British Telecom are now touching Scotland and Wales with their fibre-based next-generation-broadband services.
These will use a combination of fibre-to-the-cabinet and fibre-to-the-home deployment setups depending on the location. They wanted to have 34 exchanges in Scotland and 16 exchanges in Wales fibre-ready by 2012 with two thirds of UK premises passed by their fibre-optic network by 2014. This is part of their bid for the latest round of Broadband Delivery UK funding.
How I see it is that the upgrades are happening in the face of various local-focused rural-broadband-enrichment activity that is taking place through various parts of rural UK. In some cases, it could lead to the creation of competitive next-generation broadband like what is occurring in France where providers can compete on an infrastructure level. It may then put BT “on notice” about the pricing and quality of their service as far as consumers and retail Internet providers are concerned due to the availability of this competing Internet infrastructure.
At least these kind of rollouts could then allow for vibrant competition in Internet service delivery in the UK.
After I had reviewed this article about the apparent increase in fibre-to-the-home next-generation Internet subscribers, I had noticed a few key facts.
The areas where there was the FTTH activity taking place were France’s major cities, but where there has been local initiative taking place concerning real-broadband or next-generation Internet, there has been the activity.
A good question to ask is whether there is immediate takeup of FTTH next-generation Internet as soon as customers know that the service is passing their door? For the apartment buildings and other multi-tenancy buildings, there may be issues concerning the rollout within the buildings as agreements are struck with landlords and building-management associations (body corporates).
I would also find that the competitive-service measures such as “multifibre” (each provider maintaining fibre infrastructure to the customer” and “monofibre” (infrastructure shared by multiple providers) allows more customers to choose value for money for their triple-play Internet needs.
I have previous covered the arrival of fibre-to-the-home broadband at Hambleton, a village in Rutland in the United Kingdom courtesy of Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom.
This included doing a Skype-based telephone interview on this network. Now I have seen and provided this video which exemplifies the benefit of this real broadband Internet service to this village.
An example of this was the Finch’s Arms pub which had experienced a different from of trade that a “local” wouldn’t experience. They had installed a Wi-Fi hotspot and there has been more through the till for them due to this broadband service. They also acquired more of the business traffic again due to the high-speed Internet traffic,
Of course, there was a change of life brought about buy the provision of this fibre-optic network with the city-style Internet service being exposed to these residents. Some were even achieving reliable Skype videoconferencing sessions with distant relatives while others were making telecommuting more feasible.
From what I have seen, this is an example of what can be done to enable a village or small country town with real Internet.
In rural France, a département at a time for real Internet
Previously I have mentioned about Gironde being the location of a département-wide fibre-optic backbone rollout with an intention to reduce the digital divide that existed in that area. Now the rollout is underway with positive results coming through in that goal.
What is happening in Gironde
The fibre-optic trunks will allow more ADSL equipment to be in place thus enabling 7600 households who couldn’t to have Internet and 35000 more dial-up-modem or low-broadband households to have real proper broadband speeds.
There is public money involved with a public-private partnership with Orange. But the Gironde local government will persist on the project making sure real Internet service passes more households.
Delay with Bordeaux
But it is not all rosy at the moment. Bordeaux, the main economy in that area is being put back while the rest of the département is being covered with fibre-optic. Part of this is a presumption that there is full ADSL coverage in that city, but Bordeaux could benefit from next-gen broadband as much as anywhere else.
A main limitations is the competence of the bureaucracy concerning Bordeaux’s Internet rollout and this exposes the city to a two-tier risk as far as Internet service is concerned. This can be demonstrable with outer-urban growth corridors or resort spots that exist around the town. It can also extend to areas that may house lower socioeconomic classes But they hope to have Bordeaux covered with fibre-optic next-generation Internet by 2013.
Conclusion
In some countries, it may take a local-government area or a regional-government area to focus on Internet-enabling that area and it may have to be a public effort.
I have previously covered the Hambleton fibre-to-the-premises broadband network on HomeNetworking01.info in a few articles on rural broadband as well as an interview with Matthew Hare from Gigaclear. Here, I used this network and the Lyddington fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) network as examples of enabling rural communities with this new technology for real broadband Internet.
