Our NGA Vision is.....

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Read more! Calling grassroots activists and everyone with an idea about Digital Britain, USC delivery, nextgen broadband etc

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


There's a fab but constantly evolving doc doing the rounds that you might like to help make public. In the old days, it would have been called a chain letter.

There are 60 million people in this country who could spend money effectively on public services, so if you know how you would like to see £530M + spent on broadband, please get involved in the letter doing the rounds. Pass it on to your MP, councillors etc, at whatever point you see it.

Without a doubt, the best suggestion so far is that counties lay ducts in the roads and rent them out on a long term basis to fibre infrastructure suppliers. But many of the other ideas are great too!

If you see the doc on HTTP, post a link. It's currently under the radar and the last three times I have seen it in emails, it had changed radically from the previous attempts but it's getting way more exciting now....

If you are a councillor, please get in touch so we can try to get you one of the latest copies for your area.

I used to hate those chain letters, but this one gives me hope!







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And the bottleneck is where?

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Read more! If you read Jeremy's speech and the report, issued today but which ruined many of our Sundays in the community broadband world, you'd think the bottleneck was in the first mile. Especially financially.

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



The truth is though that any DVP (Digital Village Pump) can be gigabit to the home, as Ashby de la Launde has proven. The bottleneck is in the middle mile/backhaul. Worse still are the bottlenecks in the longhaul/core network which is now struggling and due to struggle ever more as we all get more thirsty for gigabuckets of bandwidth. And most of us can't even afford a decent backhaul out of our communities (i.e from our DVPs to t'interweb) because of so-called "market forces" setting prices few can afford to buy at.

So, if you put a 'digital hub' (our renamed DVPs) in to, say, a BT street cab, you've just put yourself into the prime position of facing an instant bottleneck.

If the Government, councils etc cannot work out that chucking money at BT to cause this problem is an immoral waste, they don't deserve their jobs.
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How do we develop NGA apps?

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Read more! Nick Turner of the News and Star live blogged the rural broadband conference and asked live questions on behalf of those who could not get tickets.
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com

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As I heard it, there was a question asked of Bill Murphy of BT: can developers have access to fibre? This is a massively important question. (However, looking at the live blog the question was actually: will BT or the national grid allow developers to piggyback on their infrastructure FOC?)

Let's go back to what I thought was asked. If you or I have never ever been on a symmetrical 1Gbps or even 100Mbps connection, then how can we comprehend and imagine the type of apps that will come into being when such connectivity and bandwidth is available? Where will tomorrow's apps come from in the UK if we can't play on such connectivity without either a) leaving the country to do so b) finding a business willing to let us play on their big fat pipe or c) spending thousands and thousands of pounds putting in a connection to do our R&D.

The UK has always been pretty good at innovation and we have of course led the world in many sectors because of our access to the right tools for the job. In this instance, very few people have access to the sorts of bandwidth that Korea etc have today in bedrooms across the country, so we are unable to innovate at all, let alone lead the world.
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The Autumn broadband conference

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Or....Why I live in t'middle of nowhere. I know it has confused some of you city types for nigh on 15 years why anyone would live where I do, but you are about to get the chance to understand. And, on top of the unmissable 2010 broadband conference, you have a chance to enjoy our rural, Northern hospitality at its best.

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

The tickets for the Penrith and Borders broadband conference are up for grabs in the next few days. But, why come up here just to listen or attend a conference? Come and enjoy our fantastic scenery (see pic - pls forgive grime and wipers as we rescued MOD folk from the Fells), partake of our lifestyle, share the warmth that reflects the hospitality in the Lake District, bring your Mrs/Mr, kids etc, and learn what it is that I and others have fought so hard to connect all these years.

Yes, it's a conference, but it's on a Saturday, and therefore you can make a weekend of it. This is without a doubt one of the most gorgeous parts of England - why go home in a hurry?!

We are happy, as Eden residents, to arrange Friday evening events in Penrith etc, and Sunday outings around our great outdoors. We would like you to come and enjoy this fabulous part of England, and are happy to make your time here with family, friends, colleagues over the weekend of the 18th Sept 2010 into a memorable occasion, far beyond broadband alone.

