Dumbing smart meters down

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Read more! What is a smart meter? Is it simply a digital meter that feeds info back to the utility companies so they can lay off meter readers? Or is it something more?


This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


Despite having seen 'smart meters' that have built-in wifi, GSM etc, which create a mesh network or more, and having blue prints for ones with built-in femtos etc, which join up dots because they are a device which can be fitted in every house and therefore do far more than one job, apparently we should dumb smart meters down to a single use.

Apparently, a smart meter is now a dumb meter, according to the conversations yesterday on Twitter. No doubt, shortly, the UK will be building future-proofed dumb grids as well, and failing to learn from smart grids around the planet.

I am beginning to despair at the UK's aspirations. Isn't our bar already low enough?! We have an opportunity to fit into each and every home a 'device' (let's bin the word 'meter' as that seems to confuse folk) which can serve multiple purposes which solve many of the connectivity and utility problems we currently suffer.

Or we could spend £umpteen zillion, at householder's and Treasury expense, to teach the people of this nation how to hit the off switch when they leave a room. Genius. Not.

How smart are *we*?!
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How low can we go in the UK?

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Read more! I am going to take the latest PIN from DCMS to bits. Every which place I am wrong, correct me. There are plenty of people who read this blog who could just for once come out of the woodwork and contribute, instead of leaving my pet trolls to do so alone. This Framework has been causing discussions in many circles for at least 2 weeks before it was officially announced, and it is IMHO time to get this country back on track before it is too late.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



This is the PIN (Prior Information Notice) for DCMS and BDUk for around £2Billion.

The primary purpose of this Prior information notice (PIN) is to inform the market of a prospective opportunity in connection with the UK Government's broadband policies and objectives.

The delivery of high speed connectivity to businesses and residential consumers and communities is required to address the UK’s economic growth and development agenda. The topography and/or demographic characteristics of certain geographies will require investment to deploy broadband infrastructure and this, together with the lack of competitive pressure, means that market-driven private investments alone will not achieve ubiquitous connectivity.

1. All topographies and demographics require investment to deploy broadband infrastructure. END.

2. Lack of competitive pressure....ah, are we now re-wording the term 'market failure'? If that is truly the case, then let's ask ourselves why and according to whom? Could it be that there is a certain incumbent who is ensuring that the pipes are so damned thin there is no pressure (scarcity vs abundance)? No access to the pipes - could that be inhibiting competitive pressure? No market - says whom? Perhaps we should revisit who is touting this so called "lack of competitive pressure"? And is it real when so many people seem ready to invest, dig, connect etc?

3. Could we please determine a time frame in which "market-driven private investments alone will not achieve ubiquitous connectivity?" Because given a few more months without public sector investment from the Treasury's coffers, communities large and small will pull their fingers out and connect each other. Bit like railways, electricity etc. Many of which were not publicly funded nor were there so-called incumbents preventing their every move. Communities still beat the private investments to delivery - in both the rural villages I have lived in during the past 37 years, electricity was delivered by individuals not market-driven investment from shareholder owned companies or incumbents. In fact, we had electricity before Manchester, and Lord Glenamara (who became Chairman of Cable and Wireless) wrote about it in his book. Market-driven? Hell no. Innovator, edge of the network, experiment-driven. Are you really going to skew the market by giving ALL THE MONEY to a behemoth, oil-tanker sloth that doesn't love each community it connects but only the profits it can reap for its shareholders?

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) has been created within the Department of culture, media and sport (DCMS) to be the delivery vehicle for the government's policies relating to stimulating private sector investment using the available funding. Further details on BDUK, its objectives and activities can be found at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/8124.aspx.

I'd love to query the lack of capital letters in a major tender for £2Bn....but it would be more interesting to query that publication and BDUK about their achievement of those objectives to date.

BDUK is seeking to establish a framework agreement of suitably qualified prime contractors capable of delivering local broadband projects as required by local bodies or groups of local bodies. "Local bodies" potentially includes local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, devolved administrations and other public sector bodies.

Wait just one minute. Haven't we been here before? With first gen broadband? Can I not recall OGC asking for 12 suppliers for broadband solutions? And the massive outcry there was at the time about the failure to permit new entrants etc in to the game? Didn't we end up with something that (sorry, Paul) was called OGC BS (Bullshit or Buying Solutions, take your pick), and which resulted in a total failure to deliver first gen and IT solutions through 'preferred suppliers'? Isn't that what we have here, again? Are we really, so soon, going to repeat a similar futile exercise? Cut out all the innovators, new entrants, solutions providers already on the ground and digging into the ground? Seriously?

And who is defining 'Suitably qualified prime contractors'? A bank? Are any of these prime contractors going to be assessed on :

Failure to deliver consumer and business broadband requirements to date
Over-priced access for any third party to infrastructure built using public money
Failure to keep Britain in the broadband game through innovation

Prime contractors will need to be capable of delivering a range of broadband and related requirements, including (but not limited to):
— The design, build, integration and operation of wholesale broadband networks at a county, multi-county or regional level. Such areas could be of potentially up to the order of 500 000 premises,
— Broadband solutions that meet outcomes-based specifications rather than being tied to specific technologies and platforms,
— Open access wholesale services including for retail service providers (e.g. Internet Service Providers) to include as part of retail broadband packages for business and residential customers.
It is currently anticipated that: the framework agreement will be for a duration of two years with the possibility of up to 2 one-year extensions; and the contract notice for this framework agreement will be issued by the end of June 2011.

Right, one at a time. If these prime contractors were capable of delivering such a range of requirements, why have they not already done so?

Hasn't the noise from grassroots level reached BDUK about the huge dissatisfaction over the four pilots? From choosing the wrong contractual body (eg county councils who are being hit from all sides by public sector cuts, who have little comprehension of broadband tech or usage, and who are busy trying to tie in PSN, council and education networks into an 'innovative pilot' (cough, splutter) that brings telehealth, education and e-gov into homes, businesses, schools, GPs etc) to demanding £100M in the bank to connect a tiny village to show how it can be done elsewhere - do you not get it yet???

Have you not assessed what wholesale broadband networks are in place eg CLEO in Cumbria and Lancashire, and thought, "Hey, maybe we don't need to re-invent the wheel?"

Have you not mapped the existing infrastructure and said, "We don't need to spend £2Bn putting in a framework agreement - that would be a pure and simple waste of public money. What we need to do is force the existing infrastructure owners, the consumers and communities (however large or small) and our so-called Big Society government to join the dots."

Have you not considered that "outcomes-based specifications" is a totally lunacy when no-one can possibly know what is round the corner? Are you going to specify that one of the outcomes is that everyone can watch iPlayer or BBC News on the move, or are you going to accept that probably less than a year down the line bog standard TV will become old hat when everyone can livestream from their jumper?

Have you actually thought out why an ISP is required? Connect me or my neighbours into a DVP and why do I need an ISP? To be regulated? Oh, get on. Read the Dumb Network and work it out. ISPs are so yesterday, as is DRM etc.

We need dumb fat pipes. We have been saying it for years. Some people may need services, such as VM and Sky TV, but give people access and they will find their own content, make their own content, bundle their own packages and services, develop their own apps, create innovative apps as we see in Chattanooga, and much, much more.

Whilst local bodies may elect to deliver broadband via other procurement routes,

Except we, BDUK, may force them down a route where this is impossible, eg by issuing a Framework agreement that all local bodies must adhere to if they want any of the pots of money the Treasury has cajoled out of the likes of the BBC Licence Fee etc

BDUK expects that a majority of the available funding will be accessed via call-off contracts from this framework agreement. There is the potential for the framework agreement to cover projects with a total value of up to 2 000 000 000 GBP or more.
Further details on this opportunity will be provided at the industry day (see below). This further information may include information on: the scope of the framework agreement; the award procedure to be followed; anticipated timetable; funding; etc.estimated cost excluding VAT 2 000 000 000 GBP
Division into lots No

Division into Lots? No bloody chance. That would be opening the door to discussions with people who may be right, and prolong the agony for all concerned far beyond the next election.
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Thinking Down and Dirty

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Read more! Last week, courtesy of Jazz at @geonetworks, I had an interesting trip down the sewers within sight of the Olympic Stadium in East London - probably the closest I will get to the Olympics. Here follows some info, photos and thoughts from that trip.......

