UK telecoms companies not upgrading networks enough?

[Stuart C]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6552823.stm

While we have broadband that can be considered fast now, it seems that the rest of the world is likely to overtake us, and we aren't ready for the next burst of speed (think 20 meg and up).

The Broadband Stakeholder Group claims that the networks in place (for both Virgin and BT) need to be massively upgraded and expanded to cope. They would like to see fast (>20 Meg) broadband available in every town, village and city in the UK.

Of course, BT have responded by saying that they are ready with 21CN (which they have only just started rolling out), but are ignoring the fact that ADSL 2 doesn't go much faster than 20 Meg.

Virgin is claiming it is ready for faster speeds (from what I have been told, theoretically they can go much faster than the 50 meg they are testing, but it isn't currently practical), but ignore the fact that the cable network that allows them to do that only covers just over half the country.

So, what's the solution? Well, I think that in towns and cities at least, the solution the Swedish have adopted is good. Establishing a non-profit organisation that runs fibre through drains and ducting belonging to other companies, then selling bandwidth on that fibre to telecoms companies and ISPs for cost. It would certainly cost a lot less to install a fibre network in a town that way than it would for them to dig up the roads. It would also cause less disruption. Thiw would certainly make fibre to the house more viable than it is.

But, this wouldn't help villages much, or even people that live on their own.

One thing is for certain though. Someone is going to have to plow a *lot* of money into the Telecoms infrastructure in the UK, and I don't think we can rely on the Telecoms companies to do it on their own.

[awibble]

Personally i think the problem is the uk consumer.

I have delt with Americans a lot, worked and lived around europe and they charge a lot for the services. This gives them the money to upgrade networks when its needed.

Becuase of the current cost, uk consumers are not willing to pay more, personally i would pay double for broadband if i knew the networks where constantly been upgraded.

The other problem is that many countries didnt privatise, so the phone and telecoms networks are stil government owned, which means they dont have shareholders to please.

I personally see 2 ways that the UK can move, one as you have discussed is using existing piplines. It should be very easy to use the existing piplines as plenty of them are not used.

The other way is WiMax, but that has a long way to go before it can be considered a network.

BT should be the company that really need to get into gear, they inherited a public network and they have used that to avoid upgrades for years. Virgins network is much stronger from this point of view.

[danielf]

I read this story earlier, and I have to say I'm a little dubious about it as I really wonder what those super duper speeds would be used for. If my 4 meg is going to be upgraded I will be considering downgrading to the then 4 meg as it's plenty for what I use it for, and that includes watching footie via the web. I suppose (multi-channel) HD TV via the web might use up more bandwidth, but I'm struggling to think of anything else that would actually require speeds in excess of 10 meg, and I think that goes for the large majority of BB users.

[popper]

just one example but read this 'IPTV/VoD: Get up to speed'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11..._vod_briefing/

[awibble]

One major thing that some people miss is that we might not need more than say 20Meg, however if everyone tried to use 20 at the same time, the backbone could not handle it.. which is where the upgrades are needed.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by danielf

I read this story earlier, and I have to say I'm a little dubious about it as I really wonder what those super duper speeds would be used for. If my 4 meg is going to be upgraded I will be considering downgrading to the then 4 meg as it's plenty for what I use it for, and that includes watching footie via the web.

But what would you have needed 4Mb for 10 years ago when the fastest line between the UK and US was about 1MB? Does BB use follow Moores law in which case we will all need 40Mb in 10 years time?

[danielf]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

But what would you have needed 4Mb for 10 years ago when the fastest line between the UK and US was about 1MB? Does BB use follow Moores law in which case we will all need 40Mb in 10 years time?

This is true, but ten years ago it was not so hard to envisage that there might be a demand for using the web to show moving images. TV already was widely accepted consumer technology. Now, this is all fine in hindsight, but apart from HD TV I struggle to think of more data intensive applications that would be of use to the general public. I may well be wrong, but I just don't see the revolutionary applications that need that sort of bandwidth yet. And lets face it, 99% of people that are hungry for 20 Meg speeds just want it so they can grab that DVD in half the time. I don't download much, and watch the occasional footie match on the web (though the quality of that could do with some improvement), so I will probably stay put at 4 Meg. I suspect a lot of others will do that as well. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see many ISPs move to a usage based business model in the future where everyone gets top speed, and you get charged per Gig you pull down, as too many customers would find the lower speeds serve them fine.

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by danielf

I wouldn't be surprised to see many ISPs move to a usage based business model in the future where everyone gets top speed,

ntl had that idea and dumped it... they were going to offer all 10meg packages with differing usage limits.

the pay per use techniques don't seem to work with uk consumers- say "cap" or "download limit" and people run a mile. Numerous companies have tried limited broadband but i can't think of any that have had masses of success with it.

The uk market seems to thrive on broadband speed rather than quality- personally i would rather have a 20:1 2meg adsl connection for £20 than a 50:1 4meg adsl connection for £20. But joe public (to whom the vast majority of advertising is targetted) would go for 4meg because it is faster.

It is interesting how internet use changes related to speed- i remember a company which was an all online clothes shop (can't remember the name) it lauched when 56k dialup was the norm. Lovely site, you could rotate clothes, view different colours, zoom in/ out etc etc. Unfortunately the business collapsed because it was so infuriatingly slow that no-one used it. However if it lauched today, it may well have a lot more success, because the average internet connection could handle the images.

