Fibre Unbundling

Back in June 2010 when BT agreed with Ofcom that it could charge what it liked for access to it's new fibre based broadband access service, Ofcom gave them four years of freedom.  We're now three years into this, so perhaps next year will see some changes in the market.

The deal BT struck was two fold, first to forgo caps on pricing - the subject of criticism from TalkTalk and others in recent weeks - and secondly to offer unbundled service rather than bare cables, called "Virtual Unbundled Line Access" or VULA, back then.  This limits competitors to reselling the same services that BT retails, and given BT control the price; this isn't competition at all.

BT's Twisted Reality

An article in today's Telegraph reports on comments made by BT's chief Ian Livingston in response to calls by TalkTalk for more regulation on BT's broadband roll-out.  Interestingly, whilst the Torygraph is happy to promote BT's side of the argument, the original call for regulation by TalkTalk went unreported in the paper.

Naturally BT don't want more regulation on their business but Livingston (and his underling in Openreach, Liv Garvey) is playing such a game of words that beggars belief.

BT Fibre To The Cabinet

Perhaps it would be more accurate if BT's sign said "Fibre broadband stops here"

Ironically there's a Virgin Media cabinet around the corner which has been fiber fed and delivering broadband for years, so it's not even as if there is anything new "here."

Double FAIL for BT advertising.

BT telephone exchanges have been fibre-fed for years - previous generations of DSL broadband have been delivered from DSLAMs in the exchange served from a fibre-optic network, so the claim that there is something new, different (or better) about their latest roll-out is tenuous at best yet the regulators don't seem to think the public are being misled.

Blown fiber vs. "real" fiber

Courtesy of http://www.networkmuseum.net/

Blown fiber was an excellent innovation - by using cheap plastic ducts (pipes), telcos could employ cheap labour to run ducts from the exchange to their valuable business customers and a second team could come along later and using their specialist equipment simply push a strand of fiber optic cable from the exchange to the customer.  The first job, including planning, obtaining wayleaves, digging up the road and making good, breaking access routes into premises and finding routes within buildings to run the duct to the cutstomer's equipment was time consuming but fairly straightforward civil engineering taking weeks.  The blowing of the fiber is the work of an afternoon, and so a two man team can do two jobs a day.

Fibre-Only Exchanges - the ultimate BT lock-in

The Crown and Tuns, Deddington

BT have announced that Deddington in Oxforshire will be the first exchange in the UK to be "fibre only".  This means that all the services from the exchange will be connected on fibre.

Since BT uses a shared fibre system (GPON), this takes away the ability for competing telephone companies to "unbundle" the local loop and run their own services over BT's infrastructure.  Experience has shown that it these companies who provide the innovation that pushes competition in the market and without them, the subscribers of Deddington will be at the mercy of BT forevermore.

"Superfast" Surrey

Last week Surrey County Council sent out an update on their plans for spending their BDUK grant. I was struck by how unambitious their goals are, despite previous promises that we were to get the best broadband in Europe.

I would suggest you read the newsletter on their website, but it hasn't been uploaded yet - not a good sign that they are in tune with the Internet age.

Netflix in the UK and Net Neutrality

I see Netflix are launching in the UK which is good news for TV and film addicts but is going to cause some headaches at the Internet Service Providers.  Some report put Netflix usage in the US at over 30% of all bandwidth, or to put it another way, it adds half as much again to current Internet traffic volumes.

Whilst this isn't in itself an insurmountable problem for the backbones, the crunch will come when subscribers realise that the £5.99/month Netflix fee doesn't change the contract on their home broadband connection.  Most broadband connections in the UK are provided by BT and their cheaper tariffs have usage limits.

B4RN in focus

 Much as I agree with many of B4RN's goals, I do have some serious concerns about the project - one in which the "innocent public" is being asked to plough a lot of money (£1.5m)

My concerns about B4RN are:

1. there isn't enough detail supporting the published business plan
2. the proposed telephony service is a white elephant
3. the project has single-points-of-failure
4. the finances don't add up
5. there is no promise of openness
6. can B4RN Ltd. deliver the proposed service?

Why don't B4RN want on-line discussion?

I note with interest that the B4RN web site  doesn't seem to have a "feedback" or "comments" section on their web site, which is a shame.  I hope the individuals who are being asked to invest in this appreciate the risk involved and that there are many questions about the project plan which are unasked, let alone unanswered.

A discussion forum directly accessed from the project's marketing page would at least give everyone a chance to debate the project's viability.

It seems odd for a community orientated project, especially one promoting Internet access, not to be publicly engaging with the community in this way.

B4RN: How To Lie With Statistics

Darrell Huff's excellent book How To Lie With Statistics was written over fifty years ago and yet is as applicable today as it was then.

