Why we can’t afford to wait for fibre

Friday, November 26th, 2010

For the past couple of days I’ve been with BT in Northern Ireland, visiting homes and businesses that have been among the first in the UK to be hooked up to BT’s fibre broadband network.

If you’re one of those people who can’t understand why Britain needs a decent high-speed network, or think that rural campaigners are greedy for demanding proper broadband in their area, you should listen to the stories from the people we visited in Northern Ireland.

People such as Paul Sherry, Hugh Morgan and Joseph Ireland – three ambitious young men who set up their own company while midway through their degrees, because they could see that there would be no jobs in the flagging construction industry waiting for them when they finished their studies.

They run Energy Assessments NI, a company that certifies the energy efficiency of new buildings as required by EU law. Much of their work involves sending and receiving large architectural drawings over email, or delivering certificates electronically to their customers – tasks that are painfully slow or just aren’t possible without a decent broadband connection.

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Best broadband in Europe? Don’t bet on it

Friday, November 5th, 2010

In July of this year, the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt audaciously stated that “by the end of this Parliament, this country should boast the best superfast broadband in Europe.”

A bold ambition, but what does the “the best superfast broadband” actually mean? The fastest? The most widespread? Nobody actually knows, not even the poor sod whose job it is to make good on Hunt’s lofty goal.

Three and a half months after the Minister set his target, the head of Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) – the Government body charged with facilitating nationwide next-gen broadband – has admitted he isn’t actually sure what his target is. So he’s going to make it up.

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The real reasons we have to wait for BT’s fibre-to-the-premises broadband

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

“Fibre-to-the-Premises rolling out next year!” scream the headlines. It sounds so easy. But wait: most people will have to be patient, with fibre not arriving until 2012 for many, and 2015 for many more.

Why, you might well think, do I have to wait that long? I was despatched to one of BT’s FTTP trials in Milton Keynes to find out how much work goes on behind the scenes, and this blog post will reveal everything you need to know — probably more than you ever wanted to know — about the labour put in by engineers to get a tiny little cable to your home.

Two things to keep in mind: first, Milton Keynes, being a newish sort of place, has a well-planned duct system, making the trial a bit more straightforward than it could be in other locales. FTTP in older cities won’t be so easy or even possible, while others will get fibre access over telegraph poles instead.

The other thing to remember is this: fibre is really, really thin. Surprisingly so.

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Fibre broadband: when is it coming to your area?

Monday, October 4th, 2010

BT is now asking broadband customers to register their interest in high-speed fibre lines, to help inform its decision on where to roll out its next-gen network. But how do you know if you’re already on the list of towns BT plans to cover?

There are two ways to get hold of this information:

Sam Knows Broadband has an excellent Exchange Checker that tells you if and when BT plans to lay fibre in your neck of the woods, as well as providing detailed information on the availability of ADSL, cable and LLU providers in your area. To see if fibre’s coming to your area, enter your postcode, scroll down to the BT Wholesale section, and check the date alongside “FTTC status”. (FTTC stands for fibre-to-the-cabinet, BT’s up to 40Mbits/sec fibre service.)

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The word Ofcom won’t use about ISPs: liars

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

The first rule of every media legal training session I’ve ever attended is: never call companies liars. Yet what other word could you use to describe an entire industry that has systematically misled the public for years?

Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards would certainly never use the L word when referring to ISPs. He’s far too cautious for that. Yet, even he admitted for the first time yesterday that ISPs have been selling consumers broadband speeds that they couldn’t possibly achieve.

“Speeds should only be advertised if they’re achievable by some customers,” Richards proclaimed, referring to the invidious practice of selling broadband based on theoretical maximums rather than actual throughput. “Clearly ‘up to’ claims are not as clear as they should be.”

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So far, so good with the switch to ADSL

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Back in January I wrote about my impending flat purchase, and the concern I had over being forced to move from cable to ADSL broadband. Well, by now I’ve been in the flat a few months, I have my broadband up and running, and I’m pleased to say it’s been plain sailing so far.

