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 Business

FTTx Update – BT Superfast Broadband Will Soon Surpass 5 Million Homes

At some point in the coming month BT’s superfast broadband service will surpass the 5 million home mark.

I’ve been a bit quiet on the fibre updates recently. I just sat in on a BT conference call on the subject. BT is contemplating changing the frequency specification on its “superfast” broadband product which will bring speeds potentially up to 80Mbps instead of the current 40Mbps.

I questioned whether this would reduce the reach of the service but apparently it increases it. The issues are potentially higher levels of cross talk and interference on lines but the higher frequency position is the standard that has been adopted elsewhere in the EU – must be ok then.

For punters it shouldn’t make any difference as BT is likely to specify both services at the same level. In other words they will say 80Megs and the underlying delivery technology will be irrelevant. This won’t quite be true because those benefitting from FTTP should get the stated maximum throughput whilst the FTTC lines will average out at a lower speed over their copper lines.

The current FTTP trials have slipped by 6 months. This is down to the odd technical hitch but also whilst BT gets a better handle on the delivery costs. By the end of the trials they should be in a position to decide what is the most cost effective technology. I can’t imagine it will be FTTP but am prepared to be pleasantly surprised. As it stands BT is currently sticking to its position that it will use FTTP for exchange fed lines and FTTC for cabinet fed with 25% of lines in areas where BT has targeted for FTTP being FTTP.

In the near term it won’t really make much difference to end users which flavour they get. Their usage behaviour doesn’t seem to change much whether they have 40Megs FTTC or 100Megs FTTP. This does suggest that the world has not yet produced services that need the faster speed. However build it and they will come, as the saying goes.
BT expects to pass its 5 millionth home with superfast broadband by the end of June 2011.

Categories
broadband Business

2012 FTTC & FTTP Exchanges Announced

Next chunk of FTTX exchange dates are published.  These are for 2012 with nothing more precise than that at this time but it is early days. Most exchanges are getting FTTC but some have a mix of FTTP/FTTC.  I have missed the last few FTTP conference calls so will have a catch up chat with BT to see if there is an update on the plans for FTTP which is more expensive than FTTC.

Click here for the PDF with the info future FTTC & FTTP exchanges 2012.  I am a bit disappointed that Lincoln is only getting FTTC but hey… Also sorry for my rural dwelling pals – not rubbing it in here.

Categories
broadband Business

Comment on Timico Powernet Acquisition

Powernet acquired by TimicoYou may have read the news on Friday (oh boy) about the Timico acquisition of Milton Keynes based B2B ISP Powernet. This is the fifth ISP that we have bought in 7 years.

Timico has a tripartite investment strategy for growth. We invest in our core business capabilities, in growing our business organically and in acquisition of businesses that will be able to benefit from the Timico core competencies.

These core competencies include network and hosting capacity, unified communications and an ever growing involvement in mobility. Organic growth proves the business model and the acquisition of other businesses allows us to leverage their customer bases with sales of services outside their initial product set. For example a pure play ISP will be able to add voice and mobile to its connectivity and hosting services with the potential to significantly increase the average revenue per customer. It’s a win win situation.

Whilst we are an ambitious business it is important for us to grow the business in a sustainable manner. The wellbeing of our customers is just as important as business growth. This also plays a part in the selection of acquisition targets.

Powernet is a business with the same core values as Timico and this is reflected its success in winning a blue chip client portfolio that includes Travis Perkins , Aston Martin, Sheffield City Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Powernet also brings with it a track record for innovation that will sit well within the Timico Group.

This is a good time to be around in the communications industry. A great deal of change is going on and these changes bring exciting opportunities at every turn. That said business is always hard fought with customers expecting to squeeze every last ounce of value out of relationships with their suppliers. I am comfortable that for Powernet customers this acquisition will represent significant added value and that equally, Powernet will prove to be a valuable member of the Timico Group.

