Outside In is Essential

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Read more! Even in 2012, we continue to see half-hearted attempts by local authorities, government and telcos in addressing the rural broadband problem and the deprivation it continues to inflict. Even comprehending the issues the lack of connectivity is causing, let alone the solutions, appears to be beyond the wit of man if you believe some of the latest thinking coming out of local and central govt.

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


I've just returned fom a drive along the Mallerstang Valley where not a single property has anything approaching broadband, despite NWDA wasting £60k on a non-functional wireless solution (on top of the abject failure that was Project Access) to try to live by the spin that Project Access actually achieved *anything*.

I know that particular road well - my parents live and work at the other end of it. I know where mobile coverage starts and ends to the foot, and I know the plight of the Parish Council during the last 8+ years in trying to get BASIC communications into that population. And not just the permanent population but also the transitory one who pass through in ever-growing numbers along the Settle Carlisle railway.

For railway buffs, not only is Outhgill graveyard a striking and heart rending reminder of those who lost their lives building a railway through this deeply inhospitable landscape, but near the Moorcock Inn an entire train is buried after one of three horrendous crashes on this section of railway line. (See this S and C Tribute for more info). As I (and many others such as Libby Bateman, our local Digital Hero) have previously said, if back in 1867 they could build an entire railway, with mind-blowing viaducts and bridges, surely we can lay some 9 or 14mm fibre??

I proposed a solution at least 6 years ago to solve the Garsdale and Mallerstang problem, which revolved around the railway and the GX fibre plus wireless where the fibre dig was going to be prohibitively expensive - a few homes up Grisedale and a couple hidden from a wireless signal. As ever, the workable solution which involved the community and a little ingenuity was dismissed outright by the NWDA and a potential public, private, community partnership binned in favour of a purely private (but publicly funded) solution which subsequently has proven to be a waste of money. Sound familiar?

At the start of this week, one of the householders near the Mallerstang (which is very close to where Lambing Live was filmed last spring) rang asking if I had 270m of spare fibre or duct. I personally generally carry slightly less than this around in my pocket, so several unanswered calls later to suppliers and a chance conversation with Chris Conder (about where our lives were vanishing in helping solve problems for free when there are millions in the public purse to find solutions) tracked down some community owned armoured fibre. Within literally a few hours, that fibre had been purchased and was wending its way back to be laid in the ground within hours of that first call. No committees, no incomprehensible DEFRA forms, no negotiating with councils or BDUK, no State Aid concerns - just action. True JFDI, and the job is now done whilst the trench was open. Hours, not months or even years later.

On driving down the Mallerstang this evening, it became obvious how many of those disconnected properties are businesses, struggling like hell to survive off the natural tourist trail, far from services, on a road which I know from experience is often omitted from any gritting programme in winter, and yet who have created a diverse community with huge potential and initiative. The Digital Dales logo was created there by a brilliant graphic designer, there are B & Bs, holiday cottages, a company which makes cakes, an architect, forestry, and who knows what other exciting rural businesses. Oh yes, and farms. The lifeblood of rural communities.

What is being proposed for this and similar rural and remote communities to follow the unsuccessful wireless network and to regenerate this tiny but vital rural area? Well, until Rory Stewart and Tim Farron decided to throw their weight behind the rural mobile broadband need, it was satellite. In fact, it is only in the last few days and weeks that "hard to reach areas" in Cumbria even got a sniff at upgraded 3G and the 4G trials, and even now it seems that the pilot projects in Cumbria will be the first to benefit rather than those in most need like the Mallerstang, and the many similar valleys around rural England who currently have NOWT in the way of acceptable communications.

We all know that necessity is the mother of invention. We celebrate the Keep Calm and ... Bury Fibre mentality at every opportunity. Yet, we are failing to support the communities who can put this into action and create the reality which will change all of our lives. These communities can substantially reduce costs in fibre lay, and are willing to grant wayleave as long as the community retains ownership of that fibre and it is not gifted to some greedy corporate or similar who wishes to screw the community forever more. The benefits of community FTTH approaches are regularly and increasingly logged worldwide as THE SOLUTION. However, instead we would seem to prefer to create bureaucratic hurdles at every opportunity, hold infinite meetings, and relegate those furthest from civilisation and services to be "outsiders" for as long as possible.

