Table of Contents
Comments
Commenters
Some other countries (notably the developed economies in the Far East, the US metropolitan centres, urban France and the Netherlands) have taken an early lead in the deployment of next generation fibre-based or co-axial cable fixed networks. (Wireless technologies such as Long Term Evolution/ 4G and WiMax are also promising, but, within the constraints of available spectrum and devices are unlikely to be able to provide mass, very-high bandwidth services in the short term).1
A number of other governments are including next generation networks in their infrastructure development plans. The further development of next generation digital networks is part of the new US Administration’s growth package; Germany has sought to combine a measure of regulatory and fiscal incentives to encourage its main telco to upgrade to fibre. Other governments are adopting innovative financial approaches to bring forward such upgrade investment. The Australian A$5 Billion public broadband development tender includes a public capital instrument with an unspecified interest coupon: bidders for the tender offer their own values for that coupon. The Portuguese government is offering a public line of credit – albeit at commercial rates – to accelerate investment in fibre.
In the UK last year the Government commissioned the Caio Review to consider the UK’s relative position and make recommendations.
The Caio Review In February 2008 the Government commissioned Francesco Caio (Vice-Chairman of Nomura International, and subsequently adviser to the Italian Government) to examine the barriers to investment in NGA in the UK. His six month review was based around discussions with stakeholders and review of existing evidence and analysis, and focussed on three main questions:
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1) Is the delay in the development of NGA translating to a competitive disadvantage for UK businesses and UK citizens?
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2) Will the market deliver an investment in NGA on its own, or should the Government intervene now through subsidies or a structural change in regulation to get the roll-out of NGA started?
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3) Is there a role for the Government to play in the development of NGA infrastructure and, if so, what type of initiatives ought it to pursue?
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In summary, the principal finding of the Caio review were that the short term case for a major government intervention was limited. First, drivers for investment in other countries were quite different in that the UK already enjoys high availability of current generation broadband, with good levels of take-up and a highly developed internet economy. Second, there were strong indications that the market was delivering investment in NGA, with Virgin Media and BT announcing plans for fibre roll-out. Third, despite the growth in internet traffic, there was little evidence that UK customers would suffer a short term detriment.
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Caio did though warn against complacency, stressing that broadband was important to quality of life and the competitiveness of the country, and that investment was not assured, being vulnerable to economic conditions and other developments. The Government and Ofcom should therefore play an active leadership role in determining the effective deployment of NGA. Caio recommended four sets of actions:
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1) Set out a framework for delivery of NGA, by defining the country’s ambition and vision of the future.
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2) Launch a set of initiatives that do not distort the market but provide further momentum to the deployment of NGA. These included accelerating spectrum release, lowering build-out costs through better streetwork coordination and allowing overhead deployment, and supporting local open access network developments.
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3) Establish a structured permanent benchmarking process to monitor the development of NGA in the UK and in relation to other countries.
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4) Invest time and resources to identify remedies to adopt in case the market fails to deliver.
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During the Caio review and since its publication, consumer and market developments have continued apace. Virgin Media is rolling out its new 50MB/s cable broadband service to 95% of its base during this year (Virgin Media’s network passes slightly more than 50% of UK homes). This service is offered to customers at £35 per month plus line rental. In July 2008, the Virgin Media CTO announced the intention to provide 200Mb/s by 2012.1
BT Group plc announced in July 2008 its plans to invest £1.5bn in Next Generation Access networks over five years, of which £1bn was incremental to planned investment. (BT is already engaged in a major upgrade of its core network as part of the ’21CN’ programme). Their announcement promised delivery of download speeds up to 40Mb/s to 10m homes by 2010. BT has stated that the deployment will involve a mix of fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-cabinet solutions. This investment was identified as contingent on certain regulatory decisions, such as the rate of return on capital and rules on network access for BT’s competitors.1
BT announced in October 2008 that Muswell Hill in north London and Whitchurch in South Glamorgan would be first sites for deployment of fibre-to-the-cabinet, with the trials involving up to 15,000 customers in each exchange. Work in Ebbsfleet, where new-build properties are being equipped with fibre-to-the-home, is ongoing.2
In addition there is a new breed of small, entrepreneurial companies offering Next Generation Broadband using a variety of different technology and innovation approaches. They sometimes using primary infrastructure that has not traditionally been used for communications networks (in the same way that Energis, now part of Cable & Wireless, used electricity and railway infrastructure for their core Business-to-Business network).1
Competing NGA infrastructures can drive down prices. But they can also drive availability, particularly as mobile operators seeks to offer users the additional benefits of mobility at increasingly higher speeds, and make available national offers which fixed line players have to counter.
If these investments are carried to completion, we can reasonably expect at least half of the UK population to have access to NGA services and possibly a periphery around that- perhaps as much as 60 per cent or even more.
The Government welcomes these initial investments and will continue to look, in turn, at what more can be done with industry to provide a framework that is supportive of those willing to engage their capital to establish enduring networks for the future.
In some countries, regulators and governments have developed NGA strategies based on ‘regulatory forbearance’. This means encouraging investment by allowing operators to construct monopoly access networks, with no regulation to allow their competitors access to that network. While we are not persuaded by the case for such absolute regulatory forbearance, the Government firmly believes that, where returns must be regulated, higher risk infrastructure investment justifies higher rates of return. It is welcome that Ofcom recognises that its regulatory framework needs to reflect that principle.1
Unlike the current generation of broadband which flows off an already ubiquitous, sunk network (both physically and in cost terms), every additional home or business connected to Next Generation fixed networks represents new network build. This traditionally has a long (7-10 year) payback period, even allowing for uncertainties in the market, competitor decisions, and consumer take-up.1
We cannot now know the exact percentage of homes to which the market, with current incentives, will roll out Next Generation broadband. But as a nation the UK will need widespread Next Generation Access networks by the middle of the next decade, even if they do not become universal for some time after that. We should start to plan now and therefore return to this challenge later in this section.
