Tag Archive for 'big society'

Horses for Courses – picking the right tools for the fibre job!

Published on April 25, 2012 in Adrian's tech blog. 0 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, business models, community, community strategy, digital britain, fibre, localism, network architecture, NGA, procurement exercise.

This blog started life on my Posterous page which I use for quick thoughts but the impacts have been troubling me so I decided to move it to my main page and add a little to it.

It started when I spotted this tweet from FiberNews, run by the excellent Marc Duchesne (If you don’t follow @mduchesn, then why not!):

“MikroTik RouterOS – Hardware suggestions for FTTH ISP bit.ly/IVK6v9“

Seeing it raised some big questions in my mind, and ones which I think are largely a UK specific issue and not one which may be of particular relevance to other countries beginning to fibre-up.

FttH is long-lasting national strategic infrastructure. At some point in the future there will be a copper switch-off and the fibre infrastructure left behind will become default telecommunications network in each country.

This isn’t a Mystic Meg prediction – I can’t say how long it will take but Regulators in some European countries are already starting to consider the conditions under which copper networks might be switched off.

When it does happen the fibre networks being built today become natural monopolies and will have the sole responsibility for delivering critical services and for supporting the market that relies on competition from wholesale operators through service providers to content organisations. All this will rest on the decisions being made today by the pioneering fibre operators.

Many countries around the world have active community-led broadband markets but there is a subtle difference in the UK. In my work with BDUK, I suggested three broad models for delivering community solutions:

Partnership – where there is co-investment in the assets but the network is designed, built and operated by specialists
Concession – where the community own all of the assets but a concession is offered to design, build and operate the network
DIY – where the community own all the assets but also design, build and operate the network themselves

The UK, like many markets can find good examples of the first two, and this is the core focus of many international fibre markets, but I suspect the UK is alone in seeing the emergence of the third group.

In the context that any resulting fibre network will become the national strategic infrastructure, any undertaking by a community carries with it not inconsiderable responsibility and for any community considering a DIY approach this responsibility rests entirely on the shoulders of the community.

I should be clear here: There is absolutely nothing wrong with a community adopting such an approach and for a few this is something their communities will be willing and able to take-on, and I for one wouldn’t want to stop them – so long as they fully understand the responsibility they are taking on.

However, it was the tweet at the top of this blog that brought into sharp focus for me this sense of a community having a full understanding of these issues and what practical steps they need to take to assure themselves and their communities.

MikroTik is excellent kit. I’ve used it myself to build devices with features from pretty much all the Cisco catalogue from simple routers to deep packet inspection, intelligent traffic shaping and distributed load balancing devices.

MikroTik and similar kit formed the basis of the wireless network I built some years ago to deliver first generation broadband to homes and businesses in rural Oxfordshire. It allowed me to build features into that network that simply couldn’t have been cost-effective any other way, and in the same circumstances I’d do it exactly the same way again.

But I wouldn’t build a network the same way that will at some point in the future will become the network ultimately responsible for guaranteeing blue-light telephone calls or providing critical health-care services, or for sustaining the local leg of what has been identified as the largest and most vibrant on-line economy in the world.

There is a fundamental difference between deep-fibre based NGA networks and the previous generation of overlay broadband networks:

Overlay networks largely have the luxury of choosing what traffic they carry and how;
Deep fibre networks will become the national infrastructure and with that comes the same responsibility that today pretty much only the incumbent operators have to shoulder.

When you build a FttH network you are saying that you are prepared to take-over that responsibility at some point.

For that reason I would want to make sure the equipment I used to build such a network was designed to carry the burden, and that would rule out consumer grade network equipment and equipment that works brilliantly in overlay networks but isn’t designed for such a critical role.

I could still find a 100 and one uses for MikroTik hardware in my network but I don’t think I would sleep well at night using it for mission-critical network elements. The reality is that being able to meet these requirements necessitates carrier grade equipment with carrier grade processes and support systems. Its all about horses for courses – picking the right tools for the job.

Lessons from the US and Europe show that doesn’t necessarily mean gold-plated pricing or vast scale but it does require a level of understanding that few communities will easily find locally.

And it is this understanding that has typically led European and US communities to favour partnership and concession models – and deterred them from being more hands on.

I don’t want to send out the message that community-led broadband can’t work – it clearly can and I wholeheartedly support it. All I ask is that if your community is considering a DIY approach you weigh up the full implications alongside the benefits you have identified.

If you have any doubts, compare the outcomes and the risks with other models – with developing a partnership with a specialist or from offering a concession to run your network.