But if all you want to talk about is rural broadband,we can offer you a once in a lifetime trip with full colloquium opportunities, and the chance to present your solutions to the companies and communities ready to do so!

Book your family weekend away in September to the Eden Valley and the Lake District and see how life here really is. You won't ever see anything like this at a London conference - don't miss out!

If you need a deal for accommodation, travel etc, get in touch through this blog or Cumbria Tourist Board. Come and stay, you really won't ever regret it.

Check out our Big Society award winning photos and community plan
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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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What is NGA?

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Read more! Dispelling a few myths, this is an excerpt from an email thread we have permission to publish on this blog. This blog post can be read at http://5tth.blogspot.com

Barry Forde: Firstly what is NGA - "Well it has to be high speed symmetrical low latency capacity able to handle next generation applications such as HD, 3DHD and interactive video for gaming, tele-medicine and social interaction. Also probably more than one stream as most homes have more than one person in them and each is likely to want to do its own thing. Put that together and you need full duplex/symmetrical >50Mbs low contention capacity. I cannot see how FTTC, DOCIS, terrestrial wireless, satellite or data over power can deliver that, the only technology that has the range and bandwidth is fibre all the way. If we accept that fibre is the way then due to the way ethernet technology goes up in 10s you have either 10Mbs, 100Mbs or 1Gbs and of those only the higher two meet the NGA bandwidth requirements. So I'd say for NGA we need FTTP running either 100Mbs or 1Gbs back to the serving PoP.

What keeps happening is that we merge together the issue of NGA and the 2Mbs USC and get ourselves in a twist about which we are discussing. If we want to limit the public sector investment to only deliver 2Mbs then that's fine and dandy but lets not refer to it as NGA, it isn't. I think there is a genuine desire to make sure the 2Mbs USC is delivered in a timely manner and to everyone. However what the NWDA, BDUK and everyone else also realises is that any investment in USC that cannot then be reused for NGA is wasted money. We get one bite at this cherry and we had better make it work or the window of opportunity will shut for quite a while. Government will believe it has solved the problem for the rural areas and will not want to listen to people telling it that hundreds of millions have been spent but by the way we need to do it all again as its no longer fit for purpose.

So coming back to your delivery via FTTC, Wireless, Satellite etc these may have a part to play in the USC delivery. However I believe that public funds should only be used for the parts of project that do put real fibre in the ground and can therefore be reused when moving to NGA. For instance getting fibre to PoPs in the rural areas but letting the local community fund the final delivery via wireless is fine. Putting public money into the wireless side is not. Similarly getting fibre to the cabinet is fine, funding VDSL2 for final/first mile is not etc. etc.

How do we deliver USC 2Mbs under this sort of regime? Well I think if you can get high capacity pipes into local communities which can be used to provide low cost middle mile connectivity/backhaul then lots of options open up for the first/last mile connections. If communities wish to bid for funding for using fibre in an FTTP style roll out then that's eligible for support but because the total cost is high they might well have to contribute something for the local bit.( Note their contribution might be money but equally it can be things such as donating wayleaves and free/cheap labour doing duct digs or fibre installation). If on the other hand they want to take an interim position and roll out USC only then a low cost wireless/WiMax or possibly Data over power rollout is a runner. Its down to them to make the decision.

If the local community doesn't want to get involved at all then what? Well if we have funded fibre to the community then Openreach or anyone else can make use of it to do an FTTC via sub-loop unbundling or anything else they want to do. I think there are likely to be small start up ISPs who could make a living filling that space.

So to summarise I think public sector funding should only be made available for the areas that are unlikely to get NGA in a reasonable time frame otherwise (2015?). It should only be used to support fibre laying projects and finally it should mandate a delivery speed of no less than 100Mbs symmetrical. Where public sector money is targeted at USC delivery only then it should again mandate that the funding can only be used for the portions of the build that result in pure fibre installation."

reply by Miles Mandelson:
"That’s the clearest exposition of NGA and the role of public funding I’ve seen yet and, setting aside matters of self-interest, is nigh-on impossible to take issue with. However in small communities such as my own, the cost differential between FTTP and high-performance wireless (for example) is so great that, while the latter is affordable and therefore very tempting, the former feels almost completely out of reach. Accordingly, in trying to make progress locally, I find myself making compromises as regards performance in order to bring advancement into the realms of affordability and, in doing so, bending the definition of NGA to make a case for funding.

