Fibre to the home Council, Milan 2011
16:22 in guest post by Tom Woof
As the only community representative at the Ftth council in Milan, I was definitely in the minority where 3500 delegates gathered to further the cause of Fibre to the Home. As a potential end user I was also in the minority, as most of the other delegates represented suppliers of a bewildering array of equipment for fibre. They supplied, ducts, fibre, sub ducts, jointers, splitters, access nodes, manholes, data handling equipment for putting TV and telephone systems into the fibre.
What struck me first of all was the sheer number of ways that fibre can be put around. It can go through special ducts, existing ducts, sewers, water and gas pipes, buried directly, wrapped around electricity wires, hang off garden fences. It can go almost anywhere.
Although looking around these stalls helped me get to know how the technology fitted together, there were also presentations to listen to. One of the most interesting was the opening address by president of the Ftth council Europe Hartwig Tauber who gave a state of the union style address. He had a table of those countries where Ftth was beginning to make an impression. (This means greater than 1% of homes have it). Not surprisingly, recently modernised counties were in the lead, such as Dubai, south Korea etc. Although in Europe, former eastern block countries also did well. The surprises were Sweden, and Finland. The rural nature of their societies made it particularly interesting for me to understand how this had been achieved. The UK, Germany, and France did not feature in the table at all.
In general, it seems that where a country has large and monopolistic incumbent telephone provider there is little fibre installed. This is expressed as the incumbent wishing to ‘sweat it’s assets’. While I can understand this mentality, it is disappointing that we must suffer because our telephone system was so well advanced in the 1930s.
The other interesting fact that Mr Tauber stated was that recent data was emerging from those countries that did have good Ftth penetration which suggested that where it was available those households saved about 4,300 km of travelling per year. I will be following this up to discover the source of this data. However, at face value it has massive consequences for communities like upper Eden. This could offer savings of around 25% of vehicle fuel costs per year. Furthermore, the old arguments about how living in the countryside is unsustainable, begin to look unsustainable themselves. Further data is emerging on the relationship between increased connectivity and reduced CO2.
Some suppliers have developed ‘plug and play’ fibre kits to allow end users to overcome the technological issues of welding fibre together and ensuring good connections. In reality, if the right equipment is chosen, it doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than telephone wiring systems. This means that end users could plug their own fibre into a suitable distribution node, if they can get their fibre to such a point.
At the moment, because of the BDUK procurement process, there is a lot of discussion about the architecture of the fibre and business modeling of the structure for a fibre system for Cumbria. To me, the ownership and operation of any system is a crucial part of the discussion. Any network is worthless until it has users accessing services through it, and, at the same time, users are unable to access services until the network is in place. This symbiosis is at the heart of any workable system.
The ownership of the fibre from ISP to the home should not belong to any one body, otherwise this simply creates another investment stifling monopoly. Rather, the ‘first mile’ should belong to the community it serves (because they are best placed to provide it), the middle third to a utility company or preferably to a number of such companies (to ensure competitive pricing), and the backhaul to a range of ISPs. In this way, the control of the pricing to the end user and consequently the value of the network overall rests with the communities and not to any single provider. For a community to provide and own the first mile of fibre it would need to set up some form of legal ownership structure such as a Community Interest Company.
As I understand it, the shorthand for this model is known as ‘dark fibre’, because each end user or community of end users can negotiate a pricing structure for their internet access, telephony and TV independently of each other or a single service provider. The fibre is then ‘lit’ according to the arrangement between the user and the ISP. The ISP would need to negotiate with the utility company and the community for bandwidth over their fibres.
Well done, great post, it explains it all so well. That is exactly what we all need to know.
Laying fibre isn’t rocket science, we can all do our bit if we choose to, but getting backhaul to pumps to ‘lay it to’ is the main reason for this blog. I agree, we need to own the first mile, and escape from the clutches of the victorian phone company who think of us as the last mile and want to keep us on copper. The chance for escaping is now. We must not miss it.
chris
Tom, interesting. What did these households do that saved the 80km/week? Would it make any difference to people living close to exchanges that have reasonable speeds now? They are the ones easiest to serve with fibre but probably the ones least needing it now.
