All this reminded me of something I heard a while back at last years Broadcast Evolution Summit in Cannes – a very good event but notable for the complete absence of any internet “broadcast” companies and a large number of traditional TV executive who were showing very real signs that they didn’t really get what was about to happen to them.

At the Summit, it was pointed out that it took something like half-a-century before a car had stopped looking like horse-drawn carriage. Similarly, early TV’s often looked like some odd amalgam of sitting room furniture and a radiogram; it then took another generation to pass before colour was added; and another until HD was added.

But now TV has joined the internet; a medium that evolves in months a years rather than years and decades, and its notable that its the Internet pioneers that are making the early ground, not TV stalwarts.

I’ll give you an example. At the Summit there was lots of talk about linear and non-linear TV:

• Linear is the way we watch broadcast TV, where there is a constant stream flowing past us and we have a simple binary choice to watch it or not.
• Non-linear is recorded TV where we dip into a pool of content and choose what to watch and the order in which we watch it; this is what happens when we record stuff on our PVR, visit YouTube, drop by Mubi, install Boxee, go to Witney.TV or use the iPlayer catch-up services.

This list is long and that’s because just about all of the innovation is being made by non-linear companies and the distinction they are making with linear models is rapidly eroding.

At the Summit I reminded the audience that at a gigabit it was possible to download an HD movie in a lot less than 30-seconds. Puzzlement! Why do I care?

That’s less time than it takes to broadcast an ad – while you are watching the ad, your next HD programme will be streamed to your box; the choice of programming could be pre-booked by you or it could be carefully selected by a cloud service that collects meta-data from your previous watching patterns, taking in Last.FM’s Love/Hate buttons, and your social media connections, linking you to your communities of interest.

Today the concept of “Spotify for HD TV” is well within grasp – Love Film has launched the first steps towards it, and with Amazon’s cloud infrastructure behind it it is only a matter of time (months rather than years).

Is this linear or non-linear? And who really cares? One thing is for certain,  TV executives shouldn’t!

Traditional media companies have highly skilled staff and are able to create top draw content within islands of trust backed by the very best creative labs; even if their brands may have to do battle with major global players like Apple and Google for platform space, their content should remain king. But this, in the medium term, will only remain a valuable asset if the linear mindset is put to bed.

I understand Google has set YouTube a strategic goal to increase viewing time from minutes to hours per day. This is why net neutrality is so important to Google – unless the transmission medium is reliable they won’t be able to secure the rights to the very best content. If you were Disney would you sign away your content to a platform that regularly pixelates the most valuable asset attached to your brand?

I’ve written before about net neutrality and how ALA is about to deliver the tools that for innovative internet aware companies will remove the chance of pixelated content over pervasive and very fast networks so I won’t repeat myself here except to say that I’ve had far, far more interesting conversations about content delivery from internet companies who are beginning to get it, and far, far more puzzled or dismissive faces from traditional broadcast companies who don’t.

How long will it be before Google or Amazon try to secure premiership football rights? And who would bet against them?

For the time being at least it seems TV companies are playing catch-up. The speed of change is far, far quicker than anything they have experienced before, and they are being measured against companies who are comfortable working at that speed.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about the global challenges being posed by the US proposal for a domestic “Internet kill switch“; if the US Government were to switch off the US portions of the Internet it would not just deny UK citizens access to common services but may also kill entire portions of the UK’s internet access because of the global nature of internet peering.

There is no simple answer to this. Of course national Governments must act in their own self-interests but when it comes to the Internet the impact is seldom felt by local citizens alone. Internet Governance, thus far, has been largely successful in developing a fairly egalitarian, global phenomenon outside of national governance but we are entering a new world where national security, health and prosperity depend on the future running of the Internet – this makes it politically very important, not least to key knowledge economies like the UK.

US citizens have typically been more aware of this than many other nations – the importance of net-neutrality is a deeply emotional, heart-felt thing in the US but has so far been largely missed by UK citizens and is totally ignored in Ireland where the lack of transparency is actively marketed by the largest operator.

The reaction to the Internet blackout in response to the US SOPA proposals was interesting. It seemed to mark the awakening of debate beyond the US. I didn’t hear much from politicians outside of the US but the interest from commentators went beyond simply bemoaning that they couldn’t look things up on Wikipedia. When Jonathan Agnew from BBC’s Test Match Special comments about the importance of the internet and the problems that SOPA may introduce on Twitter, then it must have become mainstream.

My own position is that while copyright of course needs to be protected, the ramifications of any loosely drafted legislation can have far wider impacts, and the implementation of internet legislation specifically will always have implications far beyond national boundaries. Any Government considering a move like this today has a responsibility to world citizens and not just the self-interests of one sector of their local economy.

Today requires a generation of Internet-savvy politicians who can find new world solutions to old world problems like copyright.

So a bold statement:

I think that Active Line Access (ALA) will become one of the most important features of public networks in the years to come – but it will take a little time for that to become apparent. I also know that so far very few people have understood this.

When I talk to people who build public networks they typically see ALA as the necessary replacement to PPP/L2TP; that its the technical remedy that allows them to hand-off connections to ISPs in an NGA world. They are of course right in a very practical, narrow sense but what the NICC did in codifying a long list of technical standards was much, much more than that.

When I talk to people who build campus networks their immediate response is what’s all the fuss about; ALA is a codified collection of standards that large corporates have been using for many years. Again broadly true but they have forgotten what their lives were like before they had these tools.

A Ghost of Christmas Past

Travelling back 15 years to the world of large corporates, a network managers lot was very difficult. They typically had the biggest budget in the IT department with the biggest sign-off but they also found it the hardest to provide direct empirical evidence that any incremental increase in their budget would deliver a greater incremental impact on the business; granular return on investment calculations were impossible.

Around this time I started to talk about the proximity to business, and it went like this:

• The applications people had a direct relationship to the business so anything they did had a direct and immediate bearing on the business; incremental change could be measured and valued.
• The core software people, like database administrators, were closely coupled to the applications people so although they were one step removed from the business and their systems may be shared, they were were close enough to the business they could measure their impact.
• The server teams were further removed and incremental investment is beginning to become more challenging because their world is now two layers removed and increasingly shared but by working closely with the applications and core software people they could typically prove enough incremental value to justify additional investment.
• The network teams were by definition universally shared and with no direct connection to parts of the business, only to the business as a whole; at this time, budget meetings in times of major shifts in the business were a pretty unpleasant affair and something most network managers dreaded (or at least the ones focussed on the business did)

With Y2K looming, I started to focus on how I could bridge the void and improve my proximity to the business. It was also at this time that what I then called 3D networks were beginning to be possible. Traditional 2D networks were a trade-off between distance and speed but 3D networks had a policy axis using a combination of VLANs and qualities of service; combining these meant I now had a granular control over the network and could therefore finely adapt the network in response to changing business needs – it was now possible to improve the network’s proximity to the business and therefore provide a direct and measurable impact. Budget meetings could now be constructive and less confrontational.

It took time for the ideas of 3D networking to take hold, and my name for it never stuck, but today any private network manager of any merit should be able to have a direct dialogue with the business.

When the NICC created ALA, they codified the tools that private network managers use; they put in place the mechanisms to improve the proximity of public networks to people and businesses – and the impact of that will, in time, be far more profound.

