Superfast Broadband for Nottingham?

Business leaders in Nottingham are optimistic about the possibility of superfast broadband along the cities new tram links.

Nottingham City Council has applied for £8m of government money to help pay for the work, that would involve superfast broadband cables being installed along the same route as two new tram lines.  It would then be retrospectively connected to the existing network.  It is claimed it would give the city's businesses a competitive edge in the digital age.

Business leaders were informed of the plans at the launch of the Councils economic growth plan for Nottingham, and many believe it would help them compete globally.

Other cities are also bidding for the grant, with the winners being announced in the budget announcement next month.

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£2.1m Broadband Pledge from NCC

Nottinghamshire County Council is “chipping in” to the central government funding pledge to improve the county’s broadband access.

In August, the Government provisionally allocated £4.25m to Nottinghamshire County Council to improve broadband infrastructure county wide.  However with 23.7% of properties in Nottinghamshire having no or limited broadband access, the county council has decided to invest a further £2.1m.

Councillor Keith Girling, deputy cabinet member for culture and community, said: "At the moment we are losing businesses to South Yorkshire because broadband is better for them there.

"We've got to look at it sensibly. Rural areas depend on good broadband and it is up to us to make it happen."

But the county council said it needed Nottinghamshire's district and borough councils to match the funding to ensure the "vital" broadband improvements. Furthermore, the county council is seeking £8.5m from whichever telecommunications operator is appointed to carry out the improvements.  Work is not expected to start until 2013.

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Broadband Speeds Drop by 35% In the Evenings

According to comparison site uSwitch, UK broadband speeds drop by an average of 35% from their off-peak highs during the evenings when most people go online.

The report said that peak surf times were between 7pm and 9pm, meaning that was the slowest time to be online.  It went on to say that the best time to be online was between 2am and 3am.

There were also huge regional variations between evening and early morning surfing times.  Users in Evesham, Worcestershire, fared worst, according to the survey, with a massive 69% drop-off between off-peak morning and evening surfing.

Broadband speed is becoming more important as bandwidth-hungry services such as on-demand TV become more popular.  Telecoms regulator Ofcom recently revealed that British households download an average of 17 gigabytes of data every month over their home broadband connections.

Critics say consumers are being misled by internet service providers who continue to advertise their maximum broadband speeds, even though many users do not get them.

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Welsh ‘notspots’ Prevent Competitive Business

Tourism chiefs claim that a lack of fast broadband is preventing companies based in Wales from being able to compete.

The Wales Tourism Alliance said "tech-savvy" visitors expected make to bookings online and then to stay connected during their trip.  One Pembrokeshire hotelier even spent £8,000 putting in wireless broadband to solve the ‘notspot’ problem faced by so many in Wales. 

However, Bristol-based firm, Avonline believe they have a solution.  They claim that their service uses a powerful satellite over Europe launched earlier this year to bring a guaranteed minimum 6mbps service.  Avonline said it was starting its UK promotion in Wales due to Ofcom's assessment of the poor broadband provision.

A spokeswoman said the Welsh government did not promote or endorse any individual company, system or technology within the broadband support scheme.  According to the Welsh government said there were more than 100 active applications from Pembrokeshire for its broadband support scheme, including five community schemes.

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Slow Take Up on Super-Fast Broadband

Last month, Labour MP Ian Lucas told the government to "pull its finger out" because as yet, no firms or technologies have been chosen to pilot next-generation broadband in the earmarked remote test areas. 

The government has pledged to make the UK the best place for super-fast broadband in Europe by 2015, and as a result, they are pushing ahead with a second wave of funding.

There will be a further £50m made available to local authorities around the UK.  It is estimated that the extra funding will help a further 800,000 homes to benefit from next-generation broadband.

North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire and the Highlands and Islands, were all listed as pilot areas for test in October, however no firm or technologies have yet been chosen to be used in the tests.  This is the third of UK homes that are not economically attractive to firms such as BT and Virgin Media because offering next-generation services there would cost too much money.

