Topic: Broadband Initiatives

The government has announced that it will undertake a review of broadband in the UK and it's future.

It seems that in recent months most of the talk within the industry is how to provide a larger capacity connection to the UK's internet users, or more specifically how this is going to be funded. Both BT and the government saying that they would let market forces dictate what happens next, rather than investing in the massive cost for new infrastructure.

The review will be carried out by Francesco Caio, who is former chief executive of telecoms firm Cable & Wireless and will focus on how to provide future high speed broadband. This won't be a cheap option as it's estimated that the cost of upgrading the service to BT's 5.6m residential customers would be £1.1bn.

The review will report back to government ministers and Chancellor Alistair Darling in the autumn.

The European Union has announced plans that it will invest £10m in a new research project for using peer-to-peer technology (P2P) for internet television.

It's planned to build an open-source service called P2P Next and will join 19 universities with broadcasters like the BBC to help them find better ways to reach the TV-downloading online audience and offer high-quality on-demand television.

The total budget of £14m will be used to provide the service to different devices including both PCs and set-top boxes.

Ofcom has said that if us Britons want faster connections for VoD and similar bandwidth hungry applications, then we will have to pay for it.

Speaking at a Video on Demand conference last week Jeremy Olivier, who is the regulators head of convergent media, thinks that ADSL2+ with at least a 24Mbps speed were needed for such applications and consumers would "have to pay to build this."

What he has failed to grasp is that for most people a ADSL2+ connection will be nothing like 24Mbps with only those living very close to the exchange fully benefiting.
During the conference it was said that ISPs thought the costs were prohibitive and there was not the consumer demand at the moment to build faster networks.

While faster copper networks would improve the situation, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the UK needs to more to fibre based systems to provide faster networks, either to fully fibre to the home or at least to the cabinet (FTTC). But as with all things costs will have great effect on when and how this is implemented.

After official reports that the scheme to provide broadband across the Highlands and Islands was six months behind schedule and over budget, the project is said to be "progressing well".

The £70m government Pathfinder project has connected 111 of the 452 sites which were due to be connected by 2009, and now it claims that those remaining will be connected in the original time frame. The Highland Council said the first sites in Shetland go live later this month with those in Orkney following on in February.

This is good news for those who live in the more remote parts of the Highlands and Islands, who without the project would have been destined to a life of dial-up.

Nearly all of the Uk's primary and secondary schools now are connected by has broadband.

The Telecommunications and Internet Federation (TIF) has announced that 98% of schools now have broadband after a £13.5m investment by both telecos and the Government via the Broadband to Schools programme

BT Openreach says it will offer lucky customers in the Ebbsfleet Valley development in Kent the chance of 100Mbps broadband.

From August they will be trialling the service to some of the 10,000 new homes being built on the development, which is the first in the UK to install last-mile fibre optic cable connections to all new residences in order to gauge public demand.
Actual prices which the consumer will have to pay have not been released by providers involved with the trial, but wholesale prices to those ISPs have been released, being £8.33 per month for a basic connection, rising to £44 a month for the 100Mbps connection.

The question is that if there is a large take-up will BT change it's course, and provide fibre rather than continue with it's 21CN deployment based on copper, which gives a maximum of 22Mbps. BT has previously held back on fibre stating that the financial benefits to itself are uncertain due to the huge outlay involved in an all fibre infrastructure.

Customers who sign an 18-month contract at the Carphone Warehouse for the Complete Mobile Broadband Package from 3 Mobile can get a free laptop.

The Dell Inspirion laptop is the same as offered to AOL last year and will cost punters £35 a month, for this you will get a 3 mobile broadband modem dongle, 3GB of data downloads and 200 texts each month, extra data can be bought for 10p per Mb. Coverage is boasted at 85 per cent of the UK with connection speeds hitting up to 3.6Mbps.

Although this may sound steep compared to fixed broadband alternatives, for anyone needing data on the move this may be the 'complete package'.

An alternative is a mobile broadband deal from T-Mobile which is cheaper at £20 a month but customers will have to make a one-off payment of £199 for the laptop and pick up a longer contract of 24-months.

The government has drawn up plans to provide all of the UK's six million children with home broadband access.

The plans drawn up by Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) are to improve education standards by making home internet available to the estimated one million children in the UK do not have access to a computer at home.

The DCSF said it is in talks with BT, Microsoft and RM, among others, to create partnerships and is also putting pressure on suppliers to bring down the price of IT equipment to make it available to those on lower incomes.

The government's Home Access Taskforce plans to due to publish a report in April.

The Rt Hon Stephen Timms, who is the government Minister for Competitiveness, addressed the Broadband Stakeholder Group last night and outlined the governments plans for a summit to discuss the future of broadband in the UK. The summit will especially focus on next-generation broadband services and funding.

No details of the summit have been released, but the UK needs to act sooner rather than later in it's fibre-to-home plans.

BT has chosen Entanet, as it's only non-BT partner which will participate it the forthcoming 21CN broadband trials.

The trials are planned to start on 1st November 2007 from one of BT’s Birmingham exchanges and then will be expanded to ten exchanges by January 2008. The inclusion of a non-BT ISP marks a change in direction, as previously BT had only been using it's own Wholesale and Retail divisions in limited trials.

The 21CN trials will be focusing on providing ADSL2+ connections to customers, with speeds of up to 24Mbps...if you live next door to an exchange that is.