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



We met outside a rather posh hotel in Liverpool Street and during that brief wait, I found myself talking to @superglaze aka David Meyer, who some of you may know from ZDNet. I thanked him for getting the answers I had asked for from JANET about why they had upgraded their core network to 100Gbps. Those answers from JANET are well worth a read if you think a USC of 2Mbps is sufficient......

We took a taxi to Bow and prepared ourselves for the descent into the unknown. White suits, rubber gloves and a rather funky pair of fisherman's socks, all encased in waders. A safety briefing from our inimitable guide, Rob, who I suspect should have his own radio show, and we were hooked up to clamber down the ladder into one of the two barrels which had been closed off for our visit and other maintenance work.

Superglaze gazing downwards....

Once in the barrel, we could see the four ducts coming in from street level. (My iPhone packed up as a camera at this point so further underground photos can be found on geonetwork's Flickr stream....)

These four ducts have 144 cables in each - as should *any* ducting being laid in 2011 and beyond, with 288 in each duct in areas like Docklands and other high density areas. 1 is used for customers and 1 is used for testing. The other two are there for upgrades and to check for degradation faults.

Geo networks has 107km ([Corrected from 50km] of ducting laid in London and 3000km [Corrected from 2000] across the UK. Those ducts are tested against everything you can think of - rats, beer cans, sewage etc. (The ducts are that diameter because rats cannot get their jaws round them to gnaw!). The ducts are laid about 5+ feet up the walls of the sewers to keep them out of the way of "rags", high water level, and jetters. Jetters are like high pressure water jets which come in to clear blockages, and also drag any blockages back along the sewer to remove it, which means loose lay - as H20 have attempted - can be an issue as the fibre can get caught in the machinery. The cinders which we crunched over on the floor turned out to be tarmac which has washed down the gutters over the years. (I suspect it would be preferable not to recycle it, but there's a challenge for someone if we run out of oil to make tarmac to fill in potholes...!)

When choosing where to lay the ducts, Geo first use maps of their network, maps of other networks, and Google Earth and Streetview to analyse the best route above ground. Within the sewers, ducting is usually laid on the opposite side to manholes and entrances to avoid any possible accidental damage. So, in the sewer we were in, the ducting was laid down the right hand side as all further manholes were on the left in the 4 miles to the main processing plant. At the time we went below, across the entire London Geo network, there was a mere 4m of ducting which required re-affixing to a wall. Normally, there is a 4hr time limit to fix customer problems but Geo has had 100% uptime since the vast majority of it was laid in the last 5 years.

Rob told us about Santos, which sounds remarkably like Google's infamous TISP fibre April Fool; but this is a serious solution. The plan is to bring fibre to homes and buildings by bringing the fibre not to the nearest manhole in the street, but through the sewers into the basement etc of the building and then breaking out. This is a particularly great solution for towerblocks etc.....However, rural folk have not been forgotten and there are plans for fibre sewer entry through mini sewers rather than these enormous sewers we were standing in.

When the figures of what was being carried through each duct were provided, I did debate whether I could become a 'sewer rat' and just live down there. 80 wavelengths each carrying 100Gbps, giving a total of 8 terrabits per second - so near and yet so far! 2 years ago, there were a mere 32 wavelengths of 10Gbps each. The IEEE is keeping everyone on their toes by ratifying new standards so the fibre within reach (no, you just wouldn't want to!) was G.652 metro for short hops and in rural areas you would use G.655 for longer hops.

There are no joints within the sewers where possible, and once we got to the huge metal bulkhead door and the false bottom floor maneouvred by chains, you could fully understand why! At that point you began to understand the power of the 'water' that would soon be flowing back where we were now standing.

The engineering within the sewer was astounding. That false bottom and the bulkhead were Victorian and still fully functional, although Rob hammered it home that raising that false floor to drop raw sewage into the Thames was probably treason - definitely a "Here's your P45" offence anyway.

Sir Joseph Bazalgette , who designed the sewers by assessing London's waste problem, guestimating the size London might grow to within the lifespan of the sewers and then doubling his estimates, was a bloody genius who, as Rob pointed out, did not have civil servants, limited budgets, accountants, or quantity surveyors saying, "Those 2p bricks are too expensive, let's use cheaper ones" as he would have today.

Bazalgette's foresight and generosity in diameters and overflow systems works today. Whilst he never foresaw high-rise buildings, nor the phenemonal sprawl that London has 'enjoyed', Bazalgette's approach to raw sewage should be applied today in next generation network planning and build.

We are only going to do this once, and we should be doubling the most generous guestimates of data need, as Bazalgette did with sewage. C'mon, are we so dim as to ignore Victorian engineers who were the envy of the world?

Possibly the worst part for me was seeing the completely numb metal plates that have been placed over the incredible arches the Victorians built to ensure that the overflow level is raised to ensure it will be far higher during the Olympics and will not flood the River Lea, which is part of the Olympic waterway. Future generations will look at these and wonder at a generation who seemed to have little pride in their engineers, and were held hostage to a lack of joined up thinking, profits and built-in obsolence.

The barrels we were standing in sit atop a duplicate set of barrels for the overflow system - a double-barrelled set up! Makes you look at drains in a totally different way once above ground - it's very much an 'iceberg' - far more below than at street level. The arches and walls begin at a height of over 4 ft from the floor and only once the water level passes these walls does the overflow cascade into the lower levels. Each arch is a triumph of Victorian brickwork, now hidden under 21st century cost-cutting exercise.

One of the other Victorian 'niceties' of the system were snow shutes built into the roads. Down these were shoveled snow by the road cleaners, thereby removing it entirely from the London road network, unlike today where the place seems to grind to a halt if an inch of snow falls.

We learn about the install process - plan route, install plastic hangers for the duct, fit duct in gentle curves to ensure no breakage of the glass fibre, blow fibre, connect customers. It all seems so simple. And we know it is, when you remove the chancers who do not have the ethics of our forebears who left a legacy for us in railways, canals, sewers etc. We hear about this current failure to enhance ours and the next generations' lives in a disturbing way....

Often, when planning a route through the sewers, the Geo and Thames Water teams find themselves up against sections of sewer where bombs fell during the 2nd World War. At the time, because obviously, there were other things going on above ground that needed attention urgently, a wall was built around each end of the destroyed section and a pipe shoved through to keep the sewage flowing. In the 60 intervening years, we have done little to nothing to fix those sections of sewer barrels.

Our moral fibre appears to be lacking. Are we building 'best networks' for the next generation, or 'best networks for profits"?

All in all, a highly enjoyable day courtesy of Geo and I will find out the name of the Geo gent who introduced me over a glass of water afterwards to the concept of "From POTS to PANS" - Pretty Awesome New Stuff, which has had me thinking far too much!! (I think it was from Intel some 10-15 years).

It all highlighted why we need to learn the lessons from the past.

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No motion in the House

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Read more! Did the debate in the House move anything any further forward? Was it a discussion of, as @yarwell put it, apocryphal problems about broadband? Or was it a route to a solution for this country to have the (cough, splutter) 'best broadband network by 20xx'? To me, it was simply GroundHog day.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


IMHO, for starters the Motion was wrong. Rory Stewart is my MP - I queried the wording and purpose of the motion prior to the debate. (Possibly not quite that diplomatically as I recall, but when your MP hits you with an autoresponder each time you email, and has failed to personally answer a single email I have sent as his constitutent since his election...well.....it gets irksome after a year.)

