fibre connections as backhaul) offer proof that it can be done. NYnet will provide nextgen access to 27 market towns across North Yorkshire, this will in turn support the creation of 250 digital community hubs which share backhaul with public sector requirements, with on average three communities being supported by each digital community hub. In terms of fun ding, initial indications are that around £25-30m funding is available from BDUK and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The procurement process will begin in April 2011 with a view to signing a contract by 31st March 2012.

Further industry input came from Rob Leenderts of Cable & Wireless, Bill Murphy of BT and Steve Richey of satellite broadband provider Avanti. Some concerns were expressed that NYnet's focus on market towns that already have current generation access when many communities have no or very poor connectivity was unfair, at which point the fact that BDUK funds were to address areas that the market won't reach was reiterated, together with the importance of market towns as an important link in the delivery chain to reach remote communities in a sustainable, effective way. Some frustrations were also expressed over the perception of public money being spent on services that arguably weren't as important as nextgen broadband, a criticism which has also been levelled against the high speed rail project.

These frustrations, similar to those expressed at the Herefordshire event, beg the question whether enough money has really been committed to supporting the roll-out of nextgen broadband. While the funding is to be welcomed, it's significantly lower than the amounts allocated for the same purpose elsewhere in the world. What was very clear from the conference was the opportunity and advantage that NYnet offers to the county, in particular, its model for provisioning rural communities in a sustainable way, based on an existing infrastructure, proving that it can be done. The question for me is the extent to which NYnet's approach can be replicated elsewhere, especially given the tight deployment timescales the government has committed to.

The conference closed with a commitment to meet again the same time next year and slides from the day are available here. And finally, from the photostream of the event on Flickr, watch out for the chap with the rucksack – I wouldn’t listen to anything he has to say.

Conference report: Herefordshire Broadband Summit 2

2011-02-17T22:38:00.006Z

Last Friday (11th February) I attended Herefordshire’s Broadband Summit 2. Organised by Fast Broadband 4 Herefordshire, the event was convened to explore the county’s options and opportunities in relation to its selection as one of Broadband Delivery UK’s (BDUK’s) four pilot projects (the other three being North Yorkshire, Cumbria and the Highlands and Islands).

Herefordshire County Council set out its broadband strategy the same week as the conference, as discussed in this previous post. The conference was opened by Robert Sullivan, Chief Executive of BDUK, who provided the background and context to the pilots. BDUK is hoping that Herefordshire will provide some lessons on how to ensure the commercial viability of rural broadband roll-outs, and is also interested in both the county’s cross-border (the plan extends into Gloucestershire and Wales too) and cross-sector intentions (in relation to healthcare in particular).

“At least” £5m will be provided for the project, according to Herefordshire’s strategy. £50m will be allocated by BDUK for additional wave 2 pilots. Bidding guidance for these will be available in early March 2011, with bids due in late April and selection by late May. More funding will follow later in 2011. Crucial to securing future BDUK funding is the creation of a local broadband plan, which should set out a strategic approach, address demand stimulation (“demand programmes will be important to deliver sustainable revenue”) and also link to existing initiatives and networks (“investigate the re-use of public sector networks to reduce the cost of rolling out superfast broadband infrastructure in your council area”).

More on BDUK’s future plans is available in two previous presentations by Robert Sullivan from November 2010, one to the Westminster eForum and available here and the other to the NextGen10 conference. Natalia Silver from Herefordshire County Council spoke next, setting out the council’s vision for broadband. Services must be affordable, and the council intends to “work with communities to find local solutions to broadband coverage” – such as farmers digging in fibre across their fields. In terms of the opportunity NGA broadband presents, Natalia pointed out that Herefordshire doesn’t have a university, so broadband presents a possible new way to access higher education services without having to travel outside the county. An interesting consideration in relation to the current debate about rising tuition fees?

The intention is to deliver to 90% of homes and businesses by 2015, providing a network that ISPs can use to reach customers (so open access?) based on fibre and other solutions as appropriate. A commercial partner will be sought shortly via a competitive exercise, and offers of further input to develop the tender documentation were welcomed. Phase 1 will focus on Herefordshire’s borders with Gloucestershire and into Wales, essentially a band to the south of the county. There was some disappointment expressed by a number of audience members who felt that the pilot didn’t go far enough in terms of coverage and was also too slow in terms of roll-out, further evidence (as if it were needed) of the pent up demand for high quality broadband access in rural areas.

The next session covered developments in rural broadband delivery. Nick Peplow described Allpay’s wireless broadband service (also mentioned here), which builds out its service to villages using church towers and spires. Torbjörn Eriksen of the Open Networks Exchange (ONEX, the successor to the JON Exchange?) then explained how ONEX will provide a means to interconnect and deliver services across multiple networks, an important consideration if local, community-built networks are to offer an experience comparable to that provided by large telco’s networks.

All of which reminded me of an enquiry I once received from a school, as part of my previous life. The school in question wanted to subscribe to a package of learning materials and resources provided by a regional broadband consortium (RBC) elsewhere in the country, i.e. other than the one it was a member of. A perfectly reasonable question, given that the interconnection of RBC networks via the SuperJANET backbone makes this theoretically possible, but not currently practical, given the way connectivity and services are currently bundled for schools. There are some lessons for education here perhaps – separating the provision of connectivity (which is best delivered locally) from the provision of services (which could be delivered from anywhere, bandwidth permitting) would provide schools with a greater degree of local choice? The difficult bit would be preventing carefully worked out school broadband costs from unravelling completely of course.

Anyway, back to Herefordshire…Dale Barnes of Virgin Media spoke next, reporting on Virgin Media’s trialling of RFoG (radio frequency over glass) technology. Essentially, this provides a means to deliver a range of services over a single fibre, requiring only different equipment at customers’ premises depending on their choice of service. So Virgin Media can deliver both BT’s and its own NGA consumer services over a single fibre, proved as part of its trials of overhead fibre deployment via Western Power’s electricity pylons in Cwmbran/Crumlin, South Wales. Interestingly, Dale stressed that Virgin Media has no interest in owning or managing the fibre in such instances. For obvious safety reasons the company would much prefer to leave that to the power company or distribution network operator (DNO).

Later sessions covered demand issues and case studies, with much frustration expressed both over the current state of broadband in Herefordshire and the perceived shortcomings of the strategy for the pilot. The potential impact of broadband on Herefordshire’s economy was referenced throughout, with broadband described at one point as “the simple basic bedrock for economic regeneration”. Case studies included BT’s managed healthcare solution in Wakefield (memorably described by one beneficiary as “technology that stops you from being alone”), videoconferencing successes in Herefordshire schools and the constraints that the current lack of NGA creates for a local engineering firm. I thought this last one was particularly striking.

Leading Edge Turbines needs to exchange many large files with its manufacturers as part of the design process (for example, files detailing the stress analysis of a component may exceed 500MB), underlining the importance of symmetric connectivity and not just download speeds for businesses. The firm also provides a remote monitoring and diagnostic service for its products (which are often used in remote locations making engineer visits difficult and expensive), and will need to ensure sufficient bandwidth is available to support this service as the installed base of their products grows.

I thought this was another truly excellent example of how the broadband debate needs to move from the general (“broadband is a good thing”) to the specific – NGA levels of performance, capacity and reliability are needed to run the set of applications and services Leading Edge Turbines needs to be successful, or the company simply won’t be able to compete. See this previous post for more on this, based on examples from the healthcare sector in this instance.

Clear, irrefutable evidence is needed to demonstrate once and for all that NGA is about so much more than the iPlayer in HD, and also to show how NGA can bring about a panoply of long term benefits, cost savings and economic gains which far eclipse its initial installation costs. It would be terrific if BDUK’s pilots revealed loads more examples like this one, especially if the issues companies like Leading Edge Turbines currently face start to be addressed as a result of the pilots. Fingers crossed that they will.

Conclusions from BDUK’s theoretical exercise

2011-02-16T22:08:00.000Z

Broadband Delivery UK’s (BDUK’s) theoretical exercise report, drawing conclusions from the exercise conducted last summer following the industry day in July, provides an interesting overview of the current array of technologies, challenges and opportunities in the provision of broadband in rural areas. It was published late last year alongside Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future but has slipped under my radar until now. Coffee warning: this is a long post, so you might want to go and get one before reading any further.

The purpose of BDUK’s exercise was “to understand the choice of cost effective solutions available to provide a minimum level of coverage to all premises without access to at least 2Mbps broadband”, based on three locations (one in south Wales, another in the north west of England and one in the north of Scotland). Suppliers were invited “to explain what solutions they would deploy in those areas to provide coverage, how much it would cost and what revenues they would forecast over time, and a calculation of the subsidy needed to make the project viable.”

A key finding was that the USC commitment should not be separated from the drive to deliver NGA, as also acknowledged in Britain's Superfast Broadband Future:

“BDUK’s Universal Service Commitment (USC) objective should not be seen as separate from the superfast broadband objective, but rather an integral part of pushing next generation networks deep into rural Britain.”

The importance of backhaul was also recognised, which in my view further reinforces the case for investigating the potential to consolidate and re-use existing education and other public sector networks that often have significant reach into rural areas already:

“The provision of affordable backhaul in these rural areas as part of the government’s delivery approach would positively impact the business case for private sector investment in fibre, fixed wireless and mobile solutions in those areas, reducing the subsidy needed to provide universal coverage.”

More on re-use later in this post. In total, BDUK received 26 responses, but:

“BDUK was disappointed that despite some original expressions of interest no mobile operators decided to participate in the process, meaning BDUK saw no practical illustrations from the mobile operators of how their current plans for mobile broadband can contribute to the coverage challenge.”

There were some question marks over how representative the areas BDUK chose for the exercise actually were:

“Several suppliers shared their perception that the areas BDUK chose for the exercise were atypical and particularly hard areas to solve – in the 3% of least populated areas in the UK, as calculated by one supplier – and may not be typical of many of the not-spots and slow-spot locations. These suppliers warned BDUK against directly extrapolating costs from just these example areas for the whole of the UK’s not-spots and slow-spots. BDUK recognises that these areas may not be representative of the nature and cost of the most typical areas to be addressed, but maintains that there are a significant number of similarly difficult and costly areas in the UK, which in aggregate may require a significant proportion of an overall subsidy, if not of overall physical area covered. Nevertheless, the point about extrapolation of costs is noted.”

Many responses took a similar approach to provisioning the exercise locations:

“The majority of submissions received by BDUK proposed fixed wireless technology to solve not-spots and slow-spots in the exercise areas. These suppliers saw fixed wireless having a role in all three exercise areas, although identified limitations of point-to-multipoint solutions below a minimum scale in a particular area. For example in the North of Scotland scenario, several postcodes that weren’t clustered close together couldn’t be served cost-effectively by wireless solutions in most respondents’ solutions since the number of customers in a sector would generate too little revenue to make the service sustainable.”

Responses also highlighted the key gotcha between using licensed and unlicensed spectrum:

“Suppliers presented solutions using either licensed or unlicensed spectrum, but only those using licensed spectrum could assure service availability.”

And an interesting finding emerged in relation to the potential to re-use of electricity pylons to deliver services:

“Even where high-voltage (HV) electricity pylons are available as options for site locations, the cost of developing new sites is often prohibitively expensive – ironically due to the cost of getting LV power to them, so construction of new masts may be necessary.”

Alanis Morissette should take note here perhaps? To quote Ed Byrne: "The only ironic thing about that song is it's called 'Ironic' and it's written by a woman who doesn't know what irony is. That's quite ironic." On fixed access, some suppliers proposed a solution new to Openreach:

“At least one supplier proposed cabinet ‘splitting’, i.e. placing an additional cabinet closer to customers, as a way of increasing the reach of VDSL. Suppliers were told by BT Openreach that there is currently no product available from BT Openreach to enable them to ‘cut into’ the network to create / co-locate cabinets further out into the network, so at the moment this is an option that requires BT Openreach’s cooperation to implement. However the existing regulatory environment does allow Communications Providers (CPs) to request the implementation of a new equivalent product from BT Openreach.”

So would this effectively be sub-sub-loop unbundling, or SSLU? Powerline could be a possible future option for fixed access, but this is still some way from becoming an effective solution:

“BDUK received responses proposing the use of the electricity distribution network infrastructure to propagate broadband signals into the premise. Respondents were able to demonstrate the deployment of high-speed access over the power infrastructure into premises in other countries, and had the cooperation of the local electricity distribution network operator (DNO) in developing the solution. However, this solution has been piloted before, but not yet been progressed in the UK, so respondents were unable to demonstrate the commercial sustainability or practical deployment of this technology in these rural areas. The robustness of power infrastructure would suggest that this is worthy of investigation again. The powerline access technology must still connect to an appropriate backhaul route. This is not necessarily straightforward if the power infrastructure does not intercept the telecoms infrastructure locally, unless backhaul is provided via the DNO’s passive infrastructure back to an aggregation point – but these products are not yet available from the DNOs.”

Satellite options were also considered, but latency remains an issue, particularly in relation to certain applications:

“With a ~70,000km round-trip communication path, the inevitable latency of satellite means that it is more suitable for broadcasting and multicasting and less suitable for real-time services (e.g. voice, virtual private networks, two-way video) needed for home-working, relative to ground-based technologies, despite optimising technologies that improve the browsing and downloading experience.”

The importance of affordable backhaul was stressed in relation to all proposed solutions:

“A common supplier conclusion was that the provision of affordable backhaul in these areas would positively impact the economics of supplying wireline, fixed wireless and mobile technologies and so increase the business case for private sector investment.”