Welcome aboard guys 🙂

Categories
broadband Business

1Gig FTTP Broadband Coming to 24 Rural UK Communities #NextGenUs #DigitalBritain

This morning Community Interest Company (CIC) NextGenUs announced that it has secured £10m funding to provide rural fttp broadband access to up to 10,000 homes across 24 communities in the UK. This is private cash unassociated with the government’s Big Society initiative that uses (or should I say is trying to use) BDUK as a delivery mechanism.

NextGenUs is the organisation that provided 100Meg Fibre To The Premises delivered on a 1Gig bearer to Ashby de la Launde in Lincolnshire. The model is to light up broadband Notspots with the cooperation of the community using a local POP known as a Digital Village Pump. Community participation lowers costs and removes barriers such as the negotiation of wayleaves and planning permissions.

This funding is important because it will allow NextGenUs to demonstrate that it can deliver connectivity on a scale greater than a single community. Even 10,000 homes however is pretty small beer. The real issue is how can community based organisations deliver to the one third of UK homes that currently fall into the category of broadband impoverished.

For rural areas there is a lot riding on the NextGenUs model because the alternative is to leave it to the inefficient combo of government assistance and incumbent self interest. The former provides a future proofed solution with the interest of the community at heart but has uncertain scalability and the latter would eventually deliver a compromise.

We should all be offer our support to NextGenUs. Theirs is truly the Big Society at work.

 

Categories
broadband Business

BT Openreach Broadband Provisioning Lead Times Stretch Out

Broadband provisioning lead times with BT Openreach are currently far outside what we have come to expect over recent years. Typically we have quoted analogue and ISDN2 new installs at 7-10 working days and ISDN30 new installs at 20 working days but in many cases we are now seeing this double and people looking to install new circuits need to be aware of this.

Below is an extract from the weekly service update Provided by BT Openreach which explains the current position.  Note this is working days so 30 days is effectively 6 weeks:

Provision Lead Times

Provision lead times across the country remain high with significant regional variance.

Continue reading “BT Openreach Broadband Provisioning Lead Times Stretch Out”

Categories
broadband Business

Akamai Reports UK 17th for Average Internet Connection Speed Despite Being 6th Highest User #deappg

Akamai is the world’s largest Content Delivery Network employing 73,000 servers around the globe to deliver its customers’ content. Timico hosts an Akamai box in London.

The trends in traffic patterns flowing through the Akamai network are therefore very much representative of what is happening elsewhere on the internet. It was Akamai that showed us that 23% of the world’s internet usage was coming from the UK during England’s afternoon match in last year’s football world cup.

The Akamai State of The Internet Report states that in Q3 2010 over 533 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai network, a 20% growth over the same quarter a year ago. Of these 21.6 million were in the UK. For reference Germany has 31.5 and France just under 23m. Looking at the UK’s global competitors the USA led the pack with 141m, China 63m and Japan 37.5m. By this token the UK creeps in as sixth largest user of the internet.

Looking at the average connection speed the story is different. South Korea leads with 14Mbps, followed by Hong Kong (9.2) and then Japan (8.5). In fact there are 16 countries whose average broadband speed, according to Akamai are faster than the UK including 11 of them in Europe.

The message here is obvious. Whilst the UK seems to occupy a significant place in the rankings for internet usage (which is good) its lowly position in respect of average connection speed is somewhat of an embarrassment.

PC link to the report is included above – you need to register but it is a good 31 page read if you are into this sort of thing.

Categories
broadband Business

FTTC Broadband Cabinets in Cornwall – First to Go Live

BT has not yet started marketing FTTC broadband to consumers in the Cornwall area, though that doesn’t mean that “mere” consumers can’t have the service.

BT has advised me that the first FTTC broadband cabinets in Cornwall went live on Monday 17th January. From that date, BT Wholesale are accepting orders for provision of lines on those cabinets in the Threewaters exchange area.

BT has also started marketing to businesses in the area, but not yet to consumers (though that doesn’t mean that if you are a “mere” consumer you can’t have the service).

