How bad is superfast broadband uptake?

Friday, November 11th, 2011

We’ve been waiting for years for true “superfast” fibre-optic broadband, but now it’s here it seems few people actually want it. At least, that’s the impression given by Ofcom chief Ed Richards’ comments earlier this week, when he said superfast (24Mbits/sec+) broadband uptake was “still low” and largely confined to families with teenage children.

How low is “low”? We asked BT for its latest fibre figures. More than six million premises now have access to BT’s fibre lines, but only 300,000 customers have actually signed up for the service. That’s a less than impressive sounding conversion rate of 5%.

It’s even less impressive when you consider that BT Infinity fibre costs no more than the company’s most expensive ADSL package, and that the company admits to “really going for it” in terms of marketing fibre to customers. People are being offered an effectively free speed upgrade and many seemingly don’t want it.

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Government’s broadband strategy: no new money, no new ideas

Monday, December 6th, 2010

So now we have it: the Government’s masterplan to make sure we have “the best broadband network in 2015”. What has Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt (at least, I think that’s his name – Radio 4 seems to have a different, ahem, pronunciation) come up with? Well, not a lot.

The headline figure is £830 million of Government money being ploughed into the project, up from the £530 million announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review a few weeks ago. Except closer inspection of the figures shows there’s no new money here, just some creative accounting.

The Government is stripping £150 million a year from the BBC’s licence fee pot to help fund next-gen broadband. Because the Comprehensive Spending Review only runs until 2015, the Government only accounted for two years’ worth of BBC contributions in its previously announced £530 million figure.  But because the Government’s broadband plan stretches to 2017, it can add another £300 million to the headline figure and make it look like new money, even if it’s just a rehash of previously announced plans. Cunning.

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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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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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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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Fibre broadband: why you might have to move your router

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Those salivating over the prospect of 40 or even 100Mbits/sec broadband arriving down a BT fibre connection sometime soon, be warned: installation might not be quite as straightforward as you’d hoped.

BT’s fibre lines use VDSL, rather than the ADSL used to power today’s broadband.  That means BT can’t just flick a switch in the exchange like it normally does with ADSL upgrades: it needs to come into your home and fit a new faceplate on your master telephone socket.

The bad news is that with this set-up you can’t run your router off extension wiring any more – it must be plugged into the master socket. That’s a bit of an issue if, as in many homes, your master socket is inconveniently located in the hallway or kitchen. Not many people want their router sat next to the coat stand, and it’s a pain in the buttocks if you prefer a wired connection from your router to devices such as your PC or games console.

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The Government’s giving up on rural fibre broadband

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pledge of £250m to help Britain achieve universal broadband might sound like progress – but it’s practically an admission that rural areas will never get high-speed fibre connections.

The amount of money on the table is derisory. BT is spending £1.5 billion on bringing fibre-to-the-cabinet to 10 million homes across the country, and BT is (so far) concentrating on urban areas where deployment costs are lower. Does the Government really think it can bring even 2Mbit/sec broadband to the whole of Britain on a sixth of the budget?

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Is BT boss losing his bottle?

Friday, November 14th, 2008

“This is a bold step by BT and we need others to be just as bold,” – BT chief Ian Livingston, announcing the company’s £1.5bn fibre broadband rollout in July.

“I have to tell you there are some shareholders who say ‘you know something, don’t do that, don’t do a whole lot of other things. That leaves you with a lot more cash and cash today is worth a lot more than cash in a few years’ time. I personally believe if it is the right thing to do as a 20-year decision it is the right thing to do. But we need to have the environment in which our shareholders feel there is a good chance of us making a return. If we cannot have that environment this is not the time to be taking on sure-fire losses.” – BT chief Ian Livingston quoted in The Guardian today.

Not looking quite so bold now, is he? 

BT puts gun to Ofcom’s head

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

There have been plenty of times in the past where I’d have happily fired Ofcom. But it seems BT has cleverly put a gun to the regulator’s head with the announcement of its planned fibre network.

The company says it’s prepared to spend £1.5 billion to bring high-speed broadband to ten million homes by 2012, but that depends on “ “a supportive and enduring regulatory environment”. In other words, give us what we want or we’re taking our football home.

That puts Ofcom in a no-win situation: if the regulator puts it foot down, it will be accused of stalling Britain’s broadband network; if it gives BT carte blanche, the former monopoly’s rivals will be crying foul.

BT has already demanded access to Virgin’s cable network in an exclusive briefing with PC Pro. What else will it demand in its negotiations with Ofcom? Oh, to be a fly on the wall in those meetings…