thinkbroadband :: Broadband Campaign "Final Third First" launched

Advocacy site

Final Third First blog

My Comments on this campaign

There have been steps taken in the UK to “get broadband to the farm gate” but there are still a lot of questions concerning how this is going on.  The main issue being raised regarding rural broadband in the UK is lack of “proper access”. IMHO, this would mean “at the door” access speeds that match service-package “headline speeds” for mid-tier ADSL packages.

Previously, I had blogged about rural broadband not just being about planting a DSLAM in to a rural telephone exchange and providing a backhaul to one or more Internet services. There is a lot more that needs to be looked at in this context, such as the quality of the telephone wiring from the exchanges to the properties. The act of planting a DSLAM in the telephone exchange may provide close to headline-speed DSL to every one of those fixed telephone lines in the built-up area such as a hamlet or village. Then you have the issue of “clapped-out” telephone lines servicing the rural properties that limits DSL performance to these properties. Other factors also include a failure to use the options that are part of the ADSL2 standard to “push out” the signal over long distances.

I would therefore recommend a gradual but prompt process of renewing and reorganising telephone lines for particular geographic areas as users register interest in broadband Internet in their areas of residence. This may also include investigating the use of ADSL repeater setups and similar “push-out” hardware setups. I would also look at the idea of deploying fibre-based Internet like Vitesse did in Birch Green, Bramfield, Hertingfordbury and Stapleford in Hertfordshird (UK), whether directly “to the door” or as part of a backbone to copper-based runs.

News articles

AAPT launches no limit broadband plan | The Australian

No cap on downloads as AAPT’s truly unlimited internet sets new standard

From the horse’s mouth

AAPT Plan Information Page – AAPT Entertainment Bundle with 24/7 Unlimited Broadband

AAPT Press Release

My comments on this scenario

Anyone who has used broadband Internet in Australia would be aware that all of the services have a usage limit and if you go past this limit, you would either have your Internet service throttled to a very low bandwidth rate or pay for the extra bandwidth used. Some service providers have modified these plans to allow for peak / off-peak limits with separate metering and a higher limit for off-peak hours. This idea is also being investigated in the US by cable companies, especially Comcast, as a way of shaping Internet traffic, mainly to keep IP-based independent video traffic off their networks.

Now AAPT have offered a $A99.95 residential broadband plan that is in the same vein as US or European Internet service plans i.e. it has no usage limits. This has now become an attempt to “one-up” everybody else in the Australian market. This firm had introduced plans with off-peak hours that were limit-free but this has become the most bold act that any major Australian ISP had offered.

This has happened even though Telstra and Optus had recently revised their plans to permit larger usage allowances due to the increased bandwidth available for international Internet traffic to Australia. Other issues that may have encouraged this include use of IP-based entertainment services like Internet radio and IPTV / video-on-demand; as well as the up-and-coming National Broadband Network.

It will be interesting to see what happens further with this deal – whether AAPT rolls it out on to other residential and/or small-business plans and whether other major-league ISPs will roll out “limit-free-all-day” plans and whether these will be offered across the board.

 71 % des foyers suisses ont accès à Internet – DegroupNews.com (France – French language)

My comments about this article, including facts that I have translated from the article

This article appeared in DegroupNews (France’s home networking and IT portal) close to when Switzerland was announcing the rollout of their very-high-speed FTTH Internet service. This service is intended to start appearing through that country this year and is intended to be a multi-network setup where different provider groups can use their own fibre cluster like in France.

The article was stating that 71% of households in that country had the broadband “hot and cold running Internet” either through ADSL or cable technology. It also stated that most households were opting for “mid-tier” plans which would yield 2-10Mbps and that the market placed value on quality of service. There was also less likelihood for households to “jump ship” between the ISPs.

But there are some questions worth asking about this situation. One was whether the merger between Orange-Suisse and Sunrise was likely to have impact on the Swiss Internet market as in effect on prices or quality of service.

The other question that sorely needs to be answered is whether the rural neighbourhoods including those charming mountainside chalets are part of the 71% of households that have broadband Internet. This includes whether the rural services are being provided at the rated speeds that the customers agreed on. This rural-access issue has always been raised by me in this blog because it is too easy for an ISP or carrier to install a DSLAM in the rural telephone exchange and establish the Internet backbone yet forget to check on the quality of the telephone lines to the customers. This could lead to customers missing out on broadband Internet or receiving below-par service.

These facts can be easily skewed by the size of the country, its population and the size of that country’s urban areas compared to the size of a larger country like France, Germany, UK, the US or Australia. But it is worth noting what has happened in Switzerland which is a predominantly mountainous country, when factoring the provision of Internet service in to hilly areas.

Article

L’ADSL social, bientôt une réalité ? – DegroupNews.com (France – French language)

My comments and summary on this topic

The French government have taken a few positive steps in subsidising broadband Internet access to poorer communities by encouraging the provision of “tarifs sociaux” or “social tariffs”.