I would expect it to be a straightforward sale to a business. If one day you can’t have broadband and the next you are offered 40Megs, you would have to be daft to say no (this might be a slight dramatisation of the situation on the ground).

Cornwall is an interesting situation, having been the subject of large grants to “broadband enable” the county, and is regarded by some (not everyone) as a prototype for other areas with broadly rural populations.

I have some specific FTTC broadband cabinet/postcode details if you want to drop me a line.

Categories
broadband Business

@edvaizey @jeremy_hunt please read this #deappg #digitalbritain #fttc #fttp

Last week I wrote an analysis on the superfast broadband strategy published by Jeremy Hunt. It attracted more comments than any other post I have written in the last three years. I concluded that whilst the published strategy might enable the government to meet its near term objectives it was not necessarily the best thing for UK plc.

Now Barry Forde, the brains behind CLEO, has written a post on broadbandcumbria.com that goes into fantastic analytical detail as to why promoting a FTTC based plan is not the right thing to do. Indeed Barry shows that in the medium term it would be the more expensive approach and would lead to continued requests for government handouts.

I can’t better this piece of analysis and suggest you read it here.

Categories
broadband Business

Read All About It – Wheel Invented – Or a Call Upon the People of Lincoln to Vote for Superfast Broadband

With a population of only 110,000, Lincoln is not on the list of Exchanges to be enabled for superfast broadband in the forseeable future.

Of course, the wheel was almost certainly invented before anyone could read all about it. However I do get the feeling that we are somehow still in the stone age. This afternoon I registered with the BT “Race to Infinity”.  I want superfast broadband (whatever that is).  Here are the stats from Lincoln, my hometown.

Percentage of votes 0.77%
252 votes have been cast out of a total of 32,844

With only 16 days to go this spells disaster. Lincoln is not on the list of Exchanges to be enabled in the forseeable future. With a population of only 110,000 or so (at least within the general area) you would think that constituted a reasonable sized conurbation. Clearly not reasonably sized enough!

This does pose an interesting question. Lincoln is not in what is described as “the final third” – the 33% of the country that is broadband impoverished so I would find it difficult to see a situation where the government would fund connectivity under its recently published superfast broadband strategy.

How therefore does the government decide which communities it should fund?

I can envisage a four tier society

  1. Areas where the business case easily merits initial investment – ie those where “FTTC/FTTP are currently planned
  2. Areas outside the above that can only get conventional broadband and are not in the plan for FTTC/FTTP
  3. Deprived areas that are currently not spots or have very slow connectivity and are obvious candidates for funding
  4. the final 10% that BT said it could not service even with the currently envisage level of funding

Now either BT isn’t doing a very good job promoting the Race to Infinity or nobody wants the product.

My message to the people of Lincoln?

We are talking wheels here.  When the wheel was first proposed to Og (3rd cave along) 10,000 years ago he didn’t at first appreciate the benefits. It was only after ha started using it that he saw the light (lightening of his load anyway).

Get voting!

PS Og and 10,000 years are made up names and dates. I could have Googled it I suppose…

Categories
broadband Business ofcom Regs

Pros and Cons of @Jeremy_Hunt Superfast Broadband Strategy Document #digitalbritain

DCMS Minister Jeremy Hunt has finally announced the government strategy for providing “superfast broadband” to the final third. I’ve read the speech, the press release and the 64 page strategy document and this is my interpretation of where it is all at.

The government has the laudable aim for the UK of having “the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015. Moreover gov is not letting the grass grow under its feet. We have already seen work progressing on the 4 Big Society projects (initially three but apparently none included BT so a fourth was added).

Another positive is that the Universal Service Commitment of 2Megs is being rolled into the “superfast” activity. The investment in an infrastructure to just provide 2 Megs is a waste of money.