Once again, we hit the vagaries and niceties of the democracy we live in. Apparently, you dumb it down to get some support, or face the matter head on to actually solve it and risk outright Government opposition - to their own back bencher. Nice.

So, what we end up with is pretty much a nothingness. A debate on the telly box, a fill-in after lunch and until St Stephens empties out after rush hour, a few lines of media coverage, some MPs telling ghoulish tales about their constituents' failure to get online, but a hard-hitting outline of the problem? Nope. Some pussy footing around My Rt Hon friend's fantastic response, but no querying of facts, no accurate facts - that bloody £28BN figure was once again cited as fact when it wasn't and isn't. No hard core debate that actually sees people taking chunks out of each other on the floor and making the difficult choices that need to be made to push for a singular view of the place Britain is trying to get to and the route to it.

No, it was all rather pleasant, dull and pointless.

Chi from Newcastle quite clearly illustrated why Ofcom need taking out at the knees. She did no better at Rheged. She may well be a nuclearatonic brainiac rocketific psychotherapneumanist, but she seems to bluff her way out of every question with little actual knowledge or comprehension of the science, regulatory or economic arguments. I may be wrong but as yet she is doing indubitably well in proving me right.

There were several MPs who appeared to have been 'got to' by BT or some similar cause eg Ian Lucas, whose ponderous tones defied any of us to feel any passion for the subject whatsoever. He certainly didn't. And his facts simply were not. He definitely shouldn't sing for his supper - it'd be bread and water. The man seemed to understand nowt. (Or whatever the the equivalent of 'nowt' is on the Welsh border)

Eric Ollerenshaw took the floor and showed quite magnificently that he had actually heard a voice from grassroots. @cyberdoyle (who has listened hard to many over the years) had managed to inject Eric with the passion you will hear from so many consumers, communities, new entrants, businesses etc who GET IT. Now, Lancashire County Council, dare you ignore Hansard? It will be oh so easy now to highlight and broadcast, within moments, your decisions about that RDPE funding, Barry Forde's plan etc.

Tim Farron might have been lying on the bed of nails, the number he managed to hit. Quite astounding to actually hear informed truths come out of a politicians' mouth about copper, FTTC, and more. I've always been quite open to his views since meeting him when we were trying to fibre-wireless Garsdale many years ago, (kyboshed by the NWDA in favour of an impoverished and expensive wireless connection that can't, won't and doesn't work for many of its connectees); Tim definitely went up in my esteem today.

It is a true shame that the speakers cannot be intervened upon in such debates by the real world in real time. We've done it in our broadband and community events since 2004. A backchannel where the electorate are feeding information to our elected representatives might just put debates back on track and actually face up to the issues they are supposed to be discussing.

Or should we run such debates in the open, in the Big Society, and demand that our politicians attend by issuing invitations that bear similar gravitas to Question Time? Oh, but that also fails to tackle single issues debates..... If this, as it currently runs, is democracy which finds routes to the best solutions for this country, I will eat cat5.

(Due to the fact I have just sent an email to my constituency MP that includes F*&^ in the subject line, I will hold on further commentary until my MP responds to my real concerns about today's debate).



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Answers for TSB and others - Part 2

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Read more! Sorry, multi-tasking #fail. I missed Nick's last two tweets. To continue.....
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


Nick then tweeted:

So today I asked an open question about whether inclusion efforts should concentrate on urban or rural. Got several in favour of rural.


...and you guys took us onto BB and fibre. (NB @benhammersley tells me urban biz clusters need BB too, eg http://bit.ly/evIjz4)

There is no argument that rural next gen is more of a challenge in some instances than urban. However, some of the figures coming in from abroad imply a) that the civil costs etc differences between rural and urban may actually be negligible with economies of scale and b) rural take-up and need of next gen services, plus willingness to pay, may prove higher. (As some of us have been saying for a very long time - the low hanging fruit is out in the sticks....)

Inclusion is ever more important for rural areas because of distance from services. I am 8 miles from a loaf of bread or a pint of milk. No city dweller is that far from a basic resource. Everything else you take for granted in daily life is further than that - hospitals, library, ice rink, swimming pool, cinema, consultants, college, Benefits Office etc.

Access to online services in rural areas is therefore paramount. Being able to use such services when provided is equally as important.

Ben's point about urban clusters requiring broadband was brilliantly summed up by Robert Bell recently in an article about Eindhoven and its digital clustering - The Unexpected Value of the Network.

Eindhoven is not rural and is most definitely well-connected.

The article was actually about best practice in an intelligent community - Eindhoven has been nominated for an award. This level of thinking that Eindhoven demonstrates is KEY to success in Britain. Not just in urban areas, but most definitely in rural ones too.

Yes, urban clusters need fat pipes, but one could argue that rural areas need them even more so. The idea that your supplier, your component maker, your graphic designer, your website builder, or your accountant is your neighbour is far harder to achieve at present in rural UK. The odd rural business park will not bring back our lost manufacturing industry, nor bring together sufficient clusters to invigorate most rural areas, but nailing a few big players into rural locations where houses and labour are cheap could bring the "Eindhoven effect". This, in itself could do for more rural regeneration than any RDA sponsored scheme or injection of public cash.

And it will have knock on effects. More money in the local economy is always a good thing, and will help to bolster struggling rural businesses, whilst encouraging new ones to flourish, unrelated to the original scheme to bring in big business, serving the new needs of the more cash-rich community.

Trying to teach people to use the Net, when it won't work in rural areas and there are no jobs at present which make the most of the newfound skills, is most definitely the wrong way round.

The TSB and Race Online 2012 would both seem ideally placed to ensure that the necessary ingredients for a digital future are in place by pushing far harder for the connectivity issue to be resolved.

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Answers for TSB and others #nd11

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#Twicket shows what can be done

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Read more! The now globally infamous #Twicket Match in Wray, Lancashire today highlights just what can be done when rural areas have true broadband. The live streamed cricket match was a first on the Internet.....more details and full archive on twicket.info

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Over 2700 people tuned in during the match from around the world to watch, and the online 'tickets' reached a staggering 1/2 a million(!) on Eventbrite.

The main problem with 21st century UK broadband from the telcos is that it is asymmetrical. This means that live streaming with multiple TV and video cameras, as well as the internet connectivity that was being used to tweet etc today is simply impossible in the vast majority of villages in the UK. This is why BBC and other outside broadcast teams have to rely on satellite for connectivity.

In fact, the opinions expressed on Twitter during and after the match were that there are only three such villages where such an event could take place - Ashby de la Launde in Lincolnshire, Great Asby and Wray / Wennington.

These three places have one thing in common - they are all home to community broadband networks that have been built because the telcos refuse to bring rural areas into the 21st century. Communities have worked together to bring FiWi (fibre-wireless) to their inhabitants.

What Twicket should graphically illustrate to everyone, whether they understand what true broadband is or not, is that when grassroots and communities get involved in delivering services that are required in rural areas, fantastic results can be achieved. (Including fully-clothed, 15 ft high, scarecrow streakers!). Additionally, a globule of imagination is all that is required to see how Twicket equivalents will benefit every community.

For instance, livestreams and archives of Parish Council meetings, church services, village events, remote education opportunities for undersubscribed classes (or for when the village hall is just too cold for yoga!), gigs, telehealth solutions, sharing village traditions across the world....in fact, you name it, once you can create and share content over a symmetrical connection, the world really is your lobster.

To all those involved, a huge round of applause for creating a trend, firing up imaginations, and showing up the telcos.

Thank you to.....

