Category: broadband

Broadband related posts including superfast broadband, Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) or Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), fibre broadband, VoIP over broadband, broadband usage, wireless broadband, in fact anything you can think of that has to do with broadband! Rural broadband especially arouses high emotions.

Categories
broadband Engineer internet

Broadband Growth Results in Network Capacity Increases

Been a busy week again. Where do they all go? This week was a milestone for Trefor Davies in that I got my first 622Mbps BT central pipe. It’s not mine really of course, it is Timico’s but it feels like mine – toys for the boys 🙂 .

Not everyone will understand the significance. When an Internet Service Provider starts life they begin with a small connection to the BT (Wholesale) ADSL network. They use this connection, known as a “central pipe”,  to carry broadband web traffic from their ADSL customers to the internet, email server, co-located equipment etc.

The ISP itself usually provides the applications (ie email) and contracts with a variety of network providers to offer resilient access to the internet.

As the number of broadband customers grows more BT central capacity needs to be added and this is normally done in affordable “chunks” rather than going straight for a big connection that would almost certainly be uneconomic for low levels of ADSL customers.

Unfortunately for the small ISP the bigger the connection the better the level of service experience  that can be offered. This is particularly the case if an ISP has many small (34Mbps) pipes.

So this week Timico moved into the bigger league with a 622Mbps pipe and cancelled 7 smaller pipes. What is more our second 622Mbps pipe is due for delivery in April giving us a huge headroom in capacity/expansion capability. This is in additional to the resilient 1Gbps links we have for 21CN.

Ironically although supposed to provide 622Mbps these pipes in reality provide more bandwidth than advertised. This compares with a 155Mbps pipe which typically only provided 120Mbps capacity in two separate 60Mbps halves and a 34Mbps pipe which only provided 25Mbps capacity.

Exciting eh? ! 🙂

Categories
broadband Business voip

Working From Home Today

Had a day working from home today.  Nothing to do with the snow actually but my car is in being fixed after failing its MOT. Nothing major so don’t worry – just time consuming 🙂 .

I had a hugely productive day. Interestingly, whilst I spent much of the time on the phone, of the 26 calls my log tells me I made half of them were to people not in their office but working from home because of the snow. Only a few calls were made that actually cost any money, those to suppliers.

Most people I spoke with would not have known that I was at home were it not for the conversations on the subject of the weather, a peculiarly British phenomenon I think.

What is also interesting is how the house rules work. I long since lost the use of my study to the dreaded TV. I thought I could control it! Because of this if I’m working from home, which is actually only occasionally because I like being in the office,  I work in the kitchen or the conservatory. Both have Cat5 cabling for the VoIP phone.

Today the whole family was off school (my wife is a teacher) and celebrating but it meant that working in the kitchen didn’t make sense due to the human traffic. Also the conservatory was not the warmest place in the house. So I ended up working in the living room in front of the log fire – the living room also has Cat5 – doesn’t everyone’s.

The living room therefore became the no go area that was exclusively mine and everyone obeyed the rules. My pointreally is that the issue concerning homeworking is no longer whether you can do a proper days job. VoIP and broadband now makes this easy, at least when working for Timico. The issues now relate to whether you have a suitable working environment at home that allows you to be productive. Not everyone has suitable space.

I thought I’d share this picture with you – the open fire in the living room. Very pleasant when it is snowing outside – even though it was the MOT that kept me at home. By the way the kitchen also has a number of Cat5 points – doesn’t everyone’s?

fire1

Categories
broadband Business internet ofcom

Ofcom Publishes Research on Broadband Speed

Ofcom has just announced the results of its research into consumer broadband speed in the UK. The report says that 93% of UK consumers are satisfied with their general broadband experience although levels of disatisfaction do vary depending on where they live.

Rural users are, unsurprisingly less satisfied than urban users. Also the satisfaction ratings drop to 67%  for those people watching online TV. This is a warning shot across the bows for UK ISPs as using ADSL for watching TV online is going to see a huge growth.

Ofcom used broadband monitoring company samknows to conduct the research which also found that the average UK consumer ADSL speed was 3.6Mbps which is only 45% of the typically adverstised speed of 8Mbps. This is lower than the theoretical average max possible speed across the UK of 4.3Mbps taking different distances from the exchange into account.