A Ghost of Christmas Future

It often takes a single event to focus minds and create the conditions for a shift of this kind:

• For private network managers it was Y2K, when vast sums were spent renovating application platforms and they needed to justify their budgets.
• For public networks it will be the shift to NGA network we’re just beginning.

So when I talk about Service Providers I’m not being lazy and omitting “Internet” because I assume they’ re synonymous;  its because I think ISPs are in reality a general-purpose subset of Service Providers – that once “providers of service” become aware of what the NICC has done the service provider market will become a whole lot richer and more exciting.

I had hoped the NHS might have been the pioneer in this space – the confluence of PSNs and the emergence of NGA is an opportunity that should be grabbed with both hands – but I suspect it will take a major commercial company to make the first move.

Who might the early movers be? The major cloud companies and content delivery networks (CDNs) are the obvious choices, and who better than Google (with YouTube) and Amazon Web Services (with Love Films).

Imagine this:

Today Google offer a best endeavours YouTube service, over the top of other people’s transit networks; it works okay if your goal is to support three minutes of viewing per day but isn’t good enough for three hours per day. This is at the root of Google’s concerns over Net-Neutrality.

In response, Google launch a Premium YouTube service for a few pounds month but instead of routing the service via an IP-based BGP interface onto your ISP’s network, its routed via an ALA VLAN hand-over point to your network operator. Quality is assured so now you can watch three-hours a day of broadcast quality media, and Google can secure the rights to premium content as the risk of pixelation has been removed and the rights holders can feel confident their brand wont be damaged.

Love Films backed by an ALA-based “Networks as a Service” offering from Amazon Web Services is at least as well placed to be the pioneer, completely demolishing the current rigid assumption that viewing is either linear (broadcast) or non-linear (on-demand); their new streaming package that learns your viewing habits is the first baby step.

Today, this minute, this is a dream – a perfectly feasible dream – but as companies like Love Films evolve their services and they explore, prod and push the capabilities and limitations of the underlying networks then I’m as confident as I can be that it will become a reality. When (not if) an organisation like Amazon Web Services gets their heads around the capabilities of ALA the world will change and imaginations will be unleashed.

Today we have a world of Over the Top (OTT) services – prepare for a world that combines OTT with RTS (round the side) services – and prepare for a future that blows your mind.

If you build your networks without ALA in mind then you are about to condemn your platform to obsolescence and your customers to boredom!

Start developing your networks with a proximity to your customers in mind and you will never look back!

It seems very odd to me that people who are happy to argue that their own networks should be closed and vertically integrated are often well informed about the European open access models and the US net neutrality debates – that these great debates are basic human right but that they somehow don’t apply to their networks but should to everyone else’s.

Until recently it was certainly true that all but the very largest networks had little choice but to deliver their own internet services – but that was a market imperfection rather than a point of principle or commercial choice. That market flaw is easing – far from fixed but progress is being made – and it is no longer a necessity to restrict service choice.

I’ll accept that the very largest service providers are still unlikely to bite your arm off for anything less than a few tens of thousands of customers but there is a very large world of choice between no service providers and offering each and every service provider. Many of the smaller ISPs are happy to engage in local broadband projects, especially if they themselves are local – and what’s more they may be better attuned to providing a bespoke service to your new customers than many of the very biggest providers.

So why should NGA networks be open?

• People like choice – it may not be the number 1 factor for everyone but it is very important and will be in the top thee for most people. With take-up being the top success factor, its simply not worth putting an impediment in your way.
• Encouraging service competition is likely to generate more exciting, innovative services. As the capabilities of NGA networks, and more especially ALA,  become understood by the market service innovation will be more exciting than anything we’ve seen so far  but it will miss any networks not geared to delivering variety.
• If you need support from public funds then you have no choice; EU and UK law insists on open access wholesale networks. Shooting the messenger doesn’t change the law, so frankly if you have a hole in your investment case open up and you might find public funds are available to help.
• Without wholesale services, you’re footprint is deemed “NGA White” and the State reserves the right to intervene with public funds. It may not be likely and you may have a case to challenge publicly subsidised competition but by the time the law rules you will probably be no more – its not a fight worth fighting.
• And finally I fully expect Ofcom to rule within the life of your investment that fibre networks are a natural monopoly and may either force you to offer a wholesale service or impose challenging regulations on you.

Or to summarise – there are no good reasons to have a closed network and a good many to be open – its not a fight worth defending.

I’ve also started work on what I hope will become a book (“Cloud Consciousness” is the working title) looking at the shape of the cloud and how its future is closely entwined with the development of next generation networks – not exactly Christmas list stuff but I hope it will be more interesting than it sounds. About a third is written so far but it needs time to think – this is a massively disruptive area and the opportunities will be immense.

Radio silence will soon be broken – hopefully!

There have been conversations which seem to jump from a position that fibre to every home is the only real NGA solution to suggesting they are being short-changed by some mythical NGA satellite with nothing in between.

This is far from a simple binary mechanism – anyone who suggests “Fibre good, everything else bad” is at best badly misinformed. The debate is far too important to be stifled by this kind of mantra – it has to move on.

One of the great shifts in thinking within the industry has been to consider multiple solutions – gone are the days when ADSL won simply because it was the best solution to reach the widest audience. Now the best technology from a basket of possible solutions is becoming the norm.

So this is my attempt to make it all a little clearer – hopefully.

There are essentially two different government broadband policies:

1. Basic broadband – To ensure everyone has access to at least 2 Mbps
2. NGA broadband  - To make the UK the best superfast broadband market in Europe

Both policies are currently working towards 2015, and both are being delivered by BDUK. But, while the delivery of NGA broadband may have some impact on the basic broadband policy, they are essentially two different things – basic broadband is not NGA and vice versa! This is a simple undeniable fact.

The grid shows how these two different measures – NGA and basic broadband – are likely to play out in the UK. The purple area is where the commercial developments will focus, and the red is where the Government’s policy will have its key impact – the black boarder around the NGA White/Basic White is where the rural community broadband fund will focus.

NGA Broadband

The definitions of NGA and superfast broadband are many and varied but essentially the Government’s goal is to deliver fibre to the cabinet to 90% of the population as a base reference offer – that is not the same as actually delivering FttC to 90%, only that this is the base upon which other solutions will be measured.

It means that a company wanting to bid into the framework will need to offer at least FttC but will be able to deliver FttP or anything else they can successfully argue delivers at least as much as FttC.

The EU currently views NGA as a fibre-based fixed-line solution and specifically excludes satellite and wireless solutions; it is highly likely that some microwave technologies will be included in future definitions if they deliver specific characteristics but unlicensed and light licensed solutions like WiFi are unlikely to be ever considered as NGA even if they deliver high speeds.

Any suggestion that satellite or BT’s BET are NGA is simply wrong, and I’ve never heard anyone in either BT or the satellite industry claim otherwise! Just ignore anyone who suggests they are, they simply aren’t credible.

The main NGA contenders today are FttC/VDSL and FttP in both point-2-point/Ethernet or PON variants.

The two bar charts above attempt to show the impact of the Government’s policy on NGA broadband. Today there are commercial pledges to deliver a competitive physical infrastructure to at least 50% of the country, predominantly in the areas where Virgin Media are updating their cable network and BT is delivering their Infinity service.

