Category: Internet Access And Service

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

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.

Legal right to 1Mbps broadband Internet in Finland

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.

thinkbroadband :: European Commission introduces broadband funding guidelines

 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 ? / Four Years of DegroupNews : and all the ISPs there – DegroupNews.com

 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.

My comments on the new National Broadband Network in Australia

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.

Increase in poor service quality with Web-based e-mail services

 

LiveSide article about Hotmail service outage (March 12, 2009)

BBC Technology article about recent GMail blackout (February 24, 2009)

An increasing number of people are using free Web-based e-mail services like Windows Live Hotmail, Google GMail and Yahoo Mail because of their free, anywhere access model. What is happening now is that these popular services are groaning under the weight of their huge userbase and traffic demands.

This is manifested through slow response time during sessions and, lately, the services enduring significant amounts of downtime. I have even observed this with a friend’s GMail service which was off-air for a significant amount of time and this friend worrying about e-mail they or their correspondents were meant to receive. The situation ends up with users losing faith in the services or wondering what is happening with their incoming and outgoing e-mail, especially if the service is their primary e-mail address.

Most of these services typically run huge server farms on a high-availability arrangement, but they may need to identify ways of identifying potential bottlenecks and spreading the load. This could involve localisation of the user experience or simply extra machines or server farms providing a failover role.

Some of the recent Web-mail failures have been targeted not at the e-mail storage or handling but at the user-experience servers. A few people in the IT industry reckon that some of these servers are being subjected to DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks by computer hackers.

The situation that is happening with GMail and Hotmail needs to be observed by Web-based Internet services like the Bebo, Facebook and MySpace social networks; and the photo-sharing and video networks like Picasa and YouTube. This is in order to keep the Web 2.0 services alive and resilient.

thinkbroadband :: 2Meg broadband to become universal

thinkbroadband :: 2Meg broadband to become universal

My Comments about Britain’s universal broadband Internet step

Britain is taking a positive step in placing broadband Internet on the same standard as the telephone service – accessible for all no matter where they live.

I have always raised a particular issue regarding rural ADSL and wireless broadband in that the bandwidth needs to be measured from the customer’s doorstep rather than the base or a location closer to the base. This is because ADSL throughput is dependent on the length and condition of the telephone line to the customer’s door and wireless throughput is dependent on the quality of the signal received at the customer’s door.

Then any universal-service funding should be used to renovate telephone infrastructure that will impede ADSL throughput. This could include implementing DSLAMs installed in exchanges located in villages and hamlets, use of range-improvement ADSL codecs and identifying and working on any old and decaying telephone infrastructure.

Any inconsistencies in the way ADSL service is provisioned should be addressed. They typically can manifest in situations where some households, particularly those who have had their telephone lines renewed, may be able to receive ADSL whereas their neighbours may not be able to receive ADSL. This usually is caused by a street or block being serviced primarily by decaying telephone infrastructure.

Once these issues are looked at, then we can be trusting about broadband Internet as a universal service.

Watchdog exposes broadband speed rip-off – Times Online

Watchdog exposes broadband speed rip-off – Times Online

My comments

There hasn’t been a standard for defining the quality of service that one should expect from their residential or small-business broadband Internet service but this is one key issue I have talked about in the blog at its current location and its previous location. Typically this may concern those of us who want a service not of minimum bandwidth but of bandwidth that is considered reasonable by today’s standards.

Factors that may affect the broadband service quality typically will include the quality (and age) of the telephone infrastructure in an ADSL setup and the number of households sharing the same bandwidth in a cable-modem setup. Wireless installations like 3G tend to vary in quality because they are simply radio-based and can be subject to “distance from base” issues, material being between the base aerial and the customer’s modem; and simply interference.

What needs to happen is a defined minimum service standard for broadband Internet and operators being encouraged to achieve the standard at all service points. Often this is because there isn’t a universal service obligation for the Internet in that country as I have mentioned in a previous article. This issue may be more of concern with country areas or poorer communities where there is little desire to invest.

WiFi tops poll for best technological innovation of last decade – Telegraph

 

WiFi tops poll for best technological innovation of last decade – Telegraph

What has WiFi been about especially for the home IT environment?

One major way WiFi has benefited the home IT environment is the increased sale of laptop computers (http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24851973-15306,00.html?referrer=email) over desktop computers. This typically would manifest in a home computing environment consisting of one or more laptop computers that have built-in WiFi wireless ability. The network – Internet “edge” device in this environment would be a wireless router that brings the Internet to these laptops via WiFi wireless. In some countries, the standard provider-supplied “customer premises equipment” for Internet service would be equipped with WiFi wireless capability.

Increasingly, nearly every printer manufacturer is running at least one residential-tier multi-function printer equipped with network ability, typically with WiFi network access. This means that the printer can be located in one position wherever the user desires and print documents from their laptop. There also is the increasing number of “Internet radios” or “i-Radios” that use WiFi to bring Internet radio streams to the speakers in these sets.

This may not be strictly a home-IT environment issue but the number of “hotspots” and “hotzones” that are part of public places is now increasing. These WiFi-based public networks are allowing for anywhere computing.