The testing seems to have been quite comprehensive with 1500 homes involved running 7,000 different tests, meaning that over 10 millions tests were conducted overall on a range of supplier services. Interestingly the peak usage was found to be between 5pm and 6pm on a Sunday afternoon. I guess everyone is watching Songs of Praise online – assuming they still broadcast it 🙂 .

What would be interesting is if Ofcom were to commission the same testing for business broadband connections. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen because the original research was conducted as a result of a perceived level of consumer disatisfaction that is not there where businesses are concerned. Although businesses use the same fundamental ADSL technology they typically run with ISP networks such as Timico that are less congested.

Categories
broadband Business

Shareband Bonded ADSL Broadband in Lincolnshire

broadband

It’s quite pleasing to see that since I last posted on Shareband bonded ADSL the proposition seems be gaining traction. Lincolnshire County Council broadband initiative “OnLincolnshire ” has placed a contract with Timico and is promoting the technology into the business community in the mostly rural county.

LCCs concern is that businesses in Lincolnshire have a level playing field with those in more urban areas of the country and to this end are not only trialing the technology but also will likely be using the results  to build case studies to attract business users. Great.

I have to say that my experience of working with LCC is that they are a very forward thinking organisation. As a long time resident of Lincoln it is nice to be able to work locally. Time was I had to get on a plane to meet customers.

The beauty for businesses in Lincolnshire is that along with the work that the Council is doing on connectivity comes EC funded grants to help pay for it. Living in a rural backwater suddenly becomes economically attractive as well as offering a high quality of life.

Categories
broadband Business

Broadband Technology: Bonded ADSL Solutions — Shareband

broadband churn Broadband Technology Pipe

Over the last couple of years we have been testing Shareband, a broadband technology solution for bonding ADSL lines together. In theory, if you use 4 ADSLs you can get 4 times the speed of a single connection.

Of course this type of broadband solution has been available for years using Cisco equipment and multi-link technology. In practice, however, the installation costs have been expensive because it relies on high end 1800 and 2800 series Cisco equipment.

Where Shareband is different is that it uses low cost routers. It is also possible to use ADSL connections from multiple broadband technology providers, which offers a resilience story that isn’t necessarily available with the traditional multilink solution.

Whilst in practice it is unlikely that installations get the full theoretical aggregate speed performance, the results are still pretty good. Certainly much better than a single ADSL. This is important for users that are a long way from their local exchange, as Shareband may be their only solution for an adequate broadband technology service.

The Shareband service is now considered to be a production service having been tested at around 40 customers. It has been rolled out by Timico subsidiary KeConnect.

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

Ofcom Broadband Code of Practice

Ofcom’s new code of practice in respect of how consumer ISPs sell broadband comes into force tomorrow. It has been brought about because up to 25% of consumers consider that they don’t get the speeds they expect from a broadband connection.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding how ISPs sell broadband, specifically in the consumer space as they have been desperately trying to outdo each other with tales of superior performance, unlimited downloads, bigger, faster, better etc.

Whilst the code does not apply to business services it is a good code. Timico has always operated in a transparent way in respect to selling ADSL. For example our 21CN ADSL2+ service in theory will provide download speeds of up to 24Mbps. In reality users are unlikely to get this. I will be publishing the results of our trials after Christmas showing what speeds the trialists have been getting.

The ISPA is issuing a press release today supporting this Ofcom code of practice.

Categories
broadband Business

Grown Up Networks

I’ve started the process of cancelling some of our smaller connections to the BT ADSL network. We have newer bigger better pipes on order (in the pipeline 🙂 ). This is on top of the resilient Gigabit hostlinks we have into the BT 21CN network.

This really does feel as if Timico is growing up. When we started, in 2004, we had a single 34Mbps connection. By the middle of next year we should have resilient 2,000Mbps capacity. That’s a big change. Big growth. By the end of 2009 and beyond we should be into the realms of 20,000+Mbps. That’s 2 x 10Gbps. I left it expressed as Mbps for effective comparison. Quite dramatic I think.

At the same time the size of project we are handling is getting bigger and bigger. Although the majority of network customers are small with perhaps 2 or 3 sites, networks with hundreds of connections are becoming much more common and this year we have started talking to customers about projects involving thousands of sites.

Thats when life starts to get really interesting.

Categories
broadband Business

21CN Broadband Testing Task

Just sitting in on a BT webinar on 21CN testing. According to BT they are spending £150m on testing 21CN broadband related devices and networks.

