back to article BT best provider for 10Mbps USO, says former digi minister Ed Vaizey

BT's Openreach is the internet provider best placed to deliver the government's plan for a Universal Service Obligation (USO) of 10Mbps by the end of the decade, former digital minister Ed Vaizey has said. Speaking to The Register, Vaizey said: "I think if you want the most effective, quickest and likely-to-be-delivered …

  1. hplasm
    Meh

    Has-been talks bollocks.

    Film at eleven.

    1. Vimes

      Re: Has-been talks bollocks.

      Has-been looking for directorship at BT talks bollocks.

      FTFW

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Has-been talks bollocks.

      > Has-been talks bollocks.

      He's a politician - he has phorm

  2. Vimes

    I wonder if he's after a non-executive directorship, much like Patricia Hewitt before him? Or maybe his view has been shaped by Trade Ministers like Ian Livingston (who themselves used to head BT)?

    On a note entirely related note, it's funny how there seems to be revolving doors between big business and government.

    Even within government itself there are moves that seem a bit doogy. Take IoCCO and the more secretive Intelligence Services Commissoner for example: Jo Cavan used to head IoCCO, now she's moving to NTAC at the same time that both IoCCO and the Intelligence Services Commissoner are merging. NTAC is run by GCHQ. GCHQ is supposedly overseen in part by the Intelligence Services Commissoner.

    So at the same time that IoCCO is merging with the government regulator overseeing GCHQ, the head of IoCCO effectively moves to GCHQ.

    1. Blitheringeejit
      Holmes

      Revolving doors

      For an exhaustive (and depressingly lengthy) list, see "The Establishment And How They Get Away With It" by Owen Jones. Essential reading for anyone who isn't already totally cynical.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Revolving doors

        It's been a long time since UK was free of all pervasive corruption.

    2. Commswonk

      it's funny how there seems to be revolving doors between big business and government.

      Not it isn't; it's anything but funny.

  3. David Roberts
    Unhappy

    Sadly he may be talking sense

    If it was hugely profitable to run new connections to sparsely populated areas then there would not be an issue.

    The UK is cabled up for electricity and phone because at one point this was mandated and the utilities were part of the government.

    Then the utilities were sold off to reduce costs by introducing competition.

    Nerly all the broadband progress has been made squeezing the current infrastructure, which is why we have speeds far in excess of the original dial up over the same lines.

    A lot of the Virgin network is based on the infrastructure from smaller cable companies which built out then went bust. Effectively funded by commercial losses. Not a model to encourage the building out of new networks.

    We are lucky to have cable; however even in our town only the higher density housing was ever cabled up. Note this - in a town where all the infrastructure was there, it was judged not economic to cable up an area of mainly detached houses. Only mainly semi-detached. This by a company which AFAIK overextended itself financially.

    Rural areas? No chance.

    So where is the busines case to cable up sparse locations with fibre? Because of course copper just won't hack it over a certain distance. Most farms and private houses can't afford the cabling costs for fibre. So any upgrade has to be centrall funded. Which most likely will involve Openreach (unless they split it off and sell it to be milked to death by foreign investors).

    Some small firms are doing sterling work using community funding to cable up small villages but this seems to be the exception.

    How about a £5 ukp a month levy on ALL domestic broad band connections (including mobile data) and pro rata on business data connections to directly fund fibre to the wilderness? Spread the pain for national gain?

    If you could guarantee the money would be all spent on infrastructure, of course.

    Oh, and the best thing the regulator could do is offer Openreach the opportunity to upgrade these small villages, and if they decline hit them with a "no compete" clause for say 5 years to prevent them from targetting the oposition.

    1. Vimes

      Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

      How about a £5 ukp a month levy on ALL domestic broad band connections (including mobile data) and pro rata on business data connections to directly fund fibre to the wilderness? Spread the pain for national gain?

      If you could guarantee the money would be all spent on infrastructure, of course.

      You could do that by re-nationalising it?

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

        You could do that by re-nationalising it?

        Because of course the government has an excellent track record of budgeting for and managing large infrastructure projects?

        Or because the last time the government was in charge of UK telecommunications it declined to invest in it and pretty much ran it into the ground?