In addition, BT has pledged to reach two-thirds of the country with an open-access wholesale service, making a further 17% Grey in the EU’s language. This leaves the “final third” where traditional commercial approaches begin to fail.

The Government’s aim is to extend the Grey area from 17% of the population to 40%, with only 10% of the population unlikely to see NGA services in the medium term.

Why only Grey? I find it difficult to see a case where the Government would invest in a competing NGA platform where one already exists but it is at least a theoretical possibility if the existing NGA service doesn’t deliver a whole service and is vertically integrated. As I’ve written before, if you run an NGA network and you don’t offer wholesale competition then you are carrying a risk that it is at least legal for the state to subsidise a competitor even if its poor value for public funds and probably unlikely to happen.

The focus of the £20m rural community broadband fund is on this final 10%, where communities are prepared to become more actively involved in a more ambitious plan.

Basic Broadband

Today its possible to argue that anything above 512 kbps might be classed as broadband; the Government is redefining that as 2 Mbps and that it should be as near universal as practicable.

The bar charts above show how today there are in fact two degrees of White basic broadband – there are those that currently receive a services above 2 Mbps but have no choice of provider, and those below 2 Mbps regardless of how much competition there may be at the telephone exchange. The Government’s policy is to remove the top White section, where services are less than 2 Mbps.

Some of this will be solved by the NGA plans – there are locations where the cabinet, as well as the premises, is a long way from the exchange. Evidence is already beginning to appear where BT is deploying Infinity in Hertfordshire with some homes now in an NGA Grey area when they were previously in a notspot – it is also the focus of organisations like Rutland Telecom.

Where the NGA policy won’t solve the notspot problem, the Government will intervene to ensure all premises are reasonably able to receive at least 2 Mbps.

In communities where the 2 Mbps offer doesn’t meet their ambition, the £20m rural community broadband fund may be able to help turn a basic broadband offer into a viable NGA plan where the community will exists.

When my last contract came up for renewal I looked around, asked the opinions of those around me and after long deliberation I still opted to renew with another Android phone.

Android isn’t as fast of slick as an iPhone but its nearly there; the battery life of most Android phones doesn’t match any Blackberry model; and the Market doesn’t offer as many apps as Apple (although its rare I can’t find what I need).

However, the consensus of opinion was clear – if I bought into the world view of RIM or Apple, that I liked their way of doing things, then Blackberry and iPhone handsets were great – in fact arguably better than anything else on the market. BUT if I didn’t, and I wanted to tailor the device to the way I work, choose what features I had and how they worked then neither was a good choice.

At the time, the Adobe Flash row seemed epitomise it all for me. Steve Jobs hated Flash. He’s perfectly entitled to that opinion but the balance of the world didn’t agree – and purely from a pragmatic perspective I didn’t agree but neither you nor I had any influence over Apple so Flash wasn’t available to iPhone customers.

I’d grown to love Swype – an alternative keyboard for both Android and iPhone users BUT I’d have to jailbreak my new iPhone to use it while I just install it on any Android phone. Why should I have to break my warranty and risk frying my new phone simply to use a keyboard I think makes the default choice of the developer looked dated, pedestrian and inefficient?

I have grown to hate iTunes for the same reasons and although we have a bunch of iPods about the place, we no longer buy anything from iTunes, keeping our music library separate and treating iTunes as the required tools for managing the device and not my world view of music.

Its very different on Android – I’ve no idea what Eric Schmidt thinks of Flash and, while I might be interested in his views as an industry leader, the fact that neither he or Google impose that view on me was enough. I could install Swype at the touch of a button without getting special permission, and Amazon is happy to integrate their MP3 market with my phone without taking control of everything or treating me as thief.

This week Blackberry customers had a massive outage – I know its not breaking news but it is worth spending five minutes thinking about why it happened.

Blackberry customers buy into the soup-to-nuts solution offered, owned, and controlled by RIM. The software, client and server, is developed, owned, hosted and controlled by RIM.

On the surface that’s appealing – a single point of contact delivering a complete solution that delivers my mobile world. But its also a reliance on a single corporate world view, and total reliance on their processes and controls. This week they failed, probably a very small process fault somewhere but it stopped all Blackberry customers dead in their tracks.

If the same had happened on Android, what would the impact have been?

Well I use Twitter and Facebook for instant messaging so no impact there; I use a mix of IMAP and gmail so there is a chance that I might not be able to get some of my mail but as the IMAP client isn’t owned, developed or controlled by Google it would have to be a catastrophic failure for all my mail to disappear. My contacts are naturally synced between Google, Plaxo and LinkedIn as well as Twitter, Flikr, Facebook and so on, so I could still contact people.

The chances of a significant service outage on all Android phones because a Google server died is almost inconceivable.

But, I hear you say, what if the bugs were introduced by an Android update?

Even here the Android approach has safeguards. Android development is a more collaborative approach – its not as open as say, Apache or LibreOffice, but it is somewhat open. As a result the raw development work can draw on many more eyes.

Then, because Google don’t control the Android handset market, any update to the core system will also need to be tested by a large market of device manufacturers, each with their own processes and controls, each with their own reputation on the line.

And finally, when the updates begin to roll, not all manufacturers will deploy at the same time and at the same rate so significant bugs will be discovered long before they become a problem and will have impacted a relatively small number of customers.

And then I have my own little safeguard. I’m an early adopter by nature but when it comes to single points of failure I try to resist installing anything on the day it was released – a hint to all those on Twitter bemoaning Apple this week.

Today, Ubuntu has released version 11.10, the Oneiric Ocelot – I got the pop-up asking me to upgrade – my fingers hovered over the mouse, itching to click “OK” – but I resisted, so far, and only just. I won’t be tweeting today using phrases that include “Ubuntu” and “#FFS”.

I’m sure its been widely and thoroughly tested, that’s its passed through a globally huge alpha and beta programme of diverse and demanding users, I’m confident its worth the upgrade but I still want to be second on this one.

Whether they buy into the whole Opensource movement or not (I do), I think the executives of both RIM and Apple could do well to read and understand two books:

• Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral & the Bazaar” and
• “Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution”

Buy into the political aspects of Opensource if you chose, release your code to your global customers if you like, but please don’t ignore the wider lessons of collaboration and sharing – it does far more than simply make your customers your collaborators, and therefore more loyal and supportive, it introduces safeguards and resilience.

I doubt friends of mine will be willing to dust off their old Nokia bricks a second time because you had another self-inflicted mishap.

With a very basic understanding of the Titter API and scripts openly available (remember, I’m no programmer) I captured a morning’s worth of Twitter data and plotted the geo-coded tweets as a time-lapse sequence.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWMkT5y0uhw

I’ll admit its not the most interesting video ever but it does show the power of opensource mapping tools. Not a penny was spent on any of the tools and the base maps; all were Opensource or open-data.

In normal times we have Qualitative Easing – changing the quality of the money supply by adjusting interest rates. When you can no longer adjust the quality of money then you need to adjust the quantity – in earlier times that meant printing new notes but today that typically means the central bank buys bonds (debt).

