Tag Archive for 'BD-UK'

What’s actually going on?

Published on October 28, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

It still surprises me that after 18 months there seems to be confusion in the twittersphere about what is actually happening in terms of deployment and the goal of the ’s policy.

There have been conversations which seem to jump from a position that to every home is the only real solution to suggesting they are being short-changed by some mythical 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 two EU Black/Grey/White models

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 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.

Changes to NGA broadband in the UK

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.

Changes to basic broadband in the UK

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.

Steering the QE2

Published on September 29, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

The hand wringing over the global economy continues, and the UK is now having to consider a second round of quantitative easing (QE – hope no-one thinks this will be about luxury cruises).

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 ’s QE1 programme resulted in the Bank of England buying bonds, and the money was used to fund general 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 , 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 could be dramatically increased – and I purposefully use the word “underwrite” rather than simply “buy”.

Under the 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 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 switch-over!

Its all about black and white

Published on September 17, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Anyone who has been close to any public sector involvement in is likely to have come across references to Black, White and Grey areas but I get the impression that the meaning is often not well understood; this is perhaps not surprising because there are in fact two models and rarely in my experience is the specific one being used named.

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 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 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 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 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 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!

Unintended consequences

Published on September 16, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Even the best planned actions can fall foul of unintended consequences but its probably fair to say that the more rigorous the thinking the less likely they are.

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 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 or wireless.

Based on this, the level of subvention per premise in the final 10% is significantly higher than in the 90%, so 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?

Reliable data

Published on September 11, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Recently we have seen BDUK announce the funding allocations to local authorities and the devolved assemblies, and the companies aiming hoping to get on the national framework have been short-listed. The sums awarded to councils were modelled by BDUK according to their understanding of need, and at the moment the framework companies are trying to develop a consistent understanding of what will be required of them and their shareholders should they be successful.

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 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.

BDUK Broadband Speed data

(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 , 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 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 stories to write about, and my own postings became less frequent and rarely positive good 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.

Speech to INCA workshop – Community Broadband is Dead

Published on July 19, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

What follows is the transcript of a speech I gave to INCA’s workshop held on the 19th July at the Frontline Club. This was a difficult speech to give, but one I felt I had to give.

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.

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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 “ ” – 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 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, , has gone through a lot of real pain to move from an overly simplistic model towards one which understands , 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 .[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]

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Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. All BDUK models and the advice they seem to give to local authorities talks of FttC to much of the country, typically based on BT products and services, with wireless and satellite services for the rest. Don’t assume this means BT are in some way complicit – I suspect they are as frustrated as everyone else↵
  2. As anyone who has been involved in building a next generation access network will attest, the process is a complex journey which only begins after the first step. Operators whose experience is limited to core networks or first generation broadband are yet to understand this complexity. Experienced major operators have found this as much as smaller, newer organisations – those that understand the complexities of are a clear subset of the industry.↵
  3. Kees Rovers is the man behind the OnsNet network in The Netherlands. His approach is defined by 7-pillars, necessary principles for a successful broadband project. The “Us feeling” is a sense the community is in some way a stakeholder, engaged in its delivery.↵
  4. BDUK’s expectation that local authorities should use their central framework to find a single partner to deliver their local broadband plan has in many cases stopped the very difficult but necessary thinking being done by many local authorities, and pandered to those that wanted any easy process.↵
  5. The BDUK framework excludes almost every organisation with experience of building next generation networks, in some cases by what appears to be carefully crafted rules targeting specific organisations. There is also frustration being expressed by a growing number of people who feel excluded from dialogue with BDUK – meetings cancelled, concerns ignored, and a sense the dialogue has simply ended.↵
  6. I don’t know what changed inside BDUK but its clear something changed. From the outset there was a very fluid and constructive dialogue between most people involved in this space – at one time I might meet people within BDUK almost weekly. That phase has very clearly gone now. Personally I’ve not had a dialogue with BDUK of any merit in some months, and much of the advice I and many others have offered in the past has clearly been set aside.↵
  7. I’d like to think that its not too late for BDUK to repair their relationship with the industry and communities but time is certainly running out. A year has gone by, and the framework will absorb much of the next one. Communities and the industry want to make progress more quickly, with greater ambition, and with more consensus – BDUK should be part of that process, and not  allow themselves to become a competing factor as we move forward.

    This remains a very challenging goal but the policy can’t be a success if the majority of stakeholders are at odds with the policy delivery team. The original goals need to be restored; this process which will surely only deliver an efficient way to spend money needs to encompass the goal of becoming a broadband superpower again – and that will need everyone.↵

Everything should be made as simple as possible. . .

Published on July 3, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

The debate about what’s going wrong with the policy is becoming quite complex, messy and somewhat emotional.

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 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 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.

BDUK Framework update

Published on June 29, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Since I wrote about the impending BDUK procurement framework, there seems to have been a little movement which I think it right to acknowledge.

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 ’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 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 projects once they have been allocated BDUK funding. There may be a small number oflocal 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 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!

NGA closer to home

Published on June 28, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Over the past six months or so I’ve been sitting on ’s Working Group considering how we might make the best of our  landscape.  is the most rural county in the South East, making it challenging for broadband, yet it also generates many more high-technology start-ups than most – not an easy balance to achieve, especially when you realise that, unlike Cambridge with its science parks, many of these small business that will lead the UK out of our economic woes are as likely to appear in converted barns in Cotswold villages as they are in the  dreaming spires.

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 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 ’s ‘’ 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 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 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.

Localism, innovation – and national frameworks?

Published on June 22, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I think it was Cisco’s John Chambers that once said that big companies can’t innovate, as he refocussed a large part of their R&D budget to nurturing and developing partnerships with small companies that could. Today we are seeing a similar trend in the pharmaceutical industry, where large internal research labs are being replaced by smaller external research companies.

And it is smaller, more nimble companies that are developing innovative business approaches, technologies, and service delivery models in ; not just in the UK but across Europe. Heavy Reading predicted that around 60% of European 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 ’s policies for supporting SMEs in public procurement exercises and the wider 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!

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