Growing consumer demand requires at least the current level of investment which the market is currently promising to spend on new network capability in core, backhaul and access networks. That demand has accelerated over the past year. The UK’s current network infrastructure is beginning to be tested by consumer demand for real-time, streamed access rather than downloads, as shown by the higher than expected use of video sites such as the iPlayer, which went from nothing to 41m programme requests per month within a year[1] .
The UK has enjoyed a sustained period of development of its first generation broadband network, with low prices and investment in the copper network to deliver good levels of service. But the UK might soon reach a stress-point at which the ability of that network to deliver further sustained improvements is strained.1
Much of the debate around next generation networks confuses two separate issues. On the one hand, there are apparently exciting maximum speeds of 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps or more, that serve as national or corporate headline symbols in the broadband world. On the other hand, most users experience average speeds that do not match the broadband headline claims. To use an analogy with transport infrastructure, it is akin to the difference between a car’s theoretical top speed and the length of time a journey actually takes and whether you encounter any traffic jams on route.1
At this stage, demand for services requiring maximum speeds of 100Mbps is very uncertain. But between now and 2012 demand for average speeds of 20Mbps is likely.3
There are already the early signs of congestion in first generation broadband, particularly for video use in peak times. This is most noticeable in the shared parts of the fixed networks (in access and backhaul). BT’s 21st Century Network programme will play a part in upgrading the network, but it is still reasonable to expect that congestion will become more acute as more people make increasing use of high-bandwidth applications. It will also be particularly acute in small town and rural areas, not served by cable and who already have much lower average speeds than dense urban areas.
These factors have an important bearing on how the market evolves next generation networks. A very high proportion of the costs involved arise from primary infrastructure, i.e. digging up the streets to install fibre in existing ducts or creating new ducts where the current network is inadequate.1
In some other countries, the emphasis has been on fibre-to-the-home (ftth). In new building developments, this is evidently sensible: essentially the same costs would be incurred whether fibre or copper were installed. But for the majority of existing urban households and small/medium-sized businesses upgrading the network to fibre from the digital exchange to the street cabinet may well be the sensible step for many years to come. It could involve less disruption and substantially lower cost. The Broadband Stakeholders’ Group’s research shows that this could achieve national coverage of next generation networks that would provide the desired 20Mbps average speeds for about one fifth of national fibre to the home coverage (£5Bn versus £25Bn).1
Against this market and consumer backdrop, the Government remains of the view that its key role is in helping the market in the timely delivery of upgraded network capability.1
But this should not lead to a sterile debate about intervention versus laissez faire. The Government and public policy already intervenes in many ways: through the sectoral regulatory framework, as a purchaser of goods and services, as the ultimate guarantor of the financial and credit system, as a significant deliverer of goods and services to Britain’s citizens, and through the incentives or disincentive signals that the tax, rating and wider framework send out.
The developments, both in the domestic UK market and internationally, over the past year since the Caio Review started have tilted the balance between the two strands within the Review’s conclusions- watching and leading- towards the latter. The existing network will meet many users’ needs for some time to come. But if a substantive planning cycle for material network upgrade is not launched soon, then the UK will not have the necessary infrastructure in place when it needs it.1
We will establish a Government-led strategy group to assess the necessary demand side, supply-side and regulatory measures to underpin existing market-led investment plans, and to remove barriers to the timely rollout, beyond those declared plans, to maximise market-led coverage of Next Generation broadband. This Strategy Group will, by the time of the final Digital Britain Report, assess the case for how far market-led investment by Virgin Media, BT Group plc and new network enterprises will take the UK in terms of roll-out and likely take-up; and whether any contingency measures, as recommended by the Caio review, are necessary.
Secondly, the Government recognises the importance of a regulatory framework that provides predictability and is supportive of investment. Assessment of the right regulatory approach is for Ofcom as independent regulator, but the Government needs to ensure that Ofcom has the appropriate powers and duties to deliver the right balance between investment and competition.
Ofcom has set out clear regulatory principles, consistent with market-led development. Ofcom is also consulting on options for ensuring next generation network competition. Options range from a wholesale product provided by BT to competitors to direct access to the electronic equipment in BT’s physical infrastructure or indeed to the ducts themselves. Wholesale Ethernet products allow a much greater degree of product differentiation, and hence competition, than first generation broadband wholesale products.
Ofcom’s competitive remedies are focused, in fixed line, on BT in those parts of the network where BT has Significant Market Power. The Government notes that there is a range of other providers who also have ducts and other primary infrastructure.5
Between now and the full Digital Britain Report, the Government will, while recognising existing investments in infrastructure, work with the main operators and others to remove barriers to the development of a wider wholesale market in access to ducts and other primary infrastructure.4
Internet Service Providers can take action to manage the flow of data – the traffic – on their networks to retain levels of service to users or for other reasons. The concept of so-called ‘net neutrality’, requires those managing a network to refrain from taking action to manage traffic on that network. It also prevents giving to the delivery of any one service preference over the delivery of others. Net neutrality is sometimes cited by various parties in defence of internet freedom, innovation and consumer choice. The debate over possible legislation in pursuit of this goal has been stronger in the US than in the UK. Ofcom has in the past acknowledged the claims in the debate but have also acknowledged that ISPs might in future wish to offer guaranteed service levels to content providers in exchange for increased fees. In turn this could lead to differentiation of offers and promote investment in higher-speed access networks. Net neutrality regulation might prevent this sort of innovation.