The last Government’s QE1 programme resulted in the Bank of England buying government bonds, and the money was used to fund general government expenditure. This resulted in criticism from some quarters that the new cash didn’t optimise its impact on the wider economy. Expanding the money in circulation can have two high-level impacts:

• It can ensure money is circulating so the economy doesn’t stop, and
• It can be used to re-shape the economy so its more competitive when recovery comes.

It was certainly true that the former happened – because nurses and policemen kept their jobs and were paid the economy kept flowing. But the process didn’t have any lasting impact on the efficiency of the economy.

If we are to have a second round of quantitative easing, so called QE2, then a lasting impact will require investment in the shape of the economy - infrastructure, for example.

It is widely accepted that the funds available to BDUK form only a small proportion of the investment needed to ensure every UK business benefits from super-fast broadband, even when added to the level of funding already committed by the industry. However, if QE2 was used to underwrite local authority bond issues, the sums committed to broadband could be dramatically increased – and I purposefully use the word “underwrite” rather than simply “buy”.

Under the localism agenda, communities are encouraged to become more involved in their area but for many its simply not reasonable for them to build their own broadband infrastructure as it was the first time around, but that isn’t to say they don’t have a role beyond simply marketing the benefits of broadband.

By encouraging their local authority to issue infrastructure bonds, the community may be encouraged to invest in their future; by having the Bank of England underwrite the issue means the risk is somewhat reduced and the full funds may be raised in areas where there isn’t the investment cash available. This could be the 21st century “Tell Sid” campaign!

By using a local authority to issue the bonds, rather than a commercial telecoms company, ensures the wider economic impact for the area can be embeded in the process, alongside the commercial reality.

But since bonds are essentially long term loans that need to be paid back at some point in the future, today’s preferred gap funding models favoured by BDUK may not be ideal. As the local authority is today essentially providing grants to a third party to own, build and operate the network, there is no obvious mechanism for the local authority to recoup such an investment.

However, a model where the local authority issues a concession to a third party to build and operate the network but ownership remains with the local authority – or at least a stake is owned by the local authority – means they can at a later date refinance their investment to repay the bonds.

The UK already has examples of this kind of structure. NYnet in North Yorkshire is an example where the local authority retains 100% ownership, while FibreSpeed is a joint-venture model between Geo and the Welsh Assembly Government. There are pro’s and con’s to both approaches but the essence is the same – the bond owner would retain a stake to secure their investment.

I’ve no idea if we will see QE2 but if we do, this kind of approach would ensure not just the immediate re-floating of the economy but also a longer lasting impact on the UK competitiveness – we could become the first G20 country to have a fibre switch-over!

A bit of background. In 2009 the EU laid down some guidelines on where it was reasonable for a state to consider intervening in the broadband market; this introduced the concept of Black, White and Grey areas for classifying market failure in both NGA and basic broadband areas. A black area is generally one with a strong, competitive market; grey with a developing market; and White where the market has essentially failed. White does not necessarily mean there is no broadband, just no functioning market.

Basic Broadband

• A Black area is one which has two competing fixed line infrastructures. So in the UK that typically means areas where both BT and Virgin offer services.
• A Grey area is one where there is only a single physical infrastructure but it supports a wholesale marketplace. In the UK this covers any unbundled telephone exchange where there is no cable service, for example. Perhaps surprisingly this covers both Ofcom market 2 and 3 areas.
• A White area is one where there is no choice of physical infrastructure and no wholesale marketplace. This in the UK means Ofcom Market 1 areas with no other infrastructure.

NGA Broadband

The definition for NGA is broadly the same:

• An area with competing NGA broadband infrastructures would be an NGA Black area. In the UK that might mean an area with both Virgin DOCSIS3 and BT Infinity services, for example. Somewhere like Bournemouth with City Fibre and Virgin would also be Black.
• An NGA Grey area is where there is only a single NGA provider with a wholesale market. This means an area with only BT Infinity would be classed as Grey – but an area with only Virgin would not as they don’t wholesale access services.
• An NGA White area is one where there is currently is no NGA market available and no credible plans to deliver an NGA service within 3 years. This could include areas where Virgin is the only NGA operator and the footprint of many community projects like Alston Cybermoor as they don’t currently wholesale their services.

There are some major caveats in this!!

Only fibre-based fixed-line technologies are currently considered NGA technologies – wireless and satellite are currently considered “complimentary” and an area served by either is not considered as NGA Grey or Black. This means an operator using a Gigabit microwave technology could legitimately face state subsidised competition from a 40 Mbps FttC provider – FiWi is not currently protected! This may (should!) change but its a risk that needs to be born in mind today!

What’s an Area?

The EU guidelines recommend that an “area” isn’t defined as an exchange district as it may benefit the incumbent. So what is an area? At the moment this is something of a grey area, to stay with the theme. The UK government is providing local authorities with some latitude to choose between postcode areas and ONS “super output areas” (LSOA).

For a community thinking of building their own broadband solution, this loose definition may be critical. A postcode may only have 20-40 premises while a LSOA typically has about 400. A small community scheme may be protected from subsidised competition if the local authority decides to use postcodes as their defining area.

BUT if the LA uses super output areas as their measure, then any network which is much less than 400 premises could face a competitor legitimately subsidised by the BDUK framework.

Since BDUK are currently modelling communities as groups of around 100 premises, this seems rather contradictory.

BDUK Ambitions

The three years rule means that BDUK are able to focus their funding on the final third – the bit that BT haven’t formally announced. Their ambition appears to be to increase the NGA Grey and Black coverage from 66% to 90%. In the final 10% they want to ensure its at least Basic Broadband Grey (ie at least a single wholesale infrastructure).

NB: Big things you can’t ignore!

1. Anyone considering building a network, whatever their motives, needs to make sure both BDUK and the relevant local authority are completely aware, not just of the currently footprint but the credible expansion plans covering the next three years. Failing to be on their radar may mean state subsidised competition and a battle over illegal state aid few smaller operators will be able to afford.
2. A vague intention to offer wholesale services or simply making an offer to the market that is ignored is not good enough to be classed as “Grey” – you need to demonstrate a functioning wholesale market! Failing to demonstrate real wholesale agreements means your area remains “White” and could be legitimately subsidised. Working with a  national franchise model like Broadway Partners and including an existing mediator that can deliver a proven wholesale market will certainly help both whether you’re at the planning or delivery stage!
3. And communities going it alone need to know what their local authority considers to be an “area” – if its an ONS LSOA, make sure your project covers one!

The more you think about this, the more implications you will stumble across. This a very messy, complex, and shifting space. Whoever you are, don’t do it alone!

In this vein I’m beginning to hear of a growing number of communities that are finding that, far from supporting them as they try to become part of the solution to their broadband problems, their local authorities are becoming hostile. Of course this is far from common but it is being reported and does appear to be growing in some districts.

The root behind it seems to be the mechanism which is supposed to protect them. BDUK is only allowed to spend its funds in what the EU calls “White areas” – areas where the market has failed to deliver a viable broadband solution.

The logic chain says that if a provider delivers a viable solution then the area must be designated as either “Grey” or “Black” depending on the level of new competition.

Some local authorities, understanding this, are concerned that if their communities push ahead, their BDUK allocation will start to shrink as more areas become “Grey”. While the local authorities don’t directly profit from the BDUK money, it will mean they have less funding to engage one of the framework partners.