So to adhere to the principles you have set out, we need to find more ingenious (and affordable) ways of delivering FTTP in sparsely populated rural communities over long distances and across challenging terrain".

Barry's reply:
"I dont think anything I said would prove problematical to somewhere like Gxx. My thoughts were that when looking at any area with a view to rolling out FTTP there would be an analysis of the geography, distribution of premises and number of premises. From that would come an indication of what the cost would be for full FTTP rollout via a standard commercial contract. From that would flow the idea of the degree of subsidy needed for that particular community. Somewhere very difficult/expensive to connect would be eligible for higher subsidy than one that's easier/cheaper to do. I envisage the subsidy reflecting the difficulty of rollout. So the contribution from people within the community would remain broadly constant across community types. I would expect any attempt to roll out the USC 2Mbs to be subject to the same analysis and the equations to line up with each other.
In the case of Gxxx if we could deliver a centrally funded fibre into the village with a 1/10GbE backhaul, charged at a nominal fee, linking back to an Internet exchange where you could get metro Internet Transit pricing you would have quite a bit of your isolation removed. From the PoP in the Village you might well go for a quick and cheap WiMax solution and that's fine. As users wanted more then the move to putting in a fibre at a time to their premises or getting them to club together to service clusters is quite on the cards. So long as there was no subsidy for the wimax bit it would be perfectly OK for them to request subsidy for that last mile bit as and when they were ready to do it."

(this was an excerpt from an email thread we have permission to publish on this blog.
The discussion can continue in the comments if anyone has anything they wish to add ...)

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Rural NGA pilots get major support

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A hearty cheer is to be heard in the North West of the UK today as the recipients of the RDPE funding through the NWDA are announced.

Even though I am from Yorkshire, I can only feel massive pleasure to hear that the £750k RDPE funding has been awarded to two projects in Lancashire which have been of huge personal interest to me. It really could not have been a better decision on the part of the NWDA and they deserve a pat on the back for getting it right.

What we will see now is the delivery of NGA pilots which show exactly how this country can deliver forward-thinking Next Generation Access into deeply rural areas using existing infrastructure, joined up thinking, fibre, already successful projects, and the huge experience that has been hard won over the years to be able to do this.

Congratulations to Lancaster City Council, Abbeystead, Wennington, Barry Forde, Chris Conder and the many others who have given so much to achieve this. HOORAY! I can't wait to write Part 2 of the book ;o)
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Dear JON letter?

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Read more! Posted by Guy Jarvis: Interesting post from Adrian Wooster of CBN that leaves as many questions unanswered as it offers concerning the "JON" concept -

Comment posted as follows:


Adrian,

To summarise your thinking into a single sentence then -

Public Sector pays a per home VLAN (de facto partial cost underpinning of overall connectivity provision) and this encourages the market to build out Next generation Access networks?

The idea has merit, so long as the principles of the open market apply and that said Public Sector order is not simply bundled into a single national or regional package, otherwise that would have the unintended consequence of market distortion.

Quite how this relates to any need for the deliberate creation of a wholesale market for connectivity (beyond what is available already today in the UK) is unclear and I'm sure many of your readers will be interested to hear more details from you.


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Where is the NGA data set?

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Read more! AKA how poor are our govt departments with handling data enquiries?! OK, BIS announce a new report on risk assessment for NGA prepared by Analysys Mason, which is essential reading. But take a couple of Valium first as you will undoubtedly hit the roof at some of the myth perpetuation ongoing in it...

The press release sends you to a variety of sites - Communities and Local Government where you can finally, with some searching, find the report. Within the report is a reference to the data set used to formulate the outputs in an Excel file. Back to the Communities site to look for it - nope. Nothing. Try the BIS site for a reference or link - nothing. Go to data.gov.uk - nothing. Try the ESD Toolkit - nothing. (Or am I just too impatient to search through multiple, intricate layers of non-user friendly websites when the search boxes fail to reveal anything of use for multiple related search terms?)