Steering the QE2

Published on September 29, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 1 Comment Tags: BD-UK, big society, business models, central government, community strategy, digital britain, localism, NGA, politics, procurement exercise.

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 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!

BDUK Framework update

Published on June 29, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, central government, digital britain, localism, national broadband network, News, politics, procurement exercise.

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 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!

NGA closer to home

Published on June 28, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, business models, community, ed vaizey.

Over the past six months or so I’ve been sitting on Oxfordshire’s Broadband Working Group considering how we might make the best of our broadband landscape. Oxfordshire 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 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.

Localism, innovation – and national frameworks?

Published on June 22, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 4 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, business models, central government, digital britain, ed vaizey, eu countries, localism, procurement exercise.

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 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!

Mixed Ambitions

Published on May 28, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 24 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, community, community strategy, digital britain, ed vaizey, imagination, jeremy hunt, localism, regional identity.

Or why this isn’t an IT project.

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.

Why waiting to bid for BDUK may be the smartest option . . .

Published on April 15, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 3 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, business models, community, ed vaizey, localism, News, NGA, procurement exercise, public service networks, regional identity.

. . . at least until after the 9th of May.

This advice is probably too late for some local authorities so apologies for the unhelpful suggestion to those who’ve sweat blood in the last few weeks and put together a submission to BDUK already. But if there’s any doubt in your mind that your bid isn’t quite what it might be then take my advice, submit an Expression of Interest and delay.

Ed Vaizey made it quite clear at Peter Aldous’ Suffolk broadband event last week – the money doesn’t run out next week – there is funding available for many more bids after next week’s closing date – and its far more important to get it right than get it early.

Why delay? In recent weeks there have been a number of significant announcements and movements in the broadband landscape that need to be carefully considered, and which could have a fundamental impact on your bid.

Up until the last week or so much of the discussion surrounding many local authority bids has focussed on public service networks (PSNs), regional backbones and digital village pumps. This was always only half of the story – a very important half but never enough to make a successful bid to BDUK.

The really hard bit is the access strategy – how do you get from the village pump to homes and businesses?

Strategies which simply delegate this responsibility to a locally unaccountable multinational is at best a fairly risky option, especially when we are in a new world of localism and the big society.

Wishing to hand over responsibility for the access strategy is understandable – its complex and costly, a long way outside most people’s core competence. These are the holy trinity of criteria traditionally used for outsourcing. And certainly these are very good reasons why most if not all local authorities should not be attempting the access network themselves but the traditional options aren’t necessarily the only ones on offer.

There isn’t a business case for a top down deployment of next generation broadband for good reasons – and its not just about cash. Its certainly true that its very expensive to put fibre in the ground, regardless of how deep into the access network it reaches, but that isn’t the only, or even perhaps the biggest, reason a top down approach doesn’t work.

The demography and landscape of the UK varies tremendously; the desires, aspirations and capabilities of the UK’s communities vary tremendously. These factors naturally suggest more than one technical solution and more than one investment profile. A traditional top-down telecoms model only works where a common solution can be applied to the widest possible population. So delegating the access strategy to company offering a traditional approach is likely to result in a lowest common factor solution rather than an optimal solution which unlocks the more ambitious in your economy.

Three good reasons are emerging which mean there are now alternatives and mean you should delay bidding to BDUK.

The most obvious perhaps has been Fujitsu’s announcement that it intends to build a fibre to the home (not cabinet) solution to 5m homes and businesses in rural areas. Their press release suggested this was not just a traditional top-down steam-roller deployment:

“The collaboration will actively support the involvement of local community broadband groups, enabling dynamic and flexible solutions in rural communities for the first time”

At the moment it isn’t clear what that involvement will mean but the approach so far has been much more inclusive than other major announcements by the industry – something anyone developing a BDUK bid needs to at least contemplate.

Secondly, the Big Society Broadband partnership’s knowledge-base, offering advice on how to approach rural broadband, will soon be published. Work put together by a wide array of experts including INCA, the Plunkett Foundation and ACRE. Plunkett’s experience of sustainable rural enterprise is being joined by ACRE’s network of rural community councils and the collective knowledge of INCA members’ of delivering next generation networks.

And finally, but certainly not least, city institution Jendens, have been beavering away behind the scenes for some months looking at scalable models which the City can be comfortable investing in while delivering that rich tapestry of local solutions.

While they may not be a name your have heard of, their knowledge of franchise structures, large-scale investment, and the telecoms industry makes their announcement very significant, bringing a fresh and exciting new approach to solving the final third problem. Their approach cracks the knotty problem of how marry top-down and community-up approaches into a nationally deliverable, sustainable, and flexible model.