My understanding is that BDUK has essentially divided their half-billion fund in two broadly equal pots; half for achieving 90% FttC and half to ensure the final 10% has access to at least 2 Mbps via satellite or wireless.

Based on this, the level of subvention per premise in the final 10% is significantly higher than in the NGA 90%, so community projects starting out now may result in a disproportionate drop in the LA’s BDUK funding – or at least that’s how some local authorities appear to be understanding it.

The logical answer to this is to ensure communities are, in reality, engaged in this process as stakeholder and not simply as “demand stimulators” (glorified marketing agents), and that, as Mr Clegg said, BDUK increase the speed of the programme so people don’t feel excluded or simply tired of waiting.

But do the normal rules of logic apply here though?

At stake is the investment of billions of pounds and public and private money, and the future competitiveness of the UK economy. Yet questions have been raise in several quarters for quite some time now about the accuracy of BDUKs data on which all this investment sits. So for the record I decided to correlate a source of data I have grown to trust – from Samknows who in turn get their DSL data from BT – against a set of BDUK data for the same area. The sample included a little over 19,000 postcodes.

(click the graph to see a bigger version)

The plot shows BDUK speeds along the horizontal with BT speeds on the vertical, with each point representing a postcode average. If the two sets agreed the points should broadly align along the diagonal but its clear there is a limited correlation between the two sets.

This data is for Oxfordshire, so the first location I checked was my own postcode. BDUK suggests that I should get 13971.456kbps while BT suggests I get 6Mbps with ADSL2+. With an ordinary ISP I do in fact get 6 Mbps (Be There uniquely allow me to tune the connection so I get a shade more).

In fact on 76% of occasions the BDUK data offers faster speeds than BT’s reported data, and on average 52% faster.

When focussing in on just the 2 Mbps Universal Service Commitment, relying on BDUK data would result in about 900 postcodes having a problem addressed which doesn’t exist, yet almost 40% of the areas which do suffer broadband at less than 2 Mbps would have been missed altogether.

In 63 cases the discrepancy was more than 22 Mbps – or rather BDUK expected people to receive what they now consider “superfast broadband” when in fact no broadband was available at all.

From what I understand none of the usual sources relied on by the industry provided BDUK with this data and that the speeds are reported to thousandths of a kilobit suggests Excel may have been involved somewhere along the line rather than empirical data.

This information was provided to BDUK but they were largely unconcerned about the discrepancy at the time.

I’ll allow you to come to your own conclusions about the impact this might have had on the decisions BDUK is making and the fairness of funding allocations. For organisations seeking to be part of the framework, this data appears to be having a continuing impact.

NOTE: This is one of a number of blog articles which had gone unpublished for some time, occasionally dusted off and updated but left on the spike. For much of BDUK’s existence I have been supportive, and after it became clear that they were ignoring offers of help and advice from many of the people I know I had remained reluctant to be openly dismissive. But as the programme evolved it has become harder and harder to be supportive, there became fewer and fewer good news stories to write about, and my own postings became less frequent and rarely positive good news stories.

I’m publishing this now to draw a line under the whole process – time to get on with projects that make a difference in reality.

Beyond simply delivering broadband in challenging areas, the goal for both is also to learn – to create models and case studies which will influence the way broadband can be delivered in rural areas everywhere. The Parham fibre project, for example, is as much about creating a sustainable balance of roles between the local community and network operators as it is about simply delivering super-fast broadband.

The tender is seeking companies who are keen to demonstrate innovation in the way customer connections can be installed both in terms of technology advances as well as process and business innovation.

My own feeling is that these could be very important projects – ones which help develop our understanding of how we can deliver true next generation services more widely through smarter collaboration between the public sector, industry and the community.

Suffolk ACRE’s formal notice is as follows:

“Suffolk ACRE has issued two invitations to tender for the design, installation and operation of a wide area wireless next generation broadband network in east Suffolk and also a fibre to the premise network in Parham. Companies interested in bidding should in the first instance email: broadbandbids@suffolkacre.org.uk. Closing date for bid submission is 9am on the 12^th September 2011.”

So if you’d like to be considered for either of these exciting tenders, please contact Suffolk ACRE directly at broadbandbids@suffolkacre.org.uk.

BroadwayPartners is a new venture which has brought together the financial acumen of Michael Armitage and Alexander Sleigh with the experience of David Brunnen and myself, with hopefully two or three surprising additions coming on board very soon to complete the team.

While we are very supportive of what INCA is doing in the industry, BroadwayPartners isn’t an INCA venture or subsidiary – although we do aim to become members very soon (all part of the bootstrap phase) and will work to support their aims.

I suspect the confusion came about because this blog is very kindly syndicated by INCA on their website (and long may it remain so!), and my involvement was announced here.

If, like BroadwayPartners, you are engaged in new forms of broadband, independent and collaboratively minded, perhaps you should consider joining INCA also.

The speech was given as part of the events opening “provocations” to seed debate, so it was just 5 minutes long. To help clarify some points, I’ve added footnotes to the text – hover over the numbers to see some of my clarifications.

It saddens me – that I feel it necessary to say what I’m about to say but it does come from the heart.

There is no such thing as “community broadband” – its dead, gone.

Or rather “community broadband” as its often described – a neatly delineated, easily identifiable scheme run by ardent enthusiasts on the fringes – is dead.

This is an image that perhaps fitted the initial wave of broadband schemes a decade ago, when the policy was to fund regional procurement programmes and target wireless and satellite solutions at the rural fringes.

That ended in 2005 when Tony Blair stood up at his party conference and announced that broadband was done – or at least I thought it ended then

To celebrate 10 years of unevolving community broadband, it appears we are to do the exact same thing again, if the the models appearing from BDUK are to be believed^[1] – either a very brave move based on something none of us have spotted or one detached from any sense of ambition or reality.

In the beginning communities clambered across church roofs, installed wireless aerials, and were the pioneers of broadband in rural areas – over 200 at the peak.

Today, communities recognise they still live in broadband unfriendly areas, but they also recognise that the technology is more complex this time and the business case much longer and more difficult to make.

That doesn’t mean, though, that they can simply be patted on the head and told not to worry. Many, many communities – wise from their experience – know they need to be involved if they are to have an infrastructure which meets their ambitions.

Right now, very few know what form that role will take – demand stimulation, contracting to pre-orders, helping with way-leaves, investing their own money, and, yes, possibly digging their own trenches – but they know they must be stakeholders, sat around the table as equals.

Those from the industry that have overcome what might be called the Rumsfeld “unknown-unknowns”^[2] and have started to do the really hard thinking – and I include Fujitsu, Geo and BT as much the likes of Rutland – have realised that the traditional resource constrained, lean and efficient relationship with customers can’t support the business case – the take-up and cost-savings necessary to deliver long-term solutions in any geography.

A much more collaborative relationship is needed, working with communities as partners, developing what Kees Rovers calls the “us feeling”^[3] – but this is a very hard thing for a traditional telecoms company to do – its not obvious how you can make it scale, for example – but they know that to be a successful player they need to find answers.

Which is why you find senior executives from major corporations turning up to village halls – this has created a growing, common vocabulary and a space in which a dialogue between stakeholders can occur and a balance sought.