Reach for phone. Communities and Local Govt know nothing about said report and certainly don't know about an Excel file. In fact, when someone says, "Next Generation.......??" you know you are probably on a hiding to nothing. They send you to publications who know nothing and send you back to the switchboard. They recommend phoning DCMS and BIS. And nicely give you the phone numbers. My long distance call charges are stacking up now....still no luck. When will people spend time and money on educating receptionists so they know who to refer you to?

Phone Analysys Mason in desperation. "We'll ring you back. The person who may know is in a meeting."

So much for the immediacy of e-government. Start preparing the carrier pigeon and the fire for smoke signals......

I'll post on the report shortly when I have calmed down a little at the inadequacies of our civil servants and e-gov!

UPDATE: Hooray for Analysys Mason returning calls. But now we need to wait and see when the data might actually be available from Govt.....
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Govt consultation on NGA Fund & travel plans

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Read more! Berr have announced a consultation into the spend of the NGA Fund to be responded to by April 1st 2010.

Is there really likely to be market failure which will require public sector funding? And if so, where should the emphasis be on first spend of the money? In an attempt to find some answers, I am leaving tonight to go and join a group of community, rural Fibrevolutionaries from across the States in Utah for a mini conference.

I hope to discover first hand how the subsidies in the U.S. are throwing up potentially similar problems for rural NGA initiatives, and how the rural fibre difficulties have already been solved by some amazing community projects out there.

There are also plans to see first hand round a couple of fibre projects, including Utopia, which has, for me at least, been a project on the radar for a very long time. I am really looking forward to seeing round it and speaking to people who enjoy first rate NGA connectivity today. I will also be talking to some of the foremost experts who are watching with interest how FTTH develops in the UK, and who, it seems, may have some answers to the questions people like me have about how we JFDI anyway, with or without government intervention.

I hope that I will be able to report back during my trip, so watch this space. I will be happy to talk to anyone interested about what I have learned on my return - the usual exorbitant speaker fees apply!


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Bedtime reading - 3 Ofcom NGA reports

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Image via Wikipedia

Ofcom have recently released three new reports for you to peruse over the Xmas hols.

The first - Competitive Models in GPON by Analysys Mason - looks at the financials surrounding GPON tech in the UK. The reasoning behind the report is that

Ofcom wishes to understand whether a regulated GPON unbundling requirement would prove effective in supporting competition on GPON fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, such as those being proposed by BT.

The second - GPON Market Review by Analysys Mason - looks at the current GPON market, and includes case studies from several countries.

The third - BtB Interfaces by CSMG - looks at the importance of (future) Business to Business requirements and hence impact on competition, possible bottlenecks, cost restrictions, and Open Reach's Equivalence Management Platform (EMP).

That should keep you busy for a day or so. All comments more than welcome to stimulate the debate.

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Getting it and saying it with flowers

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Read more! Lots of people get it. The vision of NGA, the benefits, purpose, reasons, ways to achieve it, JFDI and so on. And some really don't...

Sadly, those that don't appear to get it seem to include those who really, really need to get it. These include people in government, MPs, ministers, govt departments, consultants and agencies employed by govt departments, RDAs, quangos set up to deliver on IT and Digital Britain targets, journalists, the health service, councils, housing developers, education chiefs, teachers, communities, consumers, planning agencies, public figures...I know you don't want me to go on. However, I will say that all of the above, luckily, also include people who do get it.

But, this last week, when we saw possibly as much, if not more, lunacy coming from government about P2P, filesharing, disconnecting people from the internet (is this ***really*** 21st century Britain pushing this type of logic?) as any nation needs to in a DECADE, I saw the most crass and stupid statement of the lot.

Just for once, and only under severe pressure, I will withhold the name and organisation involved, but let me tell you I am sitting here with a 1s and 0s gun to my head (not good for a pacifist) in order to keep anger and utter frustration at bay. This is an organisation who are (or would love to be) at the very forefront of delivering NGA to the UK and who claim to get it. Do they? Well, read on.