        Or because when BT offered to massively modernise the network in the 80s they decided instead to allow foreign companies to come in and cable up the most lucrative areas?

        Or because the best organisation to be in charge of transportation of all our precious and private data is the government?

        There are so many ways that openreach could be better. But putting the UK's telecoms network back in the hands of the government has to be the most stupid idea of the lot.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

          "Or because the last time the government was in charge of UK telecommunications it declined to invest in it and pretty much ran it into the ground?"

          Come on, who didn't love everyone having the same beige turn dial phone as everyone else? Then replaced by the grey push button phone with the sticker on it?

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

            Beige? Trendy youngster. Real telephones were black.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

        "You could do that by re-nationalising it?"

        Short memories.

    2. Commswonk

      Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

      How about a £5 ukp a month levy on ALL domestic broad band connections (including mobile data) and pro rata on business data connections to directly fund fibre to the wilderness? Spread the pain for national gain?

      Or how about bugger off? I pay quite enough for my service now (from pension income) and I don't see why I should be hit by what would be about a 20% price rise on the "broadband" portion of my monthly bill.

      I can fully accept that the agricultural community could be considered as a special case (although under the existing regime they already have taxpayers' money handed over to them, and I suspect that won't change much under Brexit) but beyond them - no.

      Perhaps a less - than - ideal broadband service may be an inescapable penalty of living in the deep countryside, much as easy access to hospitals and supermarkets might also be limited.

      I certainly don't want to subsidise rural communities just so that the gamers can play to their hearts' content. (That should ensure a few downvotes!) I am not entirely convinced that rural businesses deserve a subsidy either, unless it can be shown that they have to be rurally based rather than just as the personal choice of the owners.

      1. Ol' Grumpy

        Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

        I agree with your comment about it not being subsidised by a levy on existing connections on the basis that a tax taken from an area rarely seems to end up being spent on where it came from - I'm looking at you Vehicle Excise Duty!

        That said, you can't penalise people that live out in the sticks for living out in the sticks. Some people don't have a choice. Broadband is rapidly being considered as a utility and as such, should be available to all regardless of where they live. I know I wouldn't be too happy if I were denied access to water or 'leccy because I lived a few miles out of town and the utility companies considered it "uneconomical".

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

        I'm not convinced you need to drink milk, eat vegetables and frui etc, but thats what rural communities provide. Theyre already dumped on regarding mains gas and sewerage. Why should you live a decent modern lifestyle benefitting from their work without chucking into the pot? Sponger!

    3. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

      " ... judged not economic to cable up an area of mainly detached houses. Only mainly semi-detached."

      Most of the cable in UK was rolled out for cable TV. This was a commercial undertaking so it was sensible to think about the number of households passed and the likely uptake. As a small social comment, perhaps it was thought that the uptake in the already more spaced out detached houses was going to be low, two reasons why the return may not have enough.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Sadly he may be talking sense

        "This was a commercial undertaking so it was sensible to think about the number of households passed and the likely uptake."

        The term you're looking for is "cherrypicking". And BT, having only been allowed in the game late, is now being abused because it hasn't instantly filled the gaps between the cherries.

  4. Mystic Megabyte
    FAIL

    More crap

    "But what BT has done is incremental."

    BT got £16 million from the Scottish parliament and upgraded our exchange to 512kbs. The scheme was codenamed "Exchange Activate" but should have been called "Rip-off the tax payer".

    Luckily I can now stream video if there is no rain and it is between the hours of 1 to 5 a.m.

    At this rate of "incremental" I'll be dead before fast broadband is available here. :(

  5. Martin Summers Silver badge

    BT can't even deliver a leased line 2.5km from the exchange down a quiet country road after nearly a year. Botched a first survey with ECC's costing 12k (and they started construction already) now deciding it will cost 29k and expecting my company to agree to it! They are frankly incompetent to say the least and I am utterly furious with them. So good luck getting them to do anything. I would love el Reg to do a story on this utter farce to highlight how crap they really are.

    1. Tom 7

      RE a leased line 2.5km from the exchange

      A raspberry Pi, a couple of helical aerials on the wifi, a decent battery and a PV charger should be able to provide a bidirectional line of site relay for less than the price of putting it on a big stick and provide pretty much 24/7 cover. And if you can use a friends connection to BT and not them you can share the cost of his BB.