The scope is a lot bigger than I had thought before I sat in on the call. The ADSL related bits, which is my main interest, looks as if it will largely be unproblematic. However when you think about it there is a huge list of equipment out there that has been plugged into the BT network over decades. There is bound to be a problem somewhere.

Initial feedback is that some security related services might have a problem that needs attention. Also one very old PBX whose name escapes me (it’s that old).

A couple of PBXs would appear to have been successfully tested from manufacturers Aastra and Alcatel Lucent. Clearly there is a long way to go because most of the big guys are not in this list. BT does have a proactive programme to contact the top ten manufacturers.

I don’t have a specific list of manufacturers that are being contacted. However if you think that your’s might be from a small vendor who might not appear on the list let me know and I will happily effect the introduction with BT.

One might ask why anyone would buy a PBX from a vendor you have never heard of but hey…

Categories
broadband Business

What Makes SMBs Churn Their Broadband Suppliers?

A recent survey by Ipsos MORI found that 31% of Small and Medium Sized businesses cited that the reason for churning their broadband suppliers was poor customer service. 15% of them said it was the cost of calling their ISP for support.

This represents a huge opportunity for companies like Timico whose whole raison d’etre is to provide good quality support for business. Before Timico (BT! – now that’s an interesting thought!) my business had a hosting account with a large name brand ISP. Their people were good enough but I would often be sat in a queue for half an hour trying to get through to them at 10 pence a minute which I hugely resented.

This is why our customer support teams have to answer the phone within three rings, and we measure it. It is also the reason that out of a staff count of around 130, 38 of them are technically qualified. The support teams do not use voicemail – they have to answer the phone.

That last statement might sound a little dictatorial but believe me it isn’t and none of the staff feel it is. Theirs is a work hard play hard envirnment where effort is rewarded, as it can be in a fast growing business. Right that’s enough of the broadcast 🙂

Categories
broadband Business internet

AT&T Trials Usage Based Charging and BT Hikes Bandwidth Costs

AT&T has announced a trial in the USA for usage based broadband charging for its customers in Reno, Nevada.  This follows on from a similar trial in June by Time Warner Cable and also a 250GB cap on usage placed by Comcast on its customers. The move towards metered charging is I believe inexorable. We are in for interesting times here in the UK. BT has just hiked it’s ADSL bandwidth costs to service providers. This will make ADSL more expensive in the UK. Whether this price rise gets passed on to end users remains to be seen. It certainly makes life more difficult for service providers who were already likely to move to usage based charging. Of course BT increasingly has more competition in the guise of companies installing their own kit in BT exchanges – what’s known as Local Loop Unbundling. This competition is largely in the consumer space with broadband sometimes being packaged as a “free” element of a deal that might include line rental, minutes and, in some cases, TV. The level of service that this “free” broadband brings is unlikely to cut the mustard with most businesses. So what does this mean?

  • In the first instance a quality broadband connection is likely to get more expensive. Most LLU players don’t have a wholesale offering that B2B service providers could resell.
  • Secondly broadband customers in rural areas are likely going to have to pay more for their connectivity because the LLU operators don’t provide broadband in these “uneconomic” areas. This will exacerbate the so called “digital divide”, already a hot topic in the light of the high anticipated cost of rolling out Next Generation Access to rural areas.

BT recently removed the installation costs associated with (some) new connections to their ADSL network. On the face of it this latest move looks like they have simply shifted these costs onto the line rental. The country would certainly benefit from more competition in the wholesale space.

Categories
broadband Business internet

AT&T Trials Usage-Based Charging and BT Hikes Bandwidth Costs

AT&T has announced a trial in the USA for usage based broadband charging for its customers in Reno, Nevada.  This follows on from a similar trial in June by Time Warner Cable and also a 250GB cap on usage placed by Comcast on its customers. The move towards metered charging is I believe inexorable.

We are in for interesting times here in the UK. BT has just hiked it’s ADSL bandwidth costs to service providers. This will make ADSL more expensive in the UK. Whether this price rise gets passed on to end users remains to be seen. It certainly makes life more difficult for service providers who were already likely to move to usage based charging.