Ofcom has stated that provided consumers are properly informed, such new business models could be an important part of the investment case for Next Generation Access, provided consumers are properly informed.
On the same basis, the Government has yet to see a case for legislation in favour of net neutrality. In consequence, unless Ofcom find network operators or ISPs to have Significant Market Power and justify intervention on competition grounds, traffic management will not be prevented.
In terms of the wider regulatory framework, the Government accepts the detailed recommendations of the Caio Review.
* Ofcom has set out the framework for the deployment of Next Generation Access in new building developments; and
* The Government is working to develop a publicly available specification to facilitate installation of NGA in new build properties as standard.
Caio also noted that Non-Domestic Rates add to the costs of development, but recognised that this would be true of any property tax. He said that lack of clarity about the potential business rates liability could add to uncertainty for new investors. He recommended that the Valuation Office Agency should provide updated and detailed guidance on the application of business rates to fibre. The Government is pleased that this has now been done. The guidance confirms that the pioneering allowance which has been applied for Cable TV networks will be similarly applied to investment in NGA and remain so for the period of the next valuation list (i.e. until 2015).
The Valuation Office Agency has provided new, clear guidance which addresses the problem identified by Francesco Caio in his report, and will ensure that they respond to any queries from existing and new investors and maintain clear, helpful guidance. For its part, the Government will ensure that the guidance is widely understood by potential investors.
The Government is not persuaded that there is a case now for widespread UK-wide public subsidy for Next Generation Network deployment, since such widespread subsidy could simply duplicate existing private sector investment plans or indeed chill such plans. However, as suggested above, a significant proportion of households will fall into the group between current market-led planned deployment and the ‘last few percent’ of households. This gap reflects the difference between a widespread next generation broadband network, desirable for national innovation, efficiency and productivity gains, as opposed to, in the very long-term, universal access to the next generation network for reasons of fairness and equity.2
We will, by the time of the final Digital Britain Report, have considered the value for money case for whether public incentives have a part to play in enabling further next generation broadband deployment, beyond current market-led initiatives.
The Caio Report also recognised that localised open-access models of broadband deployment had a potentially important role to play in Next Generation roll-out.
This is particularly true when a defined and relatively stable local community can be engaged in committing to demand for such roll-out. In the Netherlands, the OnsNet project in Neunen has direct commitment from a high proportion of residents in a local community to next generation broadband. This significantly alters the economics byremoving uncertainties over take-up. The issue then becomes long-term, stable finance.
A soft version of this model was successfully deployed by BT in the later stages of the roll out of first generation broadband to more rural communities. It has also been successfully deployed by organisations like the Community Broadband Network.
Local Government and Regional Development Agencies too are working on broader roll-out of next generation networks as a central part of local regeneration and economic development strategies.
COMMUNITY BROADBAND. The Community Broadband Network is working with a range of groups across the UK, with a varying degree of regional development agency and local government support. Together, they can provide evidence of useful models for development of broadband beyond the plans of major telcos.
Alston Cybermoor is a localised community project in Cumbria which aims to provide a fibre-to-the-home network in the most sparsely-populated parish in England. A local project to obtain first-generation broadband led to the creation of Cybermoor, among the first community-run broadband projects in the UK. Cybermoor is now looking to maintain their pioneering position by investigating the opportunities for fibre-optic technologies. By taking an intelligent approach to network design, financing and harnessing the power of the local community to drive take-up, Cybermoor can become Fibremoor at a cost well below usual estimates for such rural locations.
West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative (WWHC) is a progressive social housing provider on the outskirts of Glasgow. It is embarking on a project to build a further 100 new homes alongside their existing flats, and is keen to offer their tenants the kinds of services being enjoyed by their counterparts in mainland Europe.
WWHC has appointed the Community Broadband Network to design and deliver a solution for new homes with the aim of fitting it to the existing homes soon after the building work is complete. WWHC set up a new co-op, Whitcomm, to organise the services. The fibre installation is a comparatively small percentage of the overall new build costs, funded by a mix of public and private financing.
An established set of standards could also provide ready-made template solutions of best practice, which local communities could adopt off-the-shelf rather than each having to start from scratch. This could, in turn, provide further momentum to local self-help schemes, in which the public sector needs play only a small part.
The Government is committed to working with community and local groups to develop interoperability and best practice standards to unite localised NGA projects.
The Government will help implement the Community Broadband Network’s proposals for an umbrella body to bring together all the local and community networks and provide them with technical and advisory support.Tags: access networks, adviser, AUD, bandwidth services, Britain, broadband, Broadband Network, broadband wholesale products, BT Group plc, business to business, Cable & Wireless, Cable TV, Caio Review, communications networks, community networks, copper network, deliverer, developed internet economy, development agency, digital, digital networks, electricity, electronic equipment, Ethernet, Europe, Far East, fibre-optic technologies, fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-cabinet solutions, fibre-to-the-home network, find network operators, France, Francesco Caio, GBP, generation broadband network, generation network, generation networks, Germany, Glasgow, government, high-bandwidth applications, higher-speed access networks, home network, installation of NGA, internet freedom, Internet Service Providers, internet traffic, Italian Government, Local Government, London, monopoly access networks, Muswell Hill, network infrastructure, Nomura International, physical infrastructure, Portuguese government, railway infrastructure, ready-made template solutions, stable finance, The Netherlands, the Review, traffic management, traffic on that network, transport infrastructure, UK, United Kingdom, United States, US Administration, Vice-Chairman, Virgin Media CTO, West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative, Whitchurch, wholesale product, Wireless technologies
Oh yes? Could have fooled me. I don’t know of a single RDA which has anything like a reasonable or sensible understanding of the issues, let alone doing anything really useful or practical.