If speeds were to increase more then i can see usage changing more- perhaps a switch to more streaming, more interactive websites- maybe your local video shop, or services such as ilovefilm would just allow click, buy, download. With a Media centre pc and a connection that can download an entire dvd quality movie in minutes, why would you go to the video shop?

Why would you have a phone line when you can make decent quality calls using your internet connection? Or perhaps video calls?

[rogermevans]

a lot of us are more interested in unlimited downloads and by that i mean no extra bill at end of the month

still on 2 meg here i don't download a lot but if i do i don't want to be waiting for a bill

i think that they would be better off being honest offer unlimited downloads but tell everyone if you download over x amount we will / may slow your connection

then if for some reason you eventually need 20meg plus constantly you could pay extra for the speed rather than data

[Chrysalis]

The uk consumer is part of the problem but not all of it.

Lets compare international broadband in particular america to the uk.

In america cheap broadband is available but its low speed, even if on cable and fiber technology. It's well known the vast majority of broadband consumers dont use much bandwidth so a model where heavy users pay more then light users isnt very profiteable.
However high speed is also available but at a higher price, these packages are what provide the profit to pay for future investment and also allow bigger margins for users to download more, in the UK BT market the same speed for almost everyone and just about every adsl isp is up to 8mbit now with the price only varying for other factors of the service such as amount of traffic and addons. Give a light user up to 8mbit for a bargian basement price and there is almost no incentive for that user to spend more money, this is the problem we have right now. The uk broadband market was in a better shape 4 years ago when there was less users who paid more for their service.

BTs adsl2+ speeds dont do much to bring up the average speed they just triple the headline speed so they can boast 20+mbit connectivity but the truth is 3/4 lines are over 2km and as such will still be below 10mbit even on adsl2+. So the 2 problems with the uk are consumers who now expect top speed for bottom dollar and the lack of willingness for investment to improve infrastructure without a garuantueed quick return which is what BTs 21CN is (cost cutting exercise).

Unless there is a massive market change I think the only way the UK will move forward is government intervention either by regulation or using taxpayers money to directly fund last mile investment.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Chris W

It is interesting how internet use changes related to speed- i remember a company which was an all online clothes shop (can't remember the name) it lauched when 56k dialup was the norm. Lovely site, you could rotate clothes, view different colours, zoom in/ out etc etc. Unfortunately the business collapsed because it was so infuriatingly slow that no-one used it. However if it lauched today, it may well have a lot more success, because the average internet connection could handle the images.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/752293.stm
www.Boo.com

[awibble]

Bandwidth has always been a bit of a con to me if you dont mine me saying.

You pay to connect to the internet, and with some companie you pay for what you use. So as the consumer you pay for every Mb that is transmitted to and from your computer.

Then as a webmaster you also have to pay for every Mb that is sent between your website and the customer.

So that means that 2 people are paying for the data.


Personally i feel that someone need to push quality over qunatity. At the moment the best reason to pay for 10Mb is because if you pay for 2, then on some networks, you will only get a realistic .5 So to get a good 4 most of the time, its worth getting 10+.

On BT lines, SDSL is much better in terms of quality, but home users dont want a £200 price tag for that quality.

At the same time, im sure that ntl:telewest business (i belive they havent rebranded to VM yet) also give a much better quality and much better ratios but the price im not sure of.

It would be great if someone would lay fiber door to door, so that everyone could in theory get Gigabit internet connections, but no one would want to pay the price. If i remember rightly its about £10/m can probably get that down to say £2/m in bulk.. maybe less... at 2000m (2km) that would be £4000 which in reality no one is going to want to pay. Even if you said they only had to pay for the 100m to the nearest roadside box, thats gonna be £200 Plus of course a Fiber based router, which im sure is a could of hundread... i would guess at the moment it would probably cost about £500 per house. Then remember that everyone will want it for £10 a month.. it would be 4 Years before the company that did it started to break even... Just on the cable.

BT need to be forced to upgrade their network, VM have a strong network, that will got upto 220mb i think, which at the moment is double what most servers on the net can handle, so not a major issue. So really if you think about it Virgin has a least looked after their networks over the years.

Because of the restrictions with the BT cables, i think BT will start to lower the price on SDSL and push the quality over quantity point. And thats when VM will be able to continue to grow as they can offer a much better quality system already.

[Halcyon]

We do seem to be paying too much imo comapred to the speeds that can be attained and what we actually get served up in the UK.
I saw that in France some places are getting 60Meg !
I can't see the Uk getting anywhere near that soon unless they play a quick catch up with other countries.

[awibble]

There is the issue of our size... As a smaller country, theres less of a market, so they will charge more. IMO the best thing that could be done would be for VM to extend their network further, for the near future, 220MB would keep most happy, as it will be a long time before severs are all pushed upto that sort of speed.

[brundles]

Originally Posted by awibble

220MB would keep most happy

That would certainly put us out in front in the broadband speeds - and I'd be very happy with it .

In all seriousness though, it has reached the point where providers need to look at quality of service rather than headline speeds. Having a 10 meg connection that can deliver a 10 meg speed, but has poor latency with it is no use for the sort of applications that could use them (VoIP, IPTV, gaming, etc).

Traffic management goes some way to helping this in the short term, but with home networks becoming simpler and more devices being IP aware off the shelf there's no getting around the fact that average bandwidth requirements are only going to go up with QoS requirements being more important as time progresses.