Subjecting these people to the ignominy of being unable to access even the most basic of online services, let alone innovate and explore the potential of individuals, communities, businesses, is a cardinal and inexcusable sin that should cause sleepless nights (or, IMHO, far worse) throughout Westminster and every single 'corridor of power'. For the townies who think we all make lifestyle choices about where we live, these rural citizens have in many instances been residents for generations and are often as hefted ('heafed' or 'heughed' in my bit of the Dales) and are as vital to the well-being of the land as the sheep and walls and heather. Not transient but permanent. As old as t'hills, almost literally.

It is far beyond the time where thrifty communities and individuals should be allowed access to pots of money which telcos deem insufficient to even write a viability study or get out of bed for, let alone lay fibre and connect people, despite fast-growing proof that communities can JFDI with the money that is available, whilst telcos and local authorities simply cannot.


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Bringing Utopia to Eden

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Read more! WRITTEN BY GUY JARVIS: At the BDUK Industry Day last Thursday, potentially the most important announcement was, perhaps surprisingly, not the three market testing areas (quite what there is to test about the engineering and economics of FiWi deployment that is not already known is unclear - the challenge to date has been funding the build phase)


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

The most interesting announcement was the forthcoming Cumbria Conference to be held over the weekend of 18th/19th September in Penrith and hosted by Rory Stewart, newly-elected MP for Penrith and the Border.

The objective is bold and the timing is right:

The Government Coalition has a big idea, Building the Big Society, and one of the great things about broadband, that Rory and his team have begun to realise, is that it provides a focus for local communities to come together and bring about a common benefit, in the form of the 4th Utility.

The 4th Utility is shorthand for:

World Class - a moving and ever improving target - Kaizen is the key word, continuous gradual improvement

Killer cap is the killer app - eliminating the need to consider the availability of sufficient speed and quality of service is the definition of the 4th Utility.

A future proof telecommunications access infrastructure in the First Mile which makes concerns about network capacity are a thing of the past - speed becomes an irrelevance.

Communities at a Parish-by-Parish level should have the opportunity to make an informed choice of alternatives for how their 4th Utility is delivered and on what terms.

Building the Big Society

Is Building the Big Society an approach that will enable local communities to secure their Digital Futures?

Perhaps, so long as the process of localism, handing power to local communities to make their own decisions, is genuine.

The important point to understand is that the engineering and economic cost delivery models are finalised - the supply side of FttH and FiWi is settled.

And the proposition is simple.

If your community is ready to demand its world-class future-proof 4th utility then the economic model already exists for any capable service provider to seek to establish and deliver that service.

An interesting aspect of the CIC approach is the locking of the FttH assets so that they cannot be sold on to other than CIC alternative owners without the express direction of the CIC Regulator.

Governance is the long term determinant of the terms of trade balance, in other words, who owns the network determines the deal on offer to customers.

CIC is all about preventing the existence of divergent objectives, all about creating a positive nexus, a common set of interests, of shared purpose, between monopoly access supplier and local community of customers (digital consumers and creators both)

Best Value Taxpayer Funding

Where taxpayer funding for market testing projects misses the point is that it is promoting and rewarding a promise.

Better to derisk the proposition by rewarding delivery and look to standardisation not competition in access infrastructure and it is the governance structure that matters

Why does the Community Interest matter?

Such a valuable and natural monopoly as the 4th utility, a service that has an expected operational life at least equal to that of the copper wire metallic path telephone system i.e. the rest of this century, needs careful thought and informed action now to ensure the interests of present and future generations are foremost.

Better for a nexus between supplier and customer by design than allowing an adversarial relationship to emerge by doing nothing to challenge the telecoms status quo.