The announcement talks of a ‘digital hub’ in every community by the end of this Parliament. This is great. You do however have to read between the lines to see what is going on.
The idea of a hub stems from the concept of the Digital Village Pump as is now installed in Ashby de la Launde and is being looked at for the Cumbrian Big Society project. This concept brings a high speed fibre connection into a community and allows for that connection to be used to connect to a variety of means of terminating to local end users.

There are however some worrying indicators. In today’s announcement there are constant references to BT together with “cabinets” and “fibre connectivity to the nearest exchange”. DCMS has also now confirmed that in saying digital hub they do indeed mean FTTC. BT has said that it intends to tender for each project covered by the £830m of funding made available for this activity and that it will match any government funding. On the face of it this might not sound like a bad thing. BT has said that such an arrangement would allow it to extend superfast broadband reach to 90% or more of the population.

The real issue is something that Jeremy Hunt alluded to unwittingly in his speech in saying

  • “…unless you take extraordinary risks, you won’t survive in the digital world. I want our broadband infrastructure to make it possible for our entrepreneurs and investors to take those risks.”

It would appear that the government is taking a safe, non-risk based option here. The signs are that it is lining up BT to provide the digital hubs into these communities. Superfast broadband to 90% of the population would get the UK a long way towards Jeremy Hunt’s stated objective.

So is this a bad thing we have to ask ourselves? The problem is that BT is not a company that is going to take risks. BT is also too big to be able to innovate. Everything BT does has to scale, which is one of the reasons that the government will inevitably want to partner with it. In this case however scale = inflexibility and lack of innovation.

If, as reading between the lines suggests, we are going to see FTTC as the solution for the final third this has the following issues:

  • Once FTTC is in that is it. The end user will be stuck with a copper based solution for a long time to come. BT has said that it won’t be upgrading users to FTTP if they already have FTTC. Note that the residents of Ashby de la Launde already enjoy 100Mbps symmetrical FTTP with an upgrade path if necessary. My own view is that 100Mbps symmetrical is the minimum standard we should be aiming for. This is supposed to be a long term investment.
  • BT does not currently allow competitors access to its cabinets to connect their own services. This will prevent innovative communities and service providers from providing cost effective solutions to that last 10% that still wouldn’t be getting FTTC. BT’s preferred solution for this 10% is a copper based BET technology that facilitates the government’s 2Meg USC.
  • Even if competitors were allowed cabinet access, the backhaul for FTTC is expensive – on a wholesale basis up to 3 x the cost per Megabit as putting in your own fibre backhaul.
  • The government would effectively be extending to BT a monopoly status in these areas – something that successive governments have been working hard to erode – to the great benefit of UK plc it might be added.

It seems fairly clear to me that BT will probably win the majority of tenders. For one thing today’s strategy document effectively hands it to them because the government has said that it does not see any reason to change the way fibre rates are calculated.

  • “First, that the decisions of the Valuation Office Agency are made independently of ministers. It is not our role to decide who is liable for what under the business rates regime. Second, that the existing rates regime has been tested in court numerous times and no ruling has required any change to the regime. Third, that while in general we favour a low tax environment for new investment; it is right that non-domestic property should continue to be taxed to provide the essential public services we all rely on.”

This means that only BT is likely to be able to submit a competitive bid – all other network operators will be required to pay rates on their connectivity.

There are also other issues that weigh the scales in BT’s favour. Third party access to BTs poles and ducts has been mandated by Ofcom and we await a proposal from BT in January telling us how they are going to do this. BT’s most recent offer to NextGenUs (Ashby’s network operator) required them to use BT engineers (and consequential high labour rates & uncertain availability ) to do all the work. NextGenUs were also being quoted 21 days repair time for any problems. This is not a viable business situation. They would almost certainly repair their own problems within hours. It is very important that Ofcom negotiates hard with BT re this. Ofcom’s reputation in the industry for being another department of BT does not augur well.

