Set the controls to neutral

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Read more! The government says it is minded to allow ISPs abandon net neutrality, but will it work,and should it be fought?
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com

Yesterday, in a speech the Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said in effect that he favoured the end of the principle of `Net Neutrality' where all content providers were given equal treatment in the speed of delivery, to the final user, of that content by ISPs. He said:-

We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want. This could include the evolution of a two sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service.

This has not gone down particularly well with many in the Internet Community, although as Mr Vaizey pointed out, there is a degree of content delivery management going on at the moment anyway, known as throttling.

There is a fundamental question, which it is right to ask, about whether it is right that there should be some management of high demand sites, so that the rest of us can get on and get important stuff done whilst the world and his significant other are downloading `Top Gear' in HD from the BBC i-player.

What a lot of people are highly suspicious of is the fact that ISPs might choose to charge certain content providers extra to get their content out there faster. To many that goes against the entire principle of the Internet.

I personally believe that if I pay a monthly fee for access to the internet, then all of the content that I wish to access should be accessible at the same speed. I find it deeply irritating that the X Factor could pay extra to get Simon Cowell streamed in HD in priority to something I actually want to look at.... live streaming of paint drying comes to mind as the alternative.

I got a brief customer survey from my ISP, Virgin, today, following a small change I made last week to my billing arrangements. At the bottom of the comments box I wrote the following

`If you abandon Net Neutrality as an ISP, I will abandon you for another..'

If enough people say this to their ISPs they might get quite nervous about breaking away from a neutral net, the market may work in the end and Net Neutrality could become a selling point for some ISPs

Also it will be interesting to see how this all affects communities who, like Great Asby, or Ashby de la Launde who have set up their own high speed networks. Will they have a two tier delivery system imposed from above by whoever is providing their `fat pipe' or will they be able to insist on `Net Neutrality' in their supply contract?

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No review on fibre tax

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Read more! Having taken a couple of days to calm down at the sheer idiocy of the coalition, it is time to ponder the failure to review the fibre tax.

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

There are multiple previous posts on the fibre tax on this blog, all bewailing the fact that the Government (previous ones) had failed to comprehend:

• the distortion caused by the current system towards the incumbent and against new entrants


• the cost to the UK economy of failing to address the problem by severely limiting fibre deployment


• the lunacy of not adopting a system which favours the brave with the UK well-being at heart rather than the "corporate canny" with their own shareholder interests

Aidan Paul, Vtesse Networks, at our colloquium in Newark showed in simple graphs what the current fibre rating system means for BT.

In came the coalition and, with it, hopes that the rhetoric preceding the election wasn't just hot air, and that some common sense would exhibit itself in the decisions made by the new bunch at Westminster. BUT, Ed Vaizey has decided, after constructive talks with VOA (constructive for WHOM, one has to ask?), to not review the rating lists.

There is plenty of evidence from other countries who have taken specific routes to deal with the fibre rating issue that once this barrier to deployment is removed, the revenue which is (would have been) forthcoming to the coffers from fibre tax is a DROP IN THE OCEAN compared to that generated directly and indirectly from the use of fibre, to the GDP, GNP and NNI. So, we see increased value in and from the commercial sector (eg businesses), considerable savings to the health service and within education delivery, benefits for citizens (both in personal savings and opportunities generated), plus a huge reduction in costs for delivering government services.

As if all those factors should not be sufficient to convince any government to deal with the problem so fibre deployment happens sooner rather than later, the environmental impact of FTTH alone is such that it becomes a no-brainer vs any type of copper or alt telecoms solution.

What seems to be becoming increasingly clear is that it is over 20 years since *any* government in this country really got the importance of fibre to this country's citizens and economy. This realisation (or lack of) is now causing the UK to lag behind many other nations, not just meaning that the technical deployment is hindered by factors such as outdated and unnecessary regulation, but our overall IT awareness is similarly hampered by the lack of access to a communications infrastructure which is capable of doing a 21st century job.

You cannot even begin to understand the impact, for example, telemedicine has on (let's start small and expand the ripples) a single patient --> a regional Health Department --> the NHS in general and hence this country's well-being if it cannot and does not reach any patients at all.

We have thousands of digitally reluctant in this country - "Oooh no, I wouldn't know where to start with a computer" and really, who can blame them when the day to day benefits to each of those people cannot even be demonstrated because we don't have a single FTTH demo project in this country showing how the applications can and do work.

The only relief in all of this sorry tale is that there are communities who are JFDI anyway, and who are going to begin to increase the awareness in this country of what FTTH really means, despite the government's failure to support such projects and insistence on taking a short rather than long-term view.

The reality is that during your term in office, Mr Ed Vaizey and friends, we COULD deploy FTTH to the vast majority of this nation if the barriers to doing so were removed today. If we solved the USC issue with fibre and started in the most difficult areas rather than permitting corporate cherry picking, the marketplace would pick up, the economy could be assisted towards recovery, our businesses would not be at the severe disadvantage (as they are today), our school kids would receive a cybereducation similar to that of their peers in other countries, we could help to decrease our carbon footprint, etc etc etc etc.

The savings brought across the board by FTTH could then be spent on the services the citizens of this country require, and which are currently under threat.

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What the Conservatives are saying

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Read more! The Shadow Dept of Culture, Media and Sport seem to have got it.

Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Minister of Culture, was the person who stood up in Parliament on the Digital Britain Report day and made more than a few of us sit up with the fibre broadband beginning to his speech. Now Ed Vaizey, Shadow Minister of the Arts, has delivered a fibre speech to take note of.

Watch this space. (There surely has to be a comment about light and shadows here in our fibre optic space?!)

And to the Shadow Ministers, (now that we know you are reading this blog!) how about you get in on the Broadband Manifesto discussion on Fibrevolution and add your 2p?!
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