When a teleconferencing solution was suggested for a meeting, to avoid unnecessary travel from all ends of the country and to ensure everyone who needed to could attend and had the choice to either be there in person or by video conferencing - and hell, that's not easy in this country over the network (transport or data) most of us have access to - the person responding to the final meeting date, times, venue etc said,

"I would prefer to have a real meeting with people present."

This reminds me of James May's entry to the Royal Horticultural Show at Chelsea Flower Show (pick any link you like) this year. The RHS judges took exception to the fact that there were no flowers used. NO FLOWERS???!!! Take a good look around, my lovelies. There are hundreds of flowers.

Just as being made of plasticine didn't suddenly stop those beautiful fritallaries (thanks, Joanna Lumley!!) being flowers, neither does being at the other end of a telephone line or webcam suddenly convert you into a non-person or make it an 'unreal meeting'.

To say I am furious at the incapacity of people to realise where this world has already moved on to - we will all talk on Xmas Day undoubtedly over Skype and/or new ThxSanta webcams to family and friends worldwide, gleefully sharing the fact it is free - so zillions of people already endeavour (me included) to conduct our business and lives on a daily basis over this 'ere new-fangled technology. And have been doing in some cases for well over 10 years. (Ok, you got about 4 frames an hour, but it was novel back then!)

Unless those claiming to be at the forefront of delivering NGA and educating the masses (and I include MPs, journos, and you, you and you in that grouping) get it FAST, this country is going to be left...yes, Dad, I promise I won't swear....... BLOOMING (get the reference?!) light years behind.

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National Infrastructure Investment Bank

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Read more! The Institute of Civil Engineers has been pushing for a National Infrastructure Investment Bank. This idea gained some traction at the Labour Party Conference in September, and is picking up speed elsewhere. The sad bit is...

no-one seems to have thought about including NGA in the proposal. Yet, that is clearly infrastructure, will create thousands and thousands of jobs, and could be one of the key factors to turn this nation around, socially and economically. Read more!

Fibre Switchover

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Read more! OK, the digital switchover is ongoing so let's move on and start planning the next one - the fibre switchover. No reason for it to be region by region, as the telecoms network isn't structured in the same way as the TV one. And there is already work out there, by Point Topic et al, about when NGA should come to you on which to base our work on the Fibre Switchover. However, there are different ways to look at this switchover that need addressing......

(More discussion on the Grassroots Digital Britain wave.)

The credit for the instigation of the 'fibre switchover' term and discussion must go to Briantist

What are the issues? How do you feel we should proceed to the fibre switchover? What models are the right ones for this country? For your village/town/region?

Which are the most important issues for NGA?

(Oh for Google Wave with a Yes/No/Maybe tool!!)
Open
Symmetry
Fat pipe to each user
Ownership model (private, CIC, co-op, public)
Sustainability
Social capital repayment vs fiscal capital repayment
OTHERS - please contribute your thoughts







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Get the old gen and the nextgen involved

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Read more! Geoff Daily has made a valid point on AppRising about communities aggregating demand for themselves.

It is the school holidays. Every single community in the UK has a bunch of kids who are bored - most households have 1 or 2!

My two have been out and about doing surveys for Geography and Citizenship recently, and are more than capable of getting out into our community, explaining the benefits of true broadband, (after all, it's been the most talked about topic in our house since they were born!), and establishing who needs what in our community.

In addition, we all know the population of the UK is ageing, so every community has the 'oldgen' who have time on their hands, have all sorts of useful skills that could be used to help each community move forwards, aggregate demand, educate other users in the community about the uses of IT and broadband etc.

By involving both the young and old in this task, communities can begin to establish what is required now, what may be required in the future, and also cement ties within their own circles to people they may not have known were their neighbours.

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Treating consumers well as we move forward

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Read more! One of the major problems in identifying notspots, resolving ISP issues, delivering first gen broadband, and regulating/advising what is required has been the lack of a centralised 'hub' for consumers....

Those of us who get to deal with irate and frustrated broadband customers every single day are seeing a growing number of people whose complaints, technical problems and so on are just not getting dealt with in a "timely fashion", particularly by the major ISPs. This is causing major heartache, economic problems (eg when the connection is to a small, home-run business), and stress. Often, people just don't know where to turn for help and are frequently paying for a connection which, quite simply, doesn't work.

