Perfect storm in the midlands

You couldn’t make it up!  I had to smile – laugh, even – at the confluence of topical commercial and regulatory issues that recently played out in Birmingham.  It’s a complicated story of broadband development, and some facts are difficult to establish, but here’s how it appeared to me… 

1.    Birmingham City Council wanted to provide ‘ultrafast’ broadband connectivity to businesses in some previously un-served areas of the city - Digbeth, Eastside and The Jewellery Quarter.   

2.    Both BT and Virgin have trunk network (duct infrastructure) in some parts of these areas but have hitherto chosen not to exploit it.  BT has said it has some limited plans to develop access network in the area but its preferred FTTC solution was seen by the Council as failing to provide adequate broadband performance.

3.    The Council discussed with both BT and Virgin the possibility of gaining access to their existing infrastructure but neither approach was ultimately successful.  Virgin is of course under no regulatory obligation to provide wholesale access to its infrastructure, and declined to do so.  The BT regulated access product (PIA).was found unsuitable because: 

·        Some BT duct was unfit for co-location

·        The pricing of BT’s PIA product proved to be unattractive

·        PIA is essentially not available to business customers.

4.    The Council therefore applied for c£10million (or was it £6million?) of public funding via the government’s ‘super-connected cities’ scheme (which has set aside £114m for similar projects in 10 of the largest cities).  The proposed network is intended to be genuinely open access and will offer a full array of wholesale services. 

5.    The application was successful and received state aid approval from the European Commission in June of this year, the first such clearance to be given.  However, while the council claims to have kept BT and Virgin fully informed throughout, both have now made formal requests to the ‘Commission to have that decision revoked.  (Virgin has also appealed to the European Court of Justice to have the Commission¹s decision struck out). They argue that the money will be used to build a state-funded rival in areas already well covered by their own broadband networks. This, they allege, would contravene state aid rules, would be a waste of taxpayers’ money and would undermine broadband investment from the commercial sector. 

What to make of it all?  Chi Onwurah, shadow BIS minister, sees it as ’another example of the chaos and incompetence at the heart of the government's broadband strategy’.  Yet it could equally be seen as a vindication of that very strategy – letting the private sector lead broadband investment in urban and marginal areas.  BT and Virgin may have been wrong-footed on this occasion but they are likely to be much more alert in future to pockets of demand, either to extend their existing network or to offer access to potential public sector investors.  

On the other hand, the story seems to endorse critics who see government reliance on BT’s current network technology, based on FTTC, as a short-sighted strategy.  On the face of it, the Birmingham experience also supports regulatory criticisms that BT’s PIA remedy is not fit for purpose (for all the reasons suggested to Ofcom) and that third party access obligations should probably also be imposed on Virgin’s network.

Quite a storm.

It’s the vision thing…

I have to say that I was disappointed, though not greatly surprised by the government’s official response to the recent House of Lords report on broadband strategy.  Predictably enough, the government shot down some of the report’s wackier ideas – like the suggestion of a state-sponsored FTTH network, costing “in excess of £25bn”.  But to this reader, the value of the HoL report was less in specifics than its high level messages, for instance:

1)   Setting humane objectives for the value of broadband diffusion, rather than relying on service metrics.

It’s all very well the government explaining that speed alone will not be the critical measure, rather contradicting the words of the former Culture Secretary, but the HoL has to be right in focusing on the demand side aspect of broadband development.  As the Select Committee put it: “what is important is the long term assurance that as new internet applications emerge, everyone will be able to benefit, from inhabitants of inner cities to the remotest areas of the UK.”  The government response does not address this issue.

2)   Warning against the dangers that both the BDUK framework and the delegation of decisions over broadband architecture tend to favour the dominant incumbent.

More pointedly, the Committee’s fear was that current broadband investments, including those enabled by government subsidies, could allow BT to recreate in fibre the monopoly it gradually lost in its copper network.  To the extent that the government addresses this issue, which is not much, it seems to see it as wholly a matter for Ofcom.  (Don’t hold your breath!). 

It’s hardly news when the government chooses to ignore a Select Committee critique, even one that’s been well researched, but when the wheels are already falling off current policy – here, for example – it seems a pity not to have been more receptive to alternative ideas.

 

Huawei away

Don’t you just love a good conspiracy theory?  When, some six years ago, BT issued an invitation to tender for its so-called ‘21CN’ network upgrades, the major supplier chosen was Huawei, then a little known (but fast-growing) Chinese manufacturer.  In addition to the predictable disappointment expressed by Marconi and other, more familiar suppliers, the decision subsequently led to some concern that the new hardware might be ‘hijacked by China to cripple the UK's communications infrastructure’.  It was reported in early 2009 that UK intelligence officials feared ‘a risk that China may have used its influence on Huawei to ensure 21CN is vulnerable to a remote attack’.