Some interesting insights into backhaul too, in terms of how it’s provisioned:

“All networks are shared resources, engineered to accommodate busy-period loads. Operators size networks on the basis of a backhaul allocation per customer, which enables them to offer service levels for anticipated customer experience during the day, e.g. “2Mbps available 90% of the time during peak three hours of the day”. A typical backhaul allowance from suppliers when designing solutions was 30-60Kbps per customer, which is consistent with mass-market products available today.”

The proposed solutions varied quite considerably in this regard:

“However, as the choice of backhaul infrastructure in these solutions was influenced by environmental, customer density and economic constraints, BDUK saw a wide spread in allocations: e.g. from <20Kbps for a wireline connection where backhaul would be very expensive to provision, to >200Kbps for wireless backhaul where the low density of customers on a mast meant that a significant per-customer backhaul allowance was available. These examples would result in a significantly different customer experience in peak hours of the day, but this experience is also dependent on the allowance for data transport between the operator’s point of handover and the internet as well although this is generally a commercial decision for the CP.”

Which is perhaps an important additional consideration in relation to having the “best superfast broadband in Europe” within the lifetime of this parliament, and beyond last mile bandwidth and a competitive marketplace? Responses also provided further commentary on physical infrastructure access (PIA) concerns, as I described in this previous post:

“Several suppliers had indicated that they hoped that Ofcom’s wholesale local access (WLA) consultation might provide new opportunities for backhaul. However, the recent Ofcom decision following the WLA market review accepts that access to BT Openreach’s passive infrastructure (their PIA product) should currently only apply to the access network up to the NGA access node (typically the nearest major town). Connections beyond this are provided via regulated products that sit within the business connectivity market, which are subject to cost orientation and other regulation. Suppliers also noted that while the industry is able to develop fibre access products under Ofcom’s general access obligation on BT Openreach, it is not obliged to provide dark fibre backhaul products in the current regulatory environment. This is in contrast to some other European countries, e.g. in Germany, Deutsche Telekom AG is required to offer dark fibre in certain circumstances. The use of BT passive infrastructure for leased lines and backhaul will be re-examined by Ofcom in the first half of 2011 as part of the business connectivity market assessment.”

There were both positive and negative comments in relation to the potential for re-using existing public sector networks:

"Responses that included Welsh schools or Pathfinder public sector locations highlighted the importance of previous investments in networking public sector locations; however it also became clear that there are still significant issues involved to make them accessible to public use. Specifically, it can be a challenge to transform networks created for a single customer or purpose in order to set up services that can be offered and billed to individual members of the public. This requires a different operating and security model and also upgrades to the active components of the network, which represents significant additional cost. In some instances, existing contractual arrangements may also prohibit the network operator from serving additional customers in their current form, particularly for commercial gain. Alternatively, extension of these contracts may be incompatible with public procurement regulations and also state aid guidelines for broadband.”

It’s good that such existing networks were at least acknowledged, but there is clearly more to do to explore how these challenges (most of which are contractual/commercial, rather than technical) might be addressed, as I've mentioned in this previous post (and also here). Similarly, the challenges of securing providers to offer services over new networks were also recognised – “developing multiple interfaces into the range of alternative access networks would run into the millions of pounds” – this is where the JON Exchange (or its successor?) has an important role, primarily in reducing the duplication of effort needed to connect multiple networks, operators and service providers, but the changing nature of the Internet and the consequential changing role played by ISPs may also help here too, as discussed in this previous post.

The section on revenue and project returns provides further insight into the nature of responses received:

“The majority of responses were received by network operators rather than the ISPs packaging their services to provide to the end-customer. Therefore most respondents had modelled wholesale prices / revenues, and only indicated the likely prices / products that would be paid / received by the end-customer.”

Which rather suggests that ISPs regard rural broadband as a problem for network operators to solve? This also has implications on the level of competition likely in rural areas, in terms of service availability and diversity:

“…standardisation has enabled the mainstream retail ISP market to operate on thin margins. If a wholesale operator does not charge the same £7 per month or through a similar business-to-business platform, mainstream ISPs will not be able to make money on these connections unless they segment their product in order to charge more to the user in these areas. The lack of availability of recognised, mainstream ISP brands risks lowering take-up among consumers and therefore an increase in demand risk for an investor. The network operator may instead be able to attract smaller, niche ISPs with a business model and products designed to target these rural coverage areas. This outcome could be expected to result in less competition and choice for consumers – although perhaps more services tailored closer to their needs – which is less likely to provide the same benefits of innovation and price competition that has been typical in the mainstream ISP market. BDUK needs to ensure that the availability of ISP services that are valued by customers is incorporated into any procurement process or investment in the network.”

This is borne out by community implementations to date, where only a single operator is available, but I’m sure few beneficiaries would disagree that one service provider is a whole lot better than no service providers, especially if that service provider is community-owned and operated. The section on revenues also identified an additional advantage of re-using public sector networks, in relation to the public sector's provision of anchor tenants (schools, GP surgeries, libraries - if there are any left that is) to guarantee a certain level of return:

“The prospect of public sector revenues may be more limited and substantially dependent on the timing and structure of existing contractual arrangements. However, where the public sector can be relied on as an ‘anchor’ customer for a project for a significant duration – e.g. potentially through public sector network procurements – the certainty of these additional revenues makes a substantial improvement to the economics of an area.”

So the question is whether this anchor tenant advantage and the reach of existing public sector networks present enough of an opportunity to offset the commercial/contractual (and to a lesser extent technical) hurdles identified previously. To my mind, the potential benefits make it worthwhile to put some serious effort into exploring how the difficulties might be overcome.

In conclusion, the report highlights the importance of local approaches to broadband strategy, both in terms of addressing particular local requirements and also to leverage local resources and assets as fully as possible. This is something that the four superfast broadband pilot areas are actively pursuing. Balanced against this is the clear importance of scale, to ensure commercially viable and sustainable approaches. As suspected, solutions will involve a range of technologies, depending upon circumstances, and there is much to do to explore the re-use opportunity to provide cost-effective backhaul:

“The re-use of public sector available networks is frequently referenced, but the cost and practicalities of converting the potential of these assets into a service that can be productised and sold commercially has not been adequately dealt with in any of the responses. Each owner of public sector available networks resources should make clear their intentions as to the extent to which they are able to and intend for their asset to be used in offering services direct to end users.”

A fair challenge I think, and one that the public sector should respond to?

Herefordshire County Council sets out plans for BDUK pilot

2011-02-14T22:11:00.001Z

Herefordshire County Council last week published its strategy for delivering superfast broadband across the region, following on from the announcement in October's comprehensive spending review that the county was one of four superfast broadband pilots being funded by Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), alongside North Yorkshire, Cumbria and the Highlands and Islands. From the council's press release:

"The aim is to have 90 per cent of homes and business in the county linked up to fast broadband by 2015, and by 2020 50 per cent of premises having the opportunity to access broadband speeds of 100Mbps."

More information about broadband developments in Herefordshire is available here, which is where the new strategy can also be downloaded. Some key extracts:

"...90% of homes and all business premises having the opportunity to connect to a superfast broadband service offering at least 40Mbps download speed and better than 10Mbps upload speed, by 2015. In the short term, by the end of 2012 progress should have been made by private initiatives for all homes and premises to have access to broadband at speeds of 4Mbps. By 2020 50% of homes and businesses should have the opportunity to access 100Mbps download speed with a choice of upload speeds. Broadband services in Herefordshire must be affordable to the user and in most cases offer a choice of Internet Service Provider. How the vision should be delivered is subject to a range of technical options, but the majority of homes and premises should be served by a county wide fibre optic infrastructure. New homes and new premises on business parks should be built by their developers with fibre optic connections."

The strategy goes on to acknowledge that FTTC may be "the first stage", given the cost and length of time provisioning is likely to take, but regards FTTH as an eventual progression from any interim FTTC solution. Open access considerations are acknowledged too:

"Other parts of the country are investing in fibre networks providing open access to any Internet Service Provider (ISP) and standards to provide interoperability are being developed through the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (INCA)."

And on what funding is available:

"The pilot project will provide at least £5M (partly split with Gloucestershire and Wales) so an initial area can be enabled and the problems, benefits, take-up and usage can be more accurately assessed...To maximise the use of the BDUK funds the focus will be on extending a fibre network infrastructure as far as possible into rural areas, and where the final “mile” service is not easily achievable by the provider (e.g. where the distances involved prevent use of existing copper circuits) to allow local communities or other providers to deliver the fast services to more remote homes and businesses."

The important role of local communities and the JFDI ethic is recognised too:

"This may require a separate funding stream to match fund a community's own investment in this local loop unbundling, and a community may partner with an alternative provider to deliver the service. The success of this approach would depend on the involvement of communities, possibly through Parish Councils and the parish plan process. In some rural areas the communities have worked together with local landowners and farmers to lay ducting through fields, rather than roads, and have been able to lay fibre at less than 20% of normal costs. A rule of thumb for cost of delivering a fibre optic connection in this situation is between £1,000 and £2,500 per premises/home, but other technologies can provide a fast service at a lower initial cost. There is also scope through the planning system for ensuring that any major development in a rural area, including wind turbines or anaerobic digesters, include the provision of a fibre connection for the local community."

Other technologies mentioned include Allpay's and Airband's wireless broadband services. Allpay's service was recently featured on the BBC's Midlands Today programme; I wonder if the LLU analysis of Herefordshire I undertook last year might be of some interest or relevance? Thoughts on costs and financing, via a partnership approach, include the following:

"The different technologies that can be used to deliver broadband services each have their own implementation and operational costs, and one that is cheap to implement may be much more expensive to operate over a long period of 25 years. The pilot scheme will be used see what the different telecoms providers can deliver to enable the maximum number of homes with a fast broadband service at minimum cost. Whatever the cost may be, the investment required for a county wide fast broadband service would deter the private sector from investing on its own. However, a 40% take up of the faster service from all homes would generate additional income, and a connection charge could be used to contribute to initial costs. In addition to this, higher levels of rental income would be obtained from larger businesses and Herefordshire Public Services, and some of the savings made from maximising technology to deliver services (e.g. tele-healthcare) could also be used to fund the programme. When considered over the long term, such as 25 years, the costs do become more manageable. By tackling work in stages (e.g. by simply taking fibre to a community in the first instance) there may be scope for spreading costs while delivering early benefits for people who are keen to take the service or who need it."

The importance of community involvement is stressed again here, this time in the context of community investment (at a fixed cost over a fixed period) potentially being used to leverage loan funding. All in all, an interesting read - and far more informative than the "blank sheet of paper" referred to at the NextGen10 conference. The next step for Herefordshire is the completion of the tender for the pilot, to secure a commercial partner (or partners?) via a competitive exercise. This is currently still in development, but the intention that delivery of the pilot infrastructure improvements should commence in Autumn 2011, so they'll need to go to market very soon to meet this deadline?

It'll be interesting to see what strategies are developed by the other three pilot areas. Barry Forde's trilogy of posts on the Broadband Cumbria website (on the importance and practicalities of FTTP vs FTTC, followed by a design methodology for the Eden Valley and finally a possible funding and service model) is also well worth reading. I attended Herefordshire's second Broadband Summit last week, so more to follow in another post, once I've managed to decipher my notes.

Ofcom update part 2: wholesale broadband access (WBA) developments

2011-02-08T16:09:00.003Z

Further to my post last week on Ofcom's intentions in relation to wholesale local access (WLA), here's the companion post on recent developments in relation to wholesale broadband access (WBA).

Just to refresh, WBA relates to the wholesale broadband products communications providers (CPs) provide for themselves and sell to each other, whereas The WLA market concerns access to fixed telecommunications infrastructure - the connection between the consumer and the telecommunications network. WBA offerings are therefore based on one or more WLA services, with the WBA market sitting between the WLA market and the retail broadband market providing the services that consumers purchase.

Ofcom's WBA consultation was published in March 2010, alongside the WLA consultation, and was followed by a second consultation in August 2010. This further consultation considered, in particular, geographic market definition. Ofcom published a statement following the two consultations at the beginning of December 2010 (full version here). In summary, Ofcom found that while there is effective competition across most of the UK, there remain a number of areas where this is not the case:

"We have found that there is effective competition in almost 80 per cent of the UK. However, in just over one-fifth of the UK - covered by what we have called Market 1 and Market 2 - we have concluded that there is not sufficient competition and so we have imposed regulation to protect consumers. Market 1 is made up of exchange areas in which BT is currently the only provider of wholesale broadband services, whereas Market 2 comprises exchange areas with two significant providers, or with three significant providers where BT's market share is 50 per cent or more. BT has Significant Market Power (SMP) in both of these markets and will be subject to a range of regulatory obligations, including general access and non-discrimination obligations and a requirement for charges to be cost oriented. In Market 1 we have decided that BT should also be subject to a charge control, the details of which will be the subject of a separate consultation."

This separate consultation was announced last month under the banner of "better value broadband in rural areas". From the press release:

"Ofcom has proposed significant reductions in the prices that BT Wholesale can charge internet service providers (ISPs) in parts of the country where it is the sole provider of wholesale broadband services – mainly in rural areas. The proposed price reductions are between 10.75% and 14.75% below inflation. As a result, Ofcom expects competition between retail ISPs, who will benefit from the lower wholesale prices, to lead to reductions in retail prices which will benefit consumers. The changes may also lead to better quality services by enabling ISPs to allocate more bandwidth per customer which could deliver faster broadband services. This could benefit nearly 12% of UK households or around 3 million homes and businesses. These are mostly in rural areas including parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as the South West of England, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland and other areas. In other areas of the country where there is some wholesale broadband competition delivered by local loop unbundling, Ofcom is not proposing any charge controls."