If, as it appears, that BT is being lined up to take most of the cash available for NGA I can understand why the government is taking this approach. Let us not however delude ourselves into thinking that this is the best long term strategy for UK plc. This strategy is not an example of innovation and risk taking. It is anti competitive and is likely to be a step backwards from the progress of recent years. FTTP and true open access are the only sensible long term solutions.

Categories
broadband Business UC voip

The View from My Window is All White #uksnow #voip

snowy view from our back window

With snow being today’s theme I thought I’d stick some pictures up.  The header photo (click to enlarge) is the view from my upstairs landing window into our back garden.  The kids were off yesterday and trashed the pristine snow. I was chairing a panel session at the ISPA conference in London.  The show must go on.

The conference was remarkably well attended considering that some people from “up north” were completely snowed in.

The point of this post, much as we like snow when it is at its pretty stage,  is however to show the picture of the Timico car park.  This is normally chock full with cars but we are in one of the areas heavily hit (the Lincoln Christmas Market has been forced to cancel for the first time ever). Not a problem though. Staff have been able to work from home using their VoIP accounts and broadband connections.  Sorted.

There is also an interesting story concerning one of our customers who has just recently installed VoIP in a couple of pilot sites. Because of travel to work problems and staff shortages they have shut a number of offices and wanted call diversions put in place by BT to direct traffic to their open offices. The offices piloting VoIP did this in a matter of seconds.  Those relying on BT to manually perform the divert have been told that it isn’t going to happen due to the huge demand caused by the snow! This certainly shows the right and wrong ways to perform Disaster Recovery.

I don’t normally use this blog to plug Timico but this one was too topically and relevant not to and really I’m just plugging the technology.

Here’s the view from the office window.  It has since started snowing again. The picture right at the bottom is my jeep when I got back to the trains station last night. Snow? Bring it on 🙂

timico carpark in the snow

snow covereed jeep at Newark Northgate railway station last night
snow covered jeep at Newark Northgate railway station last night
Categories
broadband datacentre Engineer

Next Generation Broadband: The Digital Village Pump

Google satellite image of Ashby de la Launde in Lincolnshire

The story of Next Generation Broadband Access into the Final Third has to be all about the Digital Village Pump. The phrase has a certain flow to it but this is not about water. This DVP is about bytes.

The concept is that you run a fibre into a village and it terminates into a secure “datacentre” owned and run by the local community.  In the picture below the DVP is tucked away nicely at the back of a building in the centre of the village.

Digital Village Pump set in a modern day utilitarian "datacentre"
Digital Village Pump set in a modern day utilitarian “datacentre”

The DVP is air cooled with minimal ongoing maintenance and running costs.

How you get the fibre into the village in the first place is going to be different for each community.

There is very often an existing fibre run in an area – serving a school for example. It is not untypical for such runs to have multile strands of fibre, most of which are unused. This just needs identifying. It maybe a wireless feed.

How that community then distributes the connectivity is up to them. It isn’t necessarily feasible to expect people with no experience of data networks to do this themselves but the idea is that they engage a management company to look

Continue reading “Next Generation Broadband: The Digital Village Pump”
Categories
broadband Business

UK’s First 100Mbps Symmetrical Superfast Broadband network goes Live in Lincolnshire – Property Prices Rocket

I have seen the light and it is in Ashby De La Launde.

This revelation appeared to me this morning in a house surrounded by fields of potatoes, carrots and other parts of my 5 a day diet too numerous to mention. I am talking about the UK’s first true superfast broadband network. 100Mbps symmetrical in fact.

Check this 30 second video out.

The network has a 100Mbps feed which is then distributed around the village using 32kms of fibre that was put down in only 14 weeks – quicker in fact than it took BT to put in the 7 metre connection to hook it up with their own fibre network.

Continue reading “UK’s First 100Mbps Symmetrical Superfast Broadband network goes Live in Lincolnshire – Property Prices Rocket”
Categories
broadband Business internet ofcom

Yes Minister 2010, Broadband Growth, and Digital Britain

Over the last year or two it has been interesting to watch updated episodes of the BBC TV series Yes Minister playing out in front of my very eyes.

