Category: Rural Broadband Access

Article

BBC News – Devon, Norfolk, Somerset and Wiltshire get faster broadband

My Comments

There have been a few efforts to deploy broadband Internet service into rural Britain that matches or betters the similar service available in urban Britain as I have covered previously on HomeNetworking01.info. Some of these have been underpinned primarily by local private companies with, in some cases, help from local government.

Now, London has come to the fore through the establishment of Broadband Delivery UK and the national funding of rural broadband projects. Four of the first few projects that have been started on under this funding are in Devonshire, Somerset, Norfolk and Wiltshire.

The funds allocations are GBP30m for Devon and Somerset; GBP15m for Norfolk and GBP4m for Wiltshire. Of course, the local councils and private investors in all these areas will provide supporting finance to the broadband provisioning effort in their areas.

An example of this is the Devon County Council pledging GBP22m towards the effort in their area. Here, their goal is to have at least 85% of Devon’s residents having access to the superfast broadband Internet service with a rated speed of 16-20Mbps at the end of the project.

The rhetoric put forward by the UK’s Cultural Secretary is that broadband Internet service is to be a common utility for homes and business in the same vein as mains electricity and telephone. They even have a goal to have the United Kingdom to be known for super fast broadband Internet service in Europe by 2015.

There was no talk about what kind of technology was going to be used to provide the service “to the door”. It then opens questions on whether a particular area was being provided with fibre technology or wireless technology; or whether the “last mile” to the customer’s door was to be copper, fibre or wireless links.

Of course it is so easy to think about whether an area will be covered by a broadband improvement drive but it is worth making sure that the service arrives at the customer’s door at the proper standard. This includes questions about how farms and similar properties are to be covered and the issue of older telephone wiring in rural areas, a factor that is increasing real when deploying cheaper “copper-in-the-last-mile” setups like VDSL2 FTTC systems.

Labor backflips on its NBN promise to regional Australia | The Australian

My comments

Rural and regional Internet users are being short-changed again by a backflip that Labor has done with the National Broadband Network.

The kind of treatment rural and regional users receive

This is an example of continual second-rate treatment of rural and regional citizens when it comes to telecommunications.

Here, I remember living in the country in the 1980s when there was continual poor-quality telephone service. Here there was a poor signal-to-noise ratio with the phone line to where I lived at and this usually manifested in a lot of crackling through the call as well as frequent incidents of crosstalk which we often described as “crossed lines”.

As well, if rural users want to contact services in metropolitan areas, they have to pay long-distance telephone rates for these calls. This is unless the service provider sets up a freecall or local-cost telephone number for people to ring in on.

Continuously, country users are limited to dial-up Internet and this is often at a substandard rate with slower-than-standard data speeds and longer connection-establishment times.

As well, country users cannot benefit from broadband because they are usually out of the proper “range” for ADSL services. Therefore they end up on the substandard dial-up services. If they are in “range” for ADSL service, they end up with substandard ADSL service.

What is happening with NBN

The Labor federal government had built their election campaign on the back of the National Broadband Network. This was to have the same cost of service across all of Australia even though the service will be provided “to the door” using fibre, wireless or satellite technologies.

Now they have done a backflip on this promise by not guaranteeing a price structure that requires the Internet service on this network to be the same for metropolitan, regional and rural areas. This is based around the excuse that the wireless technology that would be needed for the regional and rural areas will cost more to set up, especially in licensing costs.

I have seen some successful operations in the UK where next-generation broadband services have been rolled out to some rural villages in a cost-effective manner by local companies. Here, they had worked on the local deployments using technologies like VDSL-driven fibre-to-the-cabinet yet allowed the systems to be future-proof for fibre-to-the-premises.

The use of “anti-competition” measures in the NBN legislation would make it hard for a “go-getter” company to do what companies like Rutland Telecom have done in enabling rural towns with next-generation broadband.

Supporting the rural Internet needs properly

What needs to happen is for these measures to be adjusted to expedite service delivery to rural areas and facilitate the NBN or government to support local entities in deploying such technology to rural and regional areas. Then could then be able to provide retail service in to these towns or lease-back the infrastructure to the NBN for wholesale service provisioning.

As well, if there is an easement required on a property for running fibre trunks in the NBN infrastructure, the issue of fibre branches connecting “to the door” of the affected as well as adjacent properties from this trunk should be looked at.

The NBN doesn’t even look at the issue of a genuine “universal service obligation” concerning broadband and there needs to be activity concerning this issue. This includes a minimum standard or service and a maximum price for the service similar to what is being prescribed in Europe. The costs could be offset via a universal service fund which could be supported either through line spending or a direct levy like one on service-provider turnover.

Conclusion

It therefore seems to me that the Australian government have lost the plot when it come to assuring competitive Internet access and a universal standard of Internet service in the country. They need to look at what other established countries are doing for when it comes to these factors and implement these issues effectively.

