Using existing infrastructure

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Read more! This country is littered with ducts, poles and masts. All of them can be shared. There is no reason not to do so. However, there are some bloody stupid games going on to prevent it. It is your turn to tell me why that may be so and how we stop it....

I'll give you a few starters for ten about the games being played.

NB: I could write this post for three days and not cover the half of it. Feel free to comment below, or email me ldotannisonatgmaildotcom, if you wish to see more added. I haven't attributed some of it as a matter of respect. You can guess who said it if you wish...and I'll bet you will be wrong!

BT have left old copper in the ducts to block them.

Really? Why? (Ho hum). Questions were asked and as we pay these guys, I'm not anonymising this response from BIS (formerly known as the Department of Trade and Industry). It doesn't answer the question but it raised plenty more:

It is worth pointing out that duct and pole access on its own would not provide straightforward options to deliver NGA, and there are limitations which will need to be overcome before this option is achievable. For example, in a survey carried out as part of Ofcom’s work on NGA, of 31 paths between the metro node and the exchange, Ofcom found that all had at least one section where there was very little unoccupied space. This means that, even with duct access, communications providers would probably need to build new duct in at least some locations. However, on the other hand, duct and pole access could reduce the cost of market entry, be deployed quickly and make good use of existing infrastructure, which is why Ofcom is currently assessing its viability.

Who assesses what is currently in ducts, or on poles and masts, and, when it belongs to a private company (e.g.BT) but is in a duct/pole/mast laid/installed with public money way back when, who decides whether or not that existing plant is actually a) doing anything e.g. live b) of any value or c) blocking progress? Or do Ofcom just rely on the answers given without looking/digging for the actuality?

For us this last set of questions raised a huge issue. Do Ofcom take everything they are told at face value? Or do our taxes fund decent research and evaluation to generate the required evidence for regulation and decision making? We'll leave you to decide for yourselves, but if you want a clue, visit your local planning office and ask key questions about a 'controversial' planning application.

85% of UK is within 1km of BT fibre.

This was said too many times at our ABC conferences for you not to know that Peter Cochrane said this! PC has never really defined the fibre connectivity available to 85% of the UK - dark, lit - but it makes you wonder how much of the figures 'claimed' for FTTC in the latest BT announcements are based on money spent a long time ago, not recently.

As an example, at the very first broadband event I organised in 2001/2, in Hawes, Wensleydale, we caught BT laying fibre in ducts a few miles away, literally hours before the event where a BT keynote speaker was due. (Bear in mind, this was possibly the very first national broadband event in Britain and our BT speaker was coming from Cornwall - think ActNow etc.)

I phoned the CEO of BT at the time for answers. He was quite nice though utterly fed up with me, I think. A nice chap. Pierre Danon (like the yogurt) I think it was. It was a long time ago, so I will not quote him, but the answer in simple terms was, "Yes, we have been laying fibre to exchanges recently, even in remote places like the Yorkshire Dales e.g Cotterdale, Hawes, and the guys you saw near Bainbridge. I can't imagine why the engineers told you they were cleaning grit from the ducts....."

When I asked for access to that fibre in the middle mile, I received a non-committal answer (i.e "no") which I reported at the event - it is on video, and I have it here. Sadly, in 2010, accessing the middle mile is no easier, though my parents and grandparents paid for it and if the upgrades were viable at the very beginning of this century, well, no-one can tell me that money hasn't already been recouped. Again.

Every switch has a fibre feed and many mobile masts do too.

In 2005, a senior exec from O2, whilst sitting next to someone who became a BT OpenRetch Board member, at one of our DTI events in London, queried my question about whether his network would be interested in sharing excess backhaul from rural masts for community networks. "Do we have fibre backhaul to masts?" I think my look of surprised anguish at his ignorance was the prompt for the BT guy to respond, "Um yes. She is right, you know. You could consider it."