First of all it was the 2Meg Universal Service Obligation. You can picture civil servants in BIS (Dept of Business Innovation and Skills) running around in panic wondering at how they were going to make the “obligatory” bit happen. That one soon evolved to Universal Service Commitment which apparently in politicospeak means “we say 2Megs but actually it could be anything and between me and you is a worthless statement”. Got out of that then!

The came the Digital Economy Act hot potato that was thrown over the fence to Ofcom one evening with instructions to get it sorted out by the morning.

Now, with new masters settling in to the Whitehall roost, it’s a privilege to be one of the page turners and to read out to you the next hilarious chapter.

Continue reading “Yes Minister 2010, Broadband Growth, and Digital Britain”
Categories
broadband Cloud End User

Non Internet Use –> Neo-Monasticism –> The World as it Was

There are still plenty of people today who have never been or don’t go online. Life without Broadband. There will come a time when either they will have seen the light or that generation moves on to greener pastures. Then the only non-internet users will be monks. The old real world will become a spiritual world and the internet will become the new real world outside.

People will sign up for retreats for days, weeks or even for life amongst the true believers. Monastic orders will be established touting the “truly spiritual” way of life as being the road to salvation. Contact will be via a single analogue landline in a phone box at the bottom of the road and they will have self imposed rotas for when the monks will be allowed out to call friends and relatives.

The hardcore will only write letters. This in itself will spawn a new cottage industry filled with those that can actually write in the old fashioned way using pen and paper. Many people will not be able to decipher this handwriting and will need help to translate it when they receive a letter. Handwriting to text application software will be built in to every operating system

Taking this to the extreme these people will probably have to grow their own food because you will only be able to buy such items via an online portal. Tesco will be turned into a virtual arcade. You will be able to physically go there but everything on the shelves will just be a touch screen that you add to your cart. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to get instant access to goods but that will carry a premium.

The monks will of course lead long and obliviously happy lives. They will not be governed by the 3rd law of t’internet that states that time goes a lot more quickly when using the internet. This life will not be totally filled wine and roses (there is nothing to say that wine is forbidden btw) and there are some pitfalls to watch out for. Every day will become a Sunday afternoon but without even a black and white movie on TV. There will in fact be no TV because terrestrial services will long since have moved onto Terabit per second fibre to the premises.

And if you are not one of the spiritual few? Who knows what your fate might be…

PS  I realise that the concept of watching a black and white move on TV on a Sunday afternoon will be beyond the ken of someone under the age of 40 but it made it into the final editor’s cut on this post anyway 🙂

Categories
Apps broadband End User

Social Revolution Country Style @cyberdoyle

star of the Cyberdoyle Sheffield Fest/Doc video competition entryRevolutions are traditionally associated with inner cities and shipyards. The countryside revolutionaries died out with the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the Rebbecca Riots. They all moved to work in the city. It is true, however, that these self same revolutionaries have occasionally had to resort to the mountains to hide from authority. I have visions of troops driving through the narrow walled lanes and high passes whilst being watched from behind sheep pens further up the hillside.

Continue reading “Social Revolution Country Style @cyberdoyle”
Categories
broadband Business

Virgin100mbps Taxi Grinds to a Crawl in Wensleydale Slow Lanes

Virgin100MegTaxiVirgin 100Meg Taxi spotted in a traffic jam caused by cattle moving in a lane in Wensleydale today. Click on the header image for a closer look.

Allegorical? Comical? Credible?

An everyday story of country folk – the harsh reality of life in the Digital Britain age.

Don’t know what I am talking about click here.

Photo courtesy Lindsey Annison, taken whilst stuck in a cow jam.