Articles

DNS:NET bringt VDSL ins Havelland | VDSL-News (Germany – German language)

My Comments

Comments relating to an experience with an ADSL service in a country district outside an urban area

Even a country district outside of a well-serviced metropolitan area can suffer limitations with communications. This can happen where you have “green wedges”, farming districts (e.g. wine districts at Yarra Valley or Rosebud) or “beauty districts” (e.g. The Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne or the Blue Mountains in Sydney) located on the edge of or as “pockets” in a metropolitan area and many small communities exist through these areas.

Take Yarra Glen, which is located in the Yarra Valley Wine District outside of Melbourne, for example. You could get the radio and TV programmes receivable in the Melbourne metropolitan area very easily but you can end up with a telephone system that is allowed to “go rotten”.

This was exemplified when I saw a friend of mine who was living in the town and she had trouble with her ADSL Internet service. She had an ADSL modem but it appeared that there was no ADSL signal after she had the service for a few years. The service provider suggested that she try out another modem and she bought a wireless ADSL router and this unit wouldn’t show the existence of ADSL service.

After many troubleshooting hours on the telephone to the service provider and the wireless router’s manufacturer, we found that the telephone infrastructure had “gone rotten” as far as proper ADSL service was concerned. The service provider had come back with information that a lot of repair work needed to be done at the exchange (where the DSLAM was) and at a lot of wiring points between the exchange and her location. This then allowed the router to register proper service and the service had yielded significant improvement since the repairs were done.

I have been following the issue of country areas being set up with decent-standard broadband service and even hamlets, villages and small towns that exist outside a metropolitan area need to be considered.

Comments and notes on the Havelland VDSL deployment

This VDSL2 deployment is taking place in the Brandenburg-Land (German Federal State) outside the Berlin metropolitan area. For Australian readers, this may be similar to a deployment that takes place in a state like South Australia but isn’t servicing the Adelaide metropolitan area. It is in the Havelland district which is between Brandenburg town and west of the Berlin metropolitan area.

There are two main deployments in this area – one in Seeburg which will have a fibre backbone and one covering Elstal (Wustermark) and Falkirk which will have a radio backbone. Each deployment will use the VDSL2 technology to bring the next-generation broadband to the customer’s door and this technology has been valued due to less need to lay out new infrastructure to the door.

DNS:NET, who are behind this project, are working on extending its next-generation broadband infrastructure to bring this calibre of service to the small Brandenburg communities.

Conclusion

The reason I was citing the Yarra Glen poor-quality ADSL incident is that small communities that exist just outside major urban areas are at risk of being neglected when it comes to providing proper broadband service. I was citing this in conjunction to the Havelland VDSL deployments because DNS:NET were working on small communities outside the Berlin and Brandenburg conurbation by making sure they have real next-generation broadband service.

It also caters for the reality that as urban sprawl occurs, these communities will end up becoming part of that urban area and their transport and communication infrastructure needs to be taken care of.

Articles

BBC News – BT rolls out broadband to two Valleys towns

BBC News – Broadband for two rural market towns

My comments

I have previously covered efforts by companies like Rutland Telecom to have villages and small towns in the UK covered with proper-standard broadband. Examples of this include Rutland Telecom “lighting up” Lyddington in Leicestershire and Hambleton in Rutland as well as Vtesse lighting up Hatt and Higher Pill in Cornwall. Now, British Telecom, the UK equivalent of Telstra, have stepped up to the plate and started rolling out next-generation broadband in to various rural communities in the UK.

Examples of these include Pontcymmer and Baenganw near Bridgend in Wales as well as Oswestry in Shropshire and Stourport in Worcestershire. Infact, they are wanting to “wire up” properly more of the market towns in rural Wales like the whole of Bridgend,  Chepstow in Monmouthshire, Hengoed in Caerphilly, Llantrisant and Llantwit Fardre in Rondda Cynon Taf.

One of the aims stated by BT Openreach who manage the infrastructure and provide the service to retail providers was to reduce the numbers of people that left out of the broadband loop when they were talking of the Midlands deployments. Other quotes included the fact that this was not a rural issue but areas of some of the towns wore not receiving Internet service that wasn’t of proper expectations. This was also going to affect the use of broadband Internet service as a business tool.

What I had observed was that even in the tough economic times, broadband Internet service was being pushed to the same level of expectation as mains electricity or a telephone service. This can then allow for ideals like improved business knowledge as well as the ability to provide your goods  and services in a competitive manner.

 Super Wi-Fi: The Great White Hype? – SmallNetBuilder

My comments

What is happening with the VHF/UHF radio spectrum now

Over the last few years, various countries are moving their over-their-air television broadcasting setups from analogue (NTSC/PAL) technology to digital (ATSC/DVB-T) technology and during this transition phase, various tranches of radio spectrum have been opened up in the VHF Band 1 and 3 bands and the UHF bands. This is due to the digital technologies being more spectrum-efficient than the analogue technologies they are replacing.

