Tag Archive for 'NGA'

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 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 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.

Is the future of TV in doubt?

Published on January 31, 2012 in Adrian's tech blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Today Sky announced its to launch a standalone TV service. This seems perfectly timed given that NetFlix has recently entered the UK market, joining Amazon’s LoveFilms and a rash of other services and platforms like Google’s YouTube, Apple.TV, and the BBC’s iPlayer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Open is the best (only) policy

Published on December 12, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

If I’m honest I’m a little tired of the whole open network debate – largely because I don’t think there is very much to debate.

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

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

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

So why should networks be open?

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

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

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?

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.

An observation on British broadband #2

Published on May 22, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

One of my long-term predictions has been that Service Providers will ultimately disappear as we know them today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So was the work on ALA a waste?

Absolutely and unequivocally no!

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

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

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

So what is the impact of all this?

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

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

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

So for Ofcom, two messages should be very clear:

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

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

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