Local authorities also often turn up to these meetings – they have the equally hard goals of reducing costs, transforming the way they deliver services, while ensuring they have a competitive local economy

But I’d have to say that, in my experience, few councils have moved much beyond a strategy which involves “shovelling the money towards an industrial giant in the hope it just makes the bad problems go away”.

I don’t blame them – this is very hard, far from their core competence, and the advice they often receive is contradictory, rapidly changing and detached.

However, where the shift has happened its been quite brilliant to watch – my own county, Oxfordshire, has gone through a lot of real pain to move from an overly simplistic model towards one which understands localism, understands the nature of the problem, and is beginning to understand the nature of the solution.

It certainly wasn’t easy for them – and they deserved to feel proud of the progress they made – at least until BDUK decided to become misty-eyed for the past and shifted their policy from localism to the centralism of the last government.^[4]

As a result we now have a situation where the industry is increasingly able to sit around the table with communities, work with them towards the holy grail of long term solutions which scale and meet both sides ambitions and capabilities.

While, it seems, at a completely different table sits the voice of BDUK, advising councils, and closing out many of those who may know a thing or two about this space.^[5]

The reason this comes from the heart ought to be clear to most of you. Like many in this room, I’ve spent a very long time trying to figure out how to deliver sustainable and universal broadband. There are very, very good people in BDUK who have been part of this process – and from the outset those people sat around the same table as the rest of us, seeking the same solutions, and for that they garnered a lot of respect and goodwill from just about everyone.

In the last few months, however, much of that goodwill has evaporated. I’m yet to find a single person active in this space – industry or community – that thinks the framework is a good idea – I have found one or two in the public sector but even there, support is far from universal.

So, to the leadership of BDUK I say this – stop listening to price tag of the advice, and start listening to the experience within your organisation. Only then can you properly guide local councils – and recover your relationship with the parts of the the industry that matter and with communities.^[6]

And more widely in the public sector I say this – Community Broadband, as you know it, is dead!

Lets start afresh and recognise that all forms of future broadband are in a sense Community Broadband – long live community broadband! Thank you^[7]

For a long time now I’ve been trying to get my head around how to combine the necessary stakeholders so the most creative broadband solutions can start to benefit people, the economy and the telecoms industry.

So today I’m announcing that I’ve joined forces with some of the most experienced hands in the industry to form BroadwayPartners

Together with David Brunnen, Michael Armitage and Alexander Sleigh, BroadwayPartners will provide the capability to link communities with industry partners to deliver sustainable and ambitious broadband solutions.

BroadwayPartners delivers a form of franchise structure where local communities can participate in a two-stage process leading to a sustainable and fundable broadband vehicle that matches ambition with capability. We will will match each scheme with the most appropriate industry partners from a framework of experienced companies who will help build and operate the network in concert with the local community.

Recognising that in order to build a superfast next generation network requires significant investment, BroadwayPartners are in the process of creating two new funding structures:

• A national investment fund
• A templated community investment fund

When launched, the national fund will be open to anyone interested in investing in next generation broadband in the UK, with funds invested in a variety of local franchised schemes. While the community investment fund is designed for people and businesses that wish to  invest specifically in their own local scheme.

During the two-phase process, a careful balance of local and national funds will be matched with vendor and network operator investments to deliver the optimal solution for each area.

For communities, BroadwayPartners will provide a mechanism to structure and prove the business case for delivering the best broadband infrastructure possible, matching ambition with a sustainable business plan and the right mix of industry partners to make it happen.

For companies involved in delivering next generation broadband, BroadwayPartners will provide a structured approach to engaging communities and bridging the investment gap.

We hope to make ambitious broadband plans viable in just about any community, anywhere.

And now the results.

Is the proposed BDUK framework good for the broadband industry and customers?

• 63% disagree
• 21% are unsure
• 14% agree
• 2% were unaware of the framework

I suppose the upside is that the BDUK have done a good job of promoting the framework, but with only 1 in 7  supporting the framework it suggests more work is needed to engage with people.

Is the Government’s 2015 broadband target still realistic?

• 80% said “No”
• 11% said they were “Unsure”
• 9% said it was achievable

Such a clear statement surprised me – personally I have moved from a big “Yes” to “Unsure” and drifting towards “No”, and not really known for sitting on the fence I suspected that the answer would be more nuanced than this. I guess my concern about such a clear sentiment is that there may be a temptation to redefine the goals so Sir Humphrey can try to persuade us the goals have been met – perhaps by limiting Europe to the EU, or by redefining the speed within a band which begins at just 15 Mbps.

Do you feel more or less optimistic than 6-months ago about the development of “superfast” broadband in the UK?

• 2% were a lot more optimistic
• 20% were a little more optimistic
• 5% felt it was too difficult to call
• 40% were a little more pessimistic
• 33% were a lot more pessimistic

So a clear majority (73%) are feeling less happy about the way we are progressing towards our digital future than at the beginning of the year. This didn’t surprise me – I can’t remember the last conversation I had with anyone in the industry that felt things were moving along nicely, and certainly confidence in BDUK’s ability to deliver seems to have taken a major knock in recent weeks.

I have to come clean now – the reason I set the poll was to cheer me up. I was hoping the message coming back would be that its not as bad as I thought and I should look for the positives because they’re clearly out there. Sadly the clear majority feel at least as depressed as I do.

The poll was set up to be anonymous – I’d really like the 2% who are more optimistic and the 14% of who think the BDUK framework is helpful to contact me and tell me why they are more positive than the majority. I won’t publish names if you prefer, but I’d really like to see the more positive side.

So if you said you’re more optimistic or you felt the BDUK framework is a good thing – contact me! Please!

For me, the key policy of making the UK the best “superfast” (meaning > 24 Mbps) broadband market in Europe is the right one. Delivering that in tandem with the localism bill and while supporting SMEs couldn’t be better. These are all things that get my total support – and I hear very few detractors (quite the opposite).

The rub for many people seems to be in the delivery – a matter of policy implementation and interpretation. A key example (totem?) is the framework which contains what appears to be little more than lip service to the policy – an opening few paragraphs that give the appearance of supporting the policy followed by a long list of qualifying criteria which, one by one, chip away at the goals until there is almost nothing left – even the stated objective of super-fast broadband seems to have been discarded, or at best re-framed, along the way.

There have been conspiracy theories that this is a stitch up between Government and BT but I don’t support that for one minute. To begin with, I suspect that the framework isn’t something BT would prefer to support but will pragmatically go along with as its what’s on offer.

Einstein is quoted as saying:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.“

For me this is a case of a very complex problem that’s been reduced beyond the possible degree of simplicity – the framework assumes a level of homogeneity of technology, scale, business model, financing, risk, partnership and so forth that just isn’t possible – BUT it is much simpler to manage.

The original policy objectives appear to have got lost in a drive to find the optimal process – or at least the one that’s the least bother to oversee.

This isn’t a time for a difficult u-turn – this is a time for politicians to crack the whip and make sure the policy is implemented as stated.

There are very good people inside BDUK, and they didn’t suddenly switch off. Something has happened that group at the top – whether it was the change of management or the influence of KPMG but it is something that can be corrected – but time is not on anyone’s side. One or the other or both need refocussing, and very soon.