This is especially important for rural NGA, because the vast majority of financial support for rural enterprise are overseen by RDAs.
When I pay my ISP for a 10 megabit per second, uncapped connection to the internet, I expect to get a 10 megabit per second connection to the internet. Not a connection to websites who happen to pay my ISP to actually give me that connection to their services.
So is it fine for ISPs like Sky and Virgin Media who also sell TV packages to limit my access to free, legal online services like the iPlayer/4OD/ITV Player?
How about selling the stream of information that flows between me and a website like Facebook (information which incidentally should be copyrighted) to businesses like Phorm, who profit from that information without any financial recompense to the website owner who actually generated that content?
If this was happening on the sea instead of on the internet- hijacking traffic between it’s source and destination and taking away it’s value to sell it elsewhere, it would be accurate to call it piracy.
“Ofcom has stated that provided customers are properly informed [...] provided customers are properly informed.”
Clearly it’s important that customers are properly informed. So who is going to inform them that the headline speed that they pay for doesn’t represent the actual speed that they can expect, that their “uncapped” broadband connection is subject to “traffic management” unless they happen to be connecting to a service who has paid the ISP their extortion fees to allow consumers to make a connection they have already paid for?
Please, please tell me that this isn’t going to be the responsibility of the ISPs, because I can’t see any way that’s going to happen in a world where ISPs will happily lie in their advertising campaigns about technical issues.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3861-asa-upholds-complaints-against-virgin-media-fibre-optic-advertising.html
[...] Because each paragraph is identified by a named anchor, each paragraph is linked to by a unique URI; for example, here’s a link to Action 1 of the Digital Britain Interim Report: [...]
[...] Hirst notes how each paragraph of the report can be linked by a unique URI; for example, here’s a link to Action 1 of the Digital Britain Interim Report. This provides bloggers and others with an extended ability to dissect and elaborate upon [...]
Your problem in this section comes from your continuing preoccupation with what you call ‘content’. Apparently you think the point of the network is to ‘deliver content’. Accordingly you are happy for there to be various means of profiting from that. So it strikes you as reasonable, with the content model in mind, that a connectivity provider should be able to charge different ‘content suppliers’ different amounts of money to deliver their ‘content’.
BT always used to have a hankering for this, and its management expressed it as a hankering to be ‘more than a bit carrier’, and wanted to charge differentially for different levels of value so as to take a piece of the supposed value being supplied over ‘their’ network. In the same way as one supposes that the Post Office in 1900 might have wanted to charge differentially for cheques being sent by post, perhaps according to their value, or to charge by the value of goods shipped by parcel post.
In practice this is impossible, since the value of the bits and even their nature is very hard to establish in a billing environment. What we end up with in practice is network management of protocols. The failure to distinguish between protocols and the content of transmissions using them is at the heart of the network neutrality debate. If you go down the route of allowing ISPs to charge by the content of the packet or by the protocol, a few things will happen.
First, you will end up with a general regime of deep packet inspection in the effort to detect the transmission of this fabulous content. Second, you’ll end up with differential charging for different protocols, for instance P2P or VOIP. Third, as prices are levied on the transmission which in effect extract rents from them, we will end up nationally with an infrastructure which is not being used according to the cost effectiveness of its use for a given application. What it is used for will be a function of the added charges that a provider is able to levy on its use for those purposes.
What we actually need as a country is for transmission networks to be used for what they cost effectively can be used for.
This means net neutrality. It means carriers charging for the amount of data transmitted, without regard to its protocol or to its nature.
At the bottom of this issue however is the fact that the Internet is not about or driven by ‘content’ in the sense you think of it. The concept of content in the sense in which this report uses it is rapidly becoming obsolete. The sort of content which is originated by the media companies is becoming a smaller and smaller part of what is transmitted over the net. It is understandable that this small bit of the network is all that the so called ‘content providers’ see, but really, one would have expected government to be able to take a longer and less blinkered view.
Your remarks earlier in this section about removing barriers to provision of higher capacity physical transmission networks are probably sound. The parts about what the additional physical network capacity will be used for would be improved by becoming more specific. Who exactly is this transmission to be provided to? How much are they expected to pay for the increased bandwidth they will have access to?
You speak of 20Mbps average speed being ‘needed’. By who, and to do what? Lets be clear, the earlier talk about the digital economy seems to be connected to this, but it is not clear that providing every home in the country with 20Mbps in both directions would make any significant difference to economic performance.
I suppose it might increase employment for lawyers by making movie downloads more or less instant, thus raising the amount, and raising the level of enforcement required….?
If you think it will really have significant effects, enough to merit delivering it faster than the market would if left to itself, then you need to say what they are, and how great the subsidy needs to be. It is clear that if I can get 20Mbps for the price I now pay for 2Mbps, I will take it. It is not at all clear that my use of it will provide the national budget any return on the subsidy required to deliver it to me.
I agree with Richard, apart from Yorkshire Forward the majority of RDAs have no interest or understanding of NGA as it applies to rural areas. They seem to think mobile will fill the gap, though how a mobile connection can supply 10 computer in a rural business or 6 computers in a family home at a reasonable rate or price is beyond me. Fibre to the home is the only sensible economic aid to rural areas to deliver NGA.
Peter makes some good points.
