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Digital Britain Interim Report launched
By peter.shearman@intellectuk.org | January 29, 2009
The government’s Digital Britain Interim Report has been launched. The press release is available here, and the report itself is available here. The BSG press release responding to the launch is available here.
We have produced an initial analysis of the report in a special edition of our newsletter. We are keen to hear the views and opinions of members of the BSG community, and anyone else with an interest in the broadband value chain, on the issues raised in the report.
If you have any views you wish to share please either comment on this blog or send us an email. We will pass on all views to the government’s Digital Britain team.
Topics: Digital divide, Next generation broadband, content regulation, convergence |
January 30th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Two early comments on the Digital Britain interim report.
Declaring the need for a USO for Broadband in Digital Britain is a great development! The BSG desire to somehow link this to a definitive policy on NGA is not practical. You may well be able to massage it together with silky words, but they are two distinct things. NGA (fibre) is a medium, the USO will need to defined not around speed alone, but services and the end to end quality to deliver them on a national basis.
It’s not practical to put fibre up every glen, but it would be good to put it to most cabinets, thus making the speed bit at least something you can discuss. But it should not be a barrier to defining the basic building blocks of what is need to support critical services over high speed networks.
The speed and the end to end quality need to seperated. Even the example provided of video conferencing at 2mb is not true, as this would be two streams (not six or eight) of as little as 150 -200 kbps (1 -each way) with with loss and delay characteristics of <1% - the latter is the issue not the bandwidth. Now large file transfers may need to be overnight, but that will need doing anyway, fibre or not, as we need to collectively manage to a peak hour capacity to meet affordability targets.
If i had a spare £15bn I would donate it to FTTC. Even with this we need to manage the end to end service as each application just needs what it needs and no more.
Mobile Data at 2Mb - if it was 2Mb , the quality, as in loss and delay characteristics would not be good enough at present to support real-time services. Mobile companies like ISPs need to publish their network planning rules. We will need to be smarter with local wifi and actually pull fibre through where it is needed to support those communities of 200-300 homes.
Wiggle room is indeed needed to define the USO but it is a do-able project . Speed will climb over time, but the underlying quality and the setting and transparency of the planning rules is needed first and foremost. This is a pure engineering job, not one for consultants.
By the way the comments on net neutrality (bottom page P22) look totally out of place coming as as they do right after the action point on duct sharing. This must be a mistake! NN debate is the US is a mess as it is a muddle of mis-selling, calls for an open internet, and a belief in infinite capacity. The UK does need an Open internet, with ISPs making it clear to users the restrictions around peak hour. We as users then decide how we use that peak hour allowance by prioritising our traffic accordingly. It will make for a better and innovative services.
This level of transparency is needed for Convergence to occur and it is needed for a USO to work. The NN wording read literally ( as per the Reg) points to a set of stove piped internet services which is incompatible with innovation.
Much to do, but the report provides plenty of room to create a better digital commons for all.
January 30th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
My initial response? In relation to the introduction of a broadband USO, “AT LAST!”
Some of us realised that the then new EU regulatory framework, in particular the Universal Services Directive, opened the door to state funding of a broadband USO, but the opportunity was missed by DCMS and DTI/BERR in 2002 (see, for example, my comments in ‘Regulation of electronic communications networks and services in the UK’, Computer Law and Security Report (2004) Vol 20 No 1 pp4-11).
It’s been a long wait.
January 30th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
The infamous Wiggle-Room Concept of “up to” 2Mbps is curious and its impact is unpredictable. If I were a supplier of course I’d “commit” to it in return for whatever favours the government tosses my way, while in the comfort and privacy of my own home I’d be telling my wife that I’ll implement whatever I can get away with.
Heavy investment now in a new, pre-NGA broadband USC could well turn out to be a waste of materials, skills and treasure that will lock us in to a capacity-limited, uncompetitive infrastructure for far longer than would otherwise be the case. The rejection of net neutrality at a time when the BBC is proposing a cheap-and-cheerful iPlayer as well as a gold-plated, (HD, 3D?) version that will gobble bandwidth won’t be popular among those punters who see their heavily contended bandwidth shrink as their neighbours access the higher-priced services. A Race for Fibre would have been more acceptable as a starting point for policy.
For sure the MNOs are no longer seeing the USO as a “cost” and their customers will soon begin to wonder just how far the rush for 3G is going to imperil the levels of service (and prices) for those of us who are quite happy with voice and SMS on GSM, thanks very much.
However, this report is certainly a vast improvement on what’s gone before. Let’s hope for even greater clarity in the final version.
January 30th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Half the Island of Barra has BT broadband. The other half must wait in hope till 2012. All that is required is an update to our exchange.
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 pm
In my view the ‘up to 2 mbps’ approach to a universal service misses the point that ‘not spots’ come in very wide variety. One has to consider the particular characteristics of population distribution and existing (mainly legacy) phone infrastructure. For example in a relatively large area with a dispersed low population density, and where to date there has not been a regional approach to broadband deployment, some kind of ‘region based’ approach will be needed for wired or other broadband. