Hot Spots or Not Spots?

July 26, 2010
For an informed view on connected entertainment in the UK & Ireland, visit Cue Entertainment 

It can be devilishly tricky to foretell the future. Take for example Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary in the coalition government (pictured). As long ago as June 7 he promised 2 Mbps broadband across the country by 2012 and forecast that rural areas would be a priority. A lacklustre objective, but at least it was in line with the EU aim to bring broadband to every European home by 2013.

Even he described it as a “pitifully unambitious” target, but now that has been discarded and replaced by the “intention” to deliver this meagre bandwidth by 2015 and then only in areas that are deemed commercially viable. 

So the “not-spots” that fail to present a strong business case for fast broadband might as well revert to subsistence farming and the population of rural Britain is expected to get on its collective bike and find work in the towns and cities fortunate enough to be well connected.

At the July 15 launch of the “Structural Reform Plan” for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Hunt proclaimed his expectation that “our brilliant and innovative creative individuals and industries will dazzle and thrill us with groundbreaking and inspiring work”.

“The means by which we communicate, do business and deliver active citizenship will be well underway, with the dawning of a superfast broadband network – the best in Europe, by 2015,” he promised, “I want Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe, and I will do everything I can to incentivise business to invest in this, so we can get there by 2015.”

Quite how the hopes and expectations of the minister square with the reality of diminished ambitions for universal broadband access was not fully explained, though his misuse of the term “superfast broadband” brings to mind the 1936 White Paper that launched the world’s first “high definition television service” with just 405 lines.

Let’s journey into the unknown future and boldly state that without access to the infrastructure needed to support their activities the ground breaking work in the creative industries of the UK will dry up. Without the broadband tools to do the job, inspired individuals will migrate to Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles or Mumbai, where their contribution to the national economies of Canada, the US and India will be given the infrastructure support it deserves.

Cisco, one of the world’s largest providers of network services and equipment, has written recently of the “forces of change” that are affecting the business world. “Changes aren’t something enterprises can choose to take part in or ignore,” the company says, “in fact, they’re already having a profound impact on your business and your life at this very moment, whether you are unaware of change or welcome it.”

Cisco points out that time travellers from the 1970s would barely recognise today’s workplace in which people do not have to be in a specific location, such as an office in order to get work done. It reports the global average number of connected devices per individual is currently five. That’s this year; just three years ago it was one-tenth of a device per person.

By 2013, two years before the DCMS (perhaps) reaches its 2 Mbps target, that number is predicted to increase to an average of 140 connected devices per person. On the basis of the UK government’s forecast, that means that the bandwidth available per device will be approximately 14 kilobits, or about a quarter of the dial-up speeds that were around at the end of the last century. It is hard to be creative when faced with that limitation.

Cisco’s figures are an average for the world, and do not refer specifically to these islands, so let’s turn to a UK operator for a view on the plans for a not-so digital Britain.

Star has provided on-demand computing and communication products to British companies since 1995. With 3,500 UK small and medium business customers, and an associated 500,000 users, Star has a good understanding of how bandwidth is used in company networks across the UK and their charts showing the peaks in demand for corporate bandwidth when England played in the World Cup are just one example.

In an interview with Cue Supply Chain, Star Senior Product Manager David Palmer expresses disappointment that the date has been moved forward to 2015. “The 2 Mbps target date was set because of the need to achieve results by 2012 using the technology that is around today,” he says, “If you extend the timescale to 2015 then the average minimum has to be at least 8-10 Mbps and to achieve that we must be looking at ways to replace the existing infrastructure.”

Palmer says that several companies are looking at closing regional offices and substituting lower-cost solutions based on home working but high-speed broadband coverage is not widely available, even in some urban areas of the country. “There are cities where 2Mbps is all we can offer,” he says.

“When staff work from home, they anticipate the same speed of access to the corporate data centre that they had in the office. Our customers will always select the 24 Mbps broadband speed if it’s available, or if not they’ll go for 8 Mbps. They will only settle for 2Mbps if they have to. In five years time, no-one is going to accept the 2 Mbps option at any price.”

He says the danger today lies in attempts to patch up an existing but obsolete network hoping to deliver marginally better performance. “Clearly it’s going to be too slow in five years but what about in 10 years time?” asks Palmer. “We will be going through the whole exercise again and any money spent now will have to be written off completely, before the 2015 date has even arrived.”

The solution Palmer proposes is expensive but hardly revolutionary. He says, “There are no more than five big operators. The government should take the lead to ensure that the rollout is managed correctly, providing coverage in all areas of the UK with minimal duplication of services. Then there has to be agreement that access to the enhanced rural infrastructure is made available to all operators equally, on a wholesale basis.”

Funding for a 21st century infrastructure will come from treating broadband as a utility, Palmer argues, by billing businesses for the amount of data consumed on a monthly basis. It is his view that the demand for better bandwidth from corporate Britain will more than pay for the investment required, particularly as the rise in transport and energy costs starts to bite at company profits.

“We need to step back and build a network that is sustainable for the next 50 years otherwise we’ll be spending £10 billion now and trying to find another £20-30 billion a decade later,” he says.

The ageing copper network has already been stretched to its limit and the BBC’s decision to make 2012 the year of the first digital Olympics already looks over-ambitious, at least for residents of the host country. Culture Secretary Hunt might as well predict that England will win the 2014 World Cup; after all that could happen a whole year before the 2 Mbps universal broadband commitment is met and both seem equally unlikely.

If the Treasury has its way, it appears that large parts of the country are to be “not-spots” in semi-perpetuity. 

Digital Britain is but a dream and while we sleep our industrial competitors will reap the rewards. If only broadband had been around in the time of the Victorians, they invested in the future long before they knew what it was going to be.