Fundamentally, the Internet is a dumb network, because all the intelligence is contained in the end-points not in the network that connects them. This is a good thing. The essay “World of Ends” goes into more details — http://www.worldofends.com/
If the govtrnment tries to make the net into a smart network, as this proposal suggests, they will destroy innovation, not foster it. Tim Berners Lee didn;’t need anyone’s permission to invent and deploy the World Wide Web. Without net neutrality, future TBLs will need the network owners’ permission to deploy new innovative services. So innovation will be reduced.
And because other countries will mandate net neutrality, innovation will not be restricted there, so the UK will fall behind.
It’s a pragmatists conclusion. Perhaps Digital Britain needs to outline the large scale objectives or outcomes, be in health care, journey reduction, or the future delivery of TV -(when are Skys satellites due for replacement?). Either way Market 3 or rural areas will need a stimulus. BSG-Analysys pointed to £1.8bn for rural area FTTC. Given private sector will never come good here, it should provide a test case for GOV investment. No point in holding back.
This is lacking. Oddly enough the Action Plan on Delivering Digital Inclusion Oct 08 would provide part of the vision if modified. The consultation documents outline the scale of problem (opportunity) . It could easily be turned around with phrases like, if NGA was available then this problem could be solved.
The weakness in the Caio report – which is actually very good, and it is a weakness shared by those advocating the fibre revolution is that they fail to highlight the changes FTTH means to the individual.
FTTH moves me from £25 – £35 fixed or mobile Broadband/Phone service to a possible £60-£70 a month – TV/Mulit-media Communications/Hyper internet experience. It’s different, it’s not an upgrade, it’s not a BT 21CN -PSTN (1970) emulation service. The £60-£70 pm includes all TV including the BBC licence.
The market is good at identifying the lowest common demoninator and delivering good value offers. FTTH is a structural change.
IMHO more help should be given to the small companies trying to deliver NGB, as their innovative approaches will be what connects rural communities, as the larger companies will naturally concentrate on areas of dense population to get the profits. It is the small bespoke organisations who will help the hamlets and farms, villages and small towns. Government should support them where possible.
BT 21CN is primarily a cost reduction exercise, although we get ADSL 2, + oddly enough we get a replication of a 1970′s telephone service.
Both BT and Virgin investments are functions of todays expenditures on communication services. These are based on the reality of the BBC licence fee and Skys strangelhold on the pay-tv market.
NGN and NGA should allow a far more thorough level of converegence between fixed and mobile services, and provide a more coherent means of accessing entertainment and Internet services.
As consumers we are not getting anything like this! In this respect the complexity of the last 20 years of regulation are now acting as a barrier to the evolution of services, and virtually killing the chance of FTTH occurring.
We have noticed the signs of congestion since the inception of sites such as youtube, facebook and Iplayer. All the websites are getting larger graphics and flash players etc. Just surfing has demanded more bandwidth/backhaul than it did last year. People are uploading videos and images much more now. The networks are creaking in this rural area. Different people in our community on different ISPs all say the same, ‘when the kids get home kiss goodbye to your internet access’. We are a rural area and chances are there is no telco out there rushing to help us get a better feed. Broadband has brought so much to us, it is pretty gutting to lose it for long periods now.
If all UK internet users were online, the average capacity available would be 20-30Kbps per user. Fibre access would not change this unless all the backhaul was changed – look at how Virgin have to throttle the 50Mbps service.
The top line speed is just one variable.
The debate has to be about services delivered and quality of the service outcome.
The constraints for Digital Britain is not that top line speed, but the end to end service quality possible for key services.
Today we have a best effort Broadband service which is delivering what it has been designed to deliver – best effort, cheap as chips internet service. The underlying data transport is stable until overloaded which means we can do most things most of the time, but not all times.
NGN operators will wish to keep their cash cow voice and messaging services separate from the best efforts data transport. We as users want full benefit of all available bandwidth so we can have reduce our payments for multiple services.
NGA is more a quantity issue.
The final Digital Report will need section on future NGN interconnect and show which services are being interconnected via the internet and which are based on revised historical interconnect arrangements and why this is so.
BT 21C will do nothing about this specific issue. ISPs need to increase the allowances per user. More usage will cost more, hence fibre while solving the access problem will change nothing unless the end to end service is managed to deliver the designed outcome.
For the proposed 2Mbps USO service I have put together a performance table here -http://bbbritain.co.uk/ubs.aspx
NGA particularly FTTH needs to under written by a vision for health care delivery, transport reduction and future entertainment delivery.
The market itself will not create these conditions for change.
NGA and the call for the USO at 2Mbps are entirely separate and need to be kept as such.
It might be healthy to run another scenario where the radical approach could be assessed. What would it take to make it viable type question?
NGA is a disruptive technology, it changes how I consume services, how I pay fro my TV licence. Many structural changes are needed to glean the potential upside, many in conflict with current market definitions and regulatory certainties.
It would be a shame to bury this in the ‘too difficult to deal with box’.
Specifically I would suggest that a business case is made in support of £1.8bn in upgrading rural areas for FTTC as per the BSG Analsys Mason report used by Caio.
I am very encouraged by the principles adopted by the Norwegian PTO and ISPs;
A summary of the principles are;
1.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection with a predefined capacity and quality.
2.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that enables them to
– send and receive content of their choice
– use services and run applications of their choice
– connect hardware and use software of their choice that do not
harm the network.
3.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that is free of discrimination with regard to type of application, service or content or based on sender or receiver address.
More detail here http://bbbritain.co.uk/netneutrality.aspx
I genuinely think this is an error. Consumers are not informed. Ofcom/ISPA just reduce mis-selling not inform customers.
The Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority (NPT) the Consumer Council and the ISPs have come up with the following set of principles, which I recommend we adopt in the UK. The principles balance the need to protect the benefits of an open internet with the reality of managing networks which need to be shared and need to be affordable. The Norwegian achieve this by putting the user at the centre of the service.
A summary of the principles are;
1.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection with a predefined capacity and quality.
2.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that enables them to
– send and receive content of their choice
– use services and run applications of their choice
– connect hardware and use software of their choice that do not
harm the network.
3.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that is free of discrimination with regard to type of application, service or content or based on sender or receiver address.
I made reference to the Norwegian PTO (their regulator) and consumer councils efforts to define neutrality.
The internet has to be an open space, not a series of closed or semi-closed walled gardens. I must be able be able to plug the devices of my choice into the router of my choice. That for instance is getting more difficult with BT Retail at present. By not setting some basic principles you will stop markets growing for Broadband devices (cameras, video phones, heal care kit alarms, sensors) unless they are tied to the Broadband provider. This cannot be your intention.
I think the report would benefit by including some of the intent highlighted in the Digital Inclusion action plan.
It more or less states future health care is dependent on high speed services to the home.
In this respect there is a piece missing, which ought to be the government demanding ISP to deliver more robust services which are properly labelled.
Rather than closing the door on this, there must be room to leave open a more radical approach to upgrading the countries infrastructure.
I would suggest we use the rural exchanges in BSG Analsys Mason at cost of £1.8bn to make a case, which includes the resturcture of the licence fee payment as part of the service.
Perhaps legislation is too far at present, but we need principles articulated and agreed by ISPs consumers and the regulator.
The principles are summarised as;
1.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection with a predefined capacity and quality.
2.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that enables them to
– send and receive content of their choice
– use services and run applications of their choice
– connect hardware and use software of their choice that do not
harm the network.
3.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that is free of discrimination with regard to type of application, service or content or based on sender or receiver address.
Of course affordability means their is traffic management, but these need to be transparent with the customer making the choice, where choices are needed.
A: yes it is
A: no it won’t, it will continue to milk an obsolete copper network
A: Yes there is a role for Government to play in NGA infrastructure, it should regulate that telco profits be used to build the fibre out and light it instead of paying shareholders and fat cat salaries. BT should be made to take on the unemployed and save government paying dole out, and dig trenches and lay fibre to every home.
Agree with Mike, the government needs to assist rural areas with fibre, we have to be within 25km of a POP to get access, and not many of us are. (Point of Presence)
Sitting still and talking makes no person great. The Good Lord provides the Fishes, but you must Dig the Bait. Instead of frameworks why not just do it? Nobody set out a framework for twitter, or youtube or facebook. light the fibre and the people will deliver innovation.
The market will fail to deliver NGA. They are quite happy with the returns the current broadband gives them from the copper. The only investment they will make is to put money into ‘upgrades’ which are simply patches. The remedy is FttH.
end of story.
FTTH is the end goal if you want xx live steams of HD TV and willing to pay for it (£60-£70 pm rental) – end of story,and Murdoch switches off his satellites and the BBC donate half the licence fee to the fiber provider. Getting there, and how long it takes is what we need to apply ourselves.
If FTTH has become your religion, ie nothing less that an immediate £29bn gift from Government – I’ll stop. Obama stopped at circa $7bn and stopped talking speed and focused on connections.
Interim starting point is a Universal £20 a month 2Mb, (let’s push for 20GB inclusive download) service with defined quality statistics, engineerd to allow excellent home working, multi-media communications and access to heath care. You can use your line for streaming TV but not when your doing more urgent things. You will be encouraged to download in off peak hour periods. Key services are assured – not just best endeavours. And there is a USO industry fund to get an additional 2.5m connected.
Market looks to deliver FTTC & Docsis 3 (contended 50Mbps) to circa 60% of population by 2015 – that’s with no structural changes or agreements on how live TV is delivered, no cut of the licene fee and no cut from Skys subscriptions – this is a tough case to make work.
Given Obama has put in circa $7bn into rural comms, and given everything is 5 times bigger in the US (population) – making the case for £1.8bn (as per Analsys Mason /BSG) for rural FTTC costs should be worth asking for. If this was done in the form re-invested spectrum and AID fees over X years – support would be easy to build – I think.
FTTH needs the BBC / Sky / BT / Mobile revenues to be re-cut plus some very generous stimulus.
The last few years have seen a big change in software production, many programmers now sell their services or operate as overseas development teams.
There is a real risk that areas like the gaming industry which is worth a lot of money to the UK economy may move a lot more of its operations overseas.
The reasons will be many fold, cost of office space, which often leads to adoption of home working, but for developers reliable fast connections are often more expensive in the UK. End result is that once the accountants are involved the advantages of overseas development can result in shifting large parts of an operation overseas.
We run the risk that the games industry may go the way of the car industry in the 1970′s, where moving production overseas simply makes more sense.
There is a role for the Government to play, but it needs to happen on a cross-party basis, otherwise plans started now may be thrown when ever the next party takes the reins.
One possibility would be to match the investment raised by firms themselves, thus a firm that spends £3 bn reaching 50% of households, will receive a further £3bn as a low interest rate loan. By making it a loan that has longer terms than most commercial markets appear to be interested in at present it would encourage longer term thinking.
Short term may say there is no need, but in another year a lot will have happened, and unfortunately by the time the disadvantages are apparent, by the time that money is raised and plans are rolling it will then be several years later.