I wrote that a source told me that the framework would require revenues of at least £40m in each of the last two years – in the “final draft” I understand is due for publication tomorrow (Thursday 30th June) this has been reduced to £20m, and it includes the following paragraph:

“In line with the Coalition Government’s policy on supplier diversity, DCMS is designing the framework agreement to maximise opportunities for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to form part of framework suppliers’ supply chains for projects where appropriate”

Does that mean SME’s and the bulk of the industry currently building and operating NGA networks will be able to join? Almost certainly not!

There is just a four week window proposed in which companies can form partnerships and consortia, leaving the smaller, specialist companies that are already busy building networks very little time to negotiate the terms any sub-contracting agreement – most probably with a much larger company that has far less experience of building networks than they do.

In theory, excluded companies could club together to form a consortium of fantastic expertise BUT if the consortium isn’t formally incorporated then each member has to demonstrate the same requirements as if they has applied individually. Which in addition to requiring at least £20m in revenues, I understand may also require that you have delivered services to at least 30,000 premises excluding back-haul (so that’s major names like Geo and Vtesse probably disqualified).

So unless something radical happens in the next 24 hours, assume that the Government won’t be supporting the nascent NGA industry:

“The framework agreement is expected to be the procurement vehicle for the majority of local broadband projects once they have been allocated BDUK funding. There may be a small number oflocal broadband projects that do not use the framework agreement and this will be agreed with BDUK.”

It would seem that the best we can hope is that the contracts BDUK let won’t simply roll over the much more creative, ambitious and forward thinking projects that are already under-way from the bulk of the industry this process appears to be excluding.

Yesterday I wrote about the hopes and ambitions of Chipping Norton in David Cameron’s constituency. This framework may well turn out to be a significant threat to Big Society community actions like theirs. The gap between policy and action is now becoming a chasm.

(I’ll let others tell you how “superfast” appears to redefined, making it easier to achieve)

Let’s hope the next coming hours see a serious re-think!

The process, similar to many up and down the country, has taken the County Council into new territory and has required much scratching of heads, but it now feels like the group is close to a strategy which is ambitious both for the public sector and our economy,  making the most of the county’s resources; not the least of which is smart people. Hopefully the draft strategy will soon be published and you can judge for yourself but at the moment I’d have to say that if the council leadership approve the last draft I saw then they will be one of the council’s to watch.

While this was going on at a county level, communities were beginning to come together to work out what they wanted to do – when broadband was being deployed the first time around the county spawned more than its fair share of broadband programmes and community networks. Blewbury, a village with long standing broadband problems, was one of the first to put its head above the parapet this time, winning the “Race to Infinity “, shortly followed by Chipping Norton and its hinterland.

At Oxfordshire’s recent Digital Summit, the County Council’s Deputy Leader David Robertson gave his support to projects that build on the government’s ‘Big Society’ ideals, and the Chipping Norton ambition certainly embodies that. “Chippy” has looked at its options and decided, for economic and social reasons, that while FttC  may fix the town’s problems for the time being, it won’t help many of the villages that rely on the town, and that ploughing ahead on its own would make a marginal business case for investing in the surrounding area impossible.

Take the small village of Chadlington in the Wychwood Forest and just outside Chippy – it has its own small telephone exchange but all the homes and businesses (including the Prime Minister’s) are connected straight to the exchange – there are no cabinets in Chadlington so FttC is not really an option. And rather than condemn villages like Chadlington to a broadband wilderness, the group is looking to install fibre optic network all the way to every home and business across the entire hinterland.

The group are also being both innovative and realistic when it comes to investment. This is a major project in a hard to reach area, and any funding from BDUK is like to amount to no more than perhaps 5% of the sum needed. They recognise that a venture such as this needs all the stakeholders to help in anyway they can, not just the telecoms industry and the public sector, but also local people and businesses. So the group is looking at how their plans for  a wholesale open access network can be owned and financed in part by the local community.

The group has already attracted financial support from the INCA’s Big Society Broadband Fund to carry out the initial feasibility study – some of their findings will soon appear in the Knowledgebase. They are now looking to gain wider public support and, in partnership with the City, raise community investment for the project.

Led by an old friend of mine who lives in the town, Neil Homer is a social entrepreneur with an urban and rural planning strategy background, the contributors to the project draw on the wide range of sage expertise you find in villages in this part of the world, including my old colleagues from Oxfordshire Rural Broadband  who delivered the first generation of broadband to west Oxfordshire (the group Ed Vaizey cut his broadband teeth on when he was an MP-in-waiting).

This is the big society writ large, and very different from the pioneering projects in Alston and Wray – this isn’t a community that would find it easy to dig trenches but they bring a whole lot of other things to the party which make next generation broadband possible.

With a County Council preparing what I hope will be an ambitious strategy for the county and the likes of Chipping Norton taking a lead, it feels like Oxfordshire may be something of a waking broadband giant. Fingers crossed!

Transition Chipping Norton is hosting a public meeting on 6th July at 7:30 in the Town Hall to explain to the communities in and around the town just how they can benefit and how they can get involved.

And it is smaller, more nimble companies that are developing innovative business approaches, technologies, and service delivery models in broadband; not just in the UK but across Europe. Heavy Reading predicted that around 60% of European fibre connections would be delivered by non-incumbents, with the largest sector being local municipal networks led by smart, small-scale innovators.

While the pattern in the UK is a little different, we too are seeing innovation growing just as it has across the continent, but these companies need space and support to develop in order that their impact can be felt, their promise can be assessed, and for the main industry players to construct partnerships or acquire the best of them. So with this in mind, the Government’s policies for supporting SMEs in public procurement exercises and the wider localism agenda are both smart and well timed if the UK is to genuinely deliver “Europe’s best superfast broadband market by 2015″.

Few sensible people would argue with the policy – but there appears to be growing concern over the implementation.

The announcement of BDUK’s intention to procure a national framework seems to have simultaneously divided the industry and undermined the Government’s policy objective. Having spoken to industry players that say they’ve seen drafts of the procurement plan, they tell me that it will require revenues of at least £40m generated in at least the last two consecutive years, excluding not just SME’s but many of the established players in the industry as well.

Nobody doubts that delivering such an ambitious plan will be very hard, but side-lining the most nimble, innovative players won’t make it any easier.

Let’s hope the rumours and grumblings are ill-founded!

Last year, when Jeremy Hunt announced the BDUK competitions, I commented at the time that it felt like ambition was back on the agenda.

A year on, localism is really beginning to play out – or perhaps more accurately, a developing understanding of what it might mean is beginning to grow  as local authorities construct their broadband strategies. This process has created a space for communities, the public sector and the telecoms industry to have a dialogue.

As with any organic and new process, progress is far from uniform – in some places communities are developing a stronger voice; in other the local authority is taking a stronger lead; and some parts of the industry have been more receptive than others. In some areas progress has been rapid, and in others painfully slow.

If there is a criticism of the new localism agenda, it is this.

Local authorities have spent more than a decade increasingly micro-managed. There has been little reason to consider risks in their corporate strategy as they were largely told by central government how and what to prioritise. There has been little reason to open a dialogue with local communities because there was little scope to adapt to their needs.

Localism has put this process sharply in reverse – local authorities now need to consider their appetite for risk and to match it with their communities ambitions and needs – yet these skills no longer come easily to many councils. This isn’t a criticism of councillors or council officials – its simply a reality.