In a nutshell, Ofcom found that there is not sufficient competition in just over one fifth of the UK, so has imposed regulation to protect consumers. The full consultation (which explains Ofcom's proposals for the WBA charge control in Market 1 exchange areas) is available here with a summary here. Specifcally, Ofcom are proposing charge controls for BT’s 8Mbit/s IPStream Connect product:

"In Market 1 BT sells several WBA products, each with different speed options. However, we propose to charge control only BT’s 8Mbit/s IPStream Connect product. CPs use this product to supply 86% of WBA services in Market 1. Therefore, controlling IPStream Connect directly protects most consumers in Market 1 and constrains BT from excessive charging on the other products. Also, 8Mbit/s is the maximum downstream speed available in Market 1 and the most used by end users in Market 1."

Ofcom currently define market 1, 2 and 3 exchange areas as follows:

"...there are four separate geographic markets in the UK as follows:
Hull Area: 0.7% of the UK premises;
Market 1: exchanges where only BT is present (11.7% of premises);
Market 2: exchanges where two Principal Operators (POs) are present or forecast and exchanges where three POs are present or forecast but where BT’s share is greater than or equal to 50% (10.0% of premises); and
Market 3: exchanges where four or more POs are present or forecast and exchanges where three POs are present or forecast but where BT’s share is less than 50% (77.6% of premises)."

Following the consultation (which closes at the end of March 2011) Ofcom expects to publish a statement in the summer. The charge controls are planned to come into effect shortly after publication of the statement.

I'll let you know (as I live in a Market 1 exchange area) if/when my bill goes down and/or my bandwidth goes up (my downstream rate is currently 1568 Kbps with 128 Kbps upstream according to my router, despite close proximity to the serving exchange)...but again, I shan't be holding my breath.

"The Internet’s edge is thickening, and its core is diminishing”

2011-02-03T21:10:00.001Z

Another really interesting report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), this time on some of the ramifications of the increasing growth in delivery of video over the Internet.

The starting point for Now Playing: Video over the Internet is the recent dispute between Level 3 and Comcast over the Internet peering capacity needed to support Netflix streaming. Level 3 have won the contract from Akamai to deliver streamed video from the Netflix service (which "offers both on-demand video streaming over the internet, and flat rate online video rental (rental-by-mail) of DVD-Video and Blu-ray Disc in the United States and Canada (streaming only)", according to Wikipedia).

The dispute arose when Level 3 "asked Comcast to make300 Gigabits/second of bandwidth available for its free and exclusive use within the Comcast network, and Comcast responded that it would only provide the transmission capacity if Level 3 agreed to pay for it", according to the report, which goes on to illustrate how this dispute illustrates not only the impact video is having on the nature of the Internet but also how this instance throws some aspects of the net neutrality debate into sharp relief. For example, on the steps being taken to ensure that video can be delivered successfully, keeping pace with ever increasing demand:

“…Internet operators have already taken some very significant steps to ensure that the Internet doesn’t collapse under the massive new load that’s just around the corner: Content Delivery Networks such as Akamai and Limelight Networks have installed video servers in colocation centres and Internet Exchanges (IXs) as close as possible to the ISP networks that carry bits to the last mile, where the users are. These servers attach to ISP networks through a few feet of cable, not across the long-haul links that have been the source of Level 3’s traditional revenue stream. (They make use of long-haul links, but mainly to seed their servers with movies that will typically be downloaded hundreds or thousands of times without any further perturbation of the long-haul network.) Colos, as they’re called, exist to make this kind of interconnection fast and cheap, and succeed because distance drives cost in network economics. ISPs install routers in as many colos and IXs as possible, the better to keep their costs low and their performance high, so all the CDNs need to do to reach them is connect through a common Ethernet switch in the colo center. Arguably, CDNs bypass the Internet; at least, they bypass of the Internet backbone in the interest of better service and lower cost.”

This has sometimes been referred to as "the flattening of the Internet" as more and more traffic is delivered over its own bespoke infrastructure in this way. The main bone of contention in this instance is the fact that Level 3 will be delivering far more traffic to Comcast than it receives, undermining the principle of traditional peering arrangements:

“There’s nothing wrong with Level 3’s requesting 300 Gbps of bandwidth from Comcast at the best price it can get, but there’s an established convention around the Internet for network-to-network traffic exchange that Level 3 doesn’t want to follow: You only get free access to a network if you can offer equal value in return, something Level 3 can’t do because their network isn’t extensive enough to do as much work for Comcast as Level 3 expects Comcast to do for it...When some Network A connects to a Network B of similar size, scope, utilization, and capacity, they’ll typically interconnect with no money changing hands; this is traditional Settlement-Free Interconnection (SFI) or peering. But if Network A is a small regional network and Network B has international scope, undersea cables, and massive redundancy for quality and reliability, Network A will pay Network B a volume-based transit fee for moving its packets.”

According to the report, the key driver here is (or should be) the economic one, with the money following the direction of the dominant traffic flow:

“The traditional way that operators have resolved questions about payment for interconnection is to measure traffic between the two networks and to have the money follow the direction of the dominant traffic flow. If Network A sends more traffic to Network B than vice versa, Network A pays. This works for the networks that have historically served as backbones, carrying traffic for others but not generating any of their own. The “sender pays” model works well enough to capture the economics of long-haul networking even though it doesn’t single out all the cost factors; ensuring that money flows in the same direction as traffic has been a good-enough simplifying assumption to keep the backbone ecosystem healthy and competitive.”

There's more:

“…every packet (except the malicious ones) on the Internet flows because someone asked for it—that fact alone doesn’t entitle anyone to free transit...Network costs are determined not only by how many packets a network carries, they’re heavily shaped by the distance the packets must be carried; long pipes cost more to build and operate than short ones…So even in the case where two networks hand off equal numbers of packets to each other, the network that carries them furthest has higher costs and is entitled to a larger share of the fees, all else being equal. This discrepancy has to be accounted for in any rational peering or transit agreement, as those that are public all do. This idea also serves the public policy goal in which rewards flow with investment; the more extensive the infrastructure, the greater the fees it should generate.”

And this is the report's key point about the changing nature of the Internet I think:

“While the Top 10 networks in terms of traffic in 2007 were all transit providers, two networks have entered the Top 10 as of 2010 that are not traditional transit networks, Google and Comcast. The Internet’s edge is thickening, and its core is diminishing.”

In response to Level 3 crying "foul" on the basis of net neutrality to the FCC, the report has this to say:

"Netflix has made a business calculation and determined that the stars are aligned such that playing the net neutrality card now will provoke the most favorable reaction from Comcast and the FCC: The agency is struggling to assert net neutrality rules against the objections of a hostile Congress, Comcast wants the FCC to approve its merger with NBC Universal, and Level 3 needs to succeed in the CDN business because the transit business is declining. Regulators should not buy the claim that paying for transit from a few widely separated colos to ISP end users distributed across three-quarters of a million route miles is unfair."

And in conclusion, on what an appropriate regulatory response should look like:

"The firms are capable of working out this dispute on their own; other CDNs have been able to reach satisfactory terms with Comcast and the other ISPs, and Level 3 is not doing much different from what Akamai and Limelight have done in the past. The FCC would do well to step back and let the firms work out the terms of an agreement among themselves."

To my mind, the key role of regulators in relation to the net neutrality is ensuring transparency at all levels - that way the customer understands what he or she is paying for, and providers have the ability and agility necessary to innovate to bring new services to market (like CDNs).

Any claim that CDNs violate net neutrality seems a red herring to me. CDNs are about additional, dedicated capacity; they aren't about reserving capacity to prioritise certain traffic, a point well made by ZDNet's David Meyer in relation to BT's ContentConnect service his blog (also referenced in this previous post).

All of which, in a roundabout sort of way, continues to underline the importance of maintaining a dedicated broadband infrastructure for education, just as Akamai and other providers of CDN services do for their customers?

Ofcom update - WLA, SLU, LLU, PIA, VULA, GEA, ALA and WBA in support of NGA - so that's all clear then?

2011-02-03T16:42:00.004Z

I never followed up my post last March on Ofcom's two consultations on ways to encourage investment in next generation access (NGA) - on wholesale local access (WLA) and wholesale broadband access (WBA) - with details of their outcomes. This post relates to the WLA consultation and developments since, I'll cover the WBA one separately. So here goes, let the TLA-fest commence...

The WLA consultation (where WLA relates to fixed telecommunications infrastructure - the physical connection between a consumer's premises and the local telephone exchange) covered a range of proposals to encourage NGA deployments, including physical infrastructure access (PIA), more commonly referred to as duct and pole sharing. The idea here that access infrastructure (principally BT's), in the form of underground ducts and telegraph poles, should be opened up for use by other communications providers (CPs) to reduce the cost of deploying fibre. The consultation also described a new mechanism called virtual unbundled local access (VULA) designed to replicate local loop unbundling (LLU) in an NGA (fibre) context, as well as considering existing mechanisms like LLU and sub-loop unbundling (SLU).

Following the consultation Ofcom announced its WLA proposals in a summary statement on 7th October 2010 (press release here and full document here). In addition to requiring BT to continue to offer its existing access mechanisms, the bulk of this statement set out how the two new interventions, PIA and VULA, should be provided. As part of the consultation, Ofcom commissioned an analysis of how PIA costs compared with deployment based on a wholesale NGA product such as BT’s Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) product:

"The modelling showed that a shared infrastructure NGA network deployment would have significantly higher fixed costs than the GEA product at current prices even under very favourable assumptions about infrastructure sharing. These fixed costs mean that a shared infrastructure based NGA network deployment would be more expensive for a CP than GEA at all but high customer penetration. This suggests that it may be a less attractive option for CPs in areas where BT has deployed its own NGA network, at least while demand for NGA services remains uncertain. A PIA obligation looks to be a much more attractive option for areas where BT has not deployed an NGA network. In these areas a PIA obligation would make entry easier by reducing CPs’ costs and putting them on a more equal footing with BT. This could speed up the initial NGA network deployment.”

Which suggests PIA may be less of a silver bullet than it's been hailed as in some quarters perhaps? Ofcom's statement also noted that in future PIA obligations won't solely fall on incumbents with significant market power (SMP):

“…the EU regulatory framework has recently been amended and the amendments have to be translated into UK law by May 2011. One of the amendments relates to infrastructure sharing, widening NRAs’ powers so that they can require any CP to share its physical infrastructure rather than just CPs designated as having SMP. We plan to undertake some scoping work and expect to announce in the near future how we propose to consider the case for exercising the new infrastructure sharing powers.”

...where NRA stands for national regulatory authority. Ofcom's statement required BT to provide a reference offer (RO) within three months of its statement, to be followed by a review process before launching. Openreach published its RO together with indicative pricing (£21 per pole and 95p per metre) on 14^th January 2011 (related Ofcom annoucement here). A service launch is due in February 2012 if Ofcom's timeline is followed (and my maths is correct). Ofcom’s statement acknowledged that “that defining access arrangements for poles is likely to be more complex and more time consuming than for ducts”, and therefore granted BT six months to produce an RO for poles, as opposed to the three it was allowed for ducts – so is this due in April/May 2011? Interestingly, the related BT press release mentioned that a commercial launch is expected is summer 2011, which is ahead of Ofcom’s schedule. Computer Weekly reported a mixed reception to Openreach's offer, so it will be interesting to see how the review process develops.

The most contentious aspect of PIA seems to be its scope, or the purposes for which it can, or in this context, can't be used. This scope was set out on page 117 of Ofcom's March 2010 WLA consultation:

“The purpose of the proposed remedy is to promote competition and infrastructure investment in the deployment of both FTTC and FTTP NGA access networks. We therefore propose that the geographic scope and the allowed uses of the remedy should be limited to this purpose. We are therefore proposing that the scope of the remedy should encompass all infrastructure in BT’s access network (i.e., ducts, poles and associated infrastructure such as chambers), where the access network is defined as the network between business and residential end users premises and their serving BT exchange. Physical infrastructure beyond serving exchanges would fall outside this scope. Thus, CPs would not be able to install cables in sections of BT’s network outside the access network, for instance between local exchanges and metro-nodes. We are proposing that use of the remedy should be limited to the deployment of access networks for: Broadband and telephony services; and SLU backhaul services between cabinets and serving MDF sites. Thus operators would not be able to use the remedy to install cables for other purposes. The installation of cables for backhaul circuits or leased lines would not be permitted. We would consider whether it would be appropriate to extend the scope of the remedy to other services in the relevant market reviews.”

These limitations on PIA have brought criticism, particularly from Geo which published this briefing paper on the matter. CEO Chris Smedley also addressed this in his presentation to NextGen10 in November 2010. From Geo's briefing paper:

"The limitations on duct and pole access will severely harm investment and limit returns to public and private investors. It is short sighted to restrict an investor from exploiting the full capabilities of the access network in this manner. Further, it perpetuates BT’s monopoly, gives it an unfair advantage over other operators, as it is not subject to these restrictions, and it is free to fully commercialise its network. The restrictions will be particularly detrimental in rural and remote areas where wireless and mobile technologies will be, or form part of, an effective broadband solution, together with VDSL and fibre roll-outs. By excluding these technologies it will eliminate any “village pump” investment models or hybrid fibre/wireless or mobile deployments."