Through France Télécom, they are running a broadband plan of €6.00 per month for 43,000 of the most disadvantaged households rather than the traditional basic plan of €16.00 per month. The government are also looking at subsidising ADSL-based “triple-play” plans to the tune of €5-10 per month for poorer households based on a “social allocation” system. On the other hand, they will work with the industry to establish an industry-established “social fund” which can help with access-enablement programs.

They are describing it as a plan to end the social digital divide. But, in my opinion, there is still the issue of providing equipment of a reasonable standard to enable these programs. If the plan includes the price of any customer-premises equipment, the plan should include a router capable of 4 Ethernet ports and 802.11g WiFi access. Other issues that may need to worked on include whether the person has to supply their own computer or whether they could have access to modest equipment such as a netbook, nettop or low-end desktop or notebook for a low monthly fee. On the other hand, these people may end up with secondhand computer equipment that is supplied “as-is”.

As well, there would need to be some form of community assistance for people who are computer-illiterate. This includes help with the common computer skills such as sending and receiving emails, Web browsing, word processing and file management.

At least France has outlined some steps towards providing affordable Internet access to the poorer communities within the cities.

thinkbroadband :: Northern Ireland to provide 2-10Mbps Universal Service by mid-2011

My comments on this topic

The steps that the Northern Ireland government are taking to meet the UK’s goals of achieving a baseline broadband standard of 2Mbps for rural areas and 10Mbps for urban areas by 2011 are at least a positive step in the right direction for affordable fast Internet for all. Yet there are certain questions that need to be answered regarding any of these ambitious service-improvement projects/

One issue that always perplexes me is whether rural end-users get at least 2Mbps at the door or is the throughput measured arbitrarily up the wire. This also includes the issue of phone-line quality in these rural areas because, as I have seen many times in these areas, the quality of broadband service, let alone dial-up modem service or even voice telephony isn’t consistent because of the older infrastructure that commonly exists in these areas. Some larger rural properties may have the main house set back from the point of entry for the telephone cable and it may be too easy to measure the ADSL throughput at that point, rather than at a phone point in the main house.

Another question is what qualifies as an urban area for applying the 10Mbps standard for minimum bandwidth. This can encompass situations such as the peripheral neighbourhoods of a large town or whenever more people move in to a smaller town that would have been deemed “rural” and this town grows significantly.

In the urban context, this standard needs to be “set in stone” in order to prevent “redlining-out” of neighbourhoods that are considered to be “poor” from the broadband service area.

At least this is in the right direction to helping Northern Ireland achieve the standard of broadband called for in the UK mainland.

Finnish government promises fast broadband by 2015 | Helsinki Times (Finland)

Finland says that 1Mb broadband is a right, not a privilege | Engadget

Broadband a legal right from 2010 in Finland | ThinkBroadband

Applause For Finland: First Country To Make Broadband Access A Legal Right | TechCrunch

Le haut débit devient un droit fondamental en Finlande | DegroupNews (France – French language)

My comments on this step towards universal Internet access

Most countries who implement universal Internet access take it to a similar level to how electricity or telephone are provided to everyone. But Finland have done what would be typical of a progressive Scandinavian country with a tech economy. They have made this a legal right for Finnish inhabitants to have 1 Mbps broadband-grade “hot and cold running” Internet by July 2010 and the minimum to be raised 10Mbps to 2015.

This has put an impetus on the government to set up the necessary programs in an orderly manner rather than adopting a “Monte Carlo” approach to providing universal broadband Internet service. As well, Finland is setting themselves as an example to other states when it comes to providing universal broadband Internet and assuring its access by all citizens.

A lot of the blogosphere have made comments on this achievement by describing it as a right to download BitTorrents of movie and TV material but they don’t think of such concepts as triple-play or “over-the-top” video, improved telephony or the ability to run competitive business.

At least this is an example of a country being a “proving ground” for broadband Internet access being as much a protected right as running water.

 BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Highlands and Islands | Rural BT exchanges in £3m upgrade

My comments on this article

The main thing I am pleased about with the upgrade of the rural BT telephone exchanges is that there is a step in the right direction for cost-effective fast broadband service in these rural areas.

One main issue that always needs to be addressed in any “broadband to the farm gate” project is the quality of the telephony infrastructure between the exchange and the farmhouse. These upgrades typically focus on slapping a few DSLAMs in the rack at the exchange and wiring them up to the lines but the main question that needs to be asked is whether every property can gain access to the broadband service at the advertised speeds. Typically the main impediments to proper ADSL service in the country is older telephone wires that run long distances and, in a lot of cases, are decaying. Sometimes this can manifest in a lot of noise and crosstalk on the lines and even slow performance for other machine-to-machine communications like dialup modems or fax machines.

