UK superfast broadband? Not in my backyard – MP A MP has questioned the government's ability to provide superfast broadband nationwide if it cannot even meet its commitments "in an urban area such as Cheltenham". Martin Horwood, Lib Dem MP for Cheltenham, told Ed Vaizey, Minister of Fun (and Broadband), that the government's target of 90 per cent superfast broadband and a …
It's hard to know with so few details but I'll stick my neck out and point the obvious: the problem may very well not be with broadband speed then (unless of course it was a preview of the next iOS update, then anything is possible!).
Was he trying to sound all technical?
It's not just broadband users that take 3 days to download files - I had a 5MB file I wanted to download on Friday that didn't download until I clicked the link on Monday.
This is outrageous! Won't someone think of the children?
Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells
To be fair, he also notes places with performance below 2 Mbps (i.e. 900 Mbyte/hr) - on which a 50 Gbyte download (enormous, but I seem to recall that's the size of one of the recent game releases on Steam?) would indeed take well over two days running flat out. I've downloaded a few things lately (Adobe Creative Cloud, Windows 10 beta, OS X Yosemite) each of which were well into multiple Gb - meaning they'd each max those poor sods' connections out for many hours instead of the minutes it took for me.
To be fair, I'm actually quite impressed with BT's FTTC rollout overall. Of course I'd like universal FTTP, but FTTC's a good stepping stone (it puts a fibre node within a few hundred metres of everywhere with FTTC, giving much better service than ADSL without the cost and long wait of individual fibre pulls). Apparently BT are willing to do FTTP on new developments, but builders aren't cooperating much so far since they don't get paid for it directly; maybe that'll change once they see enough demand from house buyers.
"To be fair, I'm actually quite impressed with BT's FTTC rollout overall. Of course I'd like universal FTTP, but FTTC's a good stepping stone (it puts a fibre node within a few hundred metres of everywhere with FTTC, giving much better service than ADSL without the cost and long wait of individual fibre pulls). "
I may be wrong, but I think the problem with FTTC is that a FTTP setup is a whole other kettle of fish, meaning when you transition to the latter, you basically have to tear nearly everything down again due to the very different equipment involved.
I may be wrong, but I think the problem with FTTC is that a FTTP setup is a whole other kettle of fish, meaning when you transition to the latter, you basically have to tear nearly everything down again due to the very different equipment involved.
I think you are wrong. A lot of people already in an FTTC area can now get FTTPoD. I'm in one of those areas. The pricing is a bit painful but the work involved is fairly minor. The new fibre seems to just connect to the FTTC cabinet. I vaguely recall that a manifold needed to be installed somewhere close (like at the end of the street) but it's basically blowing a bit more fibre down the ducts between you and the cabinet then micro trenching to get the fibre to your front door.
" you basically have to tear nearly everything down again "
Why 'again'? There's no tearing down in FTTC, it's additional kit that exists alongside the already in-place copper delivery network.
The plan that telcos are adopting is to gradually install fibre closer to premises - it starts with FTTC and then G.Fast is used to get to the last span and at some point, if the economics can be made to work, fibre all the way in. Nothing needs to be replaced if FTTP becomes the norm.
BT's FTTP program is expensive consumer shite
Consumer..well, yeah. Because that's exactly what is being discussed here. It seems harsh though to criticise a consumer product for being a consumer product. BT can do business products as well and there we're talking about pretty much whatever speed you want in both directions with no contention if you're willing to pay. Thing is consumers can't generally pay so they don't generally get the best that BT can do.
Expensive..well actually yeah i'll give you that for FTTPoD - that's looking ridiculous at the moment especially after their recent price adjustments.
Shite..I still think that's a bit harsh. They are currently offering it at 330/30 and the few reports I've heard say that it does what it should. I would like to see a higher upload though - maintaining the 4:1 that FTTC can offer should be entry level. The problem is that at those kinds of speeds it's already a serious threat to their leased line business and that puts them in an awkward position.
If the smaller schemes being rolled out by Hyperoptic and friends catch-on maybe we'll see BT upping their game. But give it time - it's only been around as a consumer product for a year or so. Meanwhile BT are suggesting that you don't really need FTTP anyway :)
Sorry @AndrueC, I thoroughly respect your opinions on internettery, but BT's delivery of FTTC is shoddy. To not show up all their other products, and to constrain what you can do with the service, they artificially constrain your upload. Consequently, all it is good for is sucking down more consumer content from BT. Don't you ever want to be able to do more with your internet connection than just suck down media?
