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back to article MPs attack BT's 'monopolistic' grip on gov-subsidised £1.2bn rural broadband rollout

The UK government has completely screwed up the deployment of faster internet connections to Brits living in the countryside because it failed to properly address competition concerns as a result of its awarding all its broadband contracts to BT, politicians concluded today. MPs sitting on the public accounts committee …

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  1. rhydian

    Were Fujitsu ever really serious?

    I didn't manage to see what fujitsu's plans were, but I can't imagine they'd be much different to BT's, especially when you take in to account the fact that most of the backhaul would probably still have to be BT Sourced.

    Also, what was the situation regarding Fujitsu having to make the links available to other providers a la BT wholesale?

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    1. Steven Jones
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      Re: Were Fujitsu ever really serious?

      The BDUK framework required that the successful bidder had to provide a non-discriminatory wholesale services. Indeed, it would have been virtually impossible to have got anything else through EU state subsidy rules if ISPs were locked out. Of course, this means that the commercial case is poorer as the winner couldn't count on retail level revenue (and hence the gap funding is higher).

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  2. Tom 7

    I've just been told by a little bird

    that our local exchange goes fibre to the cabinet this month but t seems anyone more than a mile away from the exchange will not be getting fibre to the cabinet. So those on 8 and 20 meg will be upgraded so they can watch 10 channels of shit TV more than they need but the likes of me 6 miles away will see no change.

    My provider says they couldn't afford the BT prices if they were fibering me up anyway.

    I'm going to see about some wireless point to point with some friends....

    What the fuck was all that taxpayers money wasted on?

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    1. Steven Jones
      Reply Icon

      Re: I've just been told by a little bird

      I've no idea where the distance from the exchange comes into it. There are lots of cabinets in the country which have been enabled which are far more than 1 mile from the exhange (like the one I'm attached to). Of course, the further the cabinet is from the exchange, the more it costs to run the fibre to it, but what is probably far more important is how many properties can be usefully serviced from the cabinet. Of course, there may be particular obstacles - like the cost of running power, or blocked ducts, but these aren't directly associated with the distance from the exchange.

      Of course, if what you meant was the distance from the cabinet, then the speed available will be greatly reduced at 1 mile (or 1.6km) as the limit for the 24mbps BDUK threshold is at around 1.2km line length, but you can get useful speeds up to 2-2.5km from the cabinet.

      There are also trials being performed on fibre-to-the-remot-node. Basically a very small DSLAM up a pole which is connected by fibre to the exchange and which might be line powered (maybe from the customer premises, as it's perfectly feasible to provide a few watts over a few hundred metres, where it's not possible over km type distances). All experimental just at the moment.

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      1. rhydian
        Reply Icon

        Re: I've just been told by a little bird

        I'd imagine its mainly down to how the lines were installed back in the day. Most rural exchanges I know of are around 80% direct exchange lines, especially once you leave the "core" of the town/village. That means that BT has to rewire its network to put cabinets in to these areas and get power supplies etc. to them. BT have been known to stick a new fibre cab just outside the exchange to deal with short direct exchange lines (you can usually tell by the fact its shiny, new and has cooling vents)

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  3. Neil Harland

    The scene from the ground

    The situation in North Yorkshire is that several people were asked to create a steering group to oversee the rollout of broadband to our remote area. We gave up our time for free and now we find that the money (which was earmarked for getting broadband to hard to reach areas), has been used to upgrade 'fast' cabinets in market towns to 'superfast cabinets'. We, on the other hand, must wait for funding plus the correct testing and operation of fibre to the node, wireless, or satellite (Yeah right)

    Margaret Hodge is right to give these people a grilling as they have used the money to tick the easiest boxes, (Some market towns are classed as 'rural').

    Tell me why should I give up my time for nothing when they roll over us like this?

    Considering all the other stuff we are losing in the countryside due to 'efficiency savings', (public transport, post offices, schools, healthcare services, to name a few), I think it's time all utilities should be re-privatised as Thatcher's free market experiment does not work for us.

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    1. Terry Barnes
      Reply Icon

      Re: The scene from the ground

      " I think it's time all utilities should be re-privatised as Thatcher's free market experiment does not work for us."

      They'd become less efficient and would cost more - the difference being I guess that your service would be subsidised by the tax bills of city dwellers who cost much less to provide with utility service.

      There are more city dwellers than rural dwellers and so I'm not sure a democratic vote would deliver the change you want. Equally, rural areas tend to return MPs for Team Blue and your proposal doesn't tend to fit with their world view.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unfair Competition

    There could have been competition IF the original tender had allowed small startup providers to tender. Only BT and the stalking horse Fujitsu were big enough to meet the criteria.

    Oxfordshire has a credible provider, Gigaclear, who have succesfully delivered FTTP to a number of villages who weren't on BT's roadmap. They could not tender for BDUK as they weren't big enough, although have recently won a RCBF tender. The village where I live is on the BDUK BT/Oxfordshire CC's "roadmap". BT/OCC will NOT release detailed plans on who will and will not get Infinity. All we know is that about 1/3 of the village is on EO lines, so won't qualify, plus many properties are likely to fall outside the sensible range for FTTC. FTTC I see as a last ditch attempt to get faster service over aging copper.