Jenden’s have released a document which describes their approach of enabling local authorities to create a menu of options for their county, allowing each community to enjoy a broadband solution that closely reflects their needs, capabilities and aspirations; the franchise structure can then attract local and national investment, and match the right organisation to build and operate the network in partnership with the local authority and community. The commonality of the franchise model makes it scalable and attractive to external investors and the service provider market while the flexibility of local franchise companies ensures solutions support local conditions.

The franchise model and the Big Society Broadband partnership’s approach have a lot in common, and together offer a new perspective on delivering a county-wide access strategy. This and Fujitsu’s announcement mean that if you have any doubts about your bid to BDUK then delay.

Jenden’s are co-hosting an event with INCA and the Big Society Broadband partnership on the 9th May in London

If you’re directly involved in developing your BDUK bid, click here to reserve your place.

The broadband landscape just got a lot more exciting!

A framework for localism – from pump to home

Published on March 28, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 3 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, community, community strategy, procurement exercise, public service networks, regional identity.

Local authorities across the UK are readying themselves for the BDUK process – some are in the process of issuing tenders, others preparing their bids to BDUK for the next wave, while others are doing the hard graft of getting their local broadband plans ready for later in the year.

A common theme among many plans is to use public service networks to deliver digital village pumps – points where local access solutions can emerge, relying on a school or GP network connection as back-haul. This requires that the core network procurement needs is drawn up alongside the community strategy for delivering the access network. Without both, how can tender responses for the backbone be judged if the strategies, plans and aspirations of those expected to become stakeholders and customers haven’t been considered?

BUT not every community has the same capability; not every community has the same aspirations; and not every community has the same access to resources.

A village pump strategy needs to understand and support every type of community within a seamless and sustainable access framework. The uniqueness of each community is at the heart of the localism agenda of the government, and the local broadband access strategy is one of the first – and best – places the policy can become reality.

Trying to construct a regional model which is able to support every community in a manner which plays to their strengths and aspirations is challenging, and requires careful and creative thinking.

Some communities will be perfectly happy with a “race to infinity” where they need do little more than express a vague intention to buy something delivered to their door, and where their demands for speed can be met by a lower-cost technology like wireless or fibre to the cabinet (FttC). While this type of community is perhaps the easiest to support, it also generates the weakest investment profile and applying this lowest common denominator approach across a county would deny more energetic communities of the opportunity to express their capabilities and to demonstrate their ambition.

Some communities will want to become stakeholders, perhaps investing their own money or digging the trenches for a permanent solution to the broadband needs. Its the ambition of these groups that will drive the future innovation and economic growth in a county, so its critical that their ambitions are supported alongside less technologically needy communities.

However, based on my email box, phone calls and conversations I sense that communities are becoming confused as often there seems to be less clarity surrounding the community access strategies than their is about the development of a joined-up local PSN. The access network is the most expensive and challenging part, and reflecting differing community needs and capabilities is hard but it is necessary for a successful local broadband plan.

In an earlier article I commented on the apparent lack of the Big Society manifesting itself in some local authority strategies. Developing a county-wide access framework which encompasses a range of solutions that can engage communities of all needs and aspirations fixes that. It certainly isn’t easy, and it will require creative and new thinking, but there is help available.

There are people who can help develop a community engagement programme that goes beyond a demand registration site; others who can build an investment case that leverages both city and community funds; and other still that can help shape the technical choices and delivery models that leave the community as stakeholders in a solution that fits their purpose, from within a coherent framework which can be delivered across the county.

In the coming weeks there will announcements regarding practical help and support for local authorities, communities, and network operators developing inclusive access strategies but If you’re in the middle of this work now contact me and I’ll put you touch.

What’s happening to the Big Society in broadband?

Published on March 25, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 5 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, central government, ed vaizey, manifesto, politics, procurement exercise.

For many who’ve been campaigning to get better broadband into the UK’s rural areas the Government’s Big Society policy agenda is a very welcome opportunity to really make a difference, to fix this problem once and for all.

With BD-UK’s programme under way and DEFRA announcing £20m to support rural community broadband things seem to be moving in the right direction – but there are some major challenges ahead.

There is a clear sense that politicians are not just espousing the big society principals, they really believe in it - just look to people like Rory Stewart, Peter Aldous and Jesse Norman, and of course Ed Vaizey.

The challenges, to my mind, lie elsewhere.

Generally, public servants have spent the last decade and more centralising – local government had become a delivery body for central government, spending money as they were told, micro-managed from above.