"This is very much a locally-driven process and we encourage bids from all local people with plans for improving broadband in their local area," said Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

For more information visit:  Broadband Delivery UK

Average Broadband Speeds, No Such Thing

Broadband ‘Up to’ 20Mbps is a familiar sight in ISP marketing, but according to Ofcom's latest research, very few consumers actually get these kind of headline speeds.  As a result, the industry regulator is seeking to stop providers from advertising unrealistic broadband speeds

The research suggested that just 14% of customers on 'up to' 20Mbps services received speeds of over 12Mbps, while 58% averaged speeds of 6Mbps or less.  For example;

• BT 'up to' 20Mbps - 6.9 to 8.7Mbps
• Sky 'up to' 20Mbps - 7.4 to 8.8Mbps
• TalkTalk 'up to' 24Mbps - 7.7 to 9.3Mbps

Ofcom that ISPs should use Typical Speed Rates (TSR) to avoid confusing consumers.  It has set guidelines for these speeds. It recommends that ADSL services currently advertised as 'up to' 20Mbps (megabits per second) be changed to a TSR of between 3 and 9Mbps.

The response from the industry has been less than positive.  With BT far from impressed, John Petter, managing director of BT Retail said "We have real concerns with their approach. Broadband speeds vary from line to line and so it is meaningless to use one speed for advertising.

Cheaper Broadband for Rural areas under Ofcom plans

This Summer, following a period of consultation, Ofcom are expected to publish plans that could mean cheaper broadband for rural Britain.

The proposal is that Ofcom will instill pricing controls on BT in parts of the country where they are the sole provider of wholesale broadband services.  This will affect how much BT can charge internet service providers (ISPs) in those areas.  The hope is that the changes could increase competition between retail ISPs.

The telecom regulator wants BT to reduce its wholesale charges by between 10.75% and 14.75% below the RPI measure of inflation. The plan could benefit an estimated three million homes and businesses.

Whilst Consumer Focus welcomed the move by Ofcom, they have highlighted the fact that in some remote areas people were still waiting for broadband to reach them, and the emphasis needs to remain on government plans for everywhere in the UK to have faster broadband by 2015.

BT to trial 1GB Broadband in Suffolk

BT has announced that early in 2011 they will be trialing one gigabit fibre broadband in Suffolk.  The trial will demonstrate the speed capabilities of BT's fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, and if it goes well they will add 40 rural market towns to its current fibre roll-out.  Those towns have yet to be announced.

According to industry regulators Ofcom, less than 1% of UK homes currently have a super-fast broadband connection.  The move by BT should support the government's plan to create the best broadband network in Europe by 2015.

However, BT has been criticised for not offering FTTH more widely because most of its fibre roll-out will rely on slower fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology.  Only a quarter of the homes it intends to offer fibre to will be connected using FTTH.

The government is set to provide £830m for firms willing to offer fast broadband services in rural areas, which it will provide "over the course of this parliament and the next".

BT said that if it was to "win funds on that scale" it would be able to provide fibre to 90% of the UK, whereas, under current plans, its fibre will only extend to 66% of the UK.

Satellite Broadband UPDATE

According to Avanti Communications, the Ariane 5 rocket, carrying HYLAS 1, entered orbit precisely on schedule after a “perfect” launch at 18:39 GMT on 26^th November 2010.  The HYLAS spacecraft is designed to deliver dedicated broadband services to remote locations where it is currently not possible to get a fast internet connection. 

A signal from the satellite was picked up almost right away at an antenna sited in India. Controllers will now spend a few weeks positioning the spacecraft correctly in the sky and checking out onboard systems.  HYLAS 1 is the first superfast broadband satellite launched in Europe, Avanti’s second satellite is fully funded and will launch in 2012.

Following Avanti’s success on Friday, it seems that there is now a race to space as it was announced on Monday morning that the financing has been secured for one of the most ambitious commercial space projects of the decade.