@JohnPopham for his incredible work in making this happen and never being stumped by problems, and @DAnSlee for inspiring him
@Cyberdoyle (plus Debs etc) and Lancaster Uni for constantly evolving the Wray and Wennington networks to show other communities what can be done when academia and community join forces
Aquila TV for livestreaming
CLA, (CLA Photos) NGU and Talk about Local for sponsorship
RadioYouthology for live radio commentary
Mike Rawlins for his aerial photos
@Twicketbrenda for introducing a whole new field of cricket commentary, ably assisted by @Simon_Magus
Breakdance Billy (aka Adam) for the tea time entertainment
Stephen Fry for his RT
The Guardian, Metro and Radio Lancashire for publicity.
Pimms
All the players, umpires and their yellow cards, tweeters, and everyone else involved.

THANK YOU!!

P.S. A #Twicket secret - there is ethernet strung with the bunting across Wray main street!

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BT: 100meg symmetrical..It's just not (their) cricket....

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If it wasn't so sad, it'd be funny. Community network put in a 100Meg symmetrical backhaul, announce its usage for a livestream of a village cricket match....BT spam the village with A3 posters....
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Bear in mind, this is a 7 year story so we'll keep it to the last month alone.

@johnpopham, talking to @danslee, realised that there is a need to bring people into community events needing tech. The event in question became Wray's Easter weekend cricket match, livestreamed over the Wray network. Wray has a symmetrical broadband connection, provided by Lancaster Uni. Most communities, unless they have a Digital Village Pump, can only dream of this type of community activity because the major supplier of backhaul hate the idea you could be a content provider....

It hit Twitter. As an idea. But Twitter ideas become real in moments. Even @stephenfry tweeted it. (Just like @yokoono did with Quakebook - Buy it now, please).

BT have just hit Wray with an A3 poster dissing wireless connections.

Coincidence?




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Two Leetle Questions for BT.....

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Read more! At times, it is difficult to comprehend why telcos and incumbents do what they do, say what they say. So....here's a coupla questions.............
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



1. BT plan to upgrade "up to 80% of their copper network to deliver connections of up to 20Mbps by the end of the year?"

Our question to BT: how many up to's can you get in one sentence? What do these "up tos" mean, after Ofcom has told telcos to stop using the term? What precisely are you trying to achieve? Both separately and together, with your Up Tos? For consumers? For your network? For Ofcom's plans and regulations? IN REALITY?

2. When you announce FTTC connectivity to market towns, are you planning to connect 100% of cabinets in those areas, wherever existing infrastructure lies? Are up to 100% FTTC areas 100% connected, and to what? How do you define when an area is "FTTP connected?" Do you think you can make it up by connecting one house from one cab = FTTP from that street cabinet?






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This week's catch up

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Read more! Scotland thinks it's being left behind, BDUK is under fire, and BT reckons it can spend yet more money on copper roll out for s'posedly superfast broadband

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Not read that lot yet? I suggest you do. All on Twitter, Google and a multitude of other platforms.

And when you have, the reality that will dawn on you is that if this country was hit by an earthquake, the chance of you having a halfway decent connection as you leg it out of your tower block in the City, to any type of connection to the Internet, is MINIMAL.

DoCoMo went down, big style, but internet connections stayed up in Japan. Why? Not mobile towers but fibre connectivity and decent DSL. The UK has *NONE* of that. We can't even offer mobile coverage to a vast proportion of the country - been on a train lately? Fancy reading your texts on the Tube?

This country's incumbents can be 'offended' and 'furious' when new entrants and non-SMP players tell the truth about the reality of pricing for access to ducts, poles and masts, and then send it to committee and the regulator. Or we can get on top of the problems caused by a creaking incumbent to whom we gifted the access network, which needs replacing with fibre. For Open Access. For competition. For consumer choice. For next generation access delivery.

Or we can just keep forking out for AM reports and hope one day they are read by the folk with the money and comprehension to do what is required in this country. Who may well be, at this rate, building train sets in their attics for their grandchildren instead. I suggest that could well prove to be more rewarding.
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QuakeBook

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Read more! Sometimes, we all have to put aside our own concerns to help others. The catastrophe in Japan has led to a group of people around the world coming together, via Twitter, to create Quakebook - an anthology of first hand experiences of the Tohoku earthquake.
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


I am extremely proud to have been one of those people (one of the editors, blog creator, and part of the Yammer promo community) and that Amazon, Sony, Apple and others have all come on board to help us get the book out to the widest audience possible. Yoko Ono, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein have all contributed pieces to the Quakebook, which should be on sale in a variety of formats over the next few days.

Please tweet about it, blog about it, talk about it, and then BUY it! All revenue will go directly to the Red Cross in Japan.


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Dirty tricks? Again. Have we learnt nowt?

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Read more! As regular readers know, there have been hints and gripes (to put it mildly!) about some of what appears to have been going on. Recently and not so recently - these are not new occurrences. However, only yesterday on Twitter, we hit the target: "At what point do we stop allowing corporates to ruin communities' present & future well-being'? That is the crux of the matter. It is relevant at a nuclear, micro, regional, national and international level. This press release has just arrived to re-inforce our fears about rural broadband in the UK.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com

The view taken from the Surrey Hills overlooking Ewhurst by this blogger on a recent trip to understand the issues for myself.

I could link a 5tth blog post to nearly every sentence of this PR, but will resist. The one link that is in place is, IMHO, the most important.

We have given control of broadband decision making and spending to entirely the wrong authorities. And we (civil servants, consumers, government ministers - in truth, everyone) have allowed corporates to corrupt the process. We will live to regret this enormously, UNLESS we accept our mistake and change the process IMMEDIATELY.


The press release is quoted below, verbatim:

FEARS are growing that hopes of providing fast broadband speeds in Ewhurst will be crushed.

The organisation established to bring the area out of the technological stone age is worried the plans will fall victim to British Telecom (BT).

Ewhurst & Surrey Hills Broadband (ESHB) believes that it is now the pawn in a "broadband improvement funding power struggle" between BT and Surrey County Council’s economic partnership.

ESHB was granted £150,000 by SEEDA (the South East England Development Agency [previously the lead agency for broadband in the UK - Ed]) for the purpose of providing better broadband to Ewhurst.

Shortly before the contract was to be signed in February, though, SEEDA withheld the grant until an announcement had been made.... "in a few days, which may affect the outcome".

Supporters of the Ewhurst scheme believe that BT, which did not provide a valid quotation during the tender process, has now told SEEDA and the county council that it will be upgrading Cranleigh and Ewhurst for fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and therefore there is no need for the grant to be paid.

"In theory, this is good news for both Cranleigh and Ewhurst because public money need not be spent on the project," said a spokesman for ESHB.

"However, BT has a history of saying that it will upgrade areas as soon as local groups show signs of doing the work themselves, thus blocking projects - and then BT not doing, or postponing, the work.

"Could this be yet another example of a spoiling tactic simply to block the competition with a diminished or downgraded facility solution?"

A particular challenge for Ewhurst results [are] from the long lines from the cabinet to the homes of those living in the Surrey Hills, which BT acknowledge are of poor broadband quality.

They will experience an extremely slow broadband speed even with FTTC.

To meet this challenge, the Ewhurst group wanted to use the promised enabling grant for a fully flexible enhanced solution from its chosen contractor, Vtesse Networks Limited to achieve its aims.

These include techniques to improve the very poor lines and the installation of some fibre to the premises.

"By contrast, the BT cabinets will have no such facilities, thus condemning the outlying homes irrevocably to exclusion for generations to come," said the spokesman.

He said the situation had been complicated by the entry of the county council with fledgling organisations that stand to "inherit" potential SEEDA monies left after the organisation is abolished.

The withheld Ewhurst grant would provide a useful pot of money for the county’s objectives of eventually providing some broadband improvement to Surrey generally, but not on outlying lines as long as those around Ewhurst, he said.