What is required to complete the 4th Utility jigsaw and realise world-class connectivity across the UK is for local communities to be positioned to make informed choices.

Choices about what happens after these new networks are built, how are they governed and in whose interests - shareholders, customers, both and if so in what proportion - do people come first or profits?

Provide each community champion with an information pack - can in a box - that identifies the actuality in their locality and the options available.

Regardless of our day jobs we are all 4th Utility customers

To maximise the benefits and compete globally, as customers, what matters, the test of success, is achieving the value for money at a price point that does not restrict accessibility for all.

This not to say that everyone must directly pay for service either.

There are transformational government services that may in themselves warrant providing 4th Utility access free at the point of use

When the savings on reduced transactional costs, e.g. on freeing up hospital space earlier by enabling independent living, outweigh the cost of access then it makes sense to provision that access free at the point of use.

This helpfully solves Martha's Race Online 2012 problem too.

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Taking FTTH/FTTB to the next level...

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It may be that there is a way to solve many problems in one fell swoop - FTTH, prime agricultural land becoming scarce, lack of green spaces in cities, the energy crisis, urban and rural regeneration, job creation, and no doubt more problems will come to light as we discuss this potential solution.

We all know that Korea, Hong Kong, etc have all, apparently, been able to solve universal FTTH purely because of multiple dwelling units. (We also all know that this is not **strictly** true!!) However, in Britain, we have a huge variety of problems, all of which universal FTTH could solve if we just got on with it.

What we need to do is not build high-speed railways (£14BN starting in 2017 vs FTTH £14BN finished in 2017) but build new farms in both towns and the countryside. Vertical farms. These could then help to re-populate the countryside, create thousands of new jobs, generate electricity, plus demand connectivity for telemetry - has that grass half way up got enough water? Also, this would keep DEFRA busy inspecting the number of tyres holding down the silage sheet on level 42 and whether the tags on every sheep and cow's ears on levels 18-30 are legible.

Especially for @cyberdoyle, here is a potential solution to the Final Third problem. Obviously, some thought is required to go into exactly which level her cows go on, and sheep, pigs, goats etc, but it seems that the current thought leader in all this, mainly because they have JFDI (or part of it), is right here in the UK, in Devon at Paignton Zoo

By creating multi-dwelling units in the towns and cities of UK, we could overcome the UK telcos' fears and give them MDUs to connect. Cows obviously need fibre in their daily diet (see photo) and Fibre To The Byre should help justify investment. Also, it would be simple to put 3G, LTE, wimax antennas on the structures, thereby building a wireless cloud over the surrounding area at the same time, and increasing the sadly minimal mobile coverage in rural areas.

There are several added bonuses to the technology neutral approach in that a byproduct of livestock farming, and one of the top causes of global warming/climate change, is of course methane, for which cows are regularly blamed. By a lucky coincidence, it would seem that methane is converted to hydrogen, acetylene and ethylene when subjected to continuous microwave radiation. This could then be stored and used to power the new hydrogen cell cars which we will need once the oil runs out. In addition, every farmer always needs to weld something so the acetylene should come in handy. There is also an increasing global demand for ethylene, so this should create a whole new industry sector within the UK.

This solution really could solve so many problems, surely?!


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New national broadband campaign “The Final Third First” is launched today (Thursday 4 March).

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Read more! The campaign - founded by a broad range of broadband organisations and champions of wider community interests - will lobby the Government to provide adequate and effective broadband access for the “Final Third” of the UK which currently lacks this vital infrastructure. The campaign will focus on ensuring that all those in the “Final Third” will be able to access Government online services by 2012 and then to facilitate the move towards next generation access.



Dr Charles Trotman of the CLA, who chaired the inaugural meeting, said: “The Government’s universal service commitment to provide broadband speeds of two megabits per second (Mbps) for all by 2012 will be hard to achieve. Those living in areas known as “the Final Third” still receive no proper access to broadband, putting them at a severe disadvantage. This campaign calls for faster action on the progress already made so that everyone can benefit from the Government’s increasing array of online services.”