Ofcom's justification for their approach is set out on page 110 of their statement, in relation to the limitations on geographic scope:

“We have proposed PIA as a remedy to promote effective competition in the WLA market and therefore the geographic scope of the remedy that we can impose is restricted to the WLA market, i.e., local access networks. It would not therefore be possible to extend the scope of PIA to include backhaul or core network infrastructure as part of this market review. However, we recognise that fibre NGA networks will be free from the copper network transmission limitations and may therefore adopt a different topology, particularly in relation to their reach (i.e., the area served from the access nodes) which in some cases may be larger than for copper local access networks…we consider it would be appropriate to allow PIA to be used over an area that more accurately reflects local access in the NGA context. We have therefore modified the SMP condition (FAA12) to allow PIA to be used in infrastructure between end user premises and the serving BT NGA exchange (existing and planned) or other BT exchanges that are broadly equivalent in terms of distance from the end user premises and level of aggregation… It is important to note that the geographic scope is intended only to limit use of PIA to local access deployments, and does not imply a requirement for CPs to serve premises from BT’s NGA exchanges (though they could if they wished to), and will allow them to serve end user premises from their own exchanges and to ‘break-out’ from the BT duct/pole network at intermediate points before the BT NGA exchange to connect to their own networks.”

And the justification for the limitations on the purposes PIA can be used for is on page 111:

"Leased line and backhaul services are currently regulated under the business connectivity market, where BT is required to provide these products on a cost orientated basis and in many cases in accordance with a specific charge control. We, therefore, consider that introducing PIA as a remedy into the business connectivity market could undermine the remedies that we have already imposed in that market...it is our view that it would be inappropriate for us to extend the scope of PIA without assessing the need for and impact of a PIA remedy in the business connectivity market. We have therefore decided to maintain the scope of PIA as proposed in the consultation document, allowing it to be used for the deployment of access networks for broadband and telephony services and also for SLU backhaul services between cabinets and the local NGA exchange. We will consider the case for allowing PIA to be used for leased lines in the next business connectivity market review, which we intend to commence in the first half of 2011...in our view, extending the scope of PIA to include leased lines would be unlikely to stimulate much additional investment in NGA networks in the short term.”

...which rather suggests to me that it would perhaps have been more sensible (and in keeping with the wishes of the industry) to consider PIA more broadly in the first instance, as a mechanism cutting across all market sectors, not just in relation to the local access market?

Moving on to VULA, the other new intervention, here's what Ofcom concluded:

“…BT will be required to provide VULA services on fair and reasonable terms, conditions and charges as soon as reasonably practicable to all CPs who reasonably request in writing such services. Further, we conclude that the key characteristics that we set out in the consultation document should be maintained, noting that there are likely to be many additional considerations when developing and implementing the detailed product specifications. We also conclude that we should implement our proposed specific form of no undue discrimination. Finally, we conclude that there should be no explicit price regulation of the VULA products and that instead BT should be given pricing flexibility. However, we consider that the requirement on BT to provide VULA on fair and reasonable terms, conditions and charges may be important to ensure that BT does not introduce inappropriate pricing structures.”

So no regulated pricing for VULA products is currently proposed. Ofcom also acknowledged BT's development of its Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) NGA wholesale products for CPs, which will be the means through which it addresses its VULA obligations, though some concerns still remain over these and there doesn't yet appear to be a definite timetable for availability. From the next steps section of Ofcom's WLA statement:

"It is clear from the responses, and from general discussion with industry, that further development of BT’s GEA products is needed to meet the demands of BT’s CP customers. We consider that these developments should be considered and progressed by the industry working groups, with the facilitation of the OTA (Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator), in the first instance. We would however note that BT is under a general obligation to provide network access on reasonable request. CPs can therefore formalise there requirements under this requirement and if BT and CPs are unable to agree there is the option for the matter to be submitted to us as a dispute."

So VULA's a goer, but there's a way to go before it's a reality. The recently finalised active line access (ALA) documents prepared by NICC (commentaries here and here) should assist with bringing products to market?

Whew. Right, next up: the outcomes from the WBA consultation...but not just yet.

Delivering a Digital Wales

2011-01-27T20:58:00.001Z

Some interesting extracts from Delivering a Digital Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government's broadband strategy document published last month. The underpinning ambition of the strategy is:

“To deliver all the benefits of digital technology, we expect that all businesses in Wales will have access to superfast broadband by the middle of 2016, and all households by 2020.”

Just as the UK strategy does, the strategy for Wales recognises that the drive to deliver universality should not be separated from the drive to deliver NGA. This is the first time I've seen separate targets for businesses and households in such a strategy. Also noteworthy is that the strategy nails its colours to the mast by defining a bandwidth for its vision of NGA:

“…we will ensure that any next generation broadband infrastructure funded through public sector intervention will be capable of delivering broadband services of at least 30Mbps, and ideally 100Mbps, to avoid the need for repeat investment at a later date.”

So by 2020 all households should be able to access 30Mbps, with 50% of businesses and households able to access 100Mbps, in line with the targets set out in the European Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe. Though the 2016 target for business is significantly more ambitious that the EC's target. The strategy for Wales also includes much more specific recognition of the importance of broadband for education than Britain's Superfast Broadband Future does, and it's also interesting that the potential for consolidating and re-using existing agenda is presented without the caveats that accompanied this idea in the UK strategy:

"Our vision for success is an inclusive, prosperous Digital Wales expressed in 2020 as:…Digital Wales has transformed learning. Education services have used digital technology to create entirely new teaching and learning experiences as well as enhancing existing ones...A coherent pan-Wales approach to public service infrastructure will provide the underpinning services that need to be put in place to collect, store and share information securely and confidentially. One major component is already in place in the Public Sector Broadband Aggregation (PSBA) network. This network is recognised globally as presenting a huge strategic advantage for future collaborative service delivery as well as offering the potential to influence local broadband availability in communities served by the PSBA. We will expect public sector organisations to focus on the strategic benefits of using the PSBA and accelerate its widespread adoption. Teaching and learning will be transformed through digital technology so schools in particular need to invest in higher speed fibre-based facilities unless there is an overwhelming case not to…(The) PSBA (is) One of the first totally integrated Public Sector Networks in the UK, connecting more than 2000 sites across Unitary Authorities, Hospitals, General Practitioners, Universities, Further Education Colleges, Emergency Services, and a growing number of organisations funded by the public sector.”

The importance of the public sector as an intelligent commissioner of broadband infrastructure is also acknowledged, something I concur very strongly with:

“We wish to set a challenging, yet meaningful communications infrastructure ambition for Wales. Achieving this ambition will require a sensible balance between wholly private led infrastructure deployment and private sector deployment that is facilitated by public sector behaviour.”

Don't get me wrong, there's much to praise in both strategies, but the differences between them are as interesting as their similarities.

Net neutrality update: where are we now?

2011-01-25T22:14:00.003Z

Lots has happened since my last post on net neutrality back at the beginning of December, which related to the then-imminent FCC order on the issue. This was subsequently published just before Christmas, about which more later, but first I need to wind back to an event previous to my December post which I neglected to reference at the time.

This event was a speech by Ed Vaizey MP on 17th November 2011 in which he set out the coalition government's stall on the net neutrality debate. Some key quotes:

"A lightly regulated Internet is good for business, good for the economy, and good for people. But it is also right the Government puts in place the right infrastructure to support it and has a view on how it should be governed...The continued delivery of high quality content will...require massive investment, and it may also mean networks and the traffic that flows over them are increasingly managed as the information super-highway – an old phrase but with compelling resonance in this debate – becomes ever more crowded...At the heart of this debate...is the extent to which traffic should be managed on the Internet, and more specifically whether ISPs should ever have the right to favour one content provider over another, particularly for commercial reasons."

He went on to flag the importance of openness (in terms of being able to access any legal content or services), transparency (the need for easy to understand information about traffic management policies and their impacts) and, echoing Neelie Kroes, the importance of supporting investment and innovation. He also acknowledged the fact that virtually all ISPs manage traffic on their networks already, and further illuminated the importance of supporting innovation:

“We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want. This could include the evolution of a two sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service. The market could develop in many different ways. The important thing is that ISPs and networks remain free to innovate. In doing so they may make mistakes and consumers should have the ability to make them pay for those mistakes. Again, the key is that consumers must be informed and aware of what they are buying and of any limitations attached to it; allowing them to choose a level of connectivity appropriate for their needs. Transparency is not something that should only be available to consumers. It is a principle that needs to extend throughout the entire value chain. Content and application providers should be able to know exactly what level of service they are getting especially if they are paying for it.”

The coalition government is "no fan of regulation" and there is currently "no need for intervention", a fact reinforced by the responses to Ofcom's consultation last year (to which a formal response is yet to appear from Ofcom I believe, but Ed Richards did cover this in his speech to the same conference the previous day, as well as in this one yesterday), though the situation does need to be kept under review as the market develops. All of which was, I thought, a pretty reasonable take on what can be at times a rather hysterical and ill-informed debate.

However,the Guardian didn't share this view, accusing Vaizey of suggesting that "ISPs should be free to abandon net neutrality", which I don't think is a fair representation of his speech at all. The BBC's headline ("Minister Ed Vaizey backs 'two-speed' Internet) was better, but the article then spoilt it by going on to suggest that his speech "paves the way for an end to "net neutrality" - with heavy bandwidth users like Google and the BBC likely to face a bill for the pipes they use", when it's wholly questionable whether a truly neutral Internet has ever existed, a fact emphasised by Vaizey's point that most ISPs already manage the traffic on their networks. In an interview with the Telegraph a few days later Vaizey emphasised again that his overriding priorities in this area are an open Internet and the protection of consumers: "Should the internet develop in a way that was detrimental to consumer interests we would seek to intervene." In my view I think the media were a bit premature in hitting the panic button on this one?

Anyway, this furore provided an interesting UK context for the FCC's publication of their order on preserving a free and open Internet, which as I mentioned earlier, was published a few weeks later, just before Christmas (the related FCC press release includes a useful summary - the full document runs to just under 200 pages). Vaizey's speech would seem in keeping with the FCC's approach, this from the FT:

"The "net neutrality" ruling prohibits broadband providers from blocking any lawful content, applications and services, though it would allow "reasonable network management" and permit operators to manage congestion by charging heavy users more."

While the BBC had this to say:

"The new rules prohibit telecommunications companies that provide high-speed internet service from blocking access by customers to any legal content, applications or service. But, for the first time, there is now a policy that will allow for what has been termed "paid-prioritisation", where companies will be able to pay for a faster service."

The rules remain highly contentious though: the FCC voted 3-2 in their favour; the FCC's three Democrats voted to pass the regulations, while the agency's two Republicans opposed them. And the commercial sector has already thrown down the gauntlet: on 20th January 2011, Verizon filed an appeal against the FCC's order (further commentary here). So far from a done deal.

Returning to the UK, net neutrality was in the news again at the beginning of January 2011 as BT launched its ContentConnect service, "a new content distribution network that addresses the extraordinary growth of video services over the Internet". This led to renewed claims of the dangers of creating a two-tier Internet, as reported by the BBC, but ZDnet's David Meyer (who shares my views on the way Ed Vaizey's speech was misrepresented) offered (in my opinion anyway) a far more measured reaction on his blog:

"Let's have a look at Content Connect. It's a content delivery network (CDN), much like those from providers such as Akamai and Level3. This means a bunch of servers located in areas of high congestion, where extra bandwidth is needed to push through (generally video) content at high quality. CDNs are already widely used by content providers such as the BBC, which relies on CDNs to support iPlayer across the UK, and by ISPs. BT has simply built its own CDN, which — seeing as the company utterly dominates the country's wholesale broadband market — it is in a good position to market as part of an end-to-end, we-can-guarantee-you-X-level-of-service package for other ISPs. This spring, it will start selling Content Connect access to BT Retail, which will use the CDN to deliver iPlayer on its BT Vision IPTV platform. Other ISPs will also be able to use Content Connect to push through heavy content, or they can just use the same rival CDNs they already use. I don't see how this leads to the creation of a two-tier web/net/whatever. My fear regarding net neutrality is that, within the paradigm of one network, one service gets boosted to the detriment of another. If someone wants to build spare capacity for a specific service, which will result in no change to the quality of rival services, I really couldn't care less — that sounds like a sensible business practice to me. "

I entirely agree. This is clearly a complex and challenging area, but surely any arguments should be based on facts first and foremost? It will be important to keep a close eye on this area as the market continues to develop at a dizzying rate, but the principles underlying both Ed Vaizey's recent speech and the FCC's recent order seem to me to be the right ones - transparency in delivery and openness in access.

It will be interesting to see how the market responds, both in the UK/Europe and across the Atlantic. Surely a light-touch is preferable to heavy handed regulation, but a light touch does suppose that parties will "play nicely"...

US schools' broadband provision not sufficient to meet streaming video requirements

2011-01-24T21:33:00.001Z

In an interesting counterpoint to my previous post earlier today, the FCC's 2010 E-Rate Program and Broadband Usage Survey has this to say about US schools' experience of streaming video:

"Only 11% say that that their current connection completely meets their streaming video needs and even fewer (10%) report that their connections completely meet their video-conferencing needs. This question only refers to the bandwidth to the premises, not internal wiring or other network factors that may affect the actual experience in the classroom or office. As more applications have a video component, schools and libraries will likely need additional bandwidth to take advantage of the full range of educational options available."