Thanks to all the readers who commented both with suggestions and with their own experiences – good and bad. After much consideration and a good look through the deals offered in my area, I opted for Be’s Unlimited package. It’s not cheap at £17.88 per month, but I was won over by the promise of a support team that actually knows about broadband and the lure of a static IP address, no download cap and 1.3Mb/s uploads.

It activated right on cue, and I even got to try out the support first hand. I have to confess to attempting the setup process with my own 802.11n router at 12:45am on a Thursday (don’t ask), and had a few issues with the settings for my static IP. Despite the ungodly time and my suspiciously slurred speech, a knowledgeable Dutch chap was all too happy to walk me through the process and we had it up and running within minutes. He was even chatty and cheerful, which is not something I’m familiar with when it comes to ISP staff.

Several readers suggested looking at SamKnows and ThinkBroadband, so before I made my choice I had a rough idea I’d be getting around 5Mb/s speeds at 800m from my local exchange. I ran some checks over the weekend and my actual peak-time speed seems fairly stable at between 5Mb/s and 5.8Mb/s. It’s not exactly Virgin cable broadband speeds but it’s plenty for my needs, and it’s good to see the estimates proved on the money.

So it’s first blood to Be, and a positive experience for me with ADSL so far. The next hurdle will come when BT’s Infinity fibre lines make their way to my area – pencilled in for late this year - ready for ISPs to take advantage. Has this reached your area yet? If so, has it met expectations? Let me know in the comments below.

The question Ofcom won’t answer: is it safe to run an open Wi-Fi hotspot?

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

You may remember a few weeks ago, we reported on how Ofcom’s proposed code of conduct for dealing with illegal file-sharing contained a veiled warning to the providers of free or open Wi-Fi connections.

In a nutshell, anyone who provides an open Wi-Fi connection – be that a company with a free hotspot in their reception or a home user who decides to leave their router unprotected – will be held responsible if someone downloads copyrighted material on their connection. (Unless, bizarrely, they are a coffee shop or other business that offers Wi-Fi access in conjunction with other goods or services, in which cased they’re treated as an ISP).

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Is fibre broadband as expensive as BT makes out?

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

For many years now, BT has been claiming it simply cannot afford to deliver fibre broadband to large parts of the country. In 2008, the Broadband Stakeholder Group claimed it would cost £5.1 billion to deliver nationwide Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) – a figure that BT itself has repeated in public.

However, a press release issued by none other than BT today provides a fascinating insight into the economics of fibre broadband – and casts some doubt over the accuracy of those lofty figures.

In what BT describes as a “fibre triumph”, a local council in Kent has contributed to the cost of deploying fibre in the village of Iwade. According to BT, the council stumped up £13,000, which “unlocked” £62,000 of investment from the telco, meaning it cost a total of £75,000 to bring fibre to each of the village’s 1,350 premises.

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Brighton’s broadband battle: nimbyism or just common sense?

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

The people of Brighton and Hove are lucky enough to get a little love from BT, with new infrastructure being rolled out for superfast broadband, but a few residents aren’t happy with the plans.

They’re not arguing against broadband, of course. They’re asking BT to reconsider the placement of a few of its super-cabinets, saying the 1.8m “monsters” will make the local streets ugly and disrupt residents.

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An end to “unlimited” broadband ads, at last?

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Breaking news: there’s been a freak breakout of common sense at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). After years of letting broadband providers – both fixed and mobile – get away with using the term “unlimited” on ads for services that have data caps as ludicrously tight as 250MB, the ASA seems to have finally realised something’s not quite right.

“We’ve looked at a number of complaints about individual ads in the telecoms sector regarding access speeds and usage limits and found that applying a single policy to how telecoms providers advertise can pose significant challenges,” the ASA’s communications and policy manager, Lynsay Taffe, told New Media Age.

“It’s important that we look at this on a broader policy level with service providers, other regulators and consumer groups, rather than relying on individual ASA rulings that focus on a particular service on one platform. Therefore, the ASA has invited CAP [the Committee of Advertising Practice] and BCAP [the British Code of Advertising Practice] to review broadband speed and ‘unlimited’ use claims.”

Terrific. But instead of consulting the world and his wife and taking another six months to come up with a policy, why doesn’t the ASA just consult a dictionary and find out what the world “unlimited” means? And then make the advertisers stick to it.