Categories
broadband Business Regs

Rural Broadband: Government Protects Outlay in Spending Review Cuts

country dwelling user of broadband

George Osborne announced in today’s Government Spending Review that the £530m of BBC monies earmarked for rural broadband will not be taken away. Superfast broadband will be trialled in the Highlands, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Herefordshire.

Taken in the light of an £83Bn cut in spending this must be seen as good news. Considering though that the recently announced project in Cornwall cost £132m this suggests that these four areas could well consume the whole amount.

Please don’t get me wrong here.

Continue reading “Rural Broadband: Government Protects Outlay in Spending Review Cuts”
Categories
broadband End User

The Digitally Excluded and the Problems of Getting Them Online – BBC Interview

An interview broadcast live this morning between Rod Whiting of BBC Lincolnshire and Trefor Davies regarding the problems of getting the “digitally excluded” to go online.

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

Broadband Fibre Rollout is Massive Civil Engineering Exercise

BT’s broadband fibre rollout has attracted unprecedented interest and huge levels of disappointment.

Fibre dig in Newark Notts

A few recent events have brought home the enormity of the task of rolling out broadband fibre to every premises in the UK. Firstly the pigeon stunt of last month. I drove for miles looking for Furrows Farm, passing farmhouses half a mile apart on the way. Clearly not an economic prospect that passes normal business case rules.

Secondly in producing the FTTC postcode level map last week it was difficult not to notice the sheer number of cabinets involved and the areas that BT needs to cover to accomplish the rollout.

Then also last week BT sent a digger to dig up 300 metres of road at the end of our office drive. Funnily enough it was

Continue reading “Broadband Fibre Rollout is Massive Civil Engineering Exercise”
Categories
broadband Business

FTTC Availability Mapped Out by Postcode Shows True Nature of Digital Divide in UK

The haves and have nots mapped out for the first time by postcode

fttc availability by postcode - the haves and have nots

The launch today of the trefor.net FTTC and FTTP interactive mapping service for the first time lets people check on a map whether they are winners or losers in the NGA broadband postcode lottery.

It is still relatively early days in a very long rollout plan that due to lack of a business case has no completion date. This mapping service shows clearly whether you are going to be able to get Next Generation Access broadband – also known as Fibre broadband.

Continue reading “FTTC Availability Mapped Out by Postcode Shows True Nature of Digital Divide in UK”
Categories
broadband Business

Rural Broadband Replacement – Broadband in a Bottle #trefandrory

I hope that someone gets my…I hope that someone gets my…I hope that someone gets my broadband in a bottle.

You heard about the tref and rory pigeons versus rural broadband race. Well not everyone has access to a pigeon. However everyone can get hold of a USB memory stick and put it in a bottle with a cork in it. The idea is you load your content onto the memory, put it in the bottle, cork it and throw it into the stream running along the side of the cowfield.

In due course the bottle will make its way downstream and no doubt be picked up by someone who will open it and take out the memory stick.

Continue reading “Rural Broadband Replacement – Broadband in a Bottle #trefandrory”
Categories
broadband Business

Superfast Broadband Coming to Cornwall and Scilly Isles

BT announced today that Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are set to become one of the best connected locations in the world under an ambitious £132 million BT and Cornwall Council project, supported by European funding. It will bring superfast broadband to the vast majority of businesses in this area by 2014. The project will benefit tens of thousands of local businesses, create 4,000 new local jobs and protect a further 2,000.

It is expected that other ISPs will be able to offer services using the infrastructure in the same way that they buy off BT Wholesale today. Operational details of this have yet to be announced. Rollout will be announced on a rolling basis, agreed by the project partners in consultation with internet service providers.

Continue reading “Superfast Broadband Coming to Cornwall and Scilly Isles”
Categories
broadband Business internet

FTTP Broadband Installation – First Photos of Trials

Photos of BT FTTP broadband installation. Really!

As a participant in the BT Fibre To The Premises  trials I am pleased to bring you pictures of real life fibre installations in action. There is more to a FTTP broadband installation than a traditional ADSL line which utilises existing copper cabling.