Did you find any details of community involvement, ie free labour. I’m trying to understand how a community project gets commitment financially and practically up front when some may say ‘I’ll wait and see’ and others are very keen to begin with and then lose interest. It would be interesting to see the reaction when local people are working to install fibre to a well off business.
Any thoughts? Clearly I’m thinking of across the UK to establish a semi-standard solution.
And how is a DVP funded and operated? Does it go into an ISP who manages users?
and what happens in areas where there is no community ? I have seen this situation in some notspots, which is why they’re still notspots 8 years on.
If there is no community then they will have to wait? All the more reason to support the communities who are trying so hard? Maybe they in turn will help the others? That is what we found, seed funding got a small area online, and then they helped their neighbours. They would grow even further but they haven’t a pump, and can’t expand their service without backhaul.
they’ve been waiting at least 6 years, as have many waiting for the white knight to ride over the hill.
Hi Somerset, It wasn’t clear from the President’s speech how this data was collected or to whom the figures relate; but I do intend to chase down this statistic: because, as I said previously, such evidence has implications for the way fibre is viewed in the whole sustainability debate across many areas of policy. Only today, the Govt. announced, in the field of town and country planning, that there will be a presumption in favour of sustainable development. If fibre makes development intrinsically more sustainable, how does this influence planning policy? I will post again when I have some further info on this.
You also ask about community work and payment. There was nothing at the FTTH conference about this - it was not that kind of event. However, I have given it some thought in any case. My position is that in any enterprise of this kind the community is asked to make a commitment - almost a leap of faith - that benefits will follow the efforts made. If that is the case, then peoples’ efforts in time, or granting of wayleaves, use of equipment, physical work etc. are not rewarded up front, but are so once the network is lit and revenues flow. Communities need to record the efforts people make and pay them once the network is installed and operating. In this way people build for their future in more ways than one. However, the corollary of this, is, of course, that the communities must own the first mile and generate some revenue from it. This is why it is so important that each community has the vision to build and own their own local network.
I don’t think the DVP needs to be much in many rural circumstances, it could simply be a passive connector node that people can plug into (up to 8 users from one node I saw in Milan). Passive systems seem to be able to manage up to 64 users. But I am no network architect - my info comes from FTTH Handbook 4th Edition http://www.ftthcouncil.eu/media_centre/reports/?cid=31&nid=537. If it needs to be larger, requiring power, and specialist maintenance it will need to be set up and owned by the community on the back of a decent business plan. Even so, the construction and managing of an active fibre cabinet which can handle up to 8200 users would be something, I am sure, that any commercial operator would be interested in talking about with the community that owned access to those users. This is not something I see as a major hurdle but will obviously require careful thought in every circumstance.
The question of managing the users is more challenging (and one that may solve the DVP funding issue anyway). I would hope that most parishes, or natural broadband communities, will be able to create some form of social enterprise, such as a community interest company, who will, in turn, and in time, join in a larger collective to manage the user accounts and the ISPs in the interests of the users. The management of DVPs would fall to be easily encompassed by such a group of companies.
Hello Tom, That was a great blog post and I’m glad to see you found Milan to be such a benefit in terms of understanding the range of approaches that can be employed to get FttH networks built.
One point I will make is that in my experience with community broadband over the last decade in the UK, most communities, most of the time just want to flick an switch, turn on the digital tap and it works.
i.e. when it comes down to it, most communities want to see the 4th utility service available and it is a minority who want to be involved in the ownership and running of the result.
The investment that NextGenUs brought into Ashby Lincolnshire last year we are seeking to build upon across the UK, and very much including Cumbria, this coming year.
The NextGenUs model offers the benefits of community interest asset lock and community interest surplus return within a framework that allows the local community to help get the network built without the hassles and liabilities of direct ownership.
Where in the minority of cases, a community wants to own its own network, again under a CIC structure, then NextGenUs is most willing to help such projects succeed.
All the best for your plans in Upper Eden!
Tom,
A point to make regarding DVPs is that there are a range of different types.
Certainly the simplest model is passive handover as a central point of aggregation of fibres to/from each home and business, school and other public building.
A more sophisticated model, and one that NextGenUs is actively prototyping, is the DVP as a place of concentration of computational power and diverse connectivity options.
In other words, a local node for cloud computing that also brings togther diverse sources of backhaul for local distribution.
