How others are doing rural connectivity

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Read more! Great quote: “For those who stay firm, there is commercial potential in rural connectivity too,” proclaims Ginguld. A social enterprise offering wireless broadband in northern India and the Himalayas is chucking up to 70Mbps at deeply rural communities with ingenuity and innovation.......
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Are we really going to be satisfied with connecting our own rural communities with 2Mbps? Or are we going to bite the bullet and keep up with remote and rural folk across the world in far more dire situations than our own?

If a project such as AirJaldi can create 20 local jobs, then that should be one of the criteria of any money spent in the UK too. Not just moving existing employees around the country to then claim that new employment has been created in the region, but real new jobs being created, running the networks, offering tech support, training the community etc to be self-supporting.

Shouldn't we, in reality, be embarrassed about how we are tackling the problem here? Why are we throwing such vast quantities of money to only achieve such minimal solutions as are being talked about on a daily basis now? The USC has always been the lowest bar you could possibly set, but where are the innovative pilots that BDUK promised to fund that we could be as proud of as those behind AirJaldi?

AirJaldi is more next gen than the connectivity the vast majority of the UK Final Third are going to enjoy this decade at the rate we are going.....

Read more about AirJaldi

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When wireless is the right choice....

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Read more! It was a bit hard to miss the meeting this week of the CEOs of the mobile industry with Lord Mandelson.

However, the discussions about spectrum allocation in order to deliver next gen seem to be misplaced. It is hard to see how the mobile wireless technology currently available or even on the cards can deliver what is required to get this country moving forwards to an equivalence of access already available in other countries with FTTH.

Wireless is the right technology to use to build a wireless cloud over the top of a fixed fibre network to give access when mobile ie on the move, in transit, not fixed etc. It is the right technology to use when technically it makes sense. eg why dig down that hill, through the river and up the other side to lay fibre when you can add in a single wireless link to do the job at a fraction of the price? There will be some (very few) pockets of this country where laying fibre makes no economical sense whatsoever, although over a 50 year lifetime one struggles to see how. But, even so, those places are few and far between when looking at the reality of what FTTH can do for everyone it connects and the social capital as well as the environmental savings. So, FiWi ie using Fibre to get as close to that isolated farmhouse as possible and then Wireless in the first mile where fibre cannot be done.

But those very few places who need that level of FiWi should not be accessing over a mobile dongle as we know now that many of the places who are most distant and remote do NOT get a mobile signal at present. We are not, surely, planning to intensify the mobile network coverage across the UK, with all the new masts, planning permissions, substations etc required to deliver mobile NGA to one or two of the most rural and remote areas? (There's enough hoohaa about wind turbines without putting yet more mobile masts up.)

How would that work financially? The truth is, it wouldn't. It is no more financially viable for a mobile operator to put in a mast to cover one area of remote peat moorland to connect an isolated farm than it is to dig fibre in or even to fibre up to the nearest street cab for FTTC.

Ergo, what is being planned is for a large percentage of that final third to be reliant on technology which cannot deliver what other nations term as next generation access. The bar is being deliberately lowered and we all know why, but are being treated as though we are too stupid to understand the issues.








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FiWi advances in EU

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Read more! The EU have got behind a proposal to use the digital dividend for wireless and mobile broadband.

I spoke in support of this particular use of the spectrum in January last year at the Oxford Media Convention. The panel was made up of those proposing the use by HDTV (BBC and DigiTv), mobile TV (O2) and wireless broadband, in particular for rural areas (me).

It is heartening to see, after how the panel went - it was a tough debate for my cause! that the EU have now supported this proposal. I am not claiming full credit for it, by any means, but it is rather an obvious choice for best use, rather than using the spectrum for TV services which are already amply provided for in other frequencies.

I must dig out the technical information I had acquired beforehand from those who know about TV broadcast spectrum and its limitations, and perhaps repeat the arguments here now they are so timely. That information meant I could argue the case about the feasibility of it on the panel, although there were some in question time who queried some of my assumptions and took me beyond my technical know how. That debate would be interesting to start again now...and verify the whys and wherefores of feasibility.

Not sure about the Wimax bit though.....there are proven techs that may prove more capable.
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