Archive for the ‘broadband’ Category
Friday, August 20th, 2010
Superfast all IP networks are not just around the corner they are here already, at least if you are a business. The big growth area in business networking is in Ethernet data circuits that are rapidly replacing ADSL as the business connectivity of choice.
In fact businesses are keeping their old ADSL connections as a backup to their new Ethernet circuit so whilst the market for broadband is relatively flat the general business of internet connectivity is seeing a boom.
At Timico we will see almost twice as many Ethernet circuits installed in 2010 as we did in the first five years of our existence. Next year we expect the number to at least double again.
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Tags: 21CN, ADSL2+, Ethernet, FTTC, FTTP, FTTX, MPLS, RT QoS
Posted in FTTC, broadband, internet | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Big headliner from Ofcom this morning is that average broadband speeds in the UK have increased by over 25% in the past year. Research, conducted in partnership with broadband monitoring specialists SamKnows, has found that speeds have increased from 4.1Mbit/s to 5.2Mbit/s.
This is no surprise really as ISPs move their base from ADSLMax (“up to 8Meg”) over to ADSL2+ (“up to 24Meg”). It’s a shame that the average is not higher but that’s copper for you. The research showed that cable customers fare significantly better than ADSL.
The Ofcom data also reveals some very interesting stats about performance during peak times that don’t do some ISPs any favours. (more…)
Tags: broadband speeds, Code of Practice, Ofcom
Posted in broadband, internet | 5 Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
I read in Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Broadband Delivery UK industry day today that due to the lack of funds the government has moved the target date for implementation of its 2Meg Universal Service Commitment out to the “end of this parliament” or in other words 2015 (see my post in March on the feasibility of doing it by 2012).
It is about time everyone realised this is a waste of effort. Lets forget about 2Meg and go straight for Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). FTTP for the Final third by 2015 is a sensible objective.
Tags: 2Meg USC, BDUK, Jeremy Hunt
Posted in broadband, internet | 7 Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is today holding an “industry day aimed at companies and organisations that have skills, capabilities and assets that they believe could be used to help deliver the government’s Universal Service Commitment and superfast broadband market testing projects”.
The agenda for the day, which is being held within the BIS offices at 1 Victoria Street, London is as follows:
09:30 – 10:00 Registration & Coffee
10:00 – 10:10 Introduction and Welcome – Ed Vaizey
10:10 – 11:00 Setting the context – Jeremy Hunt
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Tags: Adrian Kamellard, BDUK, BIS, Ed Vaisey, Industry Day, Jeremy Hunt, Simon Towler
Posted in broadband, internet, regulatory | 5 Comments »
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
FTTC continues to be a popular subject on this blog. It gets linked to from all sorts of non-telecom forums. There is clearly a hunger for information on faster broadband.
In the interest of adding to the body of information out there I’ve added some more info in this post. Firstly pictures of the FTTC and FTTP local architectures and a link to the BT Openreach FTTC / FTTP product page. Note the larger cabinet for FTTC. (more…)
Tags: FTTC, FTTP
Posted in General, broadband, internet | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
Met with O2 and BE today for a general chat about the BE broadband network. They are pushing a wholesale offering and are now one of only four Tier 1 broadband wholesalers in the UK – BT, TalkTalk and Cable and Wireless being the others. Reality is I don’t see C&W doing much so probably there are only really three of them.
Telefonica has been backing BE and making not insignificant investments in their network. Their current ADSL2+ offering is competitive. The longer term question for them is really the same as for TalkTalk and that is how to leverage a new (ish) high capacity backbone once ADSL2+ becomes old hat and the world has moved on to greater and faster connectivity.
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Tags: BE, broadband, O2
Posted in broadband, internet, mobile | No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
I braved the elements of a windswept rural Lincolnshire on Saturday to visit the Digby Fete. Digby is in the middle of nowhere. It’s two main distinguishing features are the fact that it is the home of RAF Digby and that it is the next village on the map to Ashby De La Launde.
The proximity to Ashby has become an irritant to the good parishioners of Digby because their neighbouring village has just announced that it is getting 100Mbps Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). Up until now neither village could get decent broadband connectivity.
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Tags: Ashby de la Launde, Caio Report, Digby, Digital Britain, finalthirdfirst, FTTP, Guy Jarvis, NextGenUs
Posted in broadband, internet | 4 Comments »
Friday, June 18th, 2010
It’s Friday afternoon and the first time this week I have been able to sit down and blog. It could be a full time activity if I had the time as so much stuff passes my way.
I note that Minister for Communications Ed Vaizey has been demonstrating his politcal sidestepping skills by answering MP Tom Watson’s request for a definition of “super fast broadband” with:
“Super fast broadband means broadband of sufficient speed and quality to deliver the services that will lead to Britain having the best broadband network in Europe. The technology used to deliver this could be fixed or wireless but will represent a significant upgrade on today’s fixed and wireless networks.”
(more…)
Tags: @andrewpercy, @edvaizey, @tom_watson, Ashby de la Launde, Fibrestream, FTTP
Posted in broadband, internet, regulatory | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 11th, 2010
The ISP industry woke up yesterday morning to a spike on their collective networks. I had people down to my office asking whether the World Cup had started a new trend in online TV watching. It undoubtedly reinforces the trend but this time the bandwidth rush was due to a Microsoft Update and not the football.
The football is starting to have an effect though – viewing figures during the opening ceremony were up around 30% over normal video watching. This didn’t have any ill effects on the quality of the experience at least at my end.
30 minutes into the opening game between the Hosts South Africa the score remains nil nil and the video traffic has grown by about 60% above the norm. This is not as many people as were watching the shennanigans the day after the general election (although it almost is). But this is not England playing here…
Just to remind readers the concern is that online viewing is going to flood the internet and affect regular users. Warnings have been issued by many ISPs and content providers. Looks like our pipes are ok at the moment although as predicted we have hit a record high in terms of bandwidth usage. If you are making a VoIP call or sending email etc you should still be fine.
You do wonder at Microsoft’s timing though, releasing an update just before the biggest demand event the internet will have seen to date. I guess there are geeks everywhere. Football? What’s football?
Tags: Microsoft, World Cup
Posted in bandwidth bandit, broadband, internet | 3 Comments »