"EHSB has put in a great deal of time and energy into this project and now see it going down the drain through devious tactics," said the group’s spokesman.

He pointed out that ESHB had raised the Cranleigh and Ewhurst profile to the extent that it had at least been considered by BT, even though BT had confirmed in writing last March that it had no such plans.

"Should the grant not be forthcoming to Ewhurst then Surrey must be obliged to ensure that BT provide a full facility universal service throughout the Ewhurst area within a reasonable time-scale and without the slippages that have occurred in other areas such as Haslemere and Brookwood," said the ESHB spokesman.

"If the ‘Big Society’ is to work and innovative schemes such as that of ESHB are to succeed, then the dead hand of big business and county authorities must be removed and local initiatives allowed to thrive," he added.

An announcement from BT that it would be providing FTTC in Cranleigh and Ewhurst was expected last week, but never materialised, and is now anticipated next week adding two more months delay.

Are we willing to allow this to continue throughout another decade? We have waited throughout the Noughties for the most basic broadband connections that copper and ADSL will allow, from the incumbent. Despite assurances that 99+% of the country can get it, the truth is plain to see in the very many letters to MPs, media, and ISPs. That 99% figure is, quite simply, A LIE.

The Final Third is now not just waiting for next gen, it is still waiting for a 20th century USC. Most other countries find our USC 'aspiration' - 2Mbps asymmetric - utterly laughable. Most consumers find it desperately frustrating that there appears to be no-one willing to take their side in 'authority', and those who are doing their utmost to resolve this are undermined by the very councils elected, and paid, to look after community well-being.



Enough is enough.
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Amazon #fail

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Read more! Amazon fail to support Japan #QuakeBook

As we reach 14 days today since the earthquake and tsunami, and the consequential nuclear dilemma, a global group of authors, photographers, journalists and bloggers have expressed their frustration at Amazon's non-support of the publication 2:46 QuakeBook


This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


This book includes a multitude of first-hand accounts of the earthquake and its consequences, with all profits going directly to the Red Cross. Such accounts have been noticeably missing from the worldwide press as many journalists have been pulled from the story to report on Libya, or pulled from the region as nuclear fears rise.

As the deadline approaches at 2:46 Friday 25th March, it seems Amazon will not assist in making this book available worldwide.

For a global corporation to even presume that the many volunteers who have made this possible could be 'ambulance chasers' begs the question whether Amazon have their finger on the button at all with how social media, voluntary action and the severity of the disaster in Japan is affecting their customer base, worldwide.

Contact: @ourmainabiko #quakebook
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OT: 10 Things I would pay £1 a month for

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Read more! Apparently, there's no money in content, nor broadband, nor supplying us pernickety customers. I beg to differ.....

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


Here's what I would expect from my dumb fat pipe as extra that I would pay, in total, £10 a month for.

Currently, I get all these things for free. But I started my own business at 8 years old. You have to be sustainable. So, make money...find the customers who actually value what you do and are willing to pay.

What would I pay for? Let's get this clear though...you as an ISP cannot re-invent the wheel as I won't buy it. I want the tools I like today, some of which I have been using for well over a decade now in one form or another. You, as my fat pipe supplier, won't see a bean from moi, but this should help you make the right strategic partnerships and form JVs...perhaps.


1) Delicious

Look, I know I saved/bookmarked it but where? I use at least 3 browsers on every computer I am on. I have 4 of my own computers plus access to untold others. I need my bookmarks, going back years, in the cloud. I've used Del.icio.us since it launched. I know what you have bookmarked of mine and I want to keep it where I can find it, please.

2) WebMail

Same as above, but access to emails.And if in a few years I have hammered this Gmail account and done 7GB, even deleting all the big files, then I'll pay you to guard my emails and let's hope the storage limit now I'm paying is waaaaaay bigger. (Oh look, $3 and I get 27GB for a year, nice!)

3) Twitter

Yep, it has its uses, without a doubt. I'll pay £1 a month as I have already earned plenty from it via my guest blogs. And then there is the value of the people I have met (social more than £££s).

4) Youtube, Flickr etc

For several reasons

a) late nights, working alone, can't face getting up to find music - pick one song, leave it to jukebox me
b) marketing for my clients, YT is the place to put videos/photo/audio without explaining how to spell vimeo, flickr etc
c) Personal - how easy can it be to upload a video/photo/podcast and send it to friends and family?

5) Data storage/back up etc

If only I was on a decent connection....I'd pay for someone to hold my data somewhere else, just in case for resilience/redundancy. Until we get broadband, I simply can't upload it but...I'm working on that broadband issue. (One day, people will understand this campaign has NOTHING to do with downloads). And when I say back up, I mean my mobile too as well as all my computers.

6) Remote Access

How many times is that file I need on the computer at home, or one of the sprogs' computers?

Yep, remote secure back up is worth a quid each month. I use it every time I'm travelling.

7) Facebook & Social Networks

OK, I admit it, I like the chance to vent to my friends, play utterly pointless games like Mousehunt, and check my kids are still alive. LinkedIn matters before meetings too - who is s/he?

8) Blogger / WordPress

I can't imagine now not having a Just Add Water type tool to create a website on the fly for my latest interest.

9) LiveStreaming

The place to point your mobile when you want to show an event you are at with others who can't be there. Be it Qik or Livestream or similar. I'd definitely pay £1 a month for this, even if I was agoraphobic.

10) I'm missing one! What would be your top "I'll pay a quid a month" app for basic internet usage?

We'll get onto business apps shortly, so chuck your ideas at me.

[Product placement is welcome on 5tth now it's legal in the UK - want to push your service? Get in touch]
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Why we needed far smarter meters and thinkers

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Smartgrids and smart meters are gonna be buzzwords this year, (finally - thanks Chattanooga for JFDI) as the competition hots up to reach consumers and achieve EU Policy requirements for energy - which as I recall were supposed to be satisfied by 2008. But, we are miles out with our thinking. Or some are.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


Chattanooga has shown the way by combining smart grids plus gigabit FTTH. We ignore such examples at our peril, I believe.

Imagine that you had a chance to install "a device" in every single premises in the country. And, just like the meters before them for electricity, this device will be in situ for years. (Mine is, I think, made of Bakelite or similar, and has Norweb on it so it could have been there since 1948! I know it hasn't - I can read too, folks. But it could have been.....)

The FT is reporting today about the partnerships for smartmeters that are springing up. The only mention of anything even vaguely 'smart' is the addition of GPRS. Where are the joined up thinkers in the electricity and utility industries these days???

Put in a smart meter, as in those I heard about in Denmark in 2004/5, that included a wireless antenna. Not so the meter reader can access the meter, but so it creates a wireless mesh network.

The Danish examples had wifi and Bluetooth (well, they had to have Bluetooth in Denmark - he was a Danish king), but why not add options for GSM, 4G, LTE, wimax and a femto cell for seriously joined up thinking?

[Who cares which wireless techs it actually includes, but stick a card slot in the side so it can be updated for all the new techs if you need forward compatability. Or upgrade, shock horror, over the network you have created. Remote upgrades are hardly new, especially in the mobile/wireless industry.]

The point is, we are missing a very serious trick. My house is, unsurprisingly, right next to my neighbours. On both sides. (Odd that!) It is within less than a mile of nearly every other house in the village. It is within 2 miles or so of pretty much every property in the Parish.

A tiny, tiny, tiny, minority of homes and businesses cannot see a single other property around them. Ditto those on grid electricity and water (Oooh look, I've just reduced the Final Third to a Final 0.001% who cannot be served directly from the SmartGrid - sorry, BT).