On cable and DSL, upload restrictions are there as technical necessities; in order to achieve the most optimal distribution of bandwidth on the connection, most is allocated to download. There is no such technical limitation with FTTC that requires this asymmetry, BT install a box in your property that connects to the exchange at 1.2GB/s, up and down. BT then apply artificial limitations later on in order to define who you are and what you can do with it.
BT FTTP - 300 Mbit down, 30Mbit up, £70 pcm
Non BT FTTP - 1000 Mbit down 1000 Mbit up, £50 pcm.
Sorry @AndrueC, I thoroughly respect your opinions on internettery, but BT's delivery of FTTC is shoddy
Did you mean to type 'FTTC there? There's not much constraint on the FTTC product. The number of people who could actually get better than 20Mb/s would be fairly small. Now if you actually meant FTTP then I already said it should be higher and acknowledged why. Basically it's a consumer product and they are trying to protect their business revenue to a large extent.
But then again - maybe there is a technical issue of sorts. When BT roll something out they have to provide a wholesale product for it. It's a legal requirement courtesy of Ofcom. I would imagine that moving from the current asymmetric model to one that is symmetric could have significant cost implications for BT. Suddenly exchanges have to be able to push just as much data as they pull. The core nodes will presumably have to be upgraded for the same reason. It becomes more than just a capacity scaling issue. It could have significant network design consequences.
And after the expense of doing that and providing a wholesale product how many ISPs would sign up? There's been precious little interest from them for the current offering. At least with the current offering it fits into the current consumer market model. All they are doing is increasing the bandwidth and that's an ongoing process that the network design can deal with.
Non BT FTTP - 1000 Mbit down 1000 Mbit up, £50 pcm.
To address the specific point about the price. A lot of that could be due to the requirements imposed on BT by Ofcom. In particular - the provider in this second example knows that they and only they get the revenue from the cable. In BT's case a large chunk of the revenue generated by the cable may end up going to someone else. There's the expense of making that happen (creating the wholesale piece) then the basic economics of building a road and having to share the revenue with someone else.
I don't want to come across too much as a BT apologist and I do agree that the current consumer 'true fibre' offerings are constrained. I just think that saying they are 'shite' is a little too harsh. I think they are a reasonable evolution of what's gone before. A little more upload would be nice but otherwise..meh. Since when has any consumer product of any kind offered exactly what we wanted at the price we were willing to pay?
The problem is that at those kinds of speeds it's already a serious threat to their leased line business and that puts them in an awkward position.
Always be prepared to cannibalise your own business because if you don't then someone else will. At least you get the money if you do it.
"Why 'again'? There's no tearing down in FTTC, it's additional kit that exists alongside the already in-place copper delivery network."
In FTTC the cabling between cabinet and exchange is replaced with glass fibre. If you changed out a FTTC area to FTTP you might want to change the routing of that - after all the cabinets are where they are because of the needs of the copper telephone network back in the day. But I imagine it would be rare that the cost of doing so would be warranted.
>Apparently BT are willing to do FTTP on new developments, but builders aren't cooperating much so far since they don't get paid for it directly;
Be interested to know why the builders aren't cooperating, since BT does all the design and specification of the within-development telecomms infrastructure and re-imburses the builder. So there is is no real reason why the last mile shouldn't be fibre ready, particularly as laying fibre is as simple as laying twisted pair - given the use of cable containing both copper and plastic fibre...
However, the biggest problem I have in my house is that the builder didn't see fit to install a power socket anywhere near the master telecomm socket, making the installation of fibre broadband equipment problemmatic.
"However, the biggest problem I have in my house is that the builder didn't see fit to install a power socket anywhere near the master telecomm socket, making the installation of fibre broadband equipment problemmatic."
One of the best parts of signing up to BT infinity is that the engineer visit to set up the service includes moving the master socket closer to a plug socket.
Urban areas aren't always easy to deal with. The ducting could be collapsed, there's loads of other underground infrastructure to deal with. Cables might take crazy paths that make the line too long for useful VDSL. Dense populations act like a discount mechanism but in some places the costs are just too high even with that assistance.