What the USA is trying to do with their vacated VHF and UHF spectrum is to use it for long-range data networks rather than reuse it as space for more broadcasters to operate in. This is compared to what UK, Europe and Australia are doing with this spectrum where they reuse it, especially VHF Band 3, for DAB-based digital radio broadcasting and / or “packing out” the UHF Band with more DVB-T TV transmitters.

As well, in most of these countries, certain channels of the UHF band are used for 2-way CB radio activity and for short-range radio applications like wireless microphones or  remote controls.

What does the US “Super Wi-Fi” concept offer?

This concept applies most of the media-specific technologies implemented in the 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi networks to the use of vacant VHF and UHF spectrum. This is intended to provide a wireless data path alternative to WiMAX or 3G cellular data technologies for providing wireless-broadband service.

It would require the use of fixed base stations that can work in the VHF Bands and the lower frequencies of the UHF bands as well as easily-relocatable access points that work on the higher frequencies of the UHF band. There are a lot of requirements set by the FCC in order to curb unnecessary interference such as use of geolocation technology and look-up tables to determine the frequency for the base stations to tune to.

The SmallNetBuilder article had mentioned that the technology would only be suited for long-range work such as a cost-effective method of providing a rural area with real broadband Internet. It wouldn’t work well in increasing the throughput of broadband service in an urban area because most of the spectrum would be used by the TV channels. They also looked in to the issue of channel-bonding as a way of increasing data throughput but whether this could be seen as an option to be used in the standards.

Conclusion

I would concur that technologies that use surplus broadcasting spectrum would be better implemented towards working as a way of providing broadband to difficult-to-serve rural areas. Here, they would work as a way of bringing the service to the consumer’s property and that we use regular 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi technology for in-property wireless networking.

As well, I would prefer the broadcasting spectrum the be used to attain reliable reception of radio or television broadcast signals or provide improved broadcasting services. This step as well as the previously-mentioned one should achieve the goal of making sure that people who live or work in the country are not second-class citizens.

Telekom: VDSL-Ausbau in BaWü geplant (VDSL service in Baden-Württemberg planned) | VDSL.de (Germany – German language)

My comments and translated notes from this story

There is some increased VDSL deployment activity occurring in Baden-Wurttemberg with an intent to make sure it is “switched on” in Crailsheim, Satteldorf and Rudolfsberg by June-August 2011 (north-hemisphere Summer). I have used Google Maps to have a look at these towns and found that these are the small country towns with Rudolfsberg being a village.

Deutsche Telekom will be needing to lay 70km worth of new fibre-optic cable and install the necessary VDSL2 switch-boxes to provide this service to the three towns.

At the moment, they would need to have 2000 potential subscribers registering interest for VDSL2 service in these three towns by the beginning Dec 2010 and want to run with their “Call & Surf Comfort VDSL” telephone+Internet plan as the preferred deal.

This plan which is worth €44.95 / month yields inclusive telephone calling to German landlines and VDSL Internet use with a bandwidth of 25Mbps standard or 50Mbps for €5 extra.

What would be interesting to know is whether all of these communities will achieve the 2000-potential-customer goal in order to see more of rural Baden-Württenberg become covered with VDSL2. It would also be interest to find out whether any of the rural VDSL2 services in Germany do make the contract bandwidths. This may be more likely because of that country being one who operates on precision and excellence and the telephony infrastructure being kept in high order.

News articles

thinkbroadband :: Faster broadband comes to Hatt and Higher Pill thanks to Vtesse

From the horse’s mouth

Vtesse Broadband

My comments

Vtesse Broadband have done it again by providing two small communities in Cornwall with next-generation broadband.  The two communities, Hatt and Higher Pill, have been provided with a level of Internet service that would be considered woeful by today’s standards but this could be rectified by the use of fibre-to-the-cabinet technology with a VDSL2 copper sub-loop link to the customer’s door.

One reservation I have always had about any DSL-based copper end-link used in a broadband setup in the country is that the telephone lines between the exchange and the customer would also have been playing a contributory role towards poor-quality service. This could be due to ageing copper infrastructure or wiring setups that aren’t particularly efficient especially if there are clusters of buildings.

What I was mainly pleased about is that a small private company had worked with a small community to provide that community with a real broadband Internet service, especially a next-generation service, rather than waiting for the major telcos to provide the service.

The same article had raised the issue of the UK government reneging on subsidising the fibre backhaul to these services and I would concur with this concept because if a government needs to put its resources where its mouth is when it comes to providing rural communities with decent-standard reliable broadband.

These small broadband setups that cover rural towns in the UK are something that needs to be watched by all of the major parties contesting the Australian Federal Election and by the party who wins the election and holds government because they can be an example of how rural communities have “gotten off their backside” to provide city-grade broadband Internet.