Of course BT increasingly has more competition in the guise of companies installing their own kit in BT exchanges – what’s known as Local Loop Unbundling. This competition is largely in the consumer space with broadband sometimes being packaged as a “free” element of a deal that might include line rental, minutes and, in some cases, TV. The level of service that this “free” broadband brings is unlikely to cut the mustard with most businesses.

So what does this mean?

  • In the first instance a quality broadband connection is likely to get more expensive. Most LLU players don’t have a wholesale offering that B2B service providers could resell.
  • Secondly broadband customers in rural areas are likely going to have to pay more for their connectivity because the LLU operators don’t provide broadband in these “uneconomic” areas. This will exacerbate the so called “digital divide”, already a hot topic in the light of the high anticipated cost of rolling out Next Generation Access to rural areas.

BT recently removed the installation costs associated with (some) new connections to their ADSL network. On the face of it this latest move looks like they have simply shifted these costs onto the line rental. The country would certainly benefit from more competition in the wholesale space.

 

Categories
broadband End User internet

How to Get Faster Broadband — Move to Spain

If you want to get faster broadband move to somewhere like Spain. Aha do I hear you say? Just the excuse you have been waiting for to make the move to a place in the sun? A bit drastic I’d say especially when I explain that the reason you might get faster broadband in Spain is because it almost certainly rains less there than in the good old UK.

It’s very interesting what snippets you pick up at Timico. Today, whilst gazing out the window at yet another downpour, I quizzed the tech support team as to whether there were any hot topics occupying their time. “Broadband” they responded. “We always get more broadband calls when it is raining”.

This took me somewhat by surprise but I checked it out and it is true. If you are a long way from your telephone exchange a bit of wind and rain can cause higher than normal noise on your copper cable, usually due to imperfect connections at the telegraph pole. That’s electrical noise – not something audible to mortals. It isn’t something easily diagnosed and ground based connections and leased lines do not suffer the same problem.

This noise can result in a temporary slowing of your broadband. Hence if you want faster broadband speed move somewhere where it doesn’t rain as much.

You heard it first on trefor.net.

PS if you do need tips on where to relocate the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.

Categories
broadband End User olympics

The Olympic Effect

Readers might be interested to know that the Olympic opening ceremony stimulated an increase of almost 10% in internet usage last Friday afternoon.

It will also be interesting to hear whether the consumer ADSL customer community will have seen any changes in the performance of their connection as their ISPs begin throttling to cope.

Categories
broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

A Teenager’s Homepage

Before we set off on our camping holiday (destination unknown) I sat down at my daughter’s pc to print out some campsite options in Yorkshire.

I was somewhat bemused to find that her homepage was set to BBC iplayer.

Look out ISPs everywhere. Your bandwidth forecasts are inadequate.

My trusty E71 got me to the first campsite on the list and that is where we stayed. I also used it to write this post.

Categories
broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

A Teenager’s Homepage

Before we set off on our camping holiday (destination unknown) I sat down at my daughter’s pc to print out some campsite options in Yorkshire.

I was somewhat bemused to find that her homepage was set to BBC iplayer.

Look out ISPs everywhere. Your bandwidth forecasts are inadequate.

My trusty E71 got me to the first campsite on the list and that is where we stayed. I also used it to write this post.

Categories
broadband Business

BT in the News for Throttling Broadband

BT has made the headlines again for throttling all peer to peer traffic. www.samknows.com has just produced a report on the subject.

People perhaps don’t realise that P2P isn’t just used for downloading (often illegal) media from the internet. P2P is often the most efficient way of moving large amounts of data from one location to another and as such is an essential business tool. Timico doesn’t throttle any of it’s traffic.

This suggests to me that the UK is moving more to a two tier ISP market. Tiers are usually based on the size of an ISP – the big ones are Tier 1, medium sized are Tier 2 etc.  I would suggest that in future the Tier  classification should be based on the quality of the customer experience. Tier 1 = good, Tier 2 = not so good.

I’ll leave you to decide which one BT fits into but I would have to say that Timico would certainly fit into the former.

Categories
broadband End User

Magnolia Paint, Croquet, and Broadband Internet

I was on a rare Tuesday night out with Ben our Head of Network Operations and Dean, Chief Technical Architect. Ben was up from the NOC in Ipswich for a meeting so we combined business with pleasure and had an evening discussing technical strategies and roadmaps for The Timico Group.

The output will reveal itself in due course but the nature of such evenings, spent in Tequila’s Mexican Cantina in Lincoln, is that the conversation lead to other subjects.