To put it in plain English: here is THE chance to build a wireless cloud (of multiple flavours, if we chose) which can then be fed by fibre. As they planned, and presumably built, in Denmark (I cannot find a link to the town where this happened, and would appreciate my lovely readers help in doing so....My Danish extends to bluetooth and forkbeard!) - a big fibre ring round town, smart meters in every house creating the RF wireless mesh for INTERNET connectivity.

Now, *that* is a smartgrid. Not just serving the utilities, but also the telcos, mobile operators (who are also telcos, lest we forget), the consumers, the environment, convergence, mobility, data usage etc etc etc.

So, where are the links to the consultation on the official specs of what smart meters should look like in the UK?

Because I think we should all be preventing a serious fup (no, not fair usage policy!) which will affect consumers to the tune of a fair few hundred quid each, slow down smart grid development in the UK, and hinder us yet further by permitting telcos to play in this space at their own speed.

Can we afford, once again, to not exercise the 'smartness' and innovation that used to exemplify British thinking? If I can come up with this in the middle of nowhere in Cumbria, surely some overpaid exec in the midst of things in the utility industry and government can see the potential of joining up a few dots?

Actually, whilst we are on the subject, why not hold on the BDUK money until we can have an innovative pilot that really does join the dots by including smart grids?

(Send in the trolls......)



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I'm not impurressed. But, please, donate to Japan

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Just in case you have forgotten that there is a major disaster in Japan....Lindsey has done this to me.....
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



I support this initiative, but the fallout at home will be immense I do have my own blog in case you need to follow Twisted Purr

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BSG pushes traffic management code of conduct for ISPs

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Read more! The Broadband Stakeholder Group have managed to get some of their members to sign a Code of Conduct about making available information to users regarding traffic management policies used to throttle Internet connections.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Whilst this is obviously a good idea in the interim period (probably about another decade at this rate) until we finally break the Scarcity Model the telcos are so fond of, it does fail to address the actual issue - we need to upgrade our networks so they can cope with data usage in the 21st century.

Optical Reboot is such a nice term, and the ideology behind it is precisely what we require. We can come up with Codes of Conduct for errant ISPs wishing to avoid regulation, or we can tackle the problem head on. (Read the ADVAOptical blog, it's good.)

Today is Pi Day, and if we can celebrate a number, I think it's time we had a "Break the Network" day involving RaceOnline2012, that Online Centres bunch, BSG, BIS, BDUK, CLA, all the Unis, schools, hospitals, politicians, local authorities, and every other group who have ever been involved in technology, or should be.

The idea would be to show our telcos and government just how b0rked the network is in 2011, even with about half the country failing to comprehend what a computer is for or why anyone would even want one. If you made everyone use a computer on a specific day e.g. to fill out the census form, and then try uploading a video to the Census Dept showing what went wrong, that should cause a certain amount of network nightmares along with all the normal everyday usage that our connections struggle to cope with.

What do you think?!
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The FTTH Pledge Pot

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Read more! I believe (Blimey, sound like someone else!) that there is an appetite to invest in order to resolve the broadband issue. And, oh dearest Coalition, I think you may be making it harder than it need be.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



My belief in how to ensure that the UK has ubiquitous, accessible and affordable true broadband has never faltered. The Access to Broadband Campaign was built on the most solid of foundations, and I believe that all we pushed for in 2000-2004 stands solid today. AFAIK, the website and all the incredible content that we created, and which has fed into so much of today's thinking, is still there as reference material.

However, it is time to overcome an issue that is so simple to solve, so obvious a barrier, and so vitally important to resolve, if we are to succeed with Next generation broadband.

FUNDING.

Someone, somewhere, decided that Local Authorities, in the midst of massive and comprehensive budget cuts, and with no experience of telecoms or even knowledge of the last decade of broadband revelations, would be the most appropriate to "bring up to speed" and pilot solutions for an issue of such huge import as "Final Third First".

Knowing what effect next generation broadband has both socially and economically, someone, somewhere, chose to dump this firework into the laps of people who cannot possibly be expected to understand 25 years of FTTH, let alone 120 years of telecoms, in a few months, whilst also operating in what can only be called a "public sector war zone".

From the outside, it looks like the majority of people are trying to stick to the "Keep Calm and Carry On" ethos, whilst keeping their heads low so they are not caught in the crossfire of budget cuts and lay offs.That is entirely understandable - you too have mouths to feed, and mortgages/rent to pay.

The 4 BDUK pilots have not yet, in six whole months, actually been introduced to each other AFAIK. Online or offline. There has been no meeting that would permit these public sector bods, who are also citizens and consumers once out of their suits, a chance to talk to one another about common problems, issues faced with the procurement etc. Let alone bringing together the "Big Society" who have clearly established their wont to be involved in making the right decision with this money from the public purse.

There is no use of the premium channel we are endeavouring to build access to - t'interweb- so these 4 pilot communities can meet each other, talk, discuss, find solutions etc.

And there is certainly no-one out there saying "How do we get best value from this BBC License Fee money?"

Where are the business planners, showing all of us how the pilots will benefit us? Where are the economists, serial entrepreneurs, experienced commercial operators?

Where is the one single person asking ME, as a resident of this pilot area, how much I am willing to invest in a solution?


Why ask BT? Why not ask me first?

I run a business. Every single farm in Eden/Cumbria, Hereford, Scotland and North Yorkshire is a business. There are thousands of businesses in these 4 counties. We can invest against tax. We can make informed business choices. We run businesses, day in and day out.

Has a single one of us been asked how much WE are willing to put into the pot to ensure that we build a next generation infrastructure that will not force our children away from this area? Into education, work, houses etc away from their homes?

We care. We know how to make profits, even when times are really rough. We know what certain solutions are worth to us, to our families, to businesses, to our communities. And therefore what we are able to put into the Pot.

Are you really going to ignore all of us, sideline us, gag us, so that contracts can be given to companies who have zero interest in our children, our schools, our Parishes, our neighbours, our livelihoods and our communities?

Really?

I pledge here and now, from my Eden-based internet marketing business, £5,000 towards building a next generation broadband network within Eden that meets all of the State Aid Guidelines, and is community-owned. (Whether as a Trust, co-op etc).

I hope that it will be on a long-term investment basis, because I am proud to live here, and I know that FTTH is a viable, sound, economic investment for anyone. However, if it has to be a legacy from which I, in my lifetime, see no return, then I will GIFT this money because I appreciate all that the generations before me have done to leave legacies of land, buildings, funds, Reading Rooms, co-ops, Aid funds etc. In both Eden and Wensleydale, the evidence of previous generation's generosity is impossible to ignore.

It is surely our task to continue the work that the previous generations started in Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Herefordshire and Scotland to ensure the well-being of our children?

I know I will not be alone, any more than my mother was with her railways - SCR and WCR.

So, I pledge £5000 for an Eden True Broadband Solution.

(And vultures, stay away. You have all been circling far too close recently.)

We can JFDI Pledge Pot Proposal

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How to spend £530M (or not...)

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Read more! One of the reasons to keep going with broadband campaigning (despite my frequent attempts to retire from all this grief) must be the chance to meet and have access to people who you would otherwise never come into contact with, and benefit from their thinking. For everything else there is Mastercard, but for quality replies such as this....

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



This weekend, at 8.09am, (which indicates how much the CCC update bothered me!) I sent the following email to someone I met whilst kicking my heels in a bar during the Lisbon 2010 FTTH Council Conference. He looked English, we got talking, and it turned out that, coincidentally, he too was at the conference. We met again in Milan a few weeks ago.

He is MD of a company already supplying 25Mbps and upwards to businesses, and who is about to start connecting rural domestic properties to similar fibre and FiWi services, with or without BDUK.

Whilst he was happy for me to publish his name, I have chosen to anonymise the content of this email. He is not based in Cumbria, and as far as I know his company is not planning to put in even an EoI for the BDUK Cumbria projects. I asked his opinion as someone who is *not* involved in the personalities or politics of this region.