There are three splices to be made.  One at the cabinet and two at your premises (inside and out). A splice is traditionally a fairly complex and expensive operation – because of the kit and skill-set required.  However you can see from the photo that today’s equipment is far more portable and thus suited to a mass market rollout when the time is right.  Note you still need a bloke to hold the umbrella 🙂 Presumably there is someone off camera heating up the urn as well :).  Thanks to BT Wholesale for the photos.

Continue reading “FTTP Broadband Installation – First Photos of Trials”
Categories
broadband Business internet

FTTP Broadband jfdi Country Style

Photo is of villagers in Ashby De La Launde digging their own trenches in preparation for fibre installation.  This is one way of circumventing the enormous civil engineering cost of lighting the UK with fibre.

Villagers in Ashby De La Launde Lincolnshire digging their own trenches in preparation for FTTP

Categories
broadband Business

Phase 6 Exchanges for FTTC Announced by BT

Hot off the press this afternoon is the much awaited schedule for the BT FTTC Phase 6 rollout with exchanges being delivered up to December 2011.  I know this is a hot one for many readers so hopefully your exchange is on the list.

Mine isn’t. I’m thinking of putting a POP into my garage in Lincoln because I don’t like being left out myself 🙂

Anyone interested in hopping on the back of this should register their interest in a comment 🙂

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

How to Get BT to Deliver Superfast FTTC Broadband to Your local area – jfdi city style.

The answer to the question of how to get BT to deliver FTTC broadband is cash, though it doesn’t necessarily have to be your own cash.

As a grown up business BT only rolls out fibre to commercially viable areas. This is clear. There is no case for investment in areas where farmhouses are miles apart and it takes weeks to dig trenches to lay ducts to provide superfast broadband so that rural folks can provide details online of stock movements and check when the next market day is in town.

This is not a gripe. In fact I like to think that readers of this blog go away enriched, fortified and looking forward to the next time they need a reason to come back – perhaps the next cake baking competition results. They don’t want to read whinging prose. They need edification. Satisfaction.

Also BT business cases don’t just apply to rural areas. Only 500 or so exchanges are currently planned to be Superfast FTTC broadband enabled in the UK. My hometown of Lincoln isn’t one of them. It’s all about economics.

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broadband Business online safety

ONS’s “Social Trends Spotlight On: e-Society” (Internet Access)

A few statistics jump out of the page of the Office Of National Statistics (ONS) report entitled Social Trends Spotlight On: e-Society.

In 2010 73% of UK households have internet access. If we take the 2009 statistic that only 90% of these had “broadband” then we can assume that around two thirds of the country has broadband. Coincidentally 64% of children aged 5 to 15 had used the internet for schoolwork or homework at least once a week. One might interpret this as saying that the 1/3 of children without broadband were unable to access the internet for schoolwork. I realise that is a bit too simplistic but is certainly does highlight a problem.

87% of French people are “very worried” that their child might become the victim of online grooming.  This is in marked contrast with the UK where the number is only 32% (Slovakia is 10%!).  There are a few ways of reading this:

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broadband Engineer internet

FTTC Broadband at 700Mbps? The Man from Huawei He Say Yes!

Huawei

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting old but the pace of life seems so frenetic these days. Today I read about a 700Mbps DSL prototype showcased in Hong Kong by Chinese networking vendor Huawei.

Huawei’s SuperMIMO technology uses four twisted pairs to achieve a downstream rate of 700Mbps at a distance of 400 metres. This means it would likely fit into a Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC broadband) scenario. In the UK of course we are just rolling out “up to 40Mbps” FTTC and trialing 100Mbps Fibre to the Premises (FTTP).

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broadband Business

FTTC Broadband Exchange Rollout Update

Just posted the most recent schedule for FTTC broadband exchanges. It’s a few weeks overdue and the next one seems likely to come out next month but it does add 46 exchanges to the previous list.  Otherwise it is mostly schedule updates.