Sometimes, Ofcom, ASA and others endeavour to step in and make the ISPs and telcos behave properly, but for some reason our telcos seem to believe that they can get away with appalling consumer/customer relationship management and customer service, regularly hiding behind arguments such as "the phone works so we aren't obliged to do anything more", (twice this week so far from people I am trying to help) and Ofcom occasionally, (I use that word advisedly) seem to have forgotten their remit.

Ofcom's Statutory Duties
Under the Communications Act 2003:

" 3(1) It shall be the principal duty of Ofcom, in carrying out their functions;
(a) to further the interests of citizens in relation to communications matters; and
(b) to further the interests of consumers in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition"

(NB. No mention of putting industry first there.)

What the consumers and citizens require is simple.

When there is a problem with a broadband connection, that complaint needs to go not just to the ISP (who in many instances it is bordering on impossible to get a straight answer from, and who can drag problems out for months, if not longer, especially bouncing it back and forth between BT and themselves), but ALSO to a central hub which:

• records the issue


• allows there to be transparency, openness, honesty between ISPs and consumers


• helps consumers see whether there is possibly a technical issue in their area, with their ISP etc


• offers the chance for the many helpful people out there to step in to assist broadband users with problems.

Let's use a fab consumer/citizen resource as an example WhatDoTheyKnow

MySociety have done a great job with this for Freedom of Information requests, and it is held up as an exemplar, as with many of their other tools and resources.

Now, Ofcom should employ them to do the same for telecoms services, consumers, and providers.

How it could work:

You have a complaint about your broadband, you go to the site, pick your ISP, and then choose one of the templates available to submit your problem. All personal information is redacted from the system, although town/county or first 4-5 digits of postcode would help others in your vicinity search on known problems and solutions, which could actually reduce complaints over time.

The complaint is then submitted to the ISP complaints department. The ISP complaints department responds, hopefully with a solution, through the website. If they are a reseller of BT Wholesale services and pass the buck to BT, that process is done automatically, but transparently within the system. If, within a certain time limit, as with FOI requests, no solution has been forthcoming, then we move to the next stage, which is of course the ADR (Alternate Dispute resolution) scheme.

The endgame of this is to help ISPs serve their customers well, and to help customers get a decent, transparent complaints procedure that works. And then get their broadband back!

The benefits of this are, and I can think of many more:

* If the system flashes up an alert that 20 people in the same area but on different ISPS are all having problems, then BT can be persuaded, forced, cajoled (pick a word) by Ofcom to deal with the issue in that area. Or another service provider can step in and replace BT by installing an alternative broadband solution - whether that is FTTH, FTTC, satellite or wireless.

*If one particular ISP is seen to be the repeated recipient of complaints, then Ofcom can step in to ask the ISP what the problem is and how it can be solved.

*Customers planning to move can review ISP complaints on the site and make informed choices about which ISP to go with based on how they deal with their existing customers.

*If people report that despite numerous efforts to get broadband, they are still no closer to getting it, (and we have people in our inboxes who have been waiting YEARS in notspots) then this will help feed into the demand base for NGA and prove the need for investment.

*There is a clear "paper trail" for all consumers and ISPs, eliminating any misunderstandings and getting problems out in the open so they can be dealt with before issues escalate out of control.

* ISPs will be able to clearly monitor where their customer service is working, or not.

* This system will fill the gap now, and far into the future, for present and next generation consumers to be protected from poor customer service and substandard broadband connectivity, whilst protecting ISPs from serial complainers in forums, on Twitter etc.

*UPDATE: This article about customer retention and wasting marketing millions shows why telcos need to focus on customers in such a way as suggested

Need I say more? Just....you heard it here first!
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"Worst is first" FTTH call from Ofcom

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Read more! Anna Bradley (Ofcom Consumer Panel) reiterates what she said, with Ashley Highfield (BBC) and others, at the BSG conference.

The broadband have-nots should leapfrog everyone else in getting FTTH / NGA.