O3b Networks, based in Jersey, has raised $1.2bn (£700m) for a series of satellites to support super-fast broadband connections to Africa and other emerging markets.  The spacecraft will act as backhaul, linking the traffic of local telecoms and internet service providers to the global fibre infrastructure.  The first platforms will be ready to go into orbit in the first half of 2013.

4G Airwaves Auction set for 2012

Ofcom's chief executive Ed Richards has laid out the new timetable for the rollout of next-generation mobile services in the UK, at the FT World Telecoms Conference.



The first half of 2012 will see the airwaves that enable 4G networks being auctioned off to mobile operators. The original auction was earmarked for 2009 but was delayed because of legal action by mobile firms such as O2 and Vodafone.


The auction will see two chunks of the spectrum sold off - the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands. Due to the digital TV switchover, the 800MHz slice has been freed up, which allows mobile signals to travel over greater distances, making it invaluable in the search to find ways of bringing broadband to rural areas.


Due to the litigation last year we are slightly behind other countries in offering services. Germany, for example, auctioned off its digital dividend spectrum and others are planning to do so very soon.

Britain’s Broadband Blackspots and BT’s response

Brigg, Ancaster, and Grantham are all listed as broadband blackspots in research conducted by broadband comparison website Top10. All three areas in Lincolnshire expect to receive less than 2Mbps. Farningham in Kent was labelled as the worst broadband blackspot in Britain.



For the last few months, BT has been running a project which expires at the end of December to identify the country’s demand for fast broadband. More than 200,000 votes have already been cast across the UK highlighting the areas of greatest demand as BT begins its roll-out of fibre-optic technology.


Caxton in Cambridgeshire and Malvern in Worcestershire will be among the first to benefit from a "vote for fibre" scheme launched by BT as they are the first to have registered more than 1,000 votes. Despite being first though, the two may not be upgraded until early 2012, BT has stated.


The list insinuates a north/south speed divide in broadband blackspots with Farningham and the market town of Holsworthy in Devon the only locations south of London that are on a list.


The government has pledged to offer every home a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps by 2015, three years later than the date promised by Labour.

The internet will transform the UK economy

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) claims that if the internet was an economic sector it would be the UK's fifth largest. This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

According to the research the internet is worth £100bn to the UK economy. Over half of that is made up of the amount of time that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web. Approximately 40% of the rest comes from investment in the UK's internet infrastructure, government IT spending and net exports.


Google commissioned the research, and according to Matt Brittin, managing director of Google UK: "The internet is a central pillar of the UK's economy.


"The sector has come of age, and with great prospects for further growth the UK internet economy will be vital to the UK's future prosperity," he added.

18th in the Broadband World Ranking's

The UK is gradually climbing the broadband world rankings but according to a global study, we are not yet “ready for tomorrow”.

Cisco has commissioned this year’s annual report into the world’s broadband capabilities. It’s a study that looks at countries performance in terms of both quality and penetration of net services. The UK is now ranked 18th out of 72 countries, up from 25th place last year, with South Korea once again ranked first.

The applications ascribed to tomorrow's internet include high definition internet TV and high-quality video communications; because such applications would require an average download speed of 11Mbps and an upload speed of 5Mbps.


Whilst the UK has improved significantly in the last two years, we are still not prepared for what is ahead.


Mr de Bernabe, a Senior Director at Cisco, said the UK was likely to experience a "step-change" in its broadband footprint over the next 12 months, because of increased fibre optic roll-outs from BT and extensions of Virgin Media's cable network.


"Where similar fibre roll-outs have happened the download speeds improved by 50 or 60% in just one year," he said.

First Click 2010 launched

9.2 million adults have never used the internet

60% of adults use the internet daily
 

Only 1% of 16 to 24-year-olds have never been online
Source: Office of National Statistics for the UK


Today, Terry Wogan has introduced First Click on Radio 2. First Click is a campaign running across the BBC people in the UK who do not have access to the internet to take the first steps to get online.

