Yesterday, key industry figures met with the government and Ofcom, to begin discussion on the future of the UK’s broadband infrastructure. The meeting, organised by Stephen Timms, the competitiveness minister and former e-commerce minister, was also attended by Neil Berkett of Virgin Media and, reportedly Ben Verwaayen of BT, as well as representatives from the BBC, Vodafone, Carphone Warehouse and Sky.
Mr Timms said: “When next-generation broadband starts to emerge, I don’t want it to be claimed that Britain is being left behind. We need to work together to avoid the non-availability in Britain of commercially significant services emerging in the US and elsewhere.”
Commercially significant services could be read to mean platforms such as IPTV, which has really taken off in France, but despite BT adding many customers to BT Vision, and Tiscali assembling a great roster of on-demand features, IPTV hasn’t kicked off over here yet. Orange have also promised an IPTV platform, but have become rather quiet about the whole venture of late.
“Delaying rollout could be a barrier to the future success of our economy.”
Critics have repeatedly pointed out that more and more popular programmes such as Heroes, which is filmed and broadcast in HD, will not be able to be viewed on demand via the current IPTV model, due to bandwidth restrictions. The BBC and Channel 4 have both expressed concern about network congestion compromising their iPlayer and 4oD services.
Ed Richards, Ofcom’s chief executive, chimed in with:
“Today’s access network, at some point in the future, will run out of steam […] Consumers will demand faster and faster access. Very few people agree on exactly when this is going to happen but many people do agree it is only a matter of time.”
The competitiveness minister reiterated his point: “Ultra-fast broadband is going to be a key future technology that will allow our businesses to innovate, grow and create wealth. We need to be discussing today how we can put this new network into place, because delay could be a barrier to the future success of our economy.”
The summit was intended to stimulate discussion and co-operation between the government, the industry and the regulator in order to bash out a blueprint for the future Broadband Blueprint of Britain. At the moment, the existing fibre networks architecture is referred to as FTTK – Fibre to the Kerb – which runs fibre optic cables to green cabinets in residential areas, connecting peoples homes to the network via a ‘last mile’ co-axial cable.
Proposed rollout of a full FTTH or Fibre to the Home network has been mooted – this would see the last mile co-ax replaced with a fibre optic cable, meaning that UK homes would have direct access to a nationwide fibre optic network, through which broadband, TV and phone services could be delivered.
It is estimated that full-on FTTH would cost £15bn to do in the UK for the whole country, and FTTK would be the cheaper alternative at £7bn, less than half. There would also have to be a separate budget set aside for general infrastructure overhaul in the UK, so these projected costs would probably end up being significantly heavier. What remains unclear is where any of the money is going to come from. BT have made vague hints that they are willing to cough up a portion of the total sum, and given their status as the main cable provider, it seems that Virgin would also be willing to make a contribution.
Neil Berkett announced that Virgin will be going ahead with their proposed 50Mbps rollout next year:
“We’ll never know exactly what demand there’ll be for super-fast broadband until it’s in people’s homes and workplaces up and down the UK. What we do know is that our cable network has a unique potential to revolutionise consumers’ experience and we’re convinced that 2008 is the moment to take the lead with the commercial launch of a 50-megabit product.”
Ofcom will be talking with the industry until December the 5th, when it is expected to make an announcement on what it considers to be the best way forwards – we imagine that along with a cash incentive from the government, a coalition of ISPs will cover the initial costs, and then after everything is set up, the network will be opened up to other providers a la Openreach.
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SSB said on 13 May 2008 at 9:25 pm #
Why doesn’t Virgin Media expand it’s current network of Fibre? There are many millions of households that don’t want to be stuck with BT for their phone line, or Sky for their additional TV channels, if fibre isn’t extended to their neighbourhoods.
Virgin Media are potentially losing Millions of pounds to Sky and BT if they don’t get their act together. Someone from Virgin Media needs to take notice of this, but they don’t seem to care, and are just focusing on upgrading the speed of their existing networks.
metatron said on 14 May 2008 at 9:12 am #
The cost of laying cables (scuse the pun!) is pretty high, requires planning, digging up roads etc.
It’s hard to implement stuff like this in certain parts of the country such as Cornwall, where there’s often only one road connecting towns - council directives state that one access point has to be open for traffic to get through, and so running cables etc is a logistical nightmare.
Many Cornish residents have only been able to get Sky TV in their homes because there’s never been a proper cable deployment in that area, and the signal isn’t strong enough for Freeview.
I agree with you though, I’d like to see cable made available to more households. Maybe Virgin will do a wholesale deal with those chaps from H20 Networks in the future.