Through my young days while living in the country, I have encountered situations where the phone service is so poor that I have had to ask callers to repeat whatever they were saying; or the phone was reported many times to Telstra (who was the then monopoly phone provider) due to noise-ridden phone calls. I have also known of locations where some properties in a country town’s street have ADSL broadband while others can only benefit from the Internet through dialup. I have also dealt with people who have wanted to head off on a “tree change” to the country and they realise they are only able to benefit from satellite broadband or dialup as their Internet means. Here these people end up mothballing their wireless routers and dig out their dialup modems when they “go bush”.

Other factors to look for include development clusters like hamlets or house clusters close to features like lakes or forests. Here, the small clusters could be set up to work on a mini-exchange which has a low-capacity DSLAM and a voice and data trunk to the main exchange that serves the rural area. Similarly, long runs could be targeted through the use of ADSL repeaters, implementation of ReADSL (a range-extended variety of ADSL2) and revised infrastructure.

Once this issue is looked at, there can be the reality of broadband access in to the country

 thinkbroadband :: European Commission introduces broadband funding guidelines

European Commission Broadband Funding Guidelines – PDF document (English) (Français) (Deutsch)

My comments and summary of this document

The European Commission’s goal in this document is to provide 100% high-speed broadband service to every European citizen – broadband to he just like regular telephone or electricity service. They are to put EUR 1.02bn to European Agricultural Fund For Rural Development with part of this money for equipping rural areas with high-speed broadband “hot and cold running Internet”. As well, member countries are pitching money towards deploying very high speed Internet services (fibre-optic Internet) into populated areas.

The activities covered in the guidelines may typically be equipment and backhaul “pipeline” to provide broadband Internet to remote population centres in the case of basic broadband provision or equipment and works to provide next-generation broadband to areas that aren’t worth it due to sparse population or poorer neighbourhoods that are less likely to pay for the service.

What to be done to qualify for State aid

New basic-broadband services

• Proper geographical analysis of Internet service in all areas to identify white and grey areas
• Open tender process for providing the State-underpinned services or infrastructure
• Most economically advantageous offer (best value for money) to be preferred for providing the service
• Technology-neutral service so that a provider can use their choice of wireline, terrestrial wireless, satellite wireless or mobile wireless technologies or provide a mix of the technologies
• Use of existing infrastructure (ducts, poles, black fibre, etc) preferred without favouring existing incumbent operators.
• Wholesale access to be preferred so that fair and equitable retail Internet access can be provided to customers from multiple providers
• Prices to be benchmarked to assess real competitiveness
• Support for a claw-back mechanism if there is over-compensation

New next-generation broadband services

Preference to pure competition such as access to ducts, black fibre or bitstream by competing operators; or support for differing topologies like point-to-point or point-to-multipoint

This could include providing for the use of trenches caused by renovation works for existing services like electricity, gas or water.

What hasn’t been covered

One major gap that exists in these guidelines, especially as far as unbundled services or next-generation broadband services is concerned is privately-owned multi-tenancy developments like shopping centres or blocks of flats.

In these places, a property owner or management committee could permit only a particular operator to lay infrastructure in their building and prohibit competing providers from laying their infrastructure in the same building. There isn’t provision for measures that preclude this kind of behaviour that denies tenants or unit owners access to infrastructurally-competitive Internet service.

Conclusion

This document should be looked at and considered by governments and telecommunications regulators when they prepare frameworks for next-generation telecommunications and Internet services.

 Quatre ans de DegroupNews : et les FAI dans tout cela ? – DegroupNews.com (French language article)

My Comments

Congratulations DegroupNews on 4 years of service as one of the better IT newsblogs that service France.

I have been a fan of this site and its companion DegroupTest site because of the good quality information that these sites give about the Internet-access scene in France. This includes information on the arrival of Fibre To The Home broadband service in various French cities as well as the service being used for a “people’s triple-play service” which provides receive-only VoIP telephony, basic-ADSL-tier Internet and IPTV service encompassing free-to-air digital TV for one euro a month.

For people who are considering moving to France or setting up or maintaining that dreamy farmhouse or apartment there as a holiday house, rental property or “bolt-hole"; this site offers good quality information on the triple-play “n-box” deals offered by the main operators as well as information about whether you can get a full triple-play Internet service at the location where your property is or will be. It has also made good-quality reviews of the hardware provided by the various Internet service providers as part of their deals so one can know what to expect when signing up.

Other issues that have been touched on in this site include the way the French have handled the perceived cancer demon associated with wireless services like mobile telephony and WiFi networks; as well as their handling of the file-sharing of copyrighted works. It is worth a read whether you have a good grip of the French language or can trust a machine-translation service like translate.google.com to translate the site in to your own.

