Tag Archive for 'digital britain'

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

Published on April 25, 2012 in Adrian's tech blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

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 -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 -led 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 . 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 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.

Open is the best (only) policy – Ghost of Christmas Future

Published on December 17, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

In my last post (Open is the best (only) policy) I gave a high-level view on why I think open access networks are important today but I didn’t really explore why I think that offers just a narrow glimpse of why open access will become the single most important thing network operators can do for their customers, and why the UK is unknowingly paving the way.

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 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 “” 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 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!

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 government’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 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 , 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 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!

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.

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 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 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!

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 Government’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!

Mixed Ambitions

Published on May 28, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 24 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Or why this isn’t an IT project.

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

A year on, 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 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 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 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.

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