The key characteristics of DVPs are scalability, flexibility, modularity
In 2009, DONG Energy’s Fibernett in Denmark, a landmark open access utility FTTP deployment was sold to incumbent TDC at less than half of the value invested. What led to this fiasco and what can be learned from Fibernett’s crash ?
Good post Tom.
One thing I would comment on is community owned access network (first mile or last mile if you are BT).
A monopoly is fine as long as it is controlled in the right way. A community interest company owned access network does this.
like Mrs T didn’t say there isn’t such a thing as “community” it will be a legal entity of some sort that owns the network - even if it’s a coop or CIC or Ltd Co it will be a single entity. The question over whether that entity is sustainable, can raise funds, etc needs to be addressed as otherwise we’re really saying “council” rather than “community”.
Tom, you are confused between the technology and the service. A DVP is a number of ports for connection but what connects to them and the DVP connects to is fairly complex. See the discussions around Barry’s plans.
Why, oh why, does Chris keep going on about BT wanting to keep people on copper, it’s a commercial decision, just like a community project.
The problem with any community project is getting the initial involvement and keeping it going. It has got to be managed by a commercial company who can provide a quick response for problems if there are business users and not have to wait for the ‘expert’ to come back from holiday (as one community scheme had to).
Are communities prepared to pay the going rate for backhaul?
Somerset, the going rate for backhaul could be what we made it if we owned the infrastructure and peered ourselves. We don’t have to stay on the old copper. We can form a commercial company or partner with one for this pilot. We can break the mold. I don’t think either Tom or Chris are confused. I think you are astroturfing, we know keeping people on copper is a commercial decision, at a great cost to innovation in this country, but the golden copper goose is dying and can’t lay many more eggs. Time to light the fibre.
So at what cost of backhaul does a community project move from being unviable to viable ? ……………. £/month per Mbits/s
Ashby-de-la-Launde wasn’t (publicly) subsidised, doesn’t have any economy of scale and is backhauled commercially to Lincoln which isn’t exactly the centre of the internet. Why is it the only project of its type ?
Phil, I think the difference with Ashby was that Nexgenus actually dug 4km to the nearest breakout point, effectively creating a digital village pump from the POP. If the community had to pay openreach to supply the pump in the village they could never have afforded it. Nextgenus could do this because nearly everyone in Ashby signed up, and there was also a lot of interest from nearby Digby for a wifi feed from Ashby, thus building a sustainable business model for NGU investment? That is what I pick up from the book on the website http://ashbybookplus.blogspot.com/, I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
Exactly Right Chris
The key lesson of the NextGenUs Ashby project came about, as so often in life, from necessity.
Namely the outrageous Excess Construction Charges proposed by BT Openreach, which would have stopped most projects dead.
NextGenUs was both determined and fortunate to have the invaluable support of the local MP (who is also helpfully a QC with expertise in ICT and telecoms law!) and thus able to reach an acceptable compromise on costs.
And it is this compromise, involving digging to meet BT and allowing BT Openreach to share NextGenUs ducting, that enabled the project to reach a successful conclusion.
The lessons learned from not only delivering the first mile FttH network and also the middle mile tail are scaleable across the UK for any community who is prepared to step up, muck in and JFDI
4km to what precisely - there isn’t any substantial infrastructure 4km away (not even a telephone exchange) so was that 4km to a point on BT ducts where BT would have no excess construction charges ?
or to a coincidental fibre feed to RAF Digby (which also has a wireless feed from Javelin Broadband I think).
Phil,
Ashby does have economy of scale when you factor in the wider North Kesteven district and its collection of notspots and grotspots.
The real driver behind Ashby and the further projects nationally that NextGenUs is working with local communities to bring to fruition is being able to move beyond powerpoints and blogs like this to have exemplar networks that local communities can relate and aspire to.
No matter who is building networks and from whatever funding sources there is no earthy point in spending anything without demand.
I guess the $64,000 question is whether Ashby *depends* on subsequent projects for long term sustainability, or could stand alone if it needed to ?
Phil,
as so often you ask exactly the right questions!
Why are there not more Ashbys already?
Well a huge delaying factor is government and one part of it specifically - BDUK
Since government intervention was announced in the market testing areas late last year, NextGenUs has seen a chilling effect on demand due to folks thinking that the government is going to put in fibre for free!