Localism means the direction of travel between local and central government is being put in reverse; the thinking should now be coming from local authorities in tune with their communities, and with the support of central government

This is very hard if you’ve not done it before

Whitehall civil servant’s natural belief is that they have the big picture.

Local government staff are quite naturally risk averse when confronted with new and difficult decisions which may affect the whole of their community.

It will take some time before Whitehall feels comfortable supporting rather than leading, and it will take equally long before local government feels comfortable sitting in the driving seat, guided by their communities.

In this climate, it is perhaps no surprise that the thinking influencing some local broadband plans is drawing from the known, and appears to be taking those local authorities towards a traditional procurement exercise that will ensure only the biggest, most traditional businesses win, and where community engagement is limited to little more than free marketing support.

Perhaps not surprising but it is disappointing given that the Big Society is a key strand of the Government’s policy agenda.

In the way that people like Jesse Norman introduced new thinking which led to a new wave of localism in politics, there is now a need to adopt some new thinking which will lead to localism in our digital society.

And this new thinking isn’t radical as in hippy – its radical as in different – its tried and tested in countries that have found the will to move on, and its has room in it for big companies, public bodies as well as communities – in a respectful partnership.

Successful local broadband strategies need to seek a balance:

Which permits the safety of an established major operator while underpinning the heart and soul of a community initiative
Which allows industrial scale investment while respecting the local stakeholders at the helm
Which attract the best national and international services while encouraging local services attuned to the community

There is no shortage of communities wanting to become stakeholders their digital future.

There are respected and experienced organisations that can provide the support that can focus that demand into action.

There are organisations willing to help raise funding to support the demand.

All that’s needed is for the processes already in motion to be encouraging of this demand rather the dismissive, and for the industry to try something a little radical.

The reward? A new contract with communities which delivers innovation, investment and opportunities. What’s not to like?

Chicken or Egg – Broadband or PSN?

Published on February 11, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 4 Comments Tags: BD-UK, big society, business models, community, procurement exercise, regional identity.

As Local Authorities around the country are beginning to scramble to prepare for the BD-UK competitions, a question seems to be hanging over everyone and is largely going unanswered: Which comes first – the PSN or the broadband?

A good number of local authorities are rolling their internal networking needs into the wider infrastructure project, which is tending to result in a PSN process leading the strategy and a fairly traditional procurement exercise ensuing. But its not clear to me that this is always the best approach.

Certainly the public sector is normally one of the biggest customers of broadband in any geography, and knowing that there is a willing anchor tenant certainly improves the business case but using the PSN as the basis for the procurement isn’t quite the same thing – the combined weight of the SME and consumer markets are considerably larger than the combined weight of the public sector, so procuring the network in the image of the smaller stakeholder doesn’t seem to make sense.

The case for broadband infrastructure can be made with or without the immediate custom of the public sector, while the existence of a next generation infrastructure will certainly make the procurement of a PSN easier and more powerful. Adding the promise of public sector business alongside that of local businesses and domestic customers helps the case – it doesn’t make it alone.

So if the public sector is seen as one of the stakeholders rather than the lead, how does this change the approach?

For any number of reasons, the procurement of a PSN means a traditional procurement exercise with a single county-wide winner. There is a relatively small pool of possible winners, all from the more traditional end of the market – it would be unlikely that Rutland Telecom or Vtesse, for example, would seriously consider bidding for a PSN contract, yet they are two of the most innovative network operators in the UK today and have demonstrated their ability to provide the kind of platform on which a flexible and high-speed PSN might be based.

Each locality will need to adopt its own approach, reflecting local needs and opportunities, as it prepares to bid for BD-UK cash. This may, in some areas, lead to a single big contract being awarded but its not the only approach, and its not one that easily meets the diverse needs of many geographies.

A more nuanced approach is likely to lead to some kind of framework, made up of a variety of providers coming together with a diverse set of stakeholders, each with their own needs and capabilities.

One such approach might adopt the LEP process, with communities or parishes that naturally associate with each other joining forces as combined elements in a county-wide framework.

Some of these areas will have money to invest;
Some may be happy to sign pre-orders as collateral;
Some will dig the trenches;
While others will race for infinity.

Such a framework will attract a wider range of bidders, greater scope for investment, and a more creative solution able to optimise every inch of every county.

A PSN built on such a rich and diverse infrastructure, based on known and existing standards, will generate a greater scope for service transformation and the development of stronger partnerships with local people and businesses.

For me, the broadband comes first – the PSN is one of its anchors.