I was reminded of the book when I was surfing the The B4RN project's web site where they have illustrated their progress using a barometer-style graphic.  It is a little deceptive as is it appears to have a non-linear scale, but having being alerted to this kind of skullduggery by Huff, I knew I had to delve deeper.

Rutland Outage

Rutland Telecom had an outage this week which they reported on their web site thus:

Service Status Wednesday 28th September 2011 @ 08:35 (BST)
We are experiencing an outage from our Back-haul provider which is affecting all internet/phone services.

Rutland are one of the leading alternate rural broadband providers in the UK, using BT's copper pairs in Sub Loop Unbundling for VDSL2 Internet access similar to what BT themselves are offering with Infinity but targeting rural locations.

What's worrying about their outage is that it is clear that they are totally reliant on a third party to support their service and they are using their Internet access service to provide telephony, which is much more fragile than the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) that we have grown accustomed to.

Wireless in the community

mobile computing

Prior to the widespread availability of ADSL, wireless Internet access was the viable interim solution for community networking projects to provide Internet access for homes in rural areas.

Now with mobile computing eclipsing fixed Internet access, wireless has changed from being a stop-gap to being a necessary service in it's own right.  Community networks still trying to compete with the big telcos in fibre deployment are running in last year's race, it's time to re-focus on what the community needs.

More "winners" in the "race to infinity"

BT have announced the all of the top ten finishers in their Race to Infinity PR stunt will be enabled for their FTTC service.

Naturally the campaigners are pleased but I worry that they will be missing out in the long-term.  With such high levels of community interest in high-speed broadband, they have missed an opportunity to apply the Big Society solution - commission their own network and get much more than BT will be offering.

wholesale dilemma (and solution)

Who wants wholesale access to our community fibre networks?

1. government want to see wholesale access offered if there's public money spent on their construction
2. ISPs believe they have a right to offer services on networks where there is a monopoly operator (irresepective of who paid for it)
3. consumers want a "choice" of ISPs

Sounds reasonable but the downside is that to engineer wholesale access can result in an inferior technical solution.  The standard wholesale architecture sees IP packets to and from a subscriber "tunnelled" to the serving ISP which can be quite some distance away.  Packets can't be processed (routed) at the Digital Village Pump.

BT Wholesale supportive of comunity networks - not!

ISPreview reports that Sally Davis, head of BT Wholesale, is advising the government not to rush to give money to smaller ISPs to build rural fibre access network.

She seems to be worried that once built, BT will have problems providing its services over a "patchwork" (her word) of access networks.  She seems oblivious to the fact that these communities aren't simply putting in access networks to do BT's job for them; they may not want (or need) BT's services at all.

It isn't suprising that BT should be discouraging competitors, but what is galling is BT's assumption that they should be the recipient of any government subsidies to build out their monopoly network, and the arrogance that we should be waiting our turn before BT deigns to sell their limited choice of overpriced services to us.

Open letter to the Fast Capel Broadband campaign

Fast Capel Broadband Campaign
The Village Cottage, Coldharbour
DORKING, RH5 6HD

3rd January, 2011

I read today on BT's Race To Infinity web site that, by BT's measure, Capel's campaign wasn't successful.
 

It may not have met BT's target but it did demonstrate the demand for better Internet access and the resolve of local residents to work together to achieve this.  There is now an opportunity to leverage the support that the campain mustered to go beyond BT's idea of "Infinity."

Wireless Link

Nearly a decade ago I built a wireless access network in my village, as BT had declared that the exchange wasn't viable for their ADSL broadband service.  As it turns out, there was sufficient interest in the wireless network that BT decided the exchange would be viable after all, so they put ADSL in and the wireless network never reached its full potential.

One remaining vestige of the old network is the access point attached to the farm house opposite mine, and the bridge that sits on the window sill in our front bedroom.  It is on this link that my neighbours still receive their Internet service - I share my broadband connection with them.

BET is a non-solution

Broadband Extension Technology (BET) has been touted by BT as solution for rural long-lines, using G.SHDSL equipment tuned to run an impressive 12km at 1Mbps.

BT are keen to promote this as one of the options of fulfilling the old government's 2Mbps universal service promise but it doesn't seem to make sense.

Dial-up Internet Wasn't Free

Whilst reviewing the paper published on the Australian Policy Online site by Robert and Charles Kenny I came across this:

dial-up ... wasn’t expensive – a 56Kbps modem cost $100 in 1997, in dial-up’s heyday. The per-line share of the ISP’s modem bank was a further $90. For this sub-$200 upgrade, society got email ... e-commerce ... User-Generated Content ... online news ... and social networking

(p. 16)

I would condense their further argument to "we didn't spend anything on the first Internet so why should we on the next one?"