Now Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom have “switched on” the Hambleton FTTH/FTTP fibre network which currently services two thirds of the properties in this village to full revenue service.
One main driver for this FTTH was Hambleton Hotel & Restaurant. They were wanting a high-grade internet service for their business guests who would be paying a premium to stay at this hotel. So they approached Rutland Telecom about establishing a broadband Internet service that would suit proper business needs and this is how this service came about. This hotel and another hospitality business in Hambleton have cottoned on to this broadband network as a way of providing real broadband as a value-added service to their guests.
In other ways, this has also been seen as a real investment in to this rural village by making it have real next-generation broadband. Who knows what it could lead to for the growth of Hambleton.
In response to the latest news that has happened with Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom in relation to the Hambleton fibre-to-the-premises rollout, I offered to organise an email exchange with a representative from this company about this broadband access network.
Matthew Hare replied to my email offering to do a short Skype-based telephone interview rather than an email interview. This allowed him and I to talk more freely about the Hambleton and Lyddington rollouts which I have been covering in HomeNetworking01.info .
Real interest in rural-broadband improvements
There are the usual naysayers who would doubt that country-village residents would not need real broadband, and I have heard these arguments through the planning and execution of Australia’s National Broadband Network.
But what Matthew had told me through this interview would prove them wrong. In the Lyddington VDSL-based fibre-to-the-cabinet rollout, a third of the village had become paying subscribers to this service at the time of publication. In the Hambleton fibre-to-the-premises rollout, two-thirds of that village had “pre-contracted” to that service. This means that they had signed agreements to have the service installed and commissioned on their premises and have paid deposits towards its provision.
Satisfying the business reality
Both towns have hospitality businesses, in the form of hotels, pubs and restaurants that need real broadband. For example, Matthew cited a large “country-house” hotel in Hambleton that appeals to business traffic and this hotel would be on a better footing with this market if they can provide Wi-Fi Internet service to their guests. Similarly, these businesses would benefit from improved innovative cloud-based software that would require a proper Internet connection.
As well, most of the households in these villages do some sort of income-generating work from their homes. This can be in the form of telecommuting to one’s employer or simply running a business from home.
The reality of a proper Internet service for business was demonstrated through the Skype call session with Matthew. Here, the Skype session died during the interview and when he came back on, he told me that the fault occurred at his end. He mentioned that he was working from home at another village that had the second-rate Internet service and affirmed the need for a proper broadband service that can handle the traffic and allow you to be competitive in business.
A commercial effort in a competitive market
Matthew also underlined the fact that this activity is a proper commercial venture rather than the philanthropic effort that besets most other rural-broadband efforts. He also highlighted that there were other rural-broadband improvements occurring around the UK, including the BT Openreach deployments. and this wasn’t the only one to think of.
But what I would see is that an Internet market that is operating under a government-assured pro-consumer pro-competition business mandate is a breeding ground for service improvement, especially when it comes to rural Internet service.
Conclusion
From what Matthew Hare had said to me through the Skype telephone interview, there is a real and probable reason why the countryside shouldn’t miss out on the broadband Internet that city dwellers take for granted.
There has been previous coverage about Rutland Telecom establishing fibre-optic next-generation broadband in Hambleton, Leicestershire in the UK. Now Gigaclear are in the throes of laying down the fibre-optic infrastructure for the next-generation broadband.
The Hambleton network has been financed through private investors in the Hambleton village. Here, they would want to see a triple return in the form of financial growth, community togetherness and a real next-generation Internet service.
Of course, Rutland Telecom will be the main service provider for this town’s next-generation broadband service even though it is part of Gigaclear. The service is intended to be online in October 2011.
Significant features will include VoIP telephony and 50Mbps headline speed for the service. As well, the router, which will be an optical-network terminal will have 300Mbps dual-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch. This also includes a future proof software design that supports IPv6 networks, which I think are the way to go for next-generation broadband. Rutland Telecom could offer as an alternative an optical-network terminal that connects up to user-supplied broadband routers, which would be required for Wi-Fi hotspots that have advanced user control.