Back in July 2010 at the BDUK Industry Day I made the most unpopular point (from the point of view of those present seeking handouts, including I have to say Barry Forde) that the case for government intervention was unproven at best and in all likelihood state aid distortional.
As Jeremy Hunt MP stated on the day, 95% of funding to pay for the UK to have “the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015″ IS NOT COMING FROM THE TAXPAYER
What NextGenUs has now proven then other communities can benefit from, either by working with us or raising their own finance, developing their own skills and JFDI.
If public subsidy can be applied to help hasten and deepen better and future-proof broadband then that is great and the sooner the nature and scope of any proposed intervention is published the better.
What is happening in the UK today is delay that serves only the interests of those who would do nothing, those who have a vested interest of legacy assets to protect and sweat.
Or multi-billion pound unfunded pension pots perhaps?
The possibility of Government funding acts in the same way as the slight possibility of BT doing something - it becomes a reason / excuse for inaction.
One could argue there is no final third if your approach is replicated - it’s just a different form of market forces providing a solution.
I’m looking beyond single projects and really trying to see how FTTP can realistically be installed in the whole of the UK. Any ideas? VM won’t do it and they have a phone/TV/broadband product. One problem is TV is not an easy attraction for FTTP as 50% of the country would have to (want to) get out of a Sky contract.
Ashby is often quoted, but single road, fields behind every property - simple.
I don’t understand the ‘keep on copper’ theory, it what comes out the end that matters. Currently it’s fine for many people, not for others, all could be different in 10 years though. Maybe 100M symmetrical over copper up to 5km by then.
How do the people of Penrith feel about FTTC?
IMO a mix of running fibre over telegraph poles or through existing cable ducts (including good prices for both), with perhaps a wireless distribution model, could work for a lot of areas (FiWi) where running the fibre directly into homes is too costly.
However, as the government has already found, there is no one solution to suit every situation. The only way around that would be to replace all the existing copper with fibre at a huge additional cost which, despite the benefits, simply isn’t feasible right now.
Like it or not, we’ll be using half-way house solutions for quite a few more years.
We’ll be a half way house for decades if we don’t JFDI ourselves. If the incumbent doesn’t want to replace the copper then we have to. Government could ease this by compulsory purchase of any infrastructure BT won’t upgrade. Plenty of others would jump at the chance?
This proposal by you was in Computer Weekly, did you get any reaction from the industry? How would it work, would BT pay for its cables that would remain?
Can’t see any legal basis for the Government to attempt that Chris, or any motivation. Unused spectrum licences set a precedent.
Neither can I Phil, but we can live in hope. Government has no motivation to help us because the majority in Westminster don’t understand the problem. They get their emails handed to them printed on dead trees. We are ruled by luddites. Well meaning but basically ignorant of the issues facing this country. They are assured by the incumbent and the regulator that everyone can get broadband. They believed that for a decade. Now they believe in Infinity. And that cabinets can deliver NGA. We know its not true, and we know cabinets can’t help the notspots, but how to convince them? If we could convince them then maybe the motivation to help us would come? As far as I know only 3 or 4 MPs (incl Edens thank goodness) know what we are on about.
I was at the conference too and picked up on the 4600km statement. (PriceWaterHouse Cooper/Ecobilan 2008 http://ftthcouncil.eu/documents/presentation/20110113PRESSCONFMilan.pdf slide 9)
However, it is not actually that much in travelling, but in CO2 saved equivalent to that amount of travelling. Which, sadly, carries less impact than fuel saved per household but is still a valid environmental reason for us to adopt FTTH.
The full report is here http://ftthcouncil.eu/documents/studies/SUDEFIB_LifeCycleAnalysis_Report0308.pdf
Loads of detail in the report as in ‘We consider that a truck covers an average distance of 1000 km and there are 144 km of cable per truck’.
But teleworking happens now for 1000′s of people without FTTH as does image transfer.
Anybody know what a ton of CO2 looks like?
The slides calculate download times with zero overheads!
Teleworking does happen for 1000s of people now. Without ftth.
But it ain’t happening in Cumbria. Because they are stuck on very slow old phone lines and many are on dial up. Many have no mobile signal. The whole point is that it would cost the same to run new copper to them and bond lines than it would to do the job properly and run fibre.