      1. Martin Summers Silver badge

        Re: RE a leased line 2.5km from the exchange

        Nice idea Tom and I would, but for a business it's not going to fly with the WiFi.

  6. Adrian Bridgett

    Gigaclear

    Well if gigaclear can deliver fibre to the home in rural locations, what's BT's excuse? Granted BT have a large area to cover, but they were very late in recognising the internet needed something better than 56K.

    Shame given that we could have had fibre in the 80s if the government hadn't blocked it (I think they wanted a 5-10 year monopoly - which they effectively _still_ have).

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Gigaclear

      I worked in the high speed chip design group of BTRL then we could have had 2.4Gb 10Km bidirectional runs of fibre for a lot less than the price BT pay now. The hardware price would have been in the low hundreds of pounds then - the power supplies being more pricey than the FO stuff.

    2. AndrueC Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Gigaclear

      Well if gigaclear can deliver fibre to the home in rural locations, what's BT's excuse?

      Gigaclear don't have to offer a wholesale service over their fibre. They can charge what they want and get 100% of the RoI because they are the only ISP customers can sign up with. BT's profit margins are largely controlled by Ofcom and as they have to offer a wholesale service over it the RoI ends up being shared with other CPs.

      This is almost certainly why only BT won the first round of BDUK contracts. No other company could come up with a viable business plan when told they had to share the fibre.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Gigaclear

      "Well if gigaclear can deliver fibre to the home in rural locations, what's BT's excuse? Granted BT have a large area to cover"

      Got it in one"

      "but they were very late in recognising the internet needed something better than 56K.

      Shame given that we could have had fibre in the 80s if the government hadn't blocked it "

      Got it in one again!

  7. Neil 44

    Exchange only lines - no chance of faster

    We have a so called "Exchange Only" line (that funny little concrete pillar containing all the telephone line joints clearly doesn't rate being called a cabinet!).

    Whilst the local exchange has been "upgraded" to fibre to the cabinet (though I'm seeing lots of complaints that the speed isn't anywhere near what was advertised!) we are still on regular ADSL... There seems to be no real plan for our sort of line. There's talk of a cabinet by the exchange - but I can't see that will give any faster connection that we have via ADSL (the "Max" version) which gives about 8Mbs as it has the same line length limitation.

    Wish we could get Gigaclear here but as BT are in the exchange, we can't...

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Exchange only lines - no chance of faster

      My cabinet was 2 miles from the house and 4 miles from the exchange so when I heard we were getting FTTC I was delighted. Not so delighted when I found the cabinet the council paid for the fibre to go to was at the fucking exchange, the cabinet I was connected to is no longer a cabinet, and I'm no better off.

  8. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

    Bloke on cloud nine talks rubbish

    He is correct to suggest BT should be sweating it's copper - it's right that any company should attempt to make as good a return on it's existing assets as it can. But that's as far as it goes.

    He is talking bollocks when he suggests they shouldn't be pushing FTTP. Not pushing the sensible option for decades is what got us to the mess of needing to sweat copper now.

    The thing is, it's a huge task - yes, converting the country to fibre would be a massive massive MASSIVE task. But that's only if you look at it in terms of converting what's already there. If we started by putting fibre in where new investment is needed then we'd be making a start. If they started that a decade ago, then we'd have (picking WAGs from the air) perhaps 5% of connections now on fibre. Not a lot perhaps, but it's a chunk into that massive task.

    There's a saying that you can eat an elephant if you do it a small piece at a time - the problem is that we're concentrating on how hard it is to eat a whole one, and not even starting on the task of trying a bit at a time.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: Bloke on cloud nine talks rubbish

      He is talking bollocks when he suggests they shouldn't be pushing FTTP. Not pushing the sensible option for decades is what got us to the mess of needing to sweat copper now.

      They tried in the 1980s. Sadly Thatcher killed the plan in favour of letting foreign companies in to provide competition. That's where VM came from. I posted a link in a previous response explaining how BT was at the world forefront of fibre optic research and manufacture and was tooling up big time. Then Maggie refused them a broadcasting license and opened things up to the cable companies. BT knew it was screwed and sold the tech. off to the likes of Fujitsu.