...too true, especially if that video component looks anything like Uni TV (we can but hope). A comparative picture of broadband provision for schools in the UK is available here. The FCC report's summary findings also make for interesting reading:

Almost All Have At Least Some Broadband: 95% of all E-rate survey respondents have some form of terrestrial broadband connection to at least one facility, while 2% use satellite and 3% use dial-up.
Faster Broadband Speeds Needed: However, nearly 80% of all survey respondents say their broadband connections do not fully meet their current needs.
Slow connection speed is the primary reason current Internet connectivity does not meet the needs for 55% of these respondents.
Cost is a Big Factor: 39% of E-rate survey respondents cite cost of service as a barrier in meeting their Internet needs, and 27% cite cost of installation as a barrier.
E-Book Use to Greatly Increase: 56% of all E-rate survey respondents expect to implement or expand the use of digital textbooks in the next two to three years, and 45% expect to implement or expand the use of handheld devices for educational purposes.
Most Have Speeds Greater Than 3 Mbps: 10% of E-rate survey respondents have broadband speeds of 100 Mbps or greater and most (55%) have broadband speeds greater than 3 Mbps.
More than half of school districts (60%) subscribe to a fiber optic connection.
66% of respondents provide some wireless connectivity for staff, students or library patrons.
E-Mail Essential for Schools: For schools, e-mail is the most-used application (almost all schools, 98%, regularly use or access e-mail), and the most essential (69% consider it the most essential).
Libraries Rely on Online Reference Materials: For libraries, online reference materials are both the most used application (86% of staff and patrons regularly use or access online reference materials) and the most essential (62% consider it the most essential)

The need to support concurrent usage (multiple users accessing multiple, complex, media-rich applications simultaneously) seems to be the underlying driver here, a situation likely to be exacerbated by the fact that almost half of the schools surveyed plan to expand the use of handheld devices for educational purposes.

The future of broadband for education?

2011-01-24T12:08:00.000Z

Uni TV, developed by the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES) at the University of Melbourne, is definitely worth a look.

This YouTube video offers a fascinating glimpse of what the future might hold in terms of video applications for education, including VoD, 3D delivery for disciplines including chemistry, medicine, archaeology and engineering, and a clever application of haptic technologies to simulate surgical operations in 3D on a virtual patient. More info in this news release.

Fantastic stuff, and a useful application to have in your pocket if/when you're confronted with anyone who asks "so what do we need all this additional bandwidth for, anyway?"

Britain's superfast broadband disconnect?

2010-12-16T15:44:00.002Z

While it was encouraging to read the following words about public sector network opportunities in the UK's new broadband strategy, published last week and greeted with an entertaining little slip-up on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (don't worry James; those of us that share the Culture Secretary's surname have heard 'em all before, more times than we care to remember in fact), it seems a few doubts have crept in along the way as well:

"5.19 Public sector networks like those that connect our schools, hospitals and other public building to the Internet are often mooted as the answer to improved connectivity for locations where broadband connections are slow and it is easy to understand the frustration of those that know that a fibre passes within close proximity of their residence. It is correct that considerable public investment has been made in these networks, but it is not unfortunately correct that they provide an instant solution to slow connectivity.

5.20 Whilst there is definite scope for the re-use of public sector networks, particularly to address the absence of adequate backhaul, those that exist today may require extensive technical alteration to make them fit for purpose, which might render them impractical or too expensive for re-use, or may be subject to commercial contracts or procurement constraints that do not permit their reuse for the household consumer market.

5.21 Neither of these are absolute barriers, although in practice budget may be the defining factor, but where the re-use of and existing public sector networks provides an efficient means of improving household connectivity it will be part of the solution. Indeed there are some examples where the model has been applied, for example the North Yorkshire network, which was built and specified with the purpose of aiding and improving household connectivity in mind and further examination of the commercial arrangements will be explored during the BDUK superfast broadband pilots.

5.22 It does need to be highlighted that each service delivery to a school or public building using fibre means that route has been upgraded and has been readied making it easier and cheaper to upgrade. This is a potential contribution to upgrading routes to rural areas, and where suitable, we will look to make this re-use a reality."

As far as I am aware, no-one has ever suggested that such networks would provide an instant solution to slow connectivity, so it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that they have. And it's always been the case that such networks would require development and most likely bandwidth upgrades to provide additional service in this way. But, given that upgrading them to support additional use would also improve services for their original users, particularly rural schools that stand to benefit hugely from improved broadband access, surely it's worth putting the effort in to address these hurdles? Worryingly, the language used above looks (to me anyway) more like an attempt to find reasons not to pursue this opportunity, rather than an encouragement to embrace it.

This undercurrent of doubt also doesn't sit very well with points made earlier in the paper. In particular, the section on the important role of local authorities and regions, in partnership with communities, in stimulating and coordinating broadband developments:

"4.2 What Governments have seldom done – but which we are proposing for the first time – is enable communities to influence or take part in extending access networks...

4.3 We are taking a new approach to delivering connectivity in rural and hard to reach areas that the market will not provide for. Where local authorities have superfast broadband as a development priority, BDUK will work with them to source an upgrade to the data transport infrastructure. This will be the foundation for the Government’s £530m investment commitment over the lifetime of this Parliament.

4.4 BDUK will also explore the viability of a broadband community hub at a local level – which could provide the means of extending networks where the community will either take responsibility for the actual civil engineering of the network or take greater control over managing network elements. Networks can then be extended over time to provide enhanced access to broadband for individual premises in a variety of ways. For example, an operator’s cabinet can be equipped to support the splicing of fibre builds into the access network. Interfaces can be made available such that wireless networks or indeed community managed femtocells can be added to the network."

Given that local authorities and regions have invested heavily in broadband access over the last 10+ years, surely it makes much more sense to utilise this existing infrastructure than to deploy duplicate over-builds? And what better "broadband community hub" could there be than a school? Doesn't the line on "extending access networks" rather contradict the previous extract, which suggests that this might be just too difficult?

My guess is that ever-helpful industry folks have been having a quiet word on the back of re-use proposals, to suggest that "you really don't want to be bothering with these fiddling little school networks you know". This is principally because industry will want to get its hands on the cash with as few strings attached as possible, to build new private assets it can then sell back to the public sector for the next 20 or 30 years. A market-led approach to broadband, in fact, as is being deployed in Cornwall.

I think consolidating and extending access to existing publicly-managed networks is a far more appropriate use of public monies. This would further develop publicly-owned and managed assets to benefit communities first and companies second. Of course the private sector has a huge role to play, as such networks are commissioned from commercial providers, but, most importantly, the critical mass of management and development resides in the public rather than the private sector under such an approach.

Here's the bottom line: you're much more likely to get an infrastructure that meets both your current and future requirements if your relationship with your providers involves "commissioning from" rather than "being sold to". The former benefits end users first and shareholders second, while in the latter, it's the other way around.

Net neutrality, Comcast & the FCC...it's just like old times

2010-12-02T15:54:00.002Z

Following a lengthy period of discussion and debate, which brought suggestions from a wide range of parties, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski yesterday announced how he intends to preserve “internet freedom and openness” – or, to put it more succinctly, he unveiled his latest proposals on net neutrality.

He began by revisiting previous misbehaviour:

“...we have seen clear deviations from the Internet’s openness – instances when broadband providers have prevented consumers from using the applications of their choice without disclosing what they were doing.”

Absolutely we have – have a look at this previous post to see what Comcast got up to in this regard. Yesterday’s announcement reiterates consumers’ right to transparency and to access the lawful content of their choice, as well as their right to a level playing field which precludes “unreasonable discrimination in transmitting lawful network traffic”. These consumer protections are balanced against recognition of ISPs’ needs:

“...broadband providers need meaningful flexibility to manage their networks – for example, to deal with traffic that’s harmful to the network or unwanted by users, and to address the effects of congestion. Reasonable network management is an important part of the proposal, recognizing that what is reasonable will take account of the network technology and architecture involved.”

And in relation to the legal basis for this, given that that the ruling made in April 2010 went in Comcast’s rather than the FCC’s favour, it seems there has been a change of heart:

“Informed by the staff’s additional legal analysis and the extensive comments on this issue over the past year, the proposal is grounded in a variety of provisions of the communications laws, but would not reclassify broadband as a Title II telecommunications service. I am satisfied that we have a sound legal basis for this approach.”

So this spells the end of the third way proposed in May 2010, where broadband services would be reclassified as Title II services, albeit with only a handful of Title II provisions applying to broadband: only the transmission component of a broadband access service would be recognised as a telecommunications service, so providers wouldn’t be regulated in relation to, for example, web-based services and applications, e-commerce sites and online content. More on this from the BBC. The FCC's board of commissioners will vote on the proposals at a meeting on December 21 2010.

It’s interesting (deliberate?) that the FCC’s announcement coincides with Comcast making further headlines in relation to net neutrality, but for a different reason this time. From the FT (Comcast at the centre of ‘net neutrality’ row):

“The US cable giant was accused late on Monday of demanding fees for the first time in return for carrying internet movies and other traffic for Level 3, an internet backbone network operator. Level 3 accused Comcast of “effectively putting up a toll booth” on its broadband networks so that it could unilaterally set the price for online content that competes with its own services The Colorado-based company recently won a contract to carry video on behalf of Netflix, whose inroads into streaming movies pose a long-term challenge to Comcast’s own cable television business...Comcast said that there had been a doubling in the amount of traffic it was being asked to handle on behalf of Level 3, with the Netflix deal believed to account for the jump. It added that it was being asked to carry five times as much traffic for Level 3 as it sent in the other direction, which it said justified the imposition of fees.”

A Comcast blog post claimed that that it already charged other internet backbone companies the same fees that it was seeking to apply to Level 3. Level 3’s original complaint is here and their response to Comcast’s reply is here. Clearly an additional complication here is that the Netflix service could be argued to be a direct competitor to Comcast’s own services. In a word? Messy.

This is a good example of what Ofcom referred to as a two-sided market in their June 2010 consultation: ISPs serve both content providers (such as the BBC, in relation to iPlayer content – perhaps not the best example, given recent history!) and downstream customers accessing their content (you and me). Philosophical arguments about whether such fees undermine the so-called principles of Internet openness and freedom have to be balanced against the reality that broadband traffic volumes are continuing to increase rapidly whilst ISPs’ revenues remain largely static. Surely this can’t be sustained if we all want to continue to benefit from new, innovative services that can exploit the full potential of next generation networks? This graph from Ofcom’s 2010 Communications Market Report (page 283) shows the proof of this:

I find it frustrating that complex issues like these all get lumped together under the banner of net neutrality when I think there are some important distinctions to be drawn, as I’ve suggested in this previous post. There is one good thing about this continuing debate though –at least it gives people like me plenty to write about!

NextGen10 conference report (day 2) - a curate's egg?

2010-11-26T16:32:00.006Z

Day 2 kicked off with a keynote from YouView Chairman Kip Meek on how the service formerly known as Project Canvas is developing. He was keen to distance YouView from perceived competitors like Google and Apple TV: "Google is providing the Internet on television, YouView is an enhanced television experience". It's planned to launch in June 2011, later than intended as a result of the level of regulatory interest in the project.

To me, it was the wrong presentation for this audience. We know streaming TV services work, the iPlayer and others have proved this. We also know that people would prefer to watch TV on, well, their TV, rather than their PC - obvious really; lean back vs lean forward content and all that. YouView's "clever bit" is managing to negotiate the commercial and regulatory minefield that is broadcast TV to develop an aggregated catch-up service. Impressive, but hardly a subject of much direct relevance to NextGen10 attendees. The technology in the set-top-box is quite clever, in that it records most popular content from broadcast so it can be served locally rather than delivered via the Internet, to reduce the load on ISPs' networks. But I imagine other providers' boxes will do this as well?

But the claim that the service will help to address the digital divide seemed entirely misplaced, especially as while the set-top-box includes browser functionality, it only allows access to a "controlled environment". Sounds like a missed opportunity. YouView looks to me to be essentially a retail platform to sell Sky+ equivalent devices to people who don't want a Sky subscription. Rather like Freeview, which was often described as offering digital TV to people who didn't want a satellite dish (or, to out it another way, Radio 4 listeners). Nothing wrong with that as a business model of course, and I think they're probably on to something, just don't pretend it's something it's not. Given the BBC's involvement, isn't there something missing here about the provision of Internet access through the device being in the public good, in keeping with the BBC's principles?

This was followed by a choice of three workshops, I attended the one on NGA network roll-out. This involved a presentation by Keymile on the opportunities offered by hybrid copper and fibre roll-outs, to maximise bandwidths and performance at the same time as minimising costs, an important consideration in the current economic climate. The presentation raised the practical question of whether current application usage really requires FTTH bandwidths. I can see the point, but such a view risks a step backwards, given the growing impetus around broadband provision generally (and the commitment in other countries such as Australia to FTTH). An interesting point was made about backhaul costs though: whereas capex costs mainly comprise installation costs, opex costs are dominated by backhaul costs - which is where infrastructure sharing (if you can of course, see my notes from day 1) and re-use of existing networks has such a potentially important role to play. Reducing backhaul costs in this way could make fibre installation more viable?

There followed a panel session with representatives from the four BDUK superfast broadband pilots, as announced in the October 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review: North Yorkshire, the Highlands & Islands, Herefordshire and Cumbria. Still early days, all are at different stages and considering different approaches. The point was made that to the Highlands & Islands, the "big society" is nothing new - they've always had to get on with things themselves. NYnet are leading in North Yorkshire, with the region in a strong position thanks to NYnet's infrastructure already providing backhaul into rural areas (via a school in one instance). Cumbria flagged the importance of aggregation, suggesting their approach would be "PSN Plus", where PSN refers to the Cabinet Office's Public Sector Network programme. Herefordshire seemed to have the most to do, by its own admission beginning with a "blank sheet of paper". This elicited a rather cutting comment from one member of the audience: that securing public funds with such a blank sheet was a very impressive achievement. Ouch!