Oh and a lot of city centre properties might be on EO lines. That means the lines go straight to the exchange instead of via a cabinet and BT isn't allowed to install VDSL equipment inside exchanges. Generally urban EO lines are quite short so the user should at least get high-teens, maybe over 20Mb/s from ADSL2+ though.
I was just about to say the same things: I've moved 100 yards or so and thereby managed to increase my speed from 400kbps to a heady 1Mbps
Rock and roll!
And of course we get to look out onto those bandwidth boasting bankers at Canary Wharf...
Three days at 9600 baud is enough to download a quarter of a gigabyte. So how slow was this connection and how big was the "program"?
Of course, if the "program" was the Win8.1 update, it would take about a month to download at that rate. And you'd only be running Win8.1 at the end of it. That *would* be irritating.
2Mbs is amazingly unambitious and certainly not superfast; only marginally faster downstream speeds than T-1, and It is still taking decades to deploy. Superfast is upwards from 100Mbs but for most rural areas these are science fiction speeds. Fast broadband is now so critically important that it is an essential check-list item in business location and house purchase decisions. The whole thing needs a radical rethink - community satellite links and local wi-fi perhaps. Fortunately this area was fibre cabled 20-odd years ago and has been regularly upgraded to 120Mbs. It really makes a difference to the way you work. Moving out of area is a real challenge though.
- so if it's like this one in Gloucester, you can choose between "up to" 2Mbps ADSL, 48Mbps FTTC, or Virgin's cable "fibre" offering up to 152 Mbps.
Admittedly, it's a pity there's a hill in the way - or I could be looking at 300 Mbps wireless from a local suppllier...
We are simply watching the artificial scarcity created by the capital heavy programs of 50 years ago, being stretched to breaking point in the modern world. How long can they stretch it out for?
I'll be happy when the common language will not use "broadband" (a despicable marketing word) and will just say "network".
You know, like in the office...
P.
PS if you cannot use 1Gb/s, then I'll have your spare...
Superfast broadband coverage in the UK is very high, at 78 per cent.
I find this figure very, very suspect. I live in East London, and although the exchange has been enabled, theres no sign at all that the cabinet ever will be - and very few of the cabinets I pass between my place and the exchange have been equipped for FTTC either. Almost no-on I know in the same area can get it either, and although a higher percentage of friends in other parts of London can get it, even that doesn't tip 50 %. Most of those I know in vaguely rural areas are below the 2 meg mark.
So I really wonder what shenanigans they're pulling to come up with that number. The most likely seems to be counting exchanges as enabled rather than cabinets, which would be pointless if you actually wanted to provide information, but useful for scoring political points. The fact no-ones properly forced BT out of their reticence regarding schedules speaks volumes for weaving a pretty story that can't be verified.
As for the average speeds Ofcom so piously puts out on a regular basis; utter bloody horseshit really. A straight average provides no meaningful information at all, but again just plays to "look how well we're doing" politics. Using median would be far more useful, but would take 90 percent of the political whitewash off and show UK broadband up for what it is; a sack of shit.
trying to squish the Internet down a wee wire. I mean that's just stupid.
why don't we all just get a copy of it in our home.
I've seen the IT Crowd - it's only about the size of a shoe box.
I could fit it under the stairs.
Maybe the postie could deliver me an updated one once a week.
job done.
The problem with the number of 78% on 2 meg or higher is a 'average'.
with the level of speed being either completely useless at at less then 1meg to having super fast at over 100 Meg it's no wonder you come up with a average that is not really showing the real picture.
The problem is also 2meg is no were 'fast broadband' these days, and there is to much pressure on the 'download' speed, when with all these pushes to 'cloud' you now need a decant upload speed to.
Well, as a person who lives on the estate in Cheltenham that Martin talked about (and I personally sent a letter to him about the maximum speed of 512Kbps - because email is too slow to use!) about the problem I'm pleased that he raised the issues but not at all surprised by the government's response.
BT told us that they had no requirement to provide broadband and they only need to provide enough quality for voice calls.
Virgin cable said that they would only lay cable if there were enough people in an area to make it 'worthwhile' and that estate wasn't big enough to bother with.
It's a new estate and BT told the house builders that the quality of lines weren't good enough to support broadband and there were no plans to upgrade.
The irony is that GCHQ is only 1 mile away - I bet they don't suffer from BT's outrageous service.