On this occasion it was magnolia paint. Dean said it was a completely boring subject and that there was nothing really to talk about. An earlier career spent in RAF accommodation had coloured his judgement on the subject.

My take was that magnolia paint is in itself a complex subject with many facets. After all you can get gloss magnolia, matt magnolia, emulsion, satin, small pots, large pots, industrial sized pots etc etc. It is also quite possible that there are many different shades of magnolia.

The point is that there are probably experts in magnolia paint who can advise the mere mortals and colour blind amongst us as to which tin of magnolia we need.

Now compare magnolia paint with your internet connection. You have probably taken both for granted but in reality a broadband internet connection is a complex animal. What sort do you go for? Is the free one that comes with a phone line the one for you or do you actually pay good cash for something different? Is there a difference? How do you decide?

Let me tell you even if you think you know what you are talking about it is not easy. It’s like the first time I had my own business and needed to choose a mobile phone tariff. There were so many on offer I basically had to take a pin and stick it in the pricelist and hope that that one was the right one for me. Someone had always made the choice for me before.

Not every business has the luxury of employing staff to specifically choose on your behalf. In fact most businesses don’t. They need to team up with someone who can advise them and who they can trust.

The fact is I leave the choice of magnolia paint to an expert, in this case my wife. My wife knows nothing about internet connections so in that case she asks me.

PS, Ben and Dean also wanted me to write on the subject of croquet. There are around 3,500 members of the Croquet Association spread amongst approximately 165 clubs. The Association was founded in 1897 so it is still taking a little while to take off! If you want to know more go to http://www.croquet.org.uk/. They are looking for support.

For internet connections go to http://www.timico.co.uk/. They want your business.

Categories
broadband End User

Sports Bar

This isn’t really a technology post. I have just had dinner in a hotel sports bar somewhere near the M25 outside London.

 

Initially I couldn’t get near the bar because the one barman was snowed under with customers attending a function that had closed the restaurant. I didn’t mind that because I don’t like being seen as a sad git reading a book on my own in the restaurant. I prefer to sit at the bar with a beer and a burger and then go back to my room to work/sleep/watch TV. I did mind it taking ages to get served with my glass of shandy (yes).

 

On this occasion the bar eventually emptied of function goers only to reveal the lonely individuals normally seen in the restaurant but this time sat on their own at tables in the sports bar.

 

It does get worse. The four screens in the sports bar all displayed the same round of some boring darts competition. Probably the world championships J.  I seem to recall that at the age of eighteen I was interested in darts. I’m 46 now and no longer interested in darts.

 

Back in the room I’m writing my board report. Can’t send it though. The Wifi signal although present is too weak. I have to go back to the bar to get a strong enough signal. It will have to wait until morning. I could do it through my Nokia E71 (more on that later) but the GSM signal is also pretty crappy.

 

There you go. It was a technology post after all – sent from reception in the hotel.

Categories
broadband Business

Leased Line Business on the Up

Despite the advent of faster (ish) broadband the demand for leased lines is on the up. At least that is a trend we are seeing at Timico. This is evidenced by the statistic that in one day last week we received 32 (that’s thirty two) requests to quote for a leased line from our existing customer base.

You might argue that 32 quotes from a base of ten thousand or so businesses is not much but I’m telling you it is. That is the annualised equivalent of 8,320 leased lines in one working year, assuming no one takes a holiday but doesn’t work weekends.

Now we don’t get that number of RFQs every day, it would be great if we did. Also this is a recent statistic so they will not yet all have turned into orders although I’m sure that a significant proportion will do so.

It does point to a growing demand though. Businesses’ need for stable higher bandwidth is on the up as they have more and more internet (or at least Internet Protocol running on private networks) based communications that they rely on. With the best will in the world broadband (ADSL) is not going to give the same degree of reilability as a leased line, but there again it is significantly cheaper.

One huge opportunity for TImico is the massive installed base of BT leased lines. I read somewhere recently that this amounted to around 118,000 installations. Most of these leased lines will likely be 2Mbps connections that have been installed for donkeys years and are now well out of contract.

You can bet your bottom dollar that BT will not have mentioned that IP bandwidth costs have plummeted in the same timeframe. The chances are the typical BT leased line customer is still paying the same for the service that he or she was five years ago. This represents a serious opportunity for fast growing outfits like Timico.