Fears of a Chinese conspiracy later died down in the UK but similar concerns have more recently erupted elsewhere.  Earlier this year, the Australian government blocked Huawei’s participation in the NBN project to build national superfast broadband infrastructure.  The company also faced opposition to its commercial expansion in India and, just this month, a congressional committee report urged U.S. companies to steer clear of Huawei (and ZTE Corp, another Chinese supplier), citing concerns that the Chinese government could install malicious hardware or software in U.S. telecommunications networks.  The report was covered in detail by ‘The Economist’, no less, the magazine having run a major survey last August on Huawei and other Chinese multinationals.  The Economist sought to draw a distinction between UK and US approaches to Chinese procurement:

“America has no effective system of supply-chain checks. In Britain, by contrast, where BT is a big customer, Huawei has established a unit (run in close co-operation with GCHQ, Britain’s signals-intelligence agency) with security-cleared personnel, including former employees of GCHQ, who vet gear from China before it is installed.”

I was still radiating in the warm glow from this reliable assurance when I saw the headline in last Wednesday’s Guardian: 

“Huawei's relationship with BT under investigation by MPs”

A fire is born?

Oh dear, oh dear, it was bound to happen: the mess at BDUK just got worse.  Sparks generated by Ian Grant have been fanned into life by the national press and politicians. One to follow…

Back to the drawing board…

Earlier this week, Robert Leigh of The Guardian put forward the idea of imposing a monthly £2 levy on broadband subscriptions in order to subsidise the costs of (print) investigative journalism.  Daft as it may seem, the idea was welcomed by Leigh’s (normally sensible) colleague on The Guardian, Roy Greenslade. 

I have to admit that I’m mildly sympathetic to the idea: like Leigh, I worry about a world in which, absent the investigative writing of commercial journalism, “wwe’ll just get the timid BBC on the one hand, and superficial junk on the other”.  But the £2 broadband levy simply won’t do as a remedy: aside from its obvious distribution concerns (who wants to subsidize Murdoch?), the levy is patently in the wrong place: any economic transfer should be attached to usage, not general subscriptions.  In other words, I agree with Mr. Leigh’s critics who respond with an ‘adapt or die’ message: the challenge is for the quality press to come up with some kind of ‘pay wall’ that meets their needs and is fit for purpose. 

But the broader point is that newspaper proprietors are not alone in struggling to find an economic model that continues to reward their investment: the providers of broadband infrastructure, particularly those investing in the expensive access network, are desperate to find ways of sharing their costs with others in the broadband value chain.  So far, all such attempts have been rebuffed – typically on grounds of net neutrality – but the pursuit of new business models is a healthy sign of market development and should not be discouraged.

 

Peer support

From time to time, it’s reassuring to learn that you’re not entirely a voice in the wilderness.  I’m therefore very grateful to Jon Hunt for pointing me towards the recent Nesta report on ‘The case for innovation-led growth’.  The thrust of this document is that the UK’s economic growth depends on our ability to foster innovation.  Fearing that the country is losing ground in this ability, and so losing international competitiveness, the Nesta paper sets out a number of proposals for enhancing the prospects for innovation.  One of these proposals is for significantly increased investment in broadband infrastructure and the policy document speaks a great deal of sense on this score, e.g. 

·        “Broadband, and in particular super-fast broadband …is the twenty-first century equivalent of the motorway system… Public investment in broadband should be seen as strategic investment…

·        We do not fully know what applications superfast broadband will give rise to… but if the history of the last 30 years has taught us anything, it is that people and businesses find ingenious uses for more memory, more processing power and more bandwidth.  It was not so long ago that Bill Gates opined that 640k of memory would suffice for most computer users.  Looking further back, the American Interstate system and the German autobahns were built long before there were enough cars to fill them.  Like these projects, superfast broadband is an investment in the future”. 

The report goes on to recommend that the government funds the construction of a national FTTH network, initially to some limited areas and costing ‘perhaps £5 billion’.  (Access to the national network would then be leased to service providers on a competitive basis).  So, in line with the recent House of Lords recommendation, the aim is for a fully fibre solution with uncertain cost.  And, similarly perhaps, it may not receive serious consideration from a cash-strapped Treasury.  We can only hope, however, that someone in government does at least read Nesta’s excellent report.

‘Something Somewhere'.…?

Not sure what to make of the Everything Everywhere (‘EE’) 4G launch yesterday.   Apart from the hoop-la over 4G itself,  the company more quietly announced it will also launch a fibre broadband service to homes and businesses with fixed-line internet speeds ‘typically ten times faster’ than today’s average broadband speeds: “Our Fibre Broadband will be available to over 11 million homes, representing around half of the population. We will be adding more homes all the time… EE is the only place where you will be able to get superfast internet - home and away”.

 So is this a new fixed network for the UK?  Well, not quite.  Dig a bit deeper and the T-Mobile website offers some additional clues:

 “Fibre speed may vary depending on distance from street cabinet and how many people are using the network at the same time as you…10 times faster based on 58.5 Mbps average speed on EE Fibre compared to the average speed of 5.9Mbits/s on ADSL broadband…”  All of this seems to confirm the story in ISP Review that EE “will make use of BT’s latest Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology and should offer speeds of up to almost 80Mbps…  It will also offer standard broadband via ADSL in non-fibre areas”.

Ten times faster?  80 Mbps? Not according to our good friends at Br0ken Teleph0n3:

“Br0ken Teleph0n3 has received reports that even 24Mbps is the top end of what BT’s Infinity fibre to the cabinet service will deliver. It appears that some councils are being told to plan for the average speed delivered from an Infinity cabinet to be just 15Mbps….Users who live close to the cabinet and have good quality copper will enjoy the top speed, but most will not”.

 
One to watch…