What else is going on in this space? Well, if you really need to know how bad it is, read the BT Pole Dancing info or read the lunacies of the proposed pole sharing agreements from BT for NGA which would permit BT to put any community network using their plant on a 3 month death sentence, even weeks into a 20-50year project.

When people such as Cyberdoyle talk about joined up thinking, solving simple problems such as this is what we mean. Whoever you are, reading this, and I know now just how many and varied are the readers of this blog, then please take 2 mins to contemplate how you could add to the joined up thinking model that will make the UK a digital nation rather than the Digital Grand Canyon.

Please allow me to finish on a high note. There *are* ways to do this right.

I spent quite a lot of time with the Scottish Exec earlier in this decade. Scotland, sadly, hides its light under a bushel much of the time in the tech and broadband arena. This is why, after hearing a SE speaker at the Ally Pally "Need for Speed" event who was onstage just before me, the Scottish ABC Conference in Aviemore happened in 2004, as well as the Dumfries & Galloway events etc.

This is my version of the story I was told all those years ago. For me, it highlights collaboration, co-operation, vision, as well as use of existing infrastructure. Despite it being Burns Night, I will resist writing the following in dialect!

The Highlands & Islands were suffering from a lack of mobile coverage. No-one wanted lots of mobile masts over what is undeniably an amazing and beautiful landscape - I know it well, now. And there are of course only a few people at the end of that particular connection.

HIE (the 'Regional Development Agency' for that area of Scotland) summoned the mobile operators to a round table meeting.

HIE offered assistance to get planning permission etc fast tracked and masts part-funded and installed, as well as adjudicate any issues where there were blackspots if the operators would co-operate and share masts, infrastructure etc in order to deliver choice to those in the Highlands and Islands.

I was never present at those meetings but I was told this story by someone who was. His opinion was along the lines of 'If only it was this bloody simple everywhere.' The operators chatted, site share agreements were dealt with in double fast time, (they all had to get on board or it was a lost market to them), and the HIE watched their community connected with the widest choice of services and providers, at least cost, without destroying the landscape.

It is that bloody simple.

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Marketing FTTH to the end user - that's you!

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Read more! Recently, I received a personal response from Vivien Reding to my letter about the need to market FTTH honestly and accurately in the coming months and years. It seems that there will now be a working group set up to discuss precisely this issue in Brussels because we are already seeing misleading of the public, MPs, media etc by the telcos/ISPs. This is creating confusion amongst not just consumers, before the UK and others in the EU have even got going with next generation broadband. It needs to be stopped.

And before you switch off and think this does not apply to you, remember one thing: we are ALL consumers. Whatever your day job, hobby, involvement in FTTH or NGA, you too are an end user.

Before and during my trip to the US, we discussed the need for shared resources about marketing fibre (amongst many other aspects of FTTH!). This is now an ongoing project, which I hope that many will get involved in. Selling FTTH and true broadband connectivity is a universal issue with solutions which may only require small tweaks to meet market conditions and consumer needs in different countries.

However, working out how to best apply best practice and lessons learnt to your network, community, region or country can be difficult if you can't discover what others have found out. And found out the hard way, judging by some of the tales I have heard over the past few months!

Travelling around the world and visiting all the networks to discover first hand is of course bordering on impossible (though I am very tempted, and willing to try if anyone wishes to sponsor me!). This is, of course, where the internet comes in, putting us all in touch with other like-minded souls in the first instance. However, I have to say that meeting people in the flesh, so to speak, is unbeatable and once again want to thank everyone across the States who showed me such unbelievable hospitality.

I digress...Interestingly, many of the talks in the US revolved around the lessons learnt by pioneers and how to share this knowledge. Not just in and from the US but across the planet. And the importance of co-operation by all to work in a sustainable, non-profit fashion for the best interests of the consumer and community rather than for shareholders.