If anyone out there needs advice on their leased line needs just drop me  line or leave a comment and I’ll sort out an independant assessment.

Categories
broadband video voip

The Bunk Inn

In my travels around the Timico empire I try to avoid staying in hotels. When I visit Twang in Newbury I stay at The Bunk Inn in Curridge. Home from home, good beer, good food and friendly staff.

The downside of the Bunk is that to make a mobile phone call you have to walk to the end of the road – the coverage is non existent. I know that in the past I have pitched this as a good point but when you want to stay in touch with home it is a different matter. There is a phone in the room but over the years I have had this ingrained feeling that in room phones = expensive hotel bills. In my globe trotting days the hotel phone bill would usually be bigger than the cost of the room. 

In the Bunk Inn this is not a problem because it provides internet access. Calling home is just a matter of firing up my PC and clicking on my Timico VoIP client. I can even have a video call.

Short and sweet – the blog entry not the phone call which was long and sweet.

Categories
broadband Business

BT Superfast Broadband

Just heard on the BBC news that BT has announced that it will be investing in a superfast broadband network/fibre rollout. It won’t have universal coverage but up to a million homes should be able to get fibre to the home. The rollout is expected to be complete by 2012 (subject no doubt to the usual BT schedule slippages)

You will recall that in a recent post I forecast that according to the trend in internet traffic growth we would need 96Mbps by 2012. Interestingly this is what the BT announcement gives.

Note unusually I heard it on the Beeb but it hasn’t appeared in any of the usual online rags yet. 

Categories
broadband Business

ISPA

I am please to be able to tell you that yesterday I was elected to the council of the UK’s Internet Service Providers’ Association at their Annual General Meeting. You might ask why do I bother when I am already on the Council of ITSPA (Internet Telephony Service Providers Association).

Well I’ll tell you. There is so much change happening in the internet world that it is important to keep in touch with what is going on, both in the VoIP and ISP fields. As a growing player in this market Timico has a lot to say and to contribute to the debate. It is an opportunuity to influence and lead.

The AGM, which was held at the Liberal Club in Westminster, was followed by a reception which must have had in attendance in excess of 200 individuals all involved in the provision of internet services in the UK. These are not all just straight bandwidth providers. They include content providers, equipment providers, end user organisations and analysts. The event was a great forum to meet people and discuss what is going on in the industry.

I look forward to being able to provide ISP insights in future blog posts from a position near to the action.

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

Ofcom Eases Up on Returns on Investment for Next Generation Broadband

broadband churn Broadband Technology Pipe

In my post “Who pays for next generation broadband” I mentioned that BT were complaining that the regulatory environment in the UK positively discouraged investment in a high speed broadband network (read fibre) because it did not allow a return on investment commensurate with the risks involved.

Well Ofcom head Ed Richards seems to have made an about turn on this in a speech he made to the “Intellect Conference 2008” on 3rd July.

I’ve pasted an extract here:

“Our position is clear. Ofcom favours a regulatory environment for the next generation of networks and access that both allows and encourages operators to make risky investments, to innovate for the benefit of consumers and, if the risks pay off, for the benefit of their shareholders too.

We are very clear that if operators are going to make investments in new infrastructure, investment that is inherently more risky than developing the existing infrastructure, then they need to know that the regulatory framework will allow them to make and keep a rate of return that is commensurate with the risks they are taking.”

I can’t imagine that anyone will be unhappy about this though we still have to see someone stepping up to the plate with the requisite investment. UK PLC does need to be looking beyond 21CN for the IP connectivity that will allow the true exploitation of the promise of the internet.

Categories
Apps broadband Business

Consumer ISP Versus Business ISP: The Facts

The broadband ISP community has been coming in for some bad press recently with high profile stories of

 

  • bandwidth capping and throttling,
  • the use of deep packet inspection to manage and shape traffic,
  • complaints to the ASA by BT regarding deception of customers by Virgin
  • complaints from the ISP industry about who pays for the bandwidth for users of  iPlayer and other internet based video streams
  • complaints on user forums about speeds throttled back to less than that of dial up at peak periods

The B2B broadband ISP community has not generally been suffering from these complaints. They arise in consumer-oriented networks from the need to cram as many customers in as possible in order to meet low price expectations. Whilst a B2B ISP still suffers from the general rise in internet bandwidth usage (currently running at around 3 – 4% a month) it cannot impose the consumer bandwidth management methods described above because a business’ internet connection is normally too important to mess with. For example when throughout drops (as it will with too many users on a network) so do VPNs therefore you have to maintain high quality throughput.