There has been recent news coverage regarding the upcoming National Broadband Network that the Australian Government has recently launched. Initially it was meant to be a fibre-to-the-node setup for most of the populated areas built by a private company who has won the government tender to build it. The last year was dogged with so much bickering about whether Telstra, Optus or other companies and consortia are fit to build the network. Now the Australian Government wrote off the tenders and decided to make the network a publicly-funded “nation-building” exercise on the same scale as the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Power Scheme.

Their idea would be to cover 90% of Australian premises with “fibre-to-the-premises” service with the remainder served by high-bandwidth wireless or satellite connections. This will be with Tasmania being a test-bed for this service and greenfield developments being prepared for fibre-to-the-premises.

But there are a few questions that need to be asked concerning the deployment of this service.

Deployments in multiple-tenant-unit developments

In most of the densely-populated areas of Australia, there are many multi-tenant-unit developments like blocks of flats, office blocks and shopping centres with many households and/or businesses in the same physical building. Similarly, there are high-density developments where multiple households or businesses in many buildings exist on one privately-owned block of land. There have been two different ways of connecting these buildings to a fibre-to-the-premises network.

The cheaper method, known as “Fibre To The Building”, is to run the fibre-optic network to the building’s wiring closet, then use copper wiring to bring the service to the customer’s door. This may be achieved through dedicated Ethernet cabling to the office, shop or apartment or use of existing wiring that is used for providing telephone or TV service to these locations but using VDSL2 or DOCSIS technology to move the data on these cables.  It would be similar to the “Fibre To The Node” setup which was originally being considered for the National Broadband Network, except that the coverage of a “Node” would be the building.

The other method, known as “Fibre To The Premises” or “Full Fibre To The Premises” would be to run the fibre-optic network to the customer’s door.  This would be similar to how the fibre-to-the-premises network would be provided to a sole-occupancy building like a house and would have a fibre-optic socket or optical-network terminal in the premises.

This issue could be answered by prescribing an installation standard for setups in all current and future multi-tenant developments or by allowing the building owner / landlord to determine which methodology to use for their property. Similarly, there would be the question of whether an existing building should be cabled the moment the infrastructure is rolled out past it or

Carriage of TV and telephone service over the NBN

There has been talk about the high bandwidth availability being the key attraction to the National Broadband Network. This has brought up the concept of video being transferred through the NBN and this may be considered a threat to commercial television and its stakeholders.

Most, if not all, of the high-bandwidth broadband networks in operation or currently being deployed are answering this issue by providing free-to-air and subscription television service through the networks. This has also allowed supplementary services like catch-up TV or video-on-demand to be provided over the same network. As well, the companies who provide retail Internet service based on these networks typically will resell subscription TV service with the service being delivered over the same pipe. There is also benefit for community and vertical-interest television providers because they can use the same bandwidth to broadcast their shows.

The standard for TV service that is available with this broadband technology would be a “best-case” standard which permits full high-definition picture with at least a 5.1 channel surround-sound audio mix and full two-way interactivity.

The landline telephone service hasn’t been mentioned in any of the discussion about the National Broadband Network. Yet it can benefit from the same technology through the use of VoIP technologies. This can lead to cheap or free calls around the country and can lead to households and “Mom and Pop” business users having the same kind of telephone service that is taken for granted in most of big business and government.

The same technology can bring through telephone conversations which have a clarity similar to FM radio. This would benefit ethnic groups who have a distinct accent; women; children; people with a speech impediment as well as voice-driven interactive telephone services. As well, the concept of the videophone, largely associated with science fiction, can be made more commonly available.

Could this be the arrival of the “single-pipe triple-play” service on the Australian market?

This is best exemplified by the typical “n-Box” (Livebox, FreeBox, Bbox) service that is being promoted by nearly every major Internet service provider in France. It is where a customer buys or rents an “n-Box” which is a WiFi router that connects computers to the Internet and works as a VoIP analogue telephone adaptor for two phones; as well as an IPTV set-top box that connects between the “n-Box” and the TV set. The customer pays for a single-pipe triple-play service with cut-price telephony, broadband “hot-and-cold running” Internet and many channels of TV.

Universal-access service and the cost of the service

There is the promise of 90% coverage for Australia but will this promise be of reality? As well, there will need to be a minimum standard of service for all to benefit from the Internet using this technology.

I have talked elsewhere in this blog about achieving a standard of universal access for the Internet in a similar manner to the landline telephone service and other utilities. Issues that may need to be raised include reserving funds for the big infrastructure projects that need to reach certain communities and whether to create subsidised access plans which provide a basic level of service at a very low price or for free.

This would then cover access to decent Internet service for disadvantaged communities including indigenous people, income-limited people and migrant / expatriate communities who would benefit from this technology.

Conclusion

Once the questions regarding about how the National Broadband Network will be implemented are answered, we will be able to gain a clearer picture of the service that it will provide for all customers.