Hearty applause from me, and undoubtedly many, many others who have struggled to be heard for so long. We have been saying this for over a decade now, since long before broadband became a household word, ADSL trigger levels and so on. Our Notspot report in 2005 also generated more than enough evidence to show this was required, economically for rural business and public sector service provision, and socially.

As a consumer of this pathetic service our dear regulator and incumbent(s) are apparently legitimately allowed to call "broadband" (to many consumers' disgust), I hope we will now see advances towards resolving a problem of national import, and which is having dire social and economic impact.

If anyone has any doubts about this 'worst is first' theory (with compliments to Sagentia for coining the term), I strongly urge you to pick up the JFDI Community Broadband books. I didn't write them alone. They are the words and experiences of communities who put their own first gen broadband in place, where the telcos refused to tread for precisely the same reasons they are citing now for not doing FTTH / NGA, and clearly illustrate why FTTH / NGA is required in rural areas FIRST.

NOT FTTC, let's make that clear. FTTC is NOT, and never will be, NGA.

The copper in rural areas is, in many cases, aged, appalling or aluminium. For FTTH / NGA purposes, it is entirely obsolete, useless, and better value sold on the open market, as Peter Cochrane first suggested way back when. The first hint of rain and our supposed broadband connections can and do dither at less than dial up speeds. There are many who don't even have this privilege though - I can introduce you to hundreds, if not thousands of them, who haunt my inbox.

There should be no concessions made to keep the copper in the first mile, whatsoever.

Whatever the cost to whomsoever does the copper replacement for rural FTTH, it is as nothing to the benefits to be reaped bringing "health, wealth and learning" opportunities across the digital divide. And hence the economic benefit to UK PLC.

Those of us behind Community FTTH, 5TTH and FiWi Pie are within an ace of making announcements about sustainable "Worst is First" broadband development and opportunities. Thank you, Anna. Your timing is impeccable!

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Mother of all definitions

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Read more! Sussed it! If it is 'fibre outside, copper inside' you can call it next generation. Otherwise.... call it by its name. FTTC, ADSL2+, co-ax etc.

The next generation is fibre outside, copper inside, and no more BS is permitted. All telco marketers hereby take note. Us consumers are not up for being 'conned', treat us as halfway intelligent please ;o) and Ofcon, reinforce it. Tis so simple a code of practice.... Read more!

NGA - definition thereof

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Read more! Before this gets any worse, we (consumers, industry and regulators) need a true definition of next generation broadband to avoid confusion. We have been here before, and still are, with ADSL etc.



We started talking about Next Generation Broadband, meaning FTTH. There is no other end game, and there is no intermediate stage that can be called 'Next Generation'. In the 1980s broadband meant 2Mbps symmetrical, or higher. We have allowed that definition to be watered down whilst the assets are sweated. We should not permit this again.

With ADSL, Broadband 1.0, we have had growing consumer confusion with 'up to' speeds meaning very little in actuality, "unlimited downloads" actually meaning "limited" (Fair Usage Policy applies), co-ax = fibre, and so on.

BT split next gen into NGN (21CN/middle mile) and NGA (first mile), mainly, it seems, because of the split of BT into Wholesale and Open Reach.

Today's announcement is continuing the trend of lies, lies, damned lies, and it is time to ensure that broadband 2.0 next generation broadband is clearly (and honestly) defined.

Next Generation Broadband needs to be called by its real name - FTTH. It is not FTTC, and it does not include in any way copper, nor the last generation network. Ergo, ADSL2+ is not Next Gen. Nor is co-ax.

Next Generation is symmetrical.

Next Generation is 100Mbps, MINIMUM, not some increment of that. It is 100Mbps or more constantly, not in bursts 'up to' 100 Mbps.

Next Generation is not ISDN (the 120,000 business properties BT today has claimed to have fibred - correct me if wrong).

Adopting this definition would mean clarity for regulators, the Advertising Standards Agency, consumers, businesses, industry, media, OECD, investors etc. It would allow true comparisons of global broadband penetration, usage, competitiveness and deployment.

If it isn't next generation broadband then it must not be called it. Next Generation Access is not ADSL2+ and to even begin by calling FTTC and therefore the use of copper in the first mile as next generation is totally irresponsible, should be illegal, and denounced at every turn.









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