Three more workshops followed; I chose the one on the regulatory environment and state aid, as these aspects present key challenges to the potential repurposing of existing networks (for example, using schools' broadband connections to provide backhaul for rural broadband projects). Complicated stuff for sure; Paul Brisby of Towerhouse Consulting LLP began by highlighting the importance of regulated products and servces: they account for more than 50% of ISPs' opex, and Openreach generates over 30% of BT group EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). The key regulatory issues and challenges in 2010 include physical infrastructure access (PIA, or duct and pole sharing), sub-loop unbundling, FTTH regulation (fibre unbundling) and generic ethernet access.

Ginny O'Flinn, Senior Associate in the Olswang EU and Competition Group, provided a very detailed overview of state aid issues for NGA networks, her presentation is well worth a look. She flagged the EU's September 2009 guidelines on state aid in relation to broadband networks, as well as the EU's state aid decisions in relation to NYnet (N746/2006 published in February 2007 and N559/2009 published in June 2010) and Cornwall (N461/2009, also published in June 2010). The EU fully recognises the benefits of broadband and bases decisions on balancing positive and negative effects, as well as proportionality, or the extent to which any aid provides the minimum necessary to achieve the intended objectives. There was some discussion of the practicality of BDUK's intention to obtain a blanket state aid approval for broadband projects (possible and is being explored currently, but individual regional assessments will still be required) and the timescales involved in obtaining decisions. These can be lengthy but not too ridiculous; Cornwall applied in July 2009 and was approved in May 2010. NYnet has been involved with three state aid applications, the two mentioned above took 4 and 12 months respectively, while the application for the South Yorkshire Digital Region Broadband Project (N157/2006) took 14-16 months.

And so we headed into the final straight...Dale Barnes, Acting Director of Advanced Technologies and Innovation at Virgin Media gave an overview of their NGA activities and pilots. Virgin Media downstream traffic has increased by over 215% in three years. 750,000 customers are paying for 20Mbps+ services, and almost 100,000 homes are connected at 50Mbps. Virgin Media are looking to ensure a 10:1 contention ratio across all services in future and have established the Stop the Broadband Con website to encourage greater honesty and transparency in relation to connection speeds...or to throw the bandwidths of competitors' offerings into sharper relief, depending on your point of view. Half of the UK will have access to their 100Mbps service by 2012 which will cost £35/month as part of a bundle or £45/month as a stand-alone service. 10,000 registrations for the 100Mbps service were received on the first day registration opened. Challenges identified by Dale included business rates, wayleaves and the PIA product set as currently proposed by BT (see my notes from day 1 for more on this). There is an opportunity for power companies to play an important role by opening up their infrastructure, and Openreach needs to accept inputs from community networks as well as larger players.

The last keynote of the conference was from Simon Towler, Head of Broadband Policy Programmes at BIS, who reiterated Ed Vaizey's remark from the previous day that the government's broadband strategy paper would be published soon. This will bring all the current strands of activity together. He also explained that the government's definition of the "best superfast broadband in Europe" would be about more than download speed; this of itself doesn't illustrate the actual user experience and having an effective, competitive marketplace is another important facet in describing "best in Europe". The government doesn't want to constrain technology choices as it sees all having a role to play. The private sector should lead investment while the government's job is to get the regulatory and investment framework right. BT's reference offer for access to its ducts is due in January 2011 with a similar offer for access to poles to follow in May. The audience expressed further concern over the potential disconnects between the procurement exercises for BDUK's pilots, BT's infrastructure sharing offer and the timing/availability of European funding, an issue that will require further deliberation I think.

Of the three remaining workshops, I chose the one exploring different ways of extending fibre to the community, which included delivering town centre and wider NGA via a CCTV fibre optic network, further insight into the PSN and solutions provided by Rutland Telecom, who cited an instance of a village with a population of 104 being quoted an excess construction charge (ECC) of £166K to deliver broadband, which clearly is simply not viable. An option Rutland Telecom can provide is installation of a DSLAM on a telephone pole, to deliver broadband to the premise over the remaining copper loop.

Unfortunately I missed the final panel session and conference close, but I'm not sure I could have taken in much more anyway, as my brain was already full ("every time I learn how to set the video I forget how to drive the car" - a Homer Simpson quote I have much sympathy with). In summary, it's clear that while we're moving forward in many regards, some serious issues remain to be addressed, mainly in relation to funding (the current amounts committed aren't sufficient) and continued obstacles from BT which could severely hamper progress. The next few months are going to be crucial, with BT's reference offers particularly significant, and plenty more fun and games to come I'm sure. Watch this space.

NextGen10 conference report (day 1) - plus ça change...

2010-11-25T22:37:00.001Z

...plus c'est la même chose? A little unfair perhaps, as there have been many developments since NextGen09, which were reported over the two days of the conference. Also, attendance was at capacity, a clear indication of the ever increasing recognition of the importance of broadband access. But at the same time it seems some very significant obstacles and problems remain to be addressed, which is concerning.

In his keynote address on day 1, BT's Bill Murphy was at pains to point out just how much BT were doing in support of UK NGA: "no other company in the world is investing as much in fibre without public sector support or a regime that allow for greater returns", apparently. An interesting line to take. The second part of his statement is clearly a not very oblique reference to (criticism of?) the UK's regulatory regime. But surely any public sector support (which he would appear to be asking for in the first part of his statement) should be conditional upon appropriate regulation, to ensure taxpayers' interests are addressed first, with shareholders' interests second? BT wants the best of both worlds here it seems, to have its cake and eat it. You can't have it both ways?

Recent developments in Cornwall ("the most ambitious rural broadband project in the world") were also flagged in Bill's presentation, about which more later. A couple of interesting additional facts and figures cropped up too: of the £830m announced for broadband in the Comprehensive Spending Review on 20 October 2010, £230m will come from the digital switchover, with the remainder from the BBC licence fee, to be allocated in £150m chunks annually from 2013. This last bit was news to me and two things struck me: a) it's not very much money, given the scale of the task (which we already knew), and b) we've got several years to wait before these funds become available. All of which puts significant additional pressure on the government's already ambitious target to ensure the UK has the best superfast broadband in Europe within the lifetime of this parliament.

Some interesting points were made in the subsequent panel session, the first of the conference, on approaches to NGA. Dave Carter, head of the Manchester Digital Development Agency, pointed out that many families now have no landline, relying totally on mobile telephony (an issue Becta also encountered as part of its Home Access programme). FTTC solutions are thus likely to be of little relevance to them. For more on this, see Ofcom's 2010 Communications Market Report, pages 337-338 - apparently 15% of households did not have a landline in Q1 2010. The point was also made that it's expensive for operators to work with multiple small community projects, and the thorny issue of business rates on fibre was raised for the first time here too. It struck me that in relation to this first point, publicly owned or community interest, not-for-profit vehicles could provide a solution, if they were purposely structured to deal with such small-scale projects, as well as being equipped to procure wholesale services on an open access basis from telcos that can't or won't deal with small concerns. A man in the middle if you like. NYnet is a good, successful example of this kind of procurement vehicle; could local authority/regional public networks be restructured to function similarly?

Next up was Peter Ludin, Vice President EMEA of Draka Telecom Solutions. One of his slides showed a pie chart revealing that approximately 75% of fibre deployment costs relate to expenditure other than equipment - civil works, installation and project management being the main costs here. He also flagged the importance of planning, using geographic data and software tools to develop cost estimates to inform investment. There seemed to be a parallel with the approach JANET(UK)'s LLU reports can facilitate, in terms of planning a local authority or regional WAN based on BT exchanges.

The next panel session, on open access networks and infrastructure sharing, was very revealing. Chris Smedley, Chief Executive of Geo set out the limitations of what's currently proposed in terms of opening up access to BT's ducts and poles, as announced by Ofcom last month. This was news to me, Pauline Rigby has an excellent account of the detail of this on her site here and the issue was also reported by Computer Weekly. This issue (specifically, that bidders don't know what their input costs will be) was a key reason why Geo and others pulled out of the Cornwall NGA project, leaving BT as the only bidder, and places a question mark over the likelihood of effective competition in procurements for the four BDUK pilot projects if it remains unresolved. An additional issue here is that other sources of funding for the pilots (for example, from Europe) are time limited and will be lost if this impasse isn't revolved prior to the commencement of tendering exercises for the pilots.

Chris also set out Geo's definition of open access networks, which seemed right on the money to me, more on this in this excellent Geo white paper. Chris said that a network that's truly open to all players is "the best place for public sector investment" and I entirely agree. Gareth Davies, Ofcom's Competition Policy Director was also on the panel and did his best to explain why the duct and pole sharing proposals are the way they are, but it did seem to me that Ofcom were (as ever?) rather caught up in their own peculiar and impenetrable internal logic on this one. My guess is that this is an inevitable consequence of the complexity of their relationship with BT, but unfortunately it makes the lack of progress very frustrating for all the other parties involved, who simply want to get on with building the NGA networks that they know their customers want.

Next up was Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, reprising his appearance at NextGen09 when he spoke for the opposition. He gave an overview of the government's intentions for this area, flagging that we should expect a strategy document (the coalition's take on the previous administration's Digital Britain report I guess) shortly. Malcolm Corbett, CEO of the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (INCA) launched their Beyond Broadband guide to NGA, which provides an excellent, concise summary of developments to date and future opportunities in this area. Malcolm was followed by Adrian Wooster, founder of the JON Exchange, which was launched earlier this month as "a wholesale marketplace that bridges the gap between service providers and the panoply of European access network owners" - a single source of alternative access networks, providing easy and consistent access to customers and a viable opportunity for network operators to demonstrate their open access credentials. Hopefully it will provide a solution to the question of how to persuade major players like BT, Sky and Virgin Media to allow their content to be delivered over networks they don't own and maintain themselves. I think this has to happen if the open access model is to gain credence and succeed in overcoming the inherent inertia in the current way of doing things?

The last keynote of day 1 was from Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, on the importance of involving our communities in broadband developments, highlighting the important evangelical role of the public sector in championing the benefits of broadband. For a further excellent insight from the RSA, have a look at this brilliant animation on changing education paradigms. Unfortunately I missed the last workshop, so that concludes my account of the first day. My report on day 2 to follow as soon as I've managed to decipher my scribbles. Back soon...

Ed Vaizey on an open internet and net neutrality

2010-11-17T16:37:00.001Z

An interesting speech from Ed Vaizey today (related BIS press release here), setting out the UK government's take on net neutrality. A well-informed speech, making reference to developments elsewhere in the world such as the FCC's four/six principles (as discussed previously here) as well as approaches taken in Canada and by the European Union (see this previous post from April of this year).

The importance of transparency, openness and the need for ISPs to be able to innovate and experiment are common threads across all these developments. It's also good to see the acknowledgement that ISPs already manage traffic and have been doing so for years, a fact which I think comes as news to some campaigners. If the principles above are properly adhered to by all parties, there is little reason to intervene. I agree with this in theory, but I do have some concerns over how such principles might be ignored in practice. But let's hope for the best.

Coverage from the BBC ("ISPs are supposed to treat all web traffic equally - serving only as a one-size-fits-all pipe for whatever data is passing from content providers to end users"...hmmm...are they really?) and the FT (Internet blow for Google and BBC: "Internet service providers should be free to favour traffic from one content provider over another as long as they inform customers"...surely their current network management already favours certain types of traffic?) rather over-simplifies the issue, and further convinces me that the term net neutrality is actually no longer helpful, given its negative connotations and the increasing complexity of the debate ("two-sided markets" anyone?). Has the internet ever been truly neutral? I don't think so, and neither do the ITIF.

I think Neelie Kroes nailed the heart of the matter best back in April:

"...over time, we should continue to monitor whether traffic management is a spur to future network investment, and not a means of exploiting current network constraints."

A difficult call though. Very close monitoring will be essential if they various parties are to be persuaded from misbehaving; without this, intervention and regulation are inevitable.

Play nicely, children?

Neelie Kroes: "None of (today's) pressing challenges can be solved without a strong ICT component"

2010-10-28T11:51:00.001+01:00

Another good speech from Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and European Digital Agenda Commissioner:

"As we know, the challenge today is to do more with less. We have more elderly people to care for; we need to reduce our carbon emissions; we have big public deficits and businesses face more intense competition from around the world. Of course we must also find ways to integrate a new generation into our society. None of these pressing challenges can be solved without a strong ICT component."

...which puts the recent in-year cuts to schools' ICT funding into sharp perspective. On broadband specifically, Kroes recognises the extent of the task at hand:

"Many people like to compare themselves to the average. By that mark Europe has pretty good broadband. But the average isn’t going to pay off debt or help you compete against Asian rivals with internet 100 times faster than your own. We have to aim higher: for a first class internet."

Not sure I'm entirely with her in relation to recent announcements about Cornwall though, but good to see both Rutland Telecom and the JFDI video getting positive mentions. And an important closing remark too:

"In conclusion, I want you to know that your digital actions make a difference. Sometimes you might feel like they are only a ‘drop in the ocean’. But without those drops, there is no ocean."

Wise words.

Superfast broadband in Herefordshire

2010-10-27T17:30:00.000+01:00

I did some work earlier this year to see if the model set out in JANET(UK)'s local loop unbundling (LLU) reports could be replicated to model connectivity options and costs for other regions and local authorities.