In essence if we find that UK consumers are suffering (e.g. cloud computing makes 200MB downloads common as we no longer hold large applications on our computer, but download and use as needed) by 2011, it will take another 6 month report, 6 month period of bidding for contracts, and a year for the new network to start rolling, which puts you into 2013, by which point things have moved on again.
Given BT has stated it is happy to use fibre to the home on greenfield sites, would it not be appropriate to force developers to engage with BT about using FTTH on all new build sites with say more than 200 homes.
For developers in a depressed market, having a development that has state of the art fibre in the ground and ready for service surely is an attraction.
If one looks at Swindon and the large building programme there it is almost criminal, Openreach commissioned a new exchange which reduced the copper loop length, but even so the area which attracts young families the sort likely to use broadband a lot are disadvantaged.
Considering mobile broadband while debating fibre speeds of 40Mbps and upwards seems unusual.
Current 3G suffers from things like cell capacity, bandwidth capacity and reception, unless 4G/LTE is going to address this then the current rush to buy mobile broadband will stall.
In actual fact a recent announcement (12/3/2009) that the mobile operators are to network share to reduce the number of cell towers may mean that some people using 3G will see access speeds reduce
It would be interesting to know what the payback was on the original copper telephone network?
We need to consider the possibilities for the next 20 to 30 years, which is where government backed funding can come into play. With tax payers effectively owning large chunks of some banks now, people are asking why can the same not happen with the communications infrastructure.
Not in rural areas.
The final Digital Britain report must keep open if not announce or at least express a willingness to share in the cost of getting FTTC to rural exchanges and is open to proposals to do so.
This is on top of and in addition to the USO.
Strawman paper to follow to outline triggers, mechanics, costs and timescales.
I must agree with this, but also as someone who sees a lot of comment from the public feel that some other points of view should be expressed.
There is a section of the public that feels that the UK’s near obsession with 100% coverage is holding back speeds in the cities. Next Generation coverage in other coverages is a long way from universal, but they do have 100Meg and faster options in the large urban areas.
I may be teaching people to suck eggs but feel this has to be said.
Congestion in first generation broadband has been a fact of life since the first ISP hit a capacity limit on its BT Central, which may have been Andrews & Arnold back in 2001. Periodically we see various ISP’s hit patches of bad contention, the good providers add more capacity, the bad just hide behind a 50:1 notional contention figure.
The recent Ofcom Broadband Speeds code of practice did nothing to address contention and how it is described to consumers.
The highly competitive retail market in the UK does not help, as the main consumer market buys based on price but is not aware of what the reality is. There are cheap relatively uncontended services, but these are often loss leader products, or will be so popular that the congestion suddenly hits 6 months or a year down the road.
Next Generation Access needs to be done in conjunction with improved backhaul, and forcing service providers to provide some form of detail on what is expected speed wise. For example if the provider plans on 50,000 people sharing 100Mbps for £10 a month, the advantage of a provider putting just 30,000 on 100Mbps for £12 a month will be much more apparent to the average broadband consumer.
This links to other comments about not/slow spots I have made.
We may find that there are communities willing to pay more upfront for a FTTH to the home solution, i.e. they want to ensure they are not left behind.
It would be good if that as part of the commercial roll-out by BT and others, that an avenue was available for areas to have a cost appraisal made, such that if a community raised the funds it could request the network build. If a local business was able to write this off against tax we may even find small local businesses willing to put up some money towards this. They would gain from better broadband access, and the attraction when bringing new workers to an area will improve.
Community solutions are taking place and CBN is doing some worthwhile work, but it seems this only works in areas where someone is willing to front the service once things are running. By having a system where a community can encourage the national networks to roll-out to them will lessen the potential for networks that are a patchwork of solutions, or reliant on one person who knows how to fix/operate the local hardware.
A key issue with community solutions is that it needs to provide a range of functionality.
For example there has been in the past small local broadband networks using Wi-Fi that did not provide a full IP address, i.e. network was NAT’d which can cause issues for business or pro-sumer use.
Ensuring that community solutions can support things like IP blocks, static IP’s are key to attracting business users onto them.
Community solutions were popular for first generation broadband in 2003, but as BT accelerated its ADSL roll-out through demand led schemes many fell by the wayside. Therefore any support needs to consider whether this is a stop gap solution or a permanent solution for an area, and if permanent it needs to ensure that the solution is not dependant on one or two high profile local techies.
It can only lead to a sterile debate unless action is taken to instruct councils, telcos et al to cut the crap and do everything within their power to get FTTH for the people. Half the trouble is because there is no joined up thinking. Sharing ducts, sharing digs, working together with a common goal, to build an infrastructure to be proud of, not one that needs patching up and reinventing every few years.
The Norwegian NPT (Ofcom -equivalent) have issued a set of net neutral principles which balance the need foran open internet, with the need for affordable services and the need to manage the peak busy period in an open transaprent manner.
It’s not law, but it would be a missed opportunity if Digital Britain did not have a set of guiding principles. You need them to minimum to support a coherent approach to USO based services.
We need to develop an equivalent set of principles on privacy. The final report should call for proposals on best practice and review them as they arrive.
It’s late but I have attempted to re-write this section, it’s been emailed and it is available to be download from here
http://cid-8a40f9200c0106b9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/NGADBd1.pdf
I haveI emailed you a re-write of this section to you. I hope it is useful.
Thanks for working late on the section, it looks good, but.
I disagree with the bit that says ” These plans will need to be supported by customer led requests by exchange to prove a
willingness to upgrade and pay for what will be a more expensive service. ”
I do not have the time to do what we did in 2003 to get the exchanges enabled. We brought awareness of the benefits to a whole community, got 500 signatures for our exchange to be enabled and it took massive effort, we are too busy teaching people how to use it, advising on connections, computers et al. We don’t have the resources to start another campaign. BT got it all done for nothing last time, we won’t fall for that one again.