Fibre is more cost effective solution, futureproof and sustainable.
“But it ain’t happening in Cumbria”
- apart from the not insignificant number of users with the same connection as they would have in a city, if not better . Anyone in a village or a town with its own exchange, for example.
Hi Phil, I have been a teleworker since the days of DOS and DialUp. I couldn’t get ADSL so I got a satellite. Then I joined and help set up a local community wifi network. This was brilliant at the start, but then some bright spark invented youtube, then iPlayer and online gaming - and the backhaul couldn’t keep up, time has moved on, and towns and cities are going faster, and now I can’t keep up with others. I can’t send jobs in to publishers at the last minute like my competitors can, because these days the files are so much larger. Our community network hasn’t got the internet feed it needs to grow. That is why having our own backbone to the digital village pumps is so important and why we must JFDI ourselves. What is on offer from the telcos is never going to be good enough for us to run our businesses if we want to compete in a digital world. A satellite or BET may enable people to check emails or do a bit of browsing, but it will be too expensive to tempt a lot of people when the rest of the country is going faster for less money. A bit of time and effort now will pay off in the long run, and if we build our own networks then the money they raise will stay in the community, which will thrive and prosper with next generation access. For the next generation. We may need to pay more at the start to get it all going, and we may have to dig our own driveways or gardens, but it will be worth it. If the bduk money could get the pipes to us it would make it all possible. If we could get a decent fibre feed enabling quadplay it would easily be worth £70 a month to an average family, it would save them a lot of money. Mobiles, sat dishes, expensive tv antenna, phone charges etc etc could all come through the fibre.
Sounds good, but how to you get commitment in time and money from the ‘community’ to do what’s required up front to secure the funding?
Particularly as the 50 people close to the (105 in Cumbria) exchanges may be happy, at present, with the speed they have now.
So… How is it for people in the village of eg. Morland, quite a few less that 500m from the exchange. Not happeing for them?
105 exchanges in Cumbria.
No doubt it’s not possible for many in the no and slow spots. Thinking generally.
Seen the Wales spec for 30M min for everyone?
https://www.sell2wales.co.uk/notices/display.html?NoticeId=24731
All businesses in Wales have access to a minimum of 30 Mbps by the middle of 2016.
Saw that. Will be interesting to see if they can pull it off, but the small print will say ‘subject to…’ and the notspots there will get BET or satellite. Enough folk will get on to cabinets to destroy any business case for community solution. Shame. So many are falling for Infinity instead of grabbing Beyond.
Tom
Looks like it was an interesting trip. Love the thought that we are suffering because we were ahead in the 30′s!
See you tomorrow night?
We were ahead in the 80′s! Today the UK probably has one of the most advanced telecomms network in the world apart from the local ends into homes. Many companies offering high bandwidth connections.
Discuss!
@somerset - would you say the core network is still fit for purpose? That isn’t what many of the highly paid analysts think……….
The engineers who keep mending all my friends connections don’t have a high opinion of the core network either. They say we will never get decent broadband north of preston.
6.8M speedtest central lakes, 2 sites, 2 exchanges.
I was thinking of all the products available from C&W, BT etc. not just broadband.
What’s limiting broadband north of Preston? Sky, TalkTalk etc. have their own network don’t they? We get what we pay for…
@Somerset, you are right there is plenty of quality core network assets travelling through Cumbria and where the fibre is in need of upgrade the point is that the ducting is already in place to accomodate.
The issue is getting that connectivity to those who are prepared to pay for service.
On the first mile principle this simply requires local communities to step up and demand service.
This is what Big Society is supposed to be all about…
@Phil, really is time you shared that key to the Lake District exchanges ;o)
LOL. The advantage of small places in valleys with their own exchange is that practically all the lines are less than 3km.
Surely everybody close to exchanges gets nearer to 8M?
full speed on Market 1 exchanges is a 6.8Mbits/s speed test (data rate not ATM rate).
So…
People close to the exchange get a good/acceptable speed and they may not be that interested in a community scheme. Tricky.
Lindsey - please link to some more details about the core network issues.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=can+uk+broadband+network+cope
What are the current thoughts? Are there any improvements or do we need to pay more?