Given this is a new estate (ie. telecomms installation planned after 2010), well you have a number of considerations:
1. What is between the cabinet and your homes - this should be modern and, if BT did their design and specification job correctly, be ready for FTTP (via either tubing for blown fibre or mixed fibre and copper cored cable).
2. What is in your home. I suspect this is a copper only installation, as I doubt the builder will have paid any attention to PAS 2016:2010, since that would increase the build cost...
3. The second problem is the cabinet to exchange connection and the exchange itself. The question here is in which grouping in the BDUK project is your exchange and cabinet, because at a minimum BT are required to deliver a minimum of 2mbps to new build under the BDUK universal access provision.
I agree a big problem is that apart from Virgin, the other major operators basically piggyback on to the BT exchange through the LLU service. Bypassing the exchange and installing your own fibre cable is not for the faint hearted, particularly as you are unlikely to receive any funding from the BDUK project as I expect BT already hold the contract for your area...
It might be advisable to send solicitors letters to both BT and the developer as the absence of (2+ mbps) broadband should of been revealed at the time of sale...
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Rather than talk about speeds why not use the ability to watch the BBC's iPlayer as a standard. In my house this is just about possible, most of the time.
Also why do the iPlayer devs think that everyone has a fast connection? There is no option to watch a programme in a smaller window. I would even prefer to watch a show in black and white rather than not at all.
... are some of the most difficult to sort out. There are patches of 80 & 90s builds in East London on Exchange Only lines that are longer than you might think and the Cable Co ignored them when they were doing their 90s build out. Really the only option is 4G, WiMax of some kind or FTTP. FTTP install in London to domestic premises is so expensive whoever put it in would never get their money back.
New builds on the edge of towns like Cheltenham are a nightmare as well. The copper line topology for the town will have been designed ages ago, so it is a case of just finding where it may be possible to run the copper bundles given whatever duct space and spare cables you have to run a telephone service to the new build. I remember seeing a map of one where the best route ended up adding several K to the distance on the wire run, while the exchange was less than 1 K away.
I live in Cheltenham and have looked into the issues - the problem is more to do with communication than implementation. We have one exchange in the centre of town but as the town has grown distances to the exchange have become very high. This means LLU services although available can drop to speeds as low as 0.5Mbps with lots of dropped packets as well - the dreaded 'notspots'. This makes using the internet for streaming, downloading, VOIP or even browsing difficult.
In comes the Fibre Broadband rollout and BT Openreach did a great job. They assessed all the cabinets in Cheltenham, and upgraded the ones that (at the time) were commercially viable. This led to an 88% coverage of fibre services available to homes in the town.
They then gave this deployment information to BDUK / Fastershire. This is the a public/private partnership project to 'fill in the gaps' using government and EU funding. However, Fastershire have claimed they were told that Cheltenham was going to be upgraded so did not include this on their scope plan when applying for government funding. Openreach have stated categorically they gave specific information down to the cabinet level of which cabinets were not being upgraded.
We could play the blame game, but that doesn't solve anything. Openreach do not generally do re-assessments as they have moved on to new areas - it's not like they've got a shortage of cabinets to build. Even if they did re-assess, there's no way to know if it would be now commercially viable. Fastershire have already closed the door for anyone else wanting to claim funding, as they've received all the funding available for Gloucestershire. It's in their remit to deliver broadband to ALL of Gloucestershire, but they've missed crucial parts in their scope plan and it's impossible to magic up extra funds to plug these gaps now. So for now, they just keep repeating 'Cheltenham is within the commercial rollout'.
Hope on the horizon: 4g is being rolled out in Cheltenham, at the minute it's expensive with tiny usage limits but as the technology matures it's possible in a few years this could provide an alternative for Cheltenham's notspots. Alternatively, it's possible a second tranche of funding will become available for Fastershire to apply for, but this would not be available to deploy until at least 2018 and at which point the government may refuse additional funding on the basis of the expected 4g available. Finally, communities are able to raise funding themselves to privately commission the cabinet, but this is limited to those communities who are able to afford to do so.
I know from current personal experience that in my rural (and aged) area about 60% of households have computers and of them less than 40% will pay a reasonable amount (£43 for unlimited 50Mbps including telephone) for a reliable service. (The local academy places homework on their servers. It often takes some children 20-30 minutes to download Powerpoint format questions and then 2 hours to upload the answers. Try doing that with 3 or 4 pieces of homework and get up for school the next day!)