Coincidentally, one of the authorities I selected to try this out was Herefordshire, which has now been selected as one of the four superfast broadband pilots announced as part of last week's comprehensive spending review (alongside North Yorkshire, Cumbria and the Highlands and Islands). A long post this, so you might want to get a cup of coffee before you read any further.

A word of warning: all product and cost information below is based on publicly available Openreach information as of April 2010. I haven't reviewed this data, so the information below should be regarded as indicative rather than definitive.

My first step was to create a list of all schools in Herefordshire from the Department for Education's EduBase database, listing all primary, secondary and special schools, together with their postcodes. The result was a list of 88 primary schools, 20 secondary schools and 4 special schools. The ever helpful folks at SamKnows then very kindly used this data to generate a new list matching school postcodes to their serving exchanges, together with the radial distance in metres between the school and its exchange.

The key JANET LLU report is the Stockport LLU/Access Locate Feasibility Study. This describes an approach for modelling an LLU deployment across the authority, based on provisioning secondary schools with 100Mbps connections and primary/special schools with 10Mbps connections. All costs are based on Openreach's open book pricing.

The Stockport study based its approach on using copper to deliver symmetric 10Mbps connections to schools within 3km of their exchange:

"Given the requirement to provide 10Mbit/s symmetrically to all Primary schools it is proposed to use EFM (Ethernet in the first mile 802.3ah) G991.2 (SHDSL) technology running over copper circuits for those schools within range...Basically G991.2 will deliver 5.6Mbit/s over a single copper pair out to about 1.5km and 2.5Mbit/s out to about 3km. To achieve 10Mbit/s reliably we have adopted a conservative policy of using 4 copper pairs bonded together for all sites out to a calculated distance, as the copper goes, of 3km. For sites beyond the 3km limit BT WES10 local access will be used...For 10Mbit/s schools below 3km this is 4xMPFs indicating the intention to use 4 bonded pairs to deliver the 10Mbit/s. These can be delivered into the LLU space in the serving exchange. For schools over 3km we revert to fibre-based circuits."

MPF stands for metallic path facility, or copper phone line. Note that the 3km figure relates to line length, not radial distance, as the key determining factor is the actual length of the line. The study suggests that multiplying the radial distance by 1.4 gives a reliable estimate of actual line length, so the next step was to apply this to the radial distances for primary and special schools to determine which could be connected via 4 copper pairs and which by WES10-LA connections (where LA means local access). WES100-LA connections would be used to deliver 100Mbps for all secondary schools.

The next step is to examine the exchange loading, i.e. how many schools are served by each exchange, to determine a core network design to interconnect the exchanges appropriately. Basically, this involved totalling the number of 4xMPF, WES10-LA and WES100-LA connections per exchange. It's worth noting that in rural areas like Herefordshire you end up with a "long tail" of exchanges serving a single primary school.

The map below shows the locations of all exchanges connecting two or more sites, created using Google Earth:

Yellow pins indicates exchanges serving four or more sites (the Hereford exchange serves the most, 5 secondaries and 19 primaries), red shows exchanges serving three sites and green two. 5 exchanges serve 4 schools or more, 5 serve 3 schools, 13 serve 2 schools and 22 serve a single primary school (these aren't shown above to keep it simple). The greatest distance between a school and its serving exchange is just over 7km; 64 of the 92 primary/special schools are 3km or less from their exchange and 28 are further away.

The numbers in brackets next to each exchange code indicate either the total bandwidth requirement of the exchange (so 120Mbps means the exchange serves 1 secondary and 2 primary schools) or the number of secondary/primary schools served by the exchange (so 5/19 means 5 secondaries and 19 primaries are served, an aggregated bandwidth requirement of 690Mbps, or 5x100Mbps + 19x10Mbps). The total aggregated traffic amounts to 2920Mbps.

Connecting all this up to ensure uncontended, symmetrical bandwidth (employing BES100 and BES1000 circuits of either 100Mbps or 1Gbps respectively) results in a core network that looks like this:

Red lines are BES1000 and green lines are BES100 links. For resilience, a ring round the perimeter could be provided using additional BES1000 circuits. However, that may well not give resilience, as the routes that BT use to connect the exchanges may well involve coming back to Hereford. So there would be an illusion of resilience, but the reality might well be a single fibre duct break could take out the primary and secondary routes. The remaining 22 exchanges connecting 1 school would be connected to their nearest neighbouring exchange via a 100Mbps connection (BES100), these aren't shown on the above map for clarity.

The pricing of these core links is dependent on distance, so the next step was to measure the length of each link using Google Earth. I then calculated the cost of all the above core network links, which gives an install cost of just over £67K and a recurrent cost of around £192K per annum. Note that these costs don't include the construction charges to lay the necessary fibre, we'll come back to those later.

I then needed to add in the cost of connecting the 22 exchanges serving a single primary school to their nearest exchange (the ones not shown above) via BES100 links (to give headroom for growth in usage and capacity to connect additional sites if necessary). I did this by averaging the cost of all the BES100 links in the core and then multiplying by 22 to give an additional cost of £43K for installation and £119K recurrent per annum, bringing the total cost of the core to around £110K for installation and £311K recurrent per annum.

Then I calculated the cost of the last mile links for schools to connect them to their serving exchange. This was much easier as these costs (for MPFs and local access products) aren't dependent on distance. There are some additional costs to consider too, as set out in the Stockport study, such as ethernet over copper modems for schools connecting via 4xMPFs. This gave a grand total of £768K for installation and £554K recurrent, or a total cost of £1.32million in year one to provide every school with either a 10Mbps or 100Mbps uncontended, symmetrical connection, with sufficient additional capacity to connect additional sites as well. Not bad really, even taking into account that there would be additional costs involved in operating and maintaining a network.

However, this is where the wheels start to come off. None of the above costs include construction charges to lay the necessary fibre. I estimated that the network would require 470km of fibre to be laid, which at a cost of £30 per metre (which is probably too low) gives a total construction cost of just over £14million. A lot of money to be sure, but a one-off cost to develop a future-proofed and fully scalable infrastructure.

The spreadsheet documenting all of this is available here and I've also created a summary of the process steps involved. For me, there are two important aspects to this: firstly, it enables you to understand what the input costs are in any network approach based on Openreach infrastructure (which, let's face it, may well be the only commercially available infrastructure in many rural areas). But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it gives you the opportunity to grasp the nettle of local provision, creating an infrastructure over which you have full visibility and control - you're commissioning from the private sector, rather than being sold a solution. A very important distinction I think.

The Stockport study (the author of which I owe a huge debt, in more ways than one) should have the last word here I think:

"Finally it should be remembered that whilst we have looked at the education community we have ignored the rest of local government and services such as health and blue light services. It is obvious that all of these could be carried on the same network needing only MPLS clouds to segregate traffic into private VLANs as needed. So, the investment can be spread ever more widely with associated savings."

What better fit with the opportunity to re-use existing public infrastructure could there be?

P2P traffic surpassed by video: "We are using the Internet more often for more things"

2010-10-27T12:03:00.000+01:00

Some very interesting developments have been captured by the most recent Cisco Visual Networking Index usage study, as reported by GigaOM:

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is now 25 percent of global broadband traffic, down from 38 percent last year.
Video - which includes streaming video, Flash, and Internet TV - represents 26 percent, compared to 25 percent for P2P.
Over one-third of the top 50 sites by volume are video sites.
Contrary to popular belief, none of the top 50 global web sites (by traffic volume) featured explicit adult content.
Ten of the top 50 sites were associated with software updates and downloads (security and application enhancements).
The top 1 percent of broadband connections is responsible for more than 20 percent of total Internet traffic.
The top 10 percent of connections is responsible for over 60 percent of broadband Internet traffic, worldwide.

Further proof - as if it were needed - to counter the accusation that broadband is only good for pornography and illegal music & video. The fact that P2P traffic has been surpassed by streaming video is particularly pertinent here. As the author of the GigaOM article correctly states, "Give us more speed and we will use it all. And then we’ll want more of it."

UK superfast broadband ambitions - where the money's coming from

2010-10-26T16:21:00.002+01:00

The Financial Times reported last week (Osborne confirms £340m cut in BBC spending) on the source of the newly-announced funding for the expansion of superfast broadband across the UK - the BBC:

"...the BBC will spend £530m from the licence fee over six years to support the extension of superfast broadband services to rural areas not likely to be reached by commercial expansion. The government now intends to combine a programme for getting basic broadband to all areas of the UK with a general upgrading of speeds, with the BBC making a major contribution. Of the total, £230m comes from money unspent by the corporation from a “digital switchover” budget of £803m to help the poor and vulnerable upgrade televisions and set top boxes from analogue to digital television by 2012."

A further FT article (BBC to help finance super-fast broadband) suggested that this amount could rise further still:

"The government, after rejecting the former Labour administration’s plans for a telephone tax to fund superfast broadband, has instead chosen to take money from the BBC licence fee...the BBC would contribute £530m from its licence fee to superfast broadband by 2015, but the total could rise to £830m by 2017."

This seems an odd choice to me, just as the previous administration's 50p landline tax seemed an unfair, ill-thought-through strategy, especially as around a third of the population are yet to get on board with broadband.

Don't get me wrong. Clearly any additional funding is to be welcomed, especially in the current climate. But diverting existing money from the BBC, rather than identifying and committing substantial new funding, seems to me out of keeping with the government's lofty ambition of ensuring the UK has the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015. Particularly when previous studies have suggested that far greater amounts will be needed to deliver what we need.

Unsurprisingly, the FT also reported that Virgin and BT had welcomed the proposal. I'll bet. I wonder if previous complaints from ISPs about the extent to which the continued growth in usage of the BBC's iPlayer requires operators to constantly upgrade their networks without generating a penny of revenue had any bearing on the decision. It will also be interesting to see the extent to which the new network builds supported by this new funding approach are required to embrace open access provision, a principle fundamental to the approach to NGA in the USA, Australia and elsewhere, and an issue I touched on in this previous post.

But to return to the point, if superfast broadband really is as important as the government says it is (and I for one believe that it is, if not even more so), shouldn't we be basing our ambition on a more solid and substantial foundation than diverting funds from elsewhere? Especially when the evidence suggests we have a long, long way to go if that ambition is to become a reality.

UK's National Infrastructure Plan - broadband is key

2010-10-25T16:54:00.001+01:00

The National Infrastructure Plan launched today (“a broad vision of the infrastructure investment required to underpin the UK’s growth”) considers “digital communications” as a key enabler, and re-states the opportunity for re-using existing broadband infrastructure on page 32:

“4.36 Maximise the use of existing public sector assets:

release electromagnetic spectrum from public sector and other uses, which can be acquired by mobile operators for expansion and improved provision of mobile broadband services; and
reuse public sector communication assets as part of projects to ensure that the most effective use is made of public funds.”

Lots that's good here. For example, the plan acknowledges the opportunities broadband offers to education and healthcare, as one of the benefits of broadband:

"...enable better and more efficient ways of delivering public services; e.g. through improvement in the quality and delivery of education services to people in more rural and remote areas or improvement in the quality and delivery of healthcare services"

...just a shame that funding for ICT in education (the Harnessing Technology Grant) was cut earlier this year, as described in this previous post, with an interesting analysis of why this is a very short-sighted strategy here. More on the implications of funding cuts on schools' broadband here, and further details of what broadband offers for healthcare are available here.

Today's announcements follow on from these statements in last week’s Spending Review:

“...£530 million will be invested over the Spending Review period to support the UK’s broadband network and to incentivise the roll out of superfast broadband in areas that the private sector would not otherwise reach... The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) settlement includes...investing £530 million over the Spending Review period including £300 million from the TV licence fee, to improve the UK’s broadband network... benefiting around 2 million households, including in some of the most remote areas of the UK. As part of this investment, the Government will also pursue superfast broadband pilot projects in North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire, and the Highlands and Islands.”

Good to see the re-use agenda remains to the fore, in keeping with the EU's views, and to see some significant funding committed as well. More on the four pilot areas on BDUK's new site here and on DCMS's site here.

Also from the plan, interesting that "the Government will publish a National Broadband Strategy in December 2010", which "will provide more detail on the full range of policy, legislative and funding initiatives that the Government is undertaking in support of its broadband vision", as trailed by Ed Vaizey at Rory Stewart's recent broadband conference. Watch this space.

JFDI - Just Farmers Doing It - reaches ever broader audience

2010-10-04T22:41:00.001+01:00

It's been really exciting to watch as the JFDI video, first seen by those of us lucky enough to attend Rory Stewart's Rural Broadband Conference, has continued to reach an ever wider (and hopefully ever more influential) audience.

The link to the video was widely tweeted in the week following the conference, culminating in Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and European Digital Agenda Commissioner, tweeting about how inspirational she had found it, with the video appearing shortly afterwards on her blog. The video also made the cover of last week's issue of Computer Weekly, following coverage earlier in the week by Ian Grant (see here, here, here and here):

Nice headline. The article includes some insight into both the possibilities and problems of re-using existing school broadband infrastructure:

"...cattle farmer and community Wi-Fi network volunteer Christine Conder...put in her own fibre link to two properties for £2,500...Conder says the fibre cost £1 a metre for the 1.2km link, the digger and driver cost £750, and the two end boxes £250 each – total cost around £2,500, or £1,250 per house... Conder uses the Cumberland and Lancaster Education Online (Cleo) network to send her data via an Arqiva radio mast transit to a Telewest backhaul feed...Conder is clearly frustrated by regulations. She cannot go faster than her present 2Mbps, even though the link is symmetrical (as fast upstream as downstream), and an upgrade would be highly affordable and desirable, given that 23 users share her link. A further 180 people are on a similar feed in the village as part of a research project called Living Lab. But the regulations prevent her from upgrading the service to maintain quality of service. According to Conder, the original intention was that Cleo infrastructure could be shared with local network operators, but that was killed as soon as local bureaucrats heard about the regulatory requirements if public money was used to build the network."