Lloyd Felton, Director of County Broadband and founder of the rural communities self-help portal said:

"This will add significant weight to our efforts to connect Rural Communities, many of whom rightly claim to be more in need of better broadband than their urban counterparts".

Mike Kiely of www.BBBritain.co.uk said:

" No political party can be serious about transforming public service delivery unless the UK's high speed data transport infrastructure is available to all and capable of supporting key services predictably."

Aidan Paul, Chief Executive of Vtesse Networks and an active campaigner for the Final Third said

"Our own pilot projects (see www.vtesse.com/news.asp) are proving to us that with appropriate government attention to fibre rates and infrastructure sharing it would be possible to deliver super-fast broadband to the majority of final third residents and businesses. We welcome the additional focus that "The Final Third First" campaign will bring to the issue. One third of the population is a very large minority indeed and must not be forsaken by policy makers."

Christine Conder of Wray Community Communications (self funded Charity promoting the benefits of ICT to a rural community) said:

“Our best efforts are being undermined because the majority of the people around here can't get access to a decent broadband connection. We now represent and help well over 50 SMEs and over 500 homes and families who are struggling with dial up within a 12 mile radius of a city. Many are farmers and SMEs who need it for their business, and children who are getting detention because they can't download/upload homework. We fully support The Final Third First campaign.”

Guy Jarvis, Founder of NextGenUs UK CIC and CEO of FibreStream said:

“I am delighted to support the Final Third First campaign and believe that by focusing on this single political issue then those millions of our fellow citizens currently most Digitally Disadvantaged stand to reap the benefits of the coming 4th Utility, the eNdGAme of World-Class Digital FiWi Services. It is to be hoped that FTF campaign will also act as a driver for the Nation as a whole to swiftly attain and then maintain an enduring World leading telecommunications utility, fit for 21st century purpose, that puts people first.”

Glenn Peacey of Hampshire County Council said:

"Rural broadband is a key part of ensuring the long term economic and social viability of rural communities. Access to the internet enables rural communities to compete on an equal footing with urban centres, enabling smarter/flexible working from home which reduces the tendency towards dormitory villages, increases spending in local shops and pubs and reduces CO2 emissions and road congestion. High speed broadband also has a significant impact on social sustainability, not only does it enable residents to access leisure and media services which they would otherwise be excluded from or have to travel to consume, broadband also facilitates access to online education and learning resources which are so vital to today's school and university students."

Daniel Yates, Managing Director, Pitchup.com says “Without adequate broadband provision, rural businesses can't market themselves and engage with customers effectively in the increasingly important online environment. With online booking rates running at over 30%, smaller businesses in remote locations - including many that are vital to fostering UK tourism - are disadvantaged against larger companies.”

Neil Blake for Ewelme Parish Council, Oxon said:

“Public sector websites now take good access for granted. Those responsible should revert to dial-up for a month and watch their children flounder for their course-work, their businesses stagger, and their VAT, tax, social services and DVLA transactions revert to Royal Mail. That is the issue not 50 miles from Westminster. E-government is a good policy but its deployment is socially flawed.”

End

Notes to Editors

1. The founding members of The Final Third First Campaign are: Country Land and Business Association, Digital Dales, Neil Blake (Ewelme Parish Council), Wray Community Communications, Pitchup.com, Vtesse Networks, Rutland Telecom, Broadband Britain, County Broadband, Richard Hull (Chair 3-C Ltd and RATS Ltd), Bob Franklin (Teleconsulting.co.uk), Community Lincs.

2. If you wish to join the Final Third First campaign please contact Charles Trotman (charles.trotman@cla.org.uk)

3. For further information, please contact Charles Trotman on 0207 460 7939


Fiberevolution are also involved through Digital Dales and would ask that everyone shares the information about this new organisation to ensure maximum coverage for such a vital campaign.
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