A company is willing to provide us with FTTP if we can get 30% of premises to sign up to 12 month contracts, but we languish at 24%. (The take up rate of households with children in education is almost 100%!)
It's very frustrating for the 1/4 of the village getting less than 500Kbps, but the economics don't stack up without more subscriptions.
So, this MP is taking up HoC time to wig the minister over an unspecified constituent, in an unspecified area, with an unmentioned connection speed an unknown computer program from an unknown server to an unknown device. And, assuming this is a bleat about the government's programme re subsidising broadband rollout, he would perhpas be better off asking the Gloucestershire county council. They've banded together with Herefordshire as "www.fastershire.com". That website though shows Cheltenham as enabled so it's not really clear what his constituent's issue is.
That is the issue really - Martin Horwood has spoken to Fastershire at length, and they believe(d) deployment is complete in Cheltenham - but its only available to 88% of homes. Openreach told Fastershire about those 12% of homes not being complete but Fastershire failed to incorporate this into their plans to complete deployment. They have since claimed that Openreach gave them bad data, but as you say on their website it still says Cheltenham is complete.
Consider that they received EU and Government funds on behalf of Cheltenham residents in order to complete plan, it's like your builder telling you he's finished the job and isn't coming back while you've got no roof on your house - and he's already taken the money.
If this is the same nationwide, we may have "100% deployment" according to government sources, but the reality is not all homes will get it and we absolutely will miss ambitious 95% superfast targets. Especially considering that it's unlikely we will get to 100% deployment in any case, if we get to 90-95% but ~10-15% of those are not really connected to the grid that's looking like as a nation we will be at 75-80% coverage.
The issue is prominent in Cheltenham not just because of the speed but simply Cheltenham is interesting in that its served by only one exchange - so some homes are 2-3 miles by copper wire. This causes line speeds to sync between 0.125Mbps and 2Mbps, not to mention that the connection is far more likely to drop frequently. That's a big reason why FTTC is important because you run fibre to the cabinet and in homes that are far from the exchange they get a massive improvement in signal.
"It seems El Reg has reduced the information content..."
Cheers for that, shame the hack didn't add it really. It seems I've cast the MP in a poor light; he actually knows what he is talking about. Looks like a mapping problem at heart, which has led to a funding shortfall by the council. The people who always seem to avoid blame here are the developers of the estates.
No, I wouldn't.
My MP, Sherryl Murray refused to communicate with me unless I provided a local address. That it could have been anyone's address, or the fact she effectively accused me of lying about being a constituent, didn't bother her. She just wasn't willing to defend her position (ref her support for the DRIP surveillance bill in July).
She made it abundantly clear that "They don't work for you".
The problem is they laud themselves for getting a statistically successful level of roll outs which makes a good headline but they classically neglect the minority because they aren't making headlines. We need their KPI to focus on the unconnected not those who are getting upgraded. My village got FTTC quite quickly which is pretty pointless because we already have much faster Virgin cable, they should concentrate their more FTTC efforts in areas where they have low penetration of broadband from *any* provider rather than just giving me more choice of where I get high speed broadband.
The problem here is what do you consider to be superfast and what do you consider to be fibre.
I would say FTTC and VDSL to your house is NOT fibre. Neither is DOCSIS over Coaxial cable, but yet Virgin Media still get to call it fibre.
In the UK "Fibre" broadband is a joke. In other countries like Sweden, Finland, even Romania then fibre is fibre. It's not a euphemism for slightly-faster-than-adsl style broadband. The sooner the government actually bothers to invest in a national fibre network the better but it wont happen because they expect companies to pay for it. But what company is going to network up the UK when nobody wants to take the service and those that do are so few and far between that it makes no economical sense to wire them up. What is needed is a national program to wire everyone up, not stopgap solutions that will only last a few years but a proper rollout.
And speaking of the new builds, we almost bought one last year but the lack of broadband was a dealbreaker for me as I work from home about 60% of the time and even have two connections to ensure I can stay online. One developer told me they team up with Sky to offer TV and phone and the likes of Virgin Media are not allowed in to cable up the street for several years. This needs to end, you cannot have a new build where the only choice is Sky the government needs to step in again and end the monopoly. Don't we have a minister responsible for broadband? What do they do all day long ?!??
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