GigaClear and Rutland Telecom have higher expectations with a “fat pipe” data link between Hambleton and London as well as streaming of high-definition television in to this neighbourhood during the 2012 Olympics.
What I have liked about this development and the Lyddington development is that they have become a catalyst for villages and towns across the UK wanting to achieve real broadband Internet on a par with the cities.
Gironde, a département in the south West of France, known as one of France’s key wine districts is doing major works to improve broadband coverage across its area.
Here, they have laid 1,060 kilometres of fibre-optic cable to produce a backbone for this service and are at the moment running it through the necessary tests. This network will provide 83 districts and 168 public buildings in this département with fibre-to-the-premises next-generation broadband.
This network will also be about making sure that an ADSL2 service capable of at least 2Mbps “at the door” will pass 99% of all households in Gironde. The remainder that cannot achieve this speed will have access to a two-way satellite connection, It will also support the competitive service provisioning that has kept the French Internet scene very lively and put a high-value Internet service in to the hands of most, if not all, French people.
This has been funded by Gironde’s local government with private input from France-Télécom (Orange). This local government is also using it as part of rolling out an improved online presence including the gradual provisioning of e-government facilities for its citizens.
I would encourage other countries to look at what the UK and France are doing for their next-generation broadband services because these countries have implemented strong mechanisms to assure a lively Internet-service marketplace. This includes technological and regulatory measures that have been put in place and the encouragement of local government rather than central government in the service-establishment phase.
Another valiant effort is taking place to connect rural England to real broadband Internet. This time it is happening in Lancashire’s rural areas north of Lancaster.
This is being achieved through a community-benefit company called “B4RN” which stands for “Broadband for Rural North”. The service is a fibre-to-the-premises service that is being provided to homes, farms and small businesses in these rural parishes. They have a goal to cover all of the 5162 properties but are working it in three phases. This is with the digging of the first phase to commence around Christmas 2011 and the first subscribers on board by January 2012.
What is interesting is that the capital for the effort is being raised through a share issue to the community and that the company is established as a “community-benefit” company where the assets are there for the community rather than being sold off if anything happens to the company.
The effort for he broadband rollout is being driven through shared local labour. It doesn’t matter whether it is to dig the necessary trenches or lay down the conduit and fibre-optic cable in order to connect up the properties. There is even support for training and upskilling locals into these areas where necessary and even the business’s office labour is local-based. One of the videos on the B4RN site even related this effort to how mains electricity was brought to rural Lancashire in the 1930s, through the use of community effort in preparing the infrastructure for the service.
At the moment, B4RN are selling the 1Gbps broadband services for £30 / month tax inclusive and with a £150 connection fee. A good question that may be raised with this service is whether B4RN would be looking at supplying VoIP telephony and / or IPTV as part of an extra-cost option or primarily offer a “purely-data” service for their customers. This is although most next-generation services typically will be expected to offer a “single-pipe triple-play” service with TV and telephony down the same connection as part of their service pack.
This service is another example of how rural communities can become active about bringing real broadband Internet to their areas rather than bemoaning the lack of the service. It also put forward the case for use of fibre-optic technology to deliver broadband to farms rather than unreliable radio services.
This is a very interesting direction that will come about as the next-generation broadband Internet service evolves.
At the moment, a typical next-generation broadband service will be based around central-office exchanges that serve and support copper and fibre-optic infrastructure for all communications. This allows for integration with copper-technology services such as PSTN voice / ADSL data.
The newer fibre-only exchanges will operate on fibre-optic infrastructure only with Fibre Ethernet backhaul and FTTH / FTTP fibre-optic service to the customers. The primary advantage of this setup would be to achieve higher throughput for the data that the high-bandwidth technology would provide.
The BT Openreach trial is primarily focused on new exchanges rather than converting existing exchanges to fibre-only operation. It is to assess how much it would cost to switch to fibre-only operation for existing exchanges or go “all-out” fibre-only for new or replacement exchanges. Such a trial could also be used for “infill” exchanges in dense urban areas or to satisfy new developments in potential “Silicon-Valley” areas around universities.
A good question about these exchanges is whether a “fibre-only” exchange could work with a part-fibre part-copper setup like a VDSL2-based fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-building setup.
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