 

The response of the B2B ISP is to increase the overall ADSL bandwidth available and bear the cost. At the end of the day the cost has to be passed on to the customer otherwise the ISP doesn’t stay in business and the customer doesn’t have an internet connection. Business customers are likely to less sensitive to changes in costs (we aren’t talking about big numbers here anyway) recognizing that they get a better service at the end of the day.

 

Whilst I can only speak for Timico, Twang.net and KeConnect the business customer pays for what he gets but at the end of the day he gets a much better service than the consumer.

Categories
broadband Business

ASA Upholds BT Complaint about Virgin Broadband Service

Virgin has been told off by the Advertising Standards Agency for not telling the truth regarding the speed of its broadband service. Its the consumer versus business ISP proposition again. Virgin didn’t tell users that it caps the broadband service of some users at peak times. I’m sure that Virgin will “get them back” sometime soon :-).

Full story is available on the BBC website.

Categories
broadband Business security voip

Supernode Discovery

I am quite excited because I think I might have discovered a Supernode. A Skype Supernode that is.

 

Skype doesn’t have it’s own network infrastructure. Instead as a peer to peer technology it takes data from Skype clients around the world and identifies which users have plenty of bandwidth and processing power available. This user then becomes a Supernode which handles some of the Skype network signalling functions.

 

Being a broadband Supernode is not at all super as what you are effectively doing is  letting other Skype users use the broadband bandwidth that you are paying for yourself.

 

This customer was complaining that his quad bonded ADSL was underperforming. He was right. He was getting 1Mbps instead of his normal 9Mbps. We sent an engineer onsite and found that the customer had taken it upon himself to do some internal rewiring and had laid the ADSL cables on top of his ring main power cable. The interference from the main was causing the poor performance.

 

We moved the cables away from the main and hey presto the original high speed returned.

 

As part of the debug process we did some traffic sniffing on his network and found serious levels of peer to peer packets which turned out to be Skype.

 

I’m not saying that Skype in this case caused his broadband connectivity to slow down but business users should be aware of the problem. It should also be noted that Skype traffic is encrypted, at least the IM part. This means that virus scanners can’t pick up potential problem packets coming into the corporate network. Look out sensitive competitive information! Don’t keep your bank details on the network!

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

Who Pays for Next Generation Broadband?

Interesting enough debate at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in London today with the latest Telecommunications Executive Networking bash. The subject was Next Generation (NGN) broadband and specifically who is going to pay for it.

 

The debate was prompted by the BT position that the UK regulator OFCOM does not allow the company to make return on investment to justify spending money on an NGN network.

 

Panelists included Andrew Heaney from Carphone Warehouse, Kip Meek from the Broadband Stakeholders’ Group and David Campbell, Director of NGA at Openreach. It is actually a complex and highly politically charged subject when you take into consideration that BT (Openreach) has Universal Service Obligations.

 

In short the assembled masses, the great and the good of the UK Telecommunications industry, concluded that they wanted an NGN network to be privately funded.

 

A few interesting points came out of the meeting. Of the two hundred or more attendees the majority of them were equipment vendors. There can’t have been more than ten or fifteen hands up from ISPs. I’d have thought that the ISP community would have been more interested than this turnout suggests. Perhaps this is because there are few (if any) ISPs who could afford even to consider investing £12 billion in a high speed broadband network. No one is going to be able to do it alone.

 

There seemed also to me to be a level of ignorance as to why a high speed (100Mbps) network might be wanted. What applications would drive this they were asking?  In my experience at Timico once people get given higher speed access they find ways of using it. The move from 2Mbps ADSL to 8Mbps (up to J ) ADSL Max prompted a large increase in average usage per tail.

 

Andrew Heaney could see that a NGN would be required but that this wasn’t going to be for some time to come. He intimated that he would be looking to begin looking at such a network in a 2 – 4 year timeframe. He also suggested that traffic was doubling every two years. This is slightly slower growth than others in the industry are forecasting.