In your Affordability section, the prices look reasonable, but they can’t be delivered in many areas without investment in the infrastructure, and this means fibre to every community, not just the exchange itself. I stand by what I said earlier, if you build then they will come. I do appreciate all your time and effort Mike, bloody well done. You have proved you think out of the box.
as predicted, BT to fibre up cities and totally ignore the rural areas, quote from thinkbroadband “BT announce first 29 exchanges for fibre deployment
Monday 23 March 2009 ”
http://tinyurl.com/c3km3a
this proves Caio’s point that investment in cities will always happen, whereas intervention will be needed in rural areas for sure and govt/ofcom must invest time and resources to identify remedies because the market will fail to deliver.
Demand for services requiring maximum speeds of 100Mbps is very uncertain _individually_, but people are increasingly engaging services such as the iPlayer and 4oD, both of which offer streaming and watch-later download options.
Moreover, they are doing this while engaging in other activities, and the proliferation of wireless-enabled broadband endpoints (i.e., as ADSL and cable modems) increases the proportion of households where there are multiple users accessing the Internet simultaneously, each of whom will have their own throughput demands.
While it is certainly true that “between now and 2012 demand for average speeds of 20Mbps is likely”, this is a very wide target: it’s quite likely that demand for this level of bandwidth will become widespread within the next 12-18 months.
Launching these initiatives are long overdue. any hole dug in the ground for ANY reason should have a duct put in for fibre. Support for local open access networks is crucial if Govt are expecting the people of UKplc to do it themselves. (as opposed to making BT et al deliver next gen networks) It is looking rather like a patchwork solution is going to be the answer, as the suits seem to think 2meg is enough. We know it isn’t. It was ok for 1st gen but now is past its sell by date.
’3) Establish a structured permanent benchmarking process to monitor the development of NGA in the UK and in relation to other countries.’
no need to do this, just light the fibre and let the rest of the world follow us.
’4) Invest time and resources to identify remedies to adopt in case the market fails to deliver.’
It has already failed, so don’t waste money – the remedy is clear, light the fibre. FttH.
‘In July 2008, the Virgin Media CTO announced the intention to provide 200Mb/s by 2012.’
this will only cover a small area, and widen the digital divide between rural and urban even further.
2010 is next year, and only a handful of homes have the promised FttH. There is no likelihood of this promise ever being fulfilled.
£5 per month per Mbps IP peering is sustainable given sufficient scale economy plus £5 per month to maintain the first mile FttH infrastructure, the next gen access network element plus £5 per month for reinvestment and network growth eg.)
Example – £(5+5+5) = £15 per month plus VAT = £17.25 per month per home
Provides 1Mbps CIR (Committed Information Rate) which is then aggregated and cross contended up to 100Mbps within a 100 home cloud
The current price problem is middle-mile transit – linking global and local together, the outlook is positive as competition develops and DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing aka Rainbow of wavelengths through a single fibre) provides 100x Layer 1 efficiency gain.
Go for gigabit for 2012 <- now there’s a NextGenUs aspiration…
[...] from http://writetoreply.org/digitalbritain/2009/01/29/section-21-next-generation-access-networks/#commen…, comments to paragraph 41 below is a pricing example for FttH in answer to what might be [...]
Other govts are rolling out fibre. The reason we aren’t is because we have such a good copper phone network. That is also what is holding us back, because they can put a limited amount of broadband through it and generate income from it instead of delivering a better service. Copper costs more than fibre, but it is already deployed. If they use existing ducts and replace the copper with fibre not only will we get NGA but it won’t cost as much as they think, see Guy J post for costs. fibre is the future
JFDI one community has proved that next gen access is not rocket science, they have laid and lit fibre to rural properties themselves see the videos and watch how they did it on http://www.youtube.com/user/wennetvideo – the first rural fibre to the home was to a house built in the 17th century!
We are a small company providing access for 23 properties that can’t get adsl due to market failure. We use wireless, we tried mobile and satellite but it didn’t work, so we buy a feed from LUNS and share it with meshboxes. We now find we can’t upgrade our network without great expense, so we are looking at replacing this with fibre to be futureproof. I just wish BT would do the same, instead of patching up an obsolete copper network.
‘Cleantech and renewables are expected to become two of the most important sectors of the economy according to a survey of UK business leaders, commissioned by the department for Business Innovation and Skills.’
Well in that case it is time the digitalbritain team started rolling out the fibre in the UK, otherwise our chance to be in the ball park will be lost. There is no way we can compete if we are stuck with an obsolete copper network…
As long as the digitalbritain team keep faffing around with pirates they are being distracted from the main issue, which is a structural change in regulation to get the roll-out of NGA started. Let the media take care of itself, our job is to build a truly digital britain, and that need intervention to get it into the rural areas, the telcos will deliver in the cities. They have proved already they can’t even deliver first gen access to villages. Time to light some fibre…
Ciao review didn’t mention that BT and Virgin were delivering in the same areas and replicating services tho did it? They both want to milk the densely populated areas and aren’t interested in the rest of the country. Therefore the report has misled the decision makers of the digitalbritain team.
We don’t need a framework for the future and endless reports. The market isn’t going to deliver. They have had plenty of time to get it right, they haven’t. We need fibre to the home, and we need it soon if the UK is going to have a part to play in a digital world. Otherwise we will stay in the slow lane and innovation will happen elsewhere. Invest now, for a stupendous ROI. not nec in the telco sector, but in every other sector.