This has also caused most current-model mobile phones and PDA devices to be equipped with WiFi wireless thus allowing for cost-effective portable Web browsing and, increasingly, DLNA-driven music management and playback. These phones will eventually lead to WiFi being another mobile-telephone network usually in the form of fixed-mobile communications for example.

There have been attempts to “kill the goose that laid the golden egg” by limiting WiFi or making it unpopular. It has mainly been based on the “electromagnetic waves being dangerous to people” theory being propagated as part of junk science, but real scientific tests have proven that the RF emissions yielded by typical WiFi and Bluetooth setups none or very little detrimental effect on people.

Even without this article, I would certainly agree that WiFi has become an important computer technology for all IT scenarios.

Universal Service Obligation and Broadband Internet – Further comments

ThinkBroadband article on European Commission plan to establish a broadband-Internet universal service obligation in the European Union.

My Comments

What should be the minimum qualifications for universal provision of a broadband Internet service?

There may have to be a minimum bandwidth for the “standard service”. This would then require the universal service provider to be able to provide that level of bandwidth to the customer’s door in all areas.
In the case of technologies like ADSL or wireless where the distance from the exchange or base station and the quality of the infrastructure or the terrain between the customer and the exchange / base station determines the bandwidth, the provider would have to take steps to achieve the minimum bandwidth at the customer’s door. This would require the ISP to undertake such works as renewal of telephone wiring or installation of repeater stations.
As far as the minimum standard of service is called, there would have to be a minimu bandwidth. Some people may reckon that 512kbps would be the standard bandwidth for basic use such as browsing “Web 2.0” sites and / or sending and receiving e-mail using POP3. Others may consider 1Mbps more realistic considering the current generation of Internet transport protocols. This would allow more bandwidth for the increasingly-common Internet practices like on-line multimedia, V2oIP (voice and video telephony over the Internet) and increased file transfer such as through use of “cloud-based” computing services.
Another factor that may need to be defined would be what kind of technology should be used to provide the service. This would determine whether the service should use ADSL2, FTTx and similar wireline connections to each door as a minimum standard or whether they can use wireless in sparse areas.
Similarly, there may be the issue of bandwidth-use allowances for the universal service and what happens if the user oversteps that allowance.
Another issue that will need to be worked out is content control mechanisms so that children don’t see unsuitable content on this service. Could this be provided with a “clean-feed” service or through a standard Internet-filter program installed in the Internet-gateway device or “end-user” computer. It also includes updating of content filter lists on a regular basis. 

Who should be the ISP who provides the “standard service” and is responsible for covering all areas?

It may be provided by the “universal service” telecommunications provider’s retail broadband-Internet arm, similar to Telstra’s BigPond service, British Telecom’s BT Broadband service or France Télécom’s Orange Internet service. On the other hand, it could be provided by an existing retail ISP who is awarded a “universal service provisioning” contract by the national government or a local ISP who works as part of a local “switched-on access” program. If true competitive access is required, then all retail ISPs would be required to provide the universal service.

What could be the public-access requirements?

The standard for universal-access Internet service will have to encompass “public-access” requirements which would be the equivalent of the “public payphone” in the universal-access telephony service definition. This could cover the requirement to provide Internet-access terminals in public libraries, hospitals, and similar public places; or providing “wireless hotspot” service in public areas like parks or town squares.

How should it be funded?

Because it will be more costly to provide the set minimum standard of Internet access at a specified price in some areas such as the country, there would be the issue of covering the losses associated with providing this kind of service.
Typically, this could be through the ISP charging more for its discretionary services such as high-bandwidth plans, mailbox services or Web hosting. This may be the model practised by retail broadband arms of universal-service telecommunications companies. It may also encompass the ISP selling content services such as music and movie download services to its customers and to the general public.
On the other hand, there may be a “universal service fund” that may be established by the government. The money could be raised through dedicated taxes such as a “universal service levy” on discretionary services; redirection of a portion of any sales tax or consumption tax associated with Internet-access costs or simply through line spending by the government.
Sometimes, the universal Internet service could be integrated in to the mechanisms that exist for providing the universal telephone service, such as using existing universal-service funds or taxes.
Whatever way, such universal-service obligations shouldn’t hamper the competitive Internet-access market and the advantages that it brings like low access prices or good-quality service.

Concerns

One main concern would be how universal-service operators could marginalise areas of less economic importance. This could manifest in deploying infrastructure capable of providing just the basic Internet service into those areas or being slow about provisioning or maintaining Internet service in those areas. This situation can lead to long-term customer dissatisfaction with the service and therefore lead to customers deserting the universal-service ISP when competition appears in their area.
This situation has repeated itself many times with incumbent telecommunications providers who provided the universal telephone service, whether they are private companies or government-run operations.
There needs to be a minimum service-level standard established as part of the universal-service obligation for the Internet. It would have to cover such issues as response to customer issues like service faults and difficulties; and the time taken to provision new services to the customer.

To sum up

If the concept of universal Internet access is to work successfully, a lot of questions will need to be asked so as to avoid problems with provisioning this level of service.