Let's hope the interest the conference has generated amongst the powers that be helps to overcome such obstacles and objections. The European Union have recognised the potential for re-using infrastructure in their latest broadband communication, as I mentioned in this previous post. And recent signs (more here, search on the page for broadband) from the Government suggest that they will continue to focus on re-use opportunities of all sorts, as Ed Vaizey mentioned in his keynote at Rory Stewart's conference.

All of which throws last weeks other big broadband announcement, about how Cornwall has secured funding for next generation access (official announcement here) into sharp relief. BT have managed to secure "up to £53.5 million of ERDF Convergence investment from the European Commission" via the South West Regional Development Agency (RDA). BT will contribute an additional £78.5 million to make a total investment of £132 million.

All of which is good news for Cornwall to be sure. But it seems to me that BT has managed to secure public money to help them build a private, commercial asset which will generate significant commercial returns for the company over the next 20-30 years. Wouldn't a better approach be (with BT's assistance of course) to use such funding to consolidate and extend existing public broadband network assets on an open access basis, similar to what Australia are doing with their National Broadband Network (NBN) roll-out?

This would seem a much more appropriate use of public monies to me, to develop publicly-owned assets that benefit communities first and companies second. And there seemed to be plenty of people at Rory Stewart's conference who would agree.

BT's Race to Infinity...your exchange needs you!

2010-10-04T15:48:00.002+01:00

BT's Race to Infinity scheme (BBC coverage here) provides an interesting contrast to the DIY approach to next generation broadband that was so much in evidence at Rory Stewart's Rural Broadband Conference last month.

The scheme echoes the demand registration scheme BT established for first-generation broadband, where individuals could register their interest in having their exchange upgraded. If sufficient did so, meeting BT's trigger level, the exchange would be upgraded. This scheme is a bit different, in that BT has committed to enable the five exchanges showing the highest demand with FTTC services, rather than any exchange which meets its trigger level. The competition runs until the end of the year, with winning exchanges being enabled in early 2012, "subject to availability, survey, terms and conditions".

This caveat is also interesting: "Exchanges need 1,000 premises votes to be eligible to be one of the winning exchanges". Which rather excludes rural areas with exchanges serving considerably less than 1,000 premises, such as this one serving 60 residential and 10 non-residential premises. I would imagine that given the closeness of such communities, it would be relatively easy to ensure almost 100% voting (by going and knocking on doors, for example), whereas it's much harder to secure an equivalent level of support larger areas where 1,000 or more votes will be required. But while it's arguable that remote, small rural communities have the most to gain from the technology, my guess is that the chosen technology approach (FTTC) won't help rural areas much anyway, given the likely distances involved.

BT does offer some consolation to such communities. If you enter the postcode (KW11 6UB) of the exchange I mentioned above into BT's site, you get the following message:

"Sorry, but your exchange is not eligible to WIN The Race to Infinity as it has less than 1000 premises. We still want you to get involved so please go to 'VOTE NOW' to express your interest. If 75% of your exchange registers, BT will engage with your community to see what we can do in your area."

So worth voting all the same perhaps? The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones makes a similar observation on his blog, and poses an interesting question about what happens if there is significant interest in the scheme:

"What strikes me is that the very communities which seem most likely to enter this competition - at least from the evidence so far - are those smaller, more remote, places which are not eligible to win it...Maybe BT's exercise will show that it is only a handful of enthusiasts who really care about super-fast broadband in rural communities. If the competition really does catch the imagination of the public, then the pressure will mount on both BT and the government to make sure that nobody is left trailing behind in the race to a faster future."

I did my bit for my community earlier today, in a (not very) remote part of rural North Warwickshire:

Needless to say, as the first of potentially 1,387 votes (or 0.07% of the total possible vote), I'm not holding my breath.

European Union policy update: universal broadband service requires public investment

2010-09-22T22:28:00.006+01:00

Neelie Kroes' speech to the Nordic Broadband Forum on 15th September put an interesting perspective on the UK government's view that the market is best placed to deliver the broadband infrastructure the country needs. Her speech focussed on approaches to funding a universal service obligation for broadband:

"In this debate, considering the large investments involved, it is crucial to determine where an extended universal service obligation should be funded by the telecoms sector or rather a broader base, such as by the State budget. In my view we should keep in mind that universal broadband offers benefits beyond the telecoms sector. The others who benefit range from currently uncovered citizens to companies offering internet services, content and applications. So while it is right to expect telecom companies to invest in new and more efficient networks, and it is right to have a socially inclusive system, it might be unfair to force the telecoms companies to fund the entire exercise. Telecoms companies should be able to realise reasonable profits from their investments at the end of the day. We must also be mindful that cross-subsidisation – very often from smaller challengers to historic incumbents - can lead to higher retail prices and competition distortions. It is best to avoid such outcomes. I therefore think that, in adapting or developing our universal service rules to the broadband environment, we need to be careful to avoid putting the entire burden on the telecom sector."

Seems a pretty clear acknowledgement of the need for European governments to invest in broadband to me? This recognition puts the limited public monies so far committed in the UK to universal service and next generation access into rather sharp relief. I would venture that funding of at least an order of magnitude greater is needed if the UK is to implement what Neelie Kroes envisages in her speech. She set out four possible approaches to universal service:

"First, to move away altogether from sector-specific universal service funding towards a publicly financed system. This would be recognition of the fact that ensuring universal broadband access, also covering remote and scarcely populated areas where the market alone would not deliver, is today a basic need. Under this option, such needs would be guaranteed by the public authorities.

A second option would be to establish a harmonised universal service obligation at a very basic speed level as a minimum EU standard. This could be financed through a sectoral fund, with the speed level being updated from time-to-time in the light of technical and social developments. The telecoms sector contribution would remain proportionate and the EU safety net would remain a real minimum safety net. At the same time, this would leave the way open for Member States to set higher national universal service standards, or promote more ambitious broadband roll-out by using general taxation (without sectoral funding). This would of course need to be in compliance with the innovative State Aid rules we adopted for broadband in 2009;

A third option is setting a cap to the funding contributions of the telecom companies. This would allow a more flexible approach that takes into account the financial strength of the companies in a given Member State while creating funds for broadband roll-out at a proportionate rate, thus avoiding undue distortions of competition. Public budgets could supplement the capped sectoral funds.

Finally, we could simply complement the EU Universal Service Directive with a guidance instrument regarding the telecoms legislation. This would guide Member States to use universal service obligations funded by the sector only where there is a true risk of social exclusion, and no risk of undue competition distortions."

So there is a clear expectation that public funding should play a major role in all four approaches, depending upon the amount (if any) of sector-specific (i.e. money to provided by telcos) funding applied as well. V3.co.uk came to a similar conclusion in their coverage. Hot on the heels of the speech came an announcement on 20th September (and welcomed by the FTTH Council Europe) of three measures "to deliver fast and ultra-fast broadband in Europe":

"This package comprises a Commission Recommendation on regulated access to Next Generation Access (NGA) networks that provides regulatory certainty to telecom operators, ensuring an appropriate balance between the need to encourage investment and the need to safeguard competition, a proposal for a Decision to establish a Radio Spectrum Policy Programme to ensure, inter alia, that spectrum is available for wireless broadband and a Broadband Communication outlining how best to encourage public and private investment in high and ultra-high speed networks."

More on this last one here; an interesting and timely extract from the full text, on ways to promote investment and reduce investment costs:

"Local authorities should also consider using fibre core networks that have been or are being constructed to link up public entities (schools, libraries, clinics) in order to bring high-speed connections to unserved communities. Where appropriate, Member States should consider setting up broadband funds at national level on which local authorities can call for the construction of such passive infrastructures."

A nice coincidence with the key message from Rory Stewart's recent broadband conference - re-use existing public sector infrastructure to deliver in rural areas. So at least the UK appears switched on in terms of possible approach, if not finances. So, time for a look down the back of the Treasury's sofa perhaps?

Broadband for telehealth and telemedicine: lessons for education?

2010-09-22T15:21:00.003+01:00

While focus of this blog is primarily education, there are a number of ongoing developments in telehealth and telemedicine that underline the importance of broadband generally and next generation access in particular and which are simply too interesting not to cover here.

In August the FCC published an excellent report, Health Care Broadband in America, with a detailed analysis of health care broadband requirements set out on pages 5-7. For example, exhibit A sets out health data file sizes and the bandwidths required to support particular download times:

Click on the image for a larger version. Some rather startling figures here I think. The report goes on to describe a number of scenarios illustrating different health care use profiles and their associated bandwidth requirements:

I strongly believe that this is exactly the kind of detailed analysis that all end-user sectors need to compile, to make the already compelling arguments about broadband's importance even more so. Clear, factual analyses like these change the dialogue about broadband from the theoretical to the specific, which in turn helps to convince those currently sitting on the fence, as well as refute the claims of doubters who suggest that all next generation broadband will be used for is entertainment and downloading illegal content. See this previous post for further thoughts along these lines, together with the beginnings of a similar analysis of educational broadband usage.

To return to telehealth and telemedicine, I've come across a number of very interesting examples and articles about how broadband is currently being or could in future be used in these areas:

Google has teamed up with Spectrum Bridge and the Hocking Valley Community Hospital in Logan, Ohio on the deployment of the first TV white spaces broadband trial network for healthcare providers;
A thought-provoking article about how people without broadband may be left behind as more and more health care services move online;
Details of the funding currently being committed to telehealth in the US (more on this here and here);
An article in the Telegraph about UK telehealth trials;
An FCC blog post about the role of policy makers in realising opportunities in this area;
Broadband for America's assessment of the telehealth opportunity;
A report on the launch of the California Telehealth Network;
An overview of the FCC's rural telemedicine plan;
A recent Radio 4 Case Notes programme focussed on telemedicine;
An analysis of the potential of broadband to reduce health care costs significantly;
Finally, an excellent telemedicine blog is available here.

I'll keep adding to this list as I come across further examples and articles of interest, have a look here for more of the same.

US National Broadband Plan: E-Rate revisions so schools can use dark fibre

2010-09-22T14:28:00.001+01:00

Revisions to the US E-Rate funding mechanism are likely to result in schools being able to access dark fibre, saving money and delivering better broadband services. From the FCC's statement by Chairman Julius Genachowski:

"This Thursday, the Commission will vote on, and I believe adopt, a major modernization of the successful E-Rate program. These changes will help bring fast, affordable Internet access to schools and libraries across the country, and help ensure that America’s students have the high-tech skills they need to compete and succeed in the 21st Century...The program has met its original goals set in a dial-up world, but needs to be taken to the next level. It needs to be updated for a broadband world...The FCC E-Rate Order will also help deliver on the Broadband Plan’s goal of super high speed anchor institutions in every community. We will give libraries as well as schools the ability to use E-Rate funds to connect to broadband in the most cost-effective way possible, giving schools and libraries the choice of contracting to light dark fiber already in the ground, or with existing state, regional, and local networks. With these fiber networks, schools and libraries can provide students and communities with cutting-edge connectivity - and save millions of dollars...the Tri-County Educational Service Center in Wooster, Ohio, which serves more than 30,000 students in 19 school districts, was able to save 50 percent through the use of dark fiber, while increasing network performance by 750 percent...E-rate has been a success, but it’s time to reboot it for the 21st century."

This opportunity was flagged at Rory Stewart's rural broadband conference on 18th September, with further coverage from the BBC here. The proposal underlines the benefits that ensue from grasping the nettle of local connectivity, as I've said before in a previous post:

"...the more you can get your hands dirty in planning and implementing your WAN, the greater the cost savings you can achieve by negating the need for more expensive managed services (which are themselves based on the same underlying products anyway). Folks "on the ground" have a detailed appreciation of local circumstances and opportunities, which can result in innovative bespoke solutions which wouldn't necessarily even have been considered by a telco."

Let's hope the FCC votes in favour...it would seem unlikely that it won't in the face of such evidence?

Broadband Commission for Digital Development: September 2010 findings

2010-09-22T14:00:00.000+01:00

The International Telecommunications Union's (ITU) Broadband Commission for Digital Development, first covered on this blog here, has now published its findings.

The Commission was established to "define strategies for accelerating broadband rollout worldwide and examine applications that could see broadband networks improve the delivery of a huge range of social services, from healthcare to education, environmental management, safety and much more." From the press release announcing the Commission's findings:

"ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré today challenged global leaders to ensure that more than half of all the world’s people have access to broadband networks by 2015, and make access to high-speed networks a basic civil right...“Broadband is the next tipping point, the next truly transformational technology. It can generate jobs, drive growth and productivity, and underpin long-term economic competitiveness. It is also the most powerful tool we have at our disposal in our race to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which are now just five years away,” said Dr Touré."

A clear fit with the UK government's 2015 intentions for universal broadband service and next generation access. The Commission's findings are in the form of two reports, the first, Broadband: A Leadership Imperative, provides a high level overview while the second, Broadband: A Platform for Progress, examines financing models, return on investment, technology choices, and strategies for deployment across a range of different types of economies. A list of key findings from the reports is available here.