Obviously, this means that any such 'helpful' groups need to be non-profit with a clear eye on paying those engaged in doing, rather than relying on the delaying of volunteer fatigue but we are all quite clear that this is a "best network of people", not some new quangos or businesses set up to meet private aspirations. The clear indications are that the will is there to deliver all of this for the communities who are involved in setting up their projects now. Wherever you may find yourself in the world.

The plan is to set up a fiber/fibre marketing social networking group to share best practice, lessons learnt and collateral which community networks can use to best effect, without having to re-invent the wheel and to make the most of what undoubtedly are always going to be tight budgets.

This is now an ongoing project which should be launched shortly.

Anyone who has any info/time/resources/etc they would like to contribute to the project, please contact me on ldotannisonatgmaildotcom and I will forward it to the others involved in setting up this social network which will, I have no doubt, bring together and help out many community and grassroots projects over the coming months.



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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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Why FiWi matters in the UK

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Read more! There are no two ways about it, and little argument from industry, government or consumers and community. In order to deliver Digital Britain, we need FiWi. That is, fibre as close to every home and business as possible, and wireless in the few places where that is not physically possible.

On such an issue as the fourth utility, finances do not come into it. However, there are always going to be places where fibre is just too difficult to provision and where wireless actually makes far more sense as being the right technology for that job.

There needs to be a Universal Service Obligation that applies to broadband exactly as it does water and electricity. Not "Best effort" depending on what your books look like and your shareholders think, but an OBLIGATION to get that utility to EVERYONE.

And not some half-hearted attempt that suits the world of commerce eg 2Mbps asymmetrical. That is NOT broadband and there is plenty to show now that asymmetry is not what people seek.

Broadband goes way beyond who is making money out of it. It is a UTILITY. There are some who still don't get it. Fine, they will, worry not. You can't escape the pervasive incursion of the internet into our daily lives, and as the public sector eg health and education realise the massive advantages, improved services and cost-savings that can be made by using broadband technology, it will become ever more pervasive and inescapable in every aspect of our world.

FiWi is key to bringing Britain into the digital age, engaging this country into the digital economy, creating 'digital citizens'. It is not some airy fairy pie in the sky notion, although I have been saying FiWi Pie for years to illustrate that there is a piece of this pie for everyone.

However, if we set the bar so low that a huge swathe of the country is reliant on wireless rather than fibre, we are doing ourselves no favours, now or in the future. The reality is that the future is FIBRE, and ignoring that fact, or shoving it under the carpet, won't make it go away.

The FiWi mix needs to be heavily skewed towards fibre, with wireless giving us the opportunity to connect the remaining few, as well as providing a wireless cloud so that everyone everywhere can connect using their wireless device. I'll say it again - wireless should not be the core technology used as the primary connection mechanism, except in a very few and exceptional places in this country.

This country needs to work together to deliver what is required, not just by our generation but by the NEXT GENERATION. It means thinking and working together to find the right solutions. Not allowing commerce to take the lead or set a glass ceiling for its own ends. Not allowing government to stymie innovation whilst it pads out the very depleted coffers. Not allowing communities to suffer at the expense of either of the aforementioned. Not ignoring the very real grassroots and industry expertise available in this country, purely to win votes or cash in.

What we need in this country is CO-OPERATION between all the stakeholders to get on with fibre and JFDI. Anyone who thinks 2Mbps is sufficient now, in 2012 or beyond, will either need to sit on the sidelines and watch, or change their thinking, fast.

Britain needs people who get IT. Who understand the scale of the task we need to undertake to firstly catch up with other countries and then, hopefully, to compete or surpass them. And who realise the time for meetings, quangos and conferences, talking about and extolling the virtues of 'true broadband' but resulting in little action, is over.

Work together and we could have a world class infrastructure our children will be proud of. Ignore the issues and continue with each party selfishly pursuing its own ends and agendas, and we will end up with a nationwide disaster that impacts every single sector of our country.


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