 

Whilst the chicken and the egg come into this calculation to some extent my rough back of a beer mat calculation goes like this.  Traffic doubling every 2 years is the same as being given double the download bandwidth in the same timeframe. On this basis the arrival in 2008 of (up to) 24Mbps  should prompt the need for 48 Mbps in 2010 and 96Mbps in 2012. This isn’t particularly scientific but it does provide a rough guide to the way that market demand could go.

 

There isn’t a plan on the table today for 96Mbps but 50Mbps is available now from Virgin. If anything would be geared to make the board of BT press the investment button for Next Generation broadband it would be seeing their market share going to Virgin.

 

Practically everyone in the room said they would be prepared to pay the additional £8 a month for NGN broadband that the £12bn investment is supposed to mean. Of course this is easy for a room full of well paid company directors to decide, The Openreach position is that the value in the market has disappeared and that consumers have been lead to expect faster broadband for less money.

 

We shall see. Interesting times ahead.

Categories
broadband Business

Internet Bandwidth Usage Doubles Every 18 Months

According to AT&T  their ADSL network bandwidth consumption is doubling every 18 months.

 

This type of statistic makes life interesting for UK ISPs who currently have to order bandwidth in large increments. This means that effectively they have to order a pipe for only a few users once capacity is reached on their existing infrastructure. What’s more they have to do this three months in advance of when they think the capacity will be required which makes it very difficult to respond quickly when usage trends increment with step functions as new drivers such as BBC iplayer enter the scene.

 

A consumer ISP will squeeze this capacity to the limit because of the incremental costs involved. Business oriented ISPs have to take the hit because the services they offer have to be of a better quality.

 

The advent of BT’s 21CN network later this year will make life a little easier though not necessarily any cheaper for the ISP community. ISPs will connect to the 21CN via an Ethernet based HostLink – typically either 1Gb or 10Gb. The up front connection charges for Ethernet products are much lower than for the legacy ATM circuits currently used to link DSL tails to an ISPs network.

 

The ISP will then pay for bandwidth used on this link rather than having to pay for the cost of the whole pipe. They will be able to order incremental bandwidth capacity with only two weeks notice.

 

21CN will bring additional benefits in that high speed Ethernet circuits should (eventually) be available almost on a country wide basis with far more cost effective pricing than is currently available.

 

Incidentally the top five per cent AT&Ts DSL customers consume 46 per cent of its traffic, and the top 1 per cent accounts for 21 per cent all bandwidth. It is easy to see that the industry is going to have to move to an usage based charging model as being the only fair way of doing business.

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broadband Business voip

It’s Funny Who You Meet on a Cruise

broadband churn Broadband Technology Pipe

Yesterday’s post on fuel prices turns out to have been quite timely because today our CEO Chris came back into the office with a spring in his step.

 

He had just returned from the IT Directors’ Forum on board the cruise liner Aurora. I’ve been pulling his leg on this for some time making sure that he had his yachting cap cleaned and his blazer pressed. However the purpose of his trip was serious. This was to brush shoulders with company IT Directors who might be target markets for Timico services.

 

He was pushing home worker solutions. Timico subsidiary Twang.net is a provider of communications services to the home worker communities of a number of FTSE 250 companies.

 

The point is that having pitched our home worker broadband proposition to some of the 240 senior executives attending the event he came away with 35 strong expressions of interest. This highlights that business really is beginning to recognise the modern day forces affecting the performance of their workforce. More people are being allowed to work from home for some of the time and with the costs of moving around this trend is only going to continue.

Categories
broadband Business voip

It’s funny who you meet on a cruise

Yesterday’s post on fuel prices turns out to have been quite timely because today our CEO Chris came back into the office with a spring in his step.

 

He had just returned from the IT Directors’ Forum on board the cruise liner Aurora. I’ve been pulling his leg on this for some time making sure that he had his yachting cap cleaned and his blazer pressed. However the purpose of his trip was serious. This was to brush shoulders with company IT Directors who might be target markets for Timico services.

 

He was pushing home worker solutions. Timico subsidiary Twang.net is a provider of communications services to the home worker communities of a number of FTSE 250 companies.

 

The point is that having pitched our home worker proposition to some of the 240 senior executives attending the event he came away with 35 strong expressions of interest. This highlights that business really is beginning to recognise the modern day forces affecting the performance of their workforce. More people are being allowed to work from home for some of the time and with the costs of moving around this trend is only going to continue.