Access to BT infrastructure granted by Ofcom

Ofcom has decided that BT are to allow competitors control of its fibre cables in a move designed to promote the take-up of superfast broadband services.

They have also insisted that the telecoms giant must give rival ISPs access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles to build their own fibre networks. However, the regulators have left the decision of pricing in the hands of BT.


The decision offers support to the ambitious and ongoing roll out of superfast broadband. Originally the plan was to nationally deliver access to basic 2Mbps broadband everywhere by 2012, however, the Government have pushed this back to 2015. A date that will put us behind in the European Union, which wants member states to provide citizens with a minimum of 30Mbps broadband by 2020 and basic broadband connections by 2013.

BT’s Broadband milestone

Fifteen million homes and small businesses are now accessing broadband over BT’s network as the telecoms giant reached a significant milestone last month. 

In August 2002 BT had approximately 200,000 broadband connections, which means that they have added 14.8 million in the last eight years.  If you do the maths, that equates to more than 5,000 new broadband connections a day.

“Auto-Tune” for Fibre Optic Technology

The way that Data currently operates is fraught with problems, relating to capacity and noise imperfections. However, this week an EU-funded team has demonstrated a prototype device that can "clean up" a noisy data signal and re-transmit it with fuller capacity.

Data is sent as a sequence of bits coded into the properties of a light beam piped down an optical fibre, so understandably these bits can become distorted over great lengths of fibre.


Two different kinds of phase noise can be the cause of this making the data unintelligible; the first being imperfections in reproducing exactly when different parts of the light signal arrive. The second because of "cross-talk", signals sent down a fibre that influence one another. Existing electronics can overcome this but the result is a reduced data capacity.


There is also a foreseeable problem due to the growth in bandwidth-hungry applications such as YouTube and iPlayer that will eventually stretch the limits of long-distance fibre links.


The prototype device demonstrated by the team makes use of advances both in optical fibre technology and in lasers, which are used to "lock on" to the signal and distinguish it from noise.


The output signal is returned to its sharp-edged nature at the precise digital levels that are needed; it is, in one sense, like a fibre-optic version of the auto-tune software that "cleans up" singers' voices.


It was stressed that the device was a laboratory demonstration, and some way from industrial application - but that similar technology would become essential in a world where bandwidth needs are always on the rise.

Delay for Broadband Britain

Labour gave 2012 as the deadline for Broadband Britain to be in place, giving the whole of the UK 2 Megabits per second. With that deadline fast approaching, the new Government has pushed it back to 2015 citing a lack of “sufficient funding” as the reason.

All seem to be in agreement that a universal service of 2 Mbps per second is the minimum required but BT has warned that it will cost billions to get fast broadband to every part of Britain.

Steve Robertson, chief executive of BT Openreach, believes that the goal can not be achieved without around £2bn in public funding.

The government wants the industry to be imaginative in solving that problem. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt believes that the previous administrations goal was unrealistic and had this to say a recent industry conference:

"I have looked at the provision the Government had made to achieve this by 2012. And I'm afraid that I am not convinced that there is sufficient funding in place.

"So, while we will keep working towards that date, we have set ourselves a more realistic target of achieving universal 2 Mbps access within the lifetime of this Parliament," he added.

StreetView: The American Conspiracy Theory

Street View is at it again, as the popular Google project is now being accused of collecting personal information of members of Congress, including some involved in national security issues.



The accusation was made by leading advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog. They want Congress to hold hearings into what data Google's Street View actually possesses. They go further in launching a Conspiracy Theory about Google’s intentions:

"We think the Google Wi-Spy effort is one of the biggest wire tapping scandals in US history," John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog

Google has admitted that the problems started in 2006 and that it may have mistakenly collected information, transmitted over unsecured wireless networks, as its cars filmed locations for mapping purposes. However the issue only came to light when German authorities asked to audit the data.


Some of the material that could be captured includes parts of an email, text, photograph, or even the website someone might be viewing.