As ever, I make no apologies for my approach to getting problems into the open - blame my Yorkshire upbringing. A spade is a spade is a spade.

Morning

http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/broadband/update.asp


Before I give myself some sort of fatal apoplectic attack at the idiocy of our Council, would you care to make any comments on this from Cumbria County Council yesterday?

Thanks!
Lins

He replied:

From the horse's mouth:

“Our aim is to use these [Rural Market Testing Pilots] to discover exactly what needs to be done to make superfast broadband commercially viable in rural communities as well as urban areas, and to understand what kind of Government support will be necessary.”
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, 15th July


The first step in understanding how government may invest in extending superfast broadband beyond where the private sector will get to will be the running of 4 market testing pilots in rural areas. The information from these projects, in addition to initiatives that are already going on across the country, will be used to better target possible government intervention and investment in ‘superfast broadband’ in the future.

The above is taken straight from the BDUK website.

Three phrases really stick out here: "market testing", "pilots", and "superfast". In my view these are the crucial elements of what the money should (one might even say "must") be used for.

Superfast

Clearly, there is no dictionary/legal definition of what constitutes superfast. However, I would argue that two, phased, meanings are emerging. The first, short term, measure is to get speeds above those theoretically possible with ADSL 2+ technology. A suitable goalpost for this in my view would be something north of 20 Mbps. For the medium term, then I agree with you that we need 100Mbps access, with a true symmetric capability.

Market testing

Market testing means, in my view, that the market must be tested! Put another way, then IF people do have access to superfast broadband at suitable price points (ie not expensive) then is there a good demand for it, what can it be used for, what will it be used for, etc etc.

Pilot

The BDUK website is VERY specific on this in my view - these are meant to be PILOT projects. They should be testing different solutions, different suppliers even.

So, returning now to the Cumbria "update".

First thing I notice is that the term "superfast" occurs only once in the whole update - in the first sentence as a descriptor for what the Accessible Cumbria project is all about. By the end of the update, the only speed mentioned has dropped to a miserly 2 Mbps. If that is what they think "superfast" means, then they should be sacked on the grounds of gross incompetence.

They then go on to state that "discussions with BDUK to date have focussed on two things", which they specify as:

• getting the best value for money
• ensuring any rationing is fair

Getting the best value for money should be measured against those three terms I listed above: Market Testing, Pilot, Superfast. That is what the money is clearly meant to be used for, and so that is what the successful use of that money should be measured against. Using the money for a different purpose should not be allowed and indeed if it is used for other purposes, then the County Council should be made to repay the money.

"Ensuring any rationing is fair" is a silly statement to make as it completely misses the point about what the money is meant to be used for. "Ensuring that the pilot addresses the challenges of delivering superfast broadband to all businesses and communities within Cumbria" would be a much better focus in my view.

The comment about FTTP is utterly ridiculous. Yes, it is expensive, but that is the point of BDUK money being focussed on "final third" areas where it is (supposedly) much harder to justify the investment. In any event, FTTP is only "expensive" where the cost per home passed is much higher than it is in dense, urban areas. Within a village, the homes might well be spaced as close as they are in an urban area and/or the cost of digging might well be less, thus helping to offset a higher home spacing.

The comment, "There are various degrees of enthusiasm and expertise in our communities which would also be shunned by the FTTP approach," is a very vague statement that is neither explained or justified. The person who wrote it is clearly not up to the task.

There then follows a long, rambling discussion about the provision of community points of presence. This serves only one purpose and that is to allow the council to spend the money on improving its own internal network with "spare capacity" perhaps being made available for community use. If they really think that the CLEO network, that they will have specified, could be leased to a supplier to then use for community access then they must have been smoking something. 

To fulfill the criteria of a superfast community point of presence (and for BDUK funding here, it must be superfast), means that the point of presence must be 1Gbps for any sizeable (eg hundred homes and upwards) community. The reason for this is that (assuming fibre delivery) the cost difference between a 100 Mbps and an 1Gbps feed will not be that significant, accepting that 100 Mbps wireless feeds would be ok for very small (few tens of homes perhaps) communities until a fibre path can be established/justified.

It really makes me fume that they think that they should install the CLEO network and then sub-let that to a supplier for community use as this is a classic way to waste money and opportunity. If anything, it should be the other way round - provide the funding that would have been spent anyway on the CLEO network to a supplier to help underpin its rollout of a true "superfast" backhaul network that is offered on an open access basis.

As for the concept of a "Quality Guild", well that just smacks of soviet style socialist thinking. It is also, I suspect, illegal under EU competition law.

Now moving on to the rationing bit...

I have to admit that the bullets do sound ok in and of themselves.

The concept of "broadband coordinators" sounds fine in theory. My real worry would be that it would be local loudmouths (aka "politician" types) who would grab these positions to further their own personal aims.

As with the [redacted] project, I see that the term "pilot" is being rapidly watered down as in "...for BDUK to make a statement about any intentions for Cumbria beyond the pilot phase...". These are meant to be pilot projects to see what works etc, not the pilot phase of a full rollout by the Council!! Megalomania or what?!?

Again, as with the [redacted] project, "action" is unlikely before summer 2012 - nearly two full years after the money was made available. That is little short of pathetic really.

Deploying 1 Gbps community points of presence to every village with (or close to) an existing BT exchange is pretty basic stuff. The costs of deployment are easy to suss out (Openreach EAD circuits have open pricing and the "excess construction" would not take that long for Openreach to assess). The County Council could have held a mini-tender just for the provision of these circuits very quickly and then have got them deployed within around a further six months. Whilst that was going on, the council could have been working on further, localised tenders for the "last mile" bits, combining a healthy mix of fibre and wireless (and even high speed satellite) deployment.

---------

[Note: Despite Ofcom's banning of all usage of the term "superfast broadband" without a TSR, I have permitted it this one last time on the 5tth blog. From now on, use superfast broadband within my hearing at your peril.]

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Weekend Discount on all the JFDI books

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Read more! If you haven't bought the JFDI Community Broadband Trilogy about villages which have built their own broadband networks, now is your chance. 20% off all the books until Monday. Just enter code "GIANTUK305" on Lulu when you order.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Happy Reading!
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State Aid Guidelines

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Read more! Light reading for the weekend, folks! After last night's "Eden Valley Connective" broadband meeting with BDUK, I thought it was time to lay into the State Aid Guidelines.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


It is going to be very important for those within the BDUK pilot areas to help those in Councils etc to make the right decisions. We can all only do that if we understand how State Aid will and does affect choices made. For instance, it would seem that "open access" is being translated to suit the bidders already, and not either the project or the end users.

In addition, it would seem very important that Councils et al are very clear about 51.

51. In assessing the proportional character of the notified measures in "white" or "grey" areas, through its decision-making practice, the Commission has highlighted a number of necessary conditions to minimise the State aid involved and the potential distortions of competition. The lack of any of the following conditions in (a) to (h) would require an in-depth assessment [51] and most likely it would lead to a negative conclusion on the compatibility of the aid with the common market.

So, a) for instance reads:

(a) Detailed mapping and coverage analysis: Member States should clearly identify which geographic areas will be covered by the support measure in question. By conducting in parallel an analysis of the competitive conditions and structure prevailing in the given area and consulting with all stakeholders affected by the relevant measure, Member States minimise distortions of competition with existing providers and with those who already have investment plans for the near future and enable these investors to plan their activities [52]. A detailed mapping exercise and a thorough consultation exercise ensure accordingly not only a high degree of transparency but serve also as an essential tool for defining the existence of "white", "grey" and "black" zones [53].

Mapping for instance is vital. At Penrith conference, the maps failed to include our own homegrown networks like Cybermoor, Gt Asby etc so maps must include ALL existing service providers, not just the big boys.