In fact, to their credit, many councils have risen to the challenge – at times it may be faltering but nevertheless localism is happening and I suspect it feels rather liberating.

But in some areas it has proved harder – the tools with which to form a dialogue with communities have been harder to muster, and the risk associated with taking risks has been too difficult to contemplate.

A common theme among these areas is that they typically draft in the IT department to lead their bid, assuming that developing a broadband strategy is a technology process which can be developed from the centre and in isolation using their specialists. Its not!

• Broadband plans are about the local economy and competitiveness,
• Broadband plans are about how local services are delivered,
• Broadband plans are about people and businesses.

Local authorities who hand their broadband strategy over to their IT department will ultimately be as disappointed as if they had handed teaching or social work over to them.

IT is an enabler that helps to solve real world issues; broadband is just a tool they might use that cuts across every possible policy area. The strategic basis of a broadband plan must be in the hands of people who deal with those real world issues.

Look to Ed Vaizey. Ed is a multi-faceted person but he’s not a technologist, he doesn’t surround himself with geeks, and yet he fully understands the impact a good broadband strategy will have on the creative industries and media, rural areas and the wider economy.

Rory Stewart has seen the benefits of localism and the impact broadband could have on his rural constituency without resulting to a discussion on bits, bytes and symmetry.

The certain disappointment of not following their lead may be hard, expensive and slow to rectify as well.

If neighbouring areas solve this problem better then rate-paying businesses will begin to migrate, making the rural areas a place to retire to rather than grow a business.

If businesses migrate, younger people will migrate to find the work.

And an area with relatively poor infrastructure means even elderly people will slowly migrate as the services which would keep them in touch with their families and allow them to stay in their homes longer won’t be there.

The risk associated with avoiding risks is much higher than developing a measured appetite that allows local ambitions to be met.

Being ambitious for your locality is the less risky path to tread.

They were a necessary middle-man when we were trying coax our voice-grade network into the internet-era; dial-up internet evolved from banks of modems providing access to bulletin boards and mail hosts to an interconnected inter-net.

Now we are moving towards a network purpose designed for data that treats voice as just another service, there is something of an assumption that ISPs as we have come to know them will remain an important part of the supply chain – the necessary link between retail customers and the telecommunications core.

We can see that evidenced in the EU’s assumption that open access networks will provide multiple layers of competition, and the initial focus of Ofcom’s work began with a replacement for level 2 services which form the basis of today’s ISP services (in fact it doesn’t feel like they’ve moved much beyond level 2 NGA access).

But its worth remembering what happened in the UK when the regulator mandated access to the first-mile copper network, the so called local loop; ISPs rushed to compete at an infrastructure level, not on a virtualised network but using  real networks. It suggests the industries preferred competitive battle-ground and the regulators may not be exactly the same.

In the days of dial-up modems, your ISP provided transit from their network to the internet, your email address and web-space. Today, most people prefer Gmail and consider Facebook their web hosts, leaving ISP’s as little more than resellers of internet transit. No wonder they seeks areas to differentiate!

Returning to today’s next generation transition, there has been a clear reluctance among ISPs to engage and commit to next generation developments. While much of the debate has been on the cost and complexity of creating new software interfaces to manage layer 2 Active Line Access (ALA – what BT calls GEA) services, lying behind this , I suspect, is a deeper preference to find a realistic substitute for local loop unbundling, where ISPs can retain their ability to compete using physical and not virtual networks.

If this is true, then perhaps it should not have been a surprise that the first formal, unequivocal request from a service provider to next generation network builders was for physical network access – Virgin’s offer to use a wavelength to extend their cable coverage to new areas where a full fibre-to-the-premises network exists.

Physical network control provides greater scope to form the service layer in your own image – to differentiate the customer experience, matching it your brand and aims.

While the arguments from the rest of the service provider community for not joining the next generation party have focussed on the complexity of software system interconnection, this is really a facet of the cost and complexity of administering virtual networks – physical network interconnection is typically a much simpler process with fewer variables.

So was the work on ALA a waste?

Absolutely and unequivocally no!

A smart and flexible layer 2 framework is what will release the content providers – the cloud operators. While service providers appear to want to move down the network stack, their place will be filled by application and content providers. The capabilities of a smart next generation networks will unleash the creativity of social media companies, cloud application developers and the content delivery companies.

ALA should be promoted to Sony and Google as much, if more than, to TalkTalk and Plusnet.

Am I bothered that some next generation networks appear vertically integrated? If their intentions are monopolistic, then very much so. If however, they are creating a platform for services and using ALA to actively encourage new service delivery models, then I’m less concerned – in many ways I suspect they will become the pioneers of a new internet era.

So what is the impact of all this?

If internet service provision does move further towards physical network provisioning, then we need to understand one key message: Who ever lights the service owns the customers and controls their access to the digital world. This is the true root of the net neutrality debate.

While it is true that whoever builds the passive cabling has a natural geographical monopoly, whoever lights the service has a natural monopoly over people and businesses. That is one of the key strengths of ALA – it breaks the chains, putting control over the digital experience in the hands of customers and the services they value.

In this regard, it perhaps matters less about having a choice over who lights the service but much more important about how they light it. Getting this right will move the internet message away from bits and bytes and towards stuff that matters to us – the services we value.

So for Ofcom, two messages should be very clear:

1. More progress needs to be made on passive infrastructure access. Its not just about ducts and polls but a passive version of ALA – a consistent framework that allows today’s ISPs to unbundle cables and reinforce their apparent desire to deliver real networks, not virtual.
2. ALA is a brilliant mechanism but only if its purpose and opportunities are made clear. Whoever lights the cables, should be using ALA, and a new level of service competition should be created where multiple content providers are able to take advantage of the intelligence built into ALA. Ofcom needs to put its long arms around the totality of its remit, and not treat broadband and different in some way to TV or content.

If we can get this right, the UK could become the first country to break the chains of the net neutrality debate and in the process create an exciting platform for the next wave of creative industries and social media. And we will have put to bed one of the key reasons the major ISPs aren’t fully engaging with this future.

The sad irony of the super-injunction fiasco is that if Twitter decide not to move to the UK because of a Mancunian footballer’s alleged immaturity to face up to his own actions, it may be the Mancunian economy that pays the price in the longer term.

Enough said.

Firstly, we are seeing a host of new models and investment announcements which are making the final third – the most rural parts of the UK – a viable and exciting place to invest in fibre-optic broadband – providing you have the logistics and business model sorted. Fujitsu, Rutland Telecom, NextGenUs and Jendens – jointly and severally – all making headway in their own distinctive way.

Secondly, BT has announced it expects to be lifting VDSL speeds using existing phone lines under its Infinity investment from “up to 40 Mbps” to northwards of “up to 80 Mbps” in the relatively short term. In their word – VDSL is a technology in its infancy and they expect to see considerable improvements as it matures. The combination of Fibre to the Cabinet (FttC) and VDSL is an architecture which really works best in more urban areas with diminishing returns as it tends towards more rural areas.

So the natural conclusion of these two shifts is that rural areas should become the place where fibre all the way to the doorstep dominates first – and urban areas will remain on copper for much longer but with services that keep in touch with their lucky bucolic friends.

Not something I expected to say out loud!