    So we are in the difficult scenario of not knowing who will get FTTC and who will stay on ADSL and WHEN it is going to happen. Of course with FTTC you never know what speed you are going to get until it is installed and tested. FTTC can be really challenging due to distance in rural communities. We would like to get the FTTP solution from Gigaclear, but the impenetrable fog from BT/OCC means that many people are sitting on the fence.

    The whole situation is a complete shambles...

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  5. Bluenose

    BT must be loving this deal

    I live in a small village of about 400 houses and businesses. Our local Duke has fibre to the premises which he paid for (lucky him, inherited wealth is so useful) while the rest of us are stuck with a maximum speed of 3mbps before the everyone finds out and piles on at which point it starts to fall (rapidly) to less than 2mbps. However because BT can provide upto 2mbps to the village we have been carved out of the local broadband plan.

    Our local council sought out lots of ideas and feedback for their local superfast broadband plan a couple of years ago. I happily said I would pay up to £30 per month for fast (not even super) BB. Now they have published the plan and oh my all those small market towns of a couple of thousand properties and more being built every day are all due to get the upgrade. The fact that Virgin also has fibre in those towns can't have anything to do with it I suppose (ROFL).

    Our village is further away from its exchange than it is from a small nearby town that has superfast broadband with FTTC. The cost of laying in some fibre from that exchange to the village and the green cabinets we have here should be fairly cheap but no, the local plan which is a partnership with two biggish towns means that we get bugger all. The two biggish towns are subsidising BT to install broadband in areas where there is already a reasonably strong economic argument to do the work anyway.

    BT are telling the customer want they can have and ignoring what the customer wants/needs. Such an approach is OK where the customer budget is insufficient to provide what they want/need but in this instance it is wrong. Local councils should be prioritising those places they know BT cannot install to without a subsidy and BT should be paying in the more economic locations. But as usual councils are scared BT will walk away if they exercise their rights.

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  6. jellypappa
    Alien

    BT inherited it's infrastructure

    the infrastructure was allways BT's just under their old business name.

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  7. Smoking Gun

    I'm interested in the forums response to the suggesting of using satellite broadband. It seems excessive and expensive to run fibre across the rural Britain when satellite services seem to now be relatively affordable and provide good speeds. I know latency can be issue which may make VPN's tricky so cause problems for businesses, but maybe it's part of the solution for home users?

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    1. rhydian
      Reply Icon

      The Welsh Government offered grants to those who couldn't get broadband any other way to go over to satellite. The main feedback I get from them and from those using satellite for events etc is:

      1: Its "slow" i.e. the latency is absolutely mental compared to ADSL so the connection seems slower to the average user and can cause issues with Skype/Video chat etc.

      2: The download limits are still low/expensive compared to ADSL. The grants only covered the purchasing, rather than the running costs.

      I have heard reports of some users going back to dialup as even though its slow, the latency was at least manageable.

      In conclusion: Satellite is brilliant if you can't get anything at all, but pants compared to even 4 meg ADSL

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Yep, you've summarised the satellite broadband issue to a "T". It's latency. Not speed. And for many applications running over IP, latency is crucial - sometimes even more so than speed (try running MS Access against a MS JET database over a 100Mpbs WAN even with 15-20mS latency) Geosynchronous orbit is approx 22,236 miles above mean sea level. As the speed of light in free space is 186,000 miles per second, the round-trip time with 0 additional latency will be (4*22236)/186000 = 470mS. Probably a trifle sub-optimal for gaming....

        A quick google suggest that the UK providers are indeed using Geosync satellites as Avonline offer "Freesat and Sky using our dish" and another provider shows dishes on their demo vehicles.

        You'd need a constellation of LEO satellites to improve on that which, unsurprisingly, look a bit beyond home broadband pricing - the Iridium Pilot is "Only £3,499+VAT " and data is $9.45/MB after $240 activation (other plans with inclusive data available)

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        1. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Hopefully we will be able to invade some 3rd world country and steal their wifi broadband airships.

          Seriously, how come the 3rd world has a bigger brighter plan than the UK for getting high speed internet to the remote masses?

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    2. itzman
      Reply Icon

      Re Satellite

      You try fighting monsters in virtual reality with a 300ms delay...and getting killed every time the leaves blow across the line of sight...

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    don't rock the boat

    seats on the board for pols and civil servants.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wireless has been done, search in google on humble wireless

    Wireless infrastructure has successfully been done.

    A point to point wireless high frequency link between a provider and local community base station and a wireless distribution system within the community.

    Faster and more reliable than adsl2.

    See https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humbie/162537127142986‎

    BT does not like this at all and will do anything to detail such projects! In Humbie BT distributed local made leaflets belitteling the community wireless offer. So not only do they have monopoly , the also are not afraid of using bullying tactics.

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