Fibre bandwidth coming to a mast near you?

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Read more! Some years ago at an event at DTI about community networks, there was an out-of-session discussion between O2, OpenReach and myself about sharing excess bandwidth from mobile masts for backhaul to rural and remote community networks.

The fact that there might even be spare capacity, or that many masts are fed by fibre seemed to come as a surprise to the O2 rep. Now, it seems that in the light of a huge ramp up in consumption of mobile bandwidth (smartphones, dongles, mobile advertising etc), over the Pond there are moves afoot to increasingly feed mobile masts with fibre.

It is likely that similar is happening or will happen soon here. The need to broker that bandwidth between the different occupiers of a mast should surely be a job for COTS? It makes sense to run one fat pipe to each mast to provide for the aggregated bandwidth requirements of each operator. However, it also adds an ideal opportunity to consider the bandwidth needs of others in the locale of that mast and to cater for that as well, thereby reducing the costs for all involved.

Whilst it would clearly trespass on the plans of mobile operators to provide broadband via dongle etc to those in the vicinity, and would require (finally) deals to be struck about the currently ludicrous costs of siting equipment on and access to masts, it could bring next generation broadband much closer to many, many people in the UK. Whether delivered by wireless (eg Wimax etc) or as a closer break out point for fibre backhaul to a community, the opportunities would seem too good to ignore from this approach.

Mobile broadband, as we have said before, has its place. But NOT as the primary mechanism for delivering next generation access. This can be delivered far more efficiently and effectively by bringing fibre as close as possible to the punters and communities, and then using wireless to cover the first mile or inch.

This is FiWi, a term we have been banging on about for ages and are still waiting to see adopted by the masses!

There is also a "FiWi Pie" side of it too i.e. there are potentially win-wins all round with this approach: Those flogging fibre backhaul stand to see more capacity required at each mast thereby generating more revenue, the mobile operators get cheaper backhaul for all their offerings, the mast owners get a cut from additional equipment sited on masts, and communities get affordable backhaul that is not being priced per inch.

Or, we can keep trying to rip each other off and go nowhere fast. I prefer the FiWi Pie approach!

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Apply this to bandwidth?

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Read more! The announcement yesterday that Scotland intend to aggregate the government and public sector demands for electricity to get better value for public money should start to raise questions about why governments and public sector across England and the UK are not doing exactly the same for bandwidth. And not just for public sector use.

It has long been an issue, particularly since the kerfuffle about Learning Stream contracts etc, that public sector uses public money to purchase access services eg to the internet, and provide connectivity to councils, schools (in the case of the Learning Stream contracts) and so on, but is unable to use/share the spare capacity on those networks to connect the local communities. It is a well-known fact that many public sector buildings have plentiful connections, provided through expensive leased lines and fibre, which lie dormant evenings and weekends (and in August judging by the number of out of office messages coming back from public sector at present!), whilst the local communities often suffer impoverished IP connectivity.

This is often down to a failure by those negotiating the contracts for public sector to get the best deal, red herrings about security, or failing to understand that these organisations and agencies are there to serve the community in all ways. In fact, there is a statutory duty to do so. In other words the resources they buy with our money should be there to serve all of us.

Communities (businesses and consumers) struggled in the first phase of broadband to get connected, and are going to struggle now, whilst existing infrastructure is in place, which, if demand were aggregated across all sectors, could prove the catalyst to encourage the necessary investment in best value networks.

Bandwidth costs are now approaching zero, (although you would never believe it from the costs apparently associated with overstepping your 'unlimited' cap), and demand aggregation for such, if the Scottish electricity model were applied, would lead to the UK having best value networks. Yes, the ISPs, incumbents etc would see a drop in profit per MB but overall we would see far more MB accessible, affordable, and hence used.
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