Communicating with existing service providers about their plans. Hm, we are already hearing from providers and communities who are getting increasingly concerned that their ongoing work could be totally distorted by BDUK intervention unless local authorities try much harder to discover what is going on in their areas. (This has been ongoing for a while, but many of those now getting in touch are not 'planning' to build something, they have already JFDI.)

This small example of a detailed and complex document gives some idea of what we are all up against.

There will be a short test on Monday on the rest of the Guidelines. ;o)

(Next week, we shall be studying the Framework Agreement).

Have a good weekend all. And just a reminder that rural areas, kids and advanced technology mix really well. I suspect we may see something similar in Stoneleigh as a school holiday course in years to come...
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Why Milton Keynes is a quick win for BT

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Read more! Type "Milton Keynes Fibre" into Google and you get an astounding number of news articles lauding the fact that MK is piloting FTTP with BT. Let's think about the history a little.....
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



I remember being astounded in about 2002/3 discovering that the new build town we had all heard so much about had had to set up a campaign group for bogstandard broadband - isn't that what "BB4mk" stood for?! After all, when MK was built, much was made of the fact that it would be the first place to have "Honey, I'm coming home" video calls, fridges that automatically re-stocked, domestic robots, and all that 21st century sci-fi wonderment. (Ok, I don't actually remember the MK promotions, but I bet it was that sort of thing!) As with Hull when it had free local calls, we were all jealous. For a bit.

Then reality struck MK. And the rest of us who were campaigning for broadband. BT and all those reselling BT's products could only offer ADSL. Which as we all know is a copper product. MK didn't have much copper. It had TPON. And aluminium. And really old cable built in the 60s with a mere 32 channels and no data capacity.

Oh, the irony of it. Here was a brand new city with some all-singing, all-dancing fibre and cable, stuck in the dark ages because they didn't have copper. There were suggestions to overlay Cu on the fibre. Which really said everything about Britain's broadband dilemma and failure to 'see the light' that was heading very fast down the tunnel at us, even then.

"No-one" could afford to do all of MK with FTTH because that would have been far too far sighted, (and whose was the TPON and cable?!), and there was all this ally to upgrade as well. It was all just too soon. Not just for consumers, but very much for SPs, CPs, councils etc who certainly didn't want that type of advance in people's houses and all the associated problems. (Which still haven't gone away for political, shareholder and multiple other reasons. Or just one. £).

In 2003, you couldn't have suddenly made that TPON useful for Internet connectivity. Someone in MK would have invented YouTube or similar, and then we'd all have been up in arms that MK had an unfair advantage. The cable guys would have cried "Foul Play". Well, let's think about that... as we should all remember, the MK cable network franchise was originally.....are you going to guess? Of course. BT's. But they were forced to sell it by a Brussels anti-competition quango; however, no-one wanted it at the astronomic price they asked, so it was leased by NTL in 1999, now VM. (AFAIK, it's still a BT asset, but VM maintain it?).

Had the good folks of MK been given FTTH (as all cable cabinets in MK are, as far as I can discover, fibred), house prices would have rocketed. MK would have become the number 1 town to live, instead of um...not the number one place to live.

Statements such as this began appearing online:

Copper cable will be provided to enable all existing customers to be transferred off TPON and on to copper to ensure they're able to receive broadband. BT plan to move customers off TPON as soon as the copper is in place which will also make ordering broadband easier. This work is also scheduled for completion in October 2005 and should ensure that 512kbps broadband is available to everyone on the estate with the expectation that most will be able to receive higher speeds. [The first run of copper to Monkston was laid in June 2003.]

Some of us have watched from afar over the years as this utopian vision failed rather spectacularly to deliver decent telecomms. After all, who could have known in the 60s that routing the copper wires around 3 sides of a square at the end of a trunk, branch and twig path would mean no Internet?

The Digital Switchover is due in 2012 in MK. Many people have had years of problems with broadband, Freeview, as well as suffering a wide variety of trials of wi-fi, Wimax, Extended Reach etc that have not solved the problems, only temporarily alleviated some of them for some of the people.

MarKet ripe for the picking? With all that fibre already in the ground, and desperation in the air, you'd think so!
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RFoG standard approved

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Read more! The Radio Frequency over Glass standard has finally been approved.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


It's not a cure-all and it won't be the winner in the FTTH market, but for certain companies looking to put in pilots in certain areas (the initials BDUK come to mind), RFoG could well be an opportunity waiting for a (FTT)home, or more to the point, a DVP (Digital Village Pump).

Read more RFOG techie stuff here.
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Europe 2020 Project Bonds consultation announced

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Read more! It had to come, using bonds to fund the major infrastructure projects that the EU will need over the coming years.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



The announcement of the consultation is here.

I've been involved in quite a few discussions about this type of infrastructure funding recently, so it will be interesting to see the results of the consult. There is definitely an appetite for more imaginative use of financial vehicles to get the EU back in the fast lane.

Meanwhile, for those with their eyes on smaller scale solutions to funding infrastructure, there is a Cumbria Social Enterprise Partnership event on 16th March in Kendal for anyone wishing to know about community share issue.
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Making the Business case for Telehealth and telecare

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Read more! Am watching the King's Fund Telehealth and Telecare conference and it is fascinating.
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


The challenges faced by these projects are oh so similar as those faced in so many other sectors of UK society.

Couple of points: (the videos will be archived and bear watching)

a) The Cornwall project had no broadband to work with so could only play with telehealth and telecare toys that worked over phone lines. (Those behind ActNow should be ashamed at what that says about the huge amount of money thrown at that county to resolve that problem earlier this decade, let alone what is once again being thrown at Cornwall now). Imagine what could have been done with the £31million these pilots have had if the comms infrastructure claimed by the telcos actually existed in this country?

b) There is a difference between telecare kit and telehealth kit. e.g. telecare includes smoke alarms, CO2 monitors, etc, and telehealth kit is much more about vital signs. This is still pretty primitive stuff compared to what telehealth means in many countries abroad, and what was taken for granted by many speakers in Milan just 2 weeks ago. I'm looking forward to the international speakers this afternoon and tomorrow, who I suspect may pop a few bubbles.

c) The users chose the simplest, least glamorous pieces of equipment. Even though there were touch screen, funky 'toys' on offer, the focus groups etc chose the ones they liked to use most. There is a lesson in this for all public procurement - ask the users, first, and secondly, it does not need to be the all-singing, all-dancing, most expensive equipment that hits the buttons for those who must use it.

d) The best story told during the event so far is that of Eddie, who has COPD. The fact that he can now monitor his own situation means that he now sees the correlation between how he feels and what the monitoring shows him - visually, on his TV as I understood it. What this has done it to release him from 5 years of not going out of his house, because he understands his illness far more clearly.

Jamesks on the Tweetstream said: Rather damning evidence on how medical profession have failed to help people take control of their health in the past.

Valid point which many holistic practioners would agree with, but putting a more positive slant on it, when KPMG run their post-lunch session on making the business case for telehealth, it would be interesting to see what GBP pound sterling value they put on Eddie's increased confidence, freedom, improved quality of life etc etc.

Because surely that should be what telehealth is about? Improving patients' lives. Yes, it should not drain the coffers dry to implement it, but surely someone should be seriously taking into account these individual stories, including those from the smoking cessation groups who were also highlighted who have found it much easier to give up because of the increased support available.

This is the SOCIAL CAPITAL side that I have been arguing for years should be shown on the balance sheets for any such project, including deploying FTTH.

BT may not want to be forced to set up so-called non-economically viable projects, but government and local authorities must look at more than just cash projections and profit forecasts, and take on board exactly what benefits and value these type of services have for citizens' well-being, quality of life, and hence the contributions that those people then put back (often many times over) into society.





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