      It is inaccurate and unfair to blame BT for a lack of foresight. I wouldn't even accuse the Post Office of that. The problem all along as been government interference.

  9. Disgruntled of TW
    Stop

    Ed who? Utter nonsense.

    An Oxford graduate who read History, then practised law for a few years ... what does he know about broadband technology? Who are the civil servants feeding him this information? Name them, and make them accountable for the spin their minister is offering.

    Aiming for a USO of 10 Mbps will ensure the UK lives in the dark ages. Our government resolutely refuses to support communities like B4RN who *can* deploy synchronous gigabit fibre in rural areas.

    Said it before, and I'll keep saying it ... based on the information the gubbermint chooses to release to us, we should scrap HS2 (cost £60Bn with 1.7:1 return) and give everyone a fibre to their home (cost £30Bn with 20:1 return).

    But the gubbermint ignores its own figures and continues to remain unaccountable for that behaviour. No wonder folk vote against the political elite. There's little worth voting for, much to vote against.

    1. Commswonk

      Re: Ed who? Utter nonsense.

      An Oxford graduate who read History, then practised law for a few years ... what does he know about broadband technology?

      Probably next to nothing. However, I would be interested to hear from others on here about which organisation ought to do it if BT does not? Which other companies have the resources to do the work on a sensible timescale, or even any timescale?

      Please do not repeat the "split off Openreach" mantra because that would open up a Pandora's Box all of its own that would impact on everyone's pensions investments for years to come. Separating Openreach has become such an article of faith that I am of the view that many if not most of those subscribing to it assume that some sort of magic would happen, and I for one rather doubt if it would.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Ed who? Utter nonsense.

        "Separating Openreach has become such an article of faith that I am of the view that many if not most of those subscribing to it assume that some sort of magic would happen"

        Like Brexit.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Ed who? Utter nonsense.

      "Our government resolutely refuses to support communities like B4RN who *can* deploy synchronous gigabit fibre in rural areas."

      Maybe they didn't offer to sign up for USO?

  10. Andrew Jones 2

    "I grant you that in 5-10 years time most people will want 100Mbps. But what BT has done is incremental."

    Yup, and when you start upgrading people it will take another 10-20 years. There are really only 2 ways forward for the next upgrade and they are FTTP which will cost a lot and FTTdP which potentially could be even more expensive unless they go down the overhead route.

    With all the money we are now apparently saving by not paying EU membership - a couple of weeks worth of money could see FTTP to pretty much everyone. We still have this on-going issue where government services are moving to be digital first (or even only), and there are still people who just don't have access, and under the current FTTC everywhere plan - still won't have access when the plan has finished. FTTC has a distance limit, FTTP does not (though obviously it costs more). FTTC also has a major crosstalk issue that everyone likes to pretend isn't there and finally - there while it is not exactly widespread - the copper system suffers from REIN and for those that is affects - there is no legal or regulatory enforcement available to fix the issue.

  11. attackcat

    Silicon Roundabout

    My office is less than a kilometre from this hyped place and we don't get FTTC. We get ADSL. Upto 8 whatsits on a good day, for a short while. It's usually less than 1. Don't give me this uneconomic to go out into the sticks stuff.

    1. Commswonk

      Re: Silicon Roundabout

      Um... a bit of a non sequitur that, but even so it does not explain or excuse the poor performance you are getting.

      You might well be on "Exchange Only" local ends, which means that there are no cabinets in which to provide FTTC in the first place. It could also be that there is insufficient (data) capacity in the exchange itself leading to serious congestion there, in which case just rolling out FTTC / FTTP would achieve nothing.

      Worth noting, perhaps, that just forcing a divorce between BT & Openreach would not in and of itself sort out exchange - level shortcomings, because as far as I can see they would remain firmly within BT's remit.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    scrap HS2

    few people WANT HS2. Not many see a great need for it........why is public money being chucked at long distance travel most people use once in a blue moon, when millions want better internet infrastructure, only to get a helpless shrug from HM Gov ? Improve the track by all means, but cut back on the ambition & spend whats needed on a modern utility. We'll be stuck with copper forever unless the treasury bung BT a few quid to help

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