Competitive broadband market? Compete with this!

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Read more! Seems wholesale prices for fibre longhaul are plummeting, with a 63% drop in 2 years for a 10Gbps wavelength from Los Angeles to Tokyo now costing £22,000 ($36,000) as compared to £60,000 ($98,500) in 2009.

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



What has caused the drop? Three new undersea cables, mucho more capacity, and a host of new competition. Funny that. The competition comes when you chuck as much capacity as you can at the problem, not the least.

Unity - a total capability of 7.68 Tbit/s
Trans-Pacific Express -a total capability of 5.12Tbps
Asia - America Gateway - a total capability of 2.88Tbps

Individual customers can start with a 10Gbps wavelength. I can feel the need to move coming on again: after all we are now down to less than the price I was quoted for 2Mbps!

When will we see a similar drop in longhaul/backhaul prices within the UK? Or are we going to continue to pursue the scarcity model forever?

LA to Tokyo is 5400 miles, which would be 9 times up and down the UK from Land's End to John O'Groats - as crows fly. So, it seems that pricing by distance doesn't always have to apply.

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I'd like to know.....

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Read more! If everyone in this country was connected to a min 100Mbps symmetrical pipe, or more, by 2015, and let's assume that those who like using the Net level out the usage for those who don't, what exactly would it cost and to whom? Not the actual FTTH solution but the bits that will need to be transported around the country....how much will they cost and what precisely do we need to achieve that aim?

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



We all hear how scarce they are, these bits, and we know that the core network is struggling anyway, but JANET upgraded their core network recently so we must have actual hardcore (ouch!) figures to play with.

Don't stress over how it gets to each person, just assume it does. What do we need in Telecity, Telehouse, datacentres, bitmines etc etc to achieve what Erol Ziya wrote about all those years ago - the cheapest country within which to move [unlimited - my addition] data?

Which, it seems to me at the end of a long week, is what we surely STILL need to achieve.....

But how to do it practically? The investment needs to come not in the first mile alone (like *that* is happening, ho hum), nor in the middle mile alone, nor in the core alone. It needs to be across the board.

Ergo, my tired little brain would suggest, this requires a cunning plan. A collaboration. A big picture with a road map to the endgame.

So, who out of our dear, expensive analysts has considered this? Who has the requisite data?

Because, it seems to me, that every which way we turn it all seems to be "too expensive" to do. Telcos don't want to do FTTH in the first mile and are struggling to even see the point of less suitable technologies as economic solutions to properties; backhaul is bloody expensive for communities, ISPs, etc; and longhaul seems to be a struggle too if you talk to ...well, pretty much anyone.

So, what do we need to solve the problem of transporting bits around this country in the most economical and affordable fashion possible to help bring a long-awaited end to those arguments?

Your thoughts are welcomed.....

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Lessons from Louisiana

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Read more! After three weeks of subzero temperatures, Louisiana makes a very welcome change. I'd forgotten what sun felt like! Am sitting here attached to a 25Mbps symmetrical pipe, boostable to anywhere up to a gig - direct into the vein! I am currently in a data exchange which has a carbon toeprint rather than a footprint, is providing cloud computing services over the community fibre network to local businesses, and is housed within a business centre which survived, only just, Katrina ....

The best bit? It was conceived and is run by an amazing, dynamic lady, the building is owned by another female visionary, it includes a Women's Business Centre, the whole focus is on economic development, and the replicability of this set-up would be simple. Even in the UK. The only reason we can't do it is that the places where this set up is most needed are those places where there is currently insufficient infrastructure to do so.

What should we be doing? Well, firstly, the sooner we resolve the cost issues of backhaul in all areas of UK, rural and urban, the better. The UK Government should spend the first tranche of money from the rural Broadband pot putting in new open fibre, owned by the community networks it has constantly supported in words (DBR, Caio etc) if not in action. It should be a co-operative, not for profit venture, so that from now far into the future, every single person, business and community in the UK has a CHOICE about who to buy backhaul from, and the telcos and incumbents are finally faced with true competition. Yes, the government will say they cannot go directly in competition with the telcos, but there are ways round all of these arguments about anti-competition, as other nations have discovered (EU included). Think Amsterdam, Vasteras, Korea etc etc. Think about who wins and why that in itself makes it essential....

The telcos need to face up to the fact that competition is going to happen. I have in front of me the figures for building a middle mile network in the UK as a co-operative venture, and these figures have been created by a group of fibre legends, and are based on sound and known principles and costs. It isn't actually as expensive as I had thought it would be, and there are undoubtedly investors out there who want to take BT et al on at their own game and take Britain into the 21st century and beyond.

This would level the playing field and bring the data transit costs down to their real value, (cost plus) level, rather than over-inflated corporate greed-need levels. It would boost usage and access to the core network in a way that no other action can. It would immediately encourage innovation and therefore help to stimulate the economy, create new jobs, and support diversification, especially in rural areas. That co-operative needs to be started and run by members of the communities who are already up and running, and then as more communities create their own networks, they too can join the co-op. There should be no telco interest, or equipment supplier interest within that co-op, just consumers and communities, who by the very own end-user self-interest will ensure that the co-op is run for the benefit of all.

I suggest it may well, and should definitely, happen in the UK soon too. If anyone has some spare cash in the bank and wants to be involved, or you are a community network in desperate need of affordable backhaul, please do get in touch.

More from the USA soon - I now have 40+ pages of notes and my head is reeling with facts, figures, ideas and information from the amazing people who I have met and who have been generous and forthcoming in the extreme with their contributions to the discussions and answers to my seemingly never-ending stream of fibre questions. Many of these people are very well-known within our sphere and I am honoured to be invited and welcomed into their world. Thank you all. You know who you are!!



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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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Competitive marketplace for backhaul

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Read more! It is becoming ever more apparent that the demand for decent backhaul for community networks is growing. Yet, even knowing this, where are the suppliers of such who should be falling over themselves to grab market share?

In order to make it easy for said suppliers, I have started a thread in the Fibrevolution.com forum entitled, "We need backhaul". Whilst it may take some time to feed the community networks the info they require to get started, there is every reason for communities and suppliers to start filling this thread with WANTED: and OFFERED: (just like Freecycle!).

It is down to suppliers to get it right when selling to fledgling and established community networks. There is no point over-selling as spare capacity that eats into the budget is the last thing a community network needs in its early days, but whatever is sold must be easily upgradeable as the network scales up and users of that network get more hungry for applications and services.

Getting the price right is also important. We know that for many years there has been a non-competitive market for backhaul, and it has often been ludicrously expensive for rural customers to get fairly priced connectivity to the Net because of the ancient process of charging by distance. Whether the bits travel 1 mile or 100 is pretty much irrelevant and the practice needs changing. It is no longer the case that only a few operators can sell backhaul so competition is increasingly fierce and community networks are going to be looking for the best prices.

We have very efficient jungle drums in the community network space, that have been beating for nigh on 10 years now, so the supplier(s) who get it right will benefit from fora such as Fibrevolution where the suppliers will undoubtedly be rated and reviewed, just as ISPs are now by consumers.

So, what are you waiting for? We all know that more and more community networks are going to spring up now and all are looking for that fat pipe......start advertising your wares, and helping these community networks flourish and become sustainable and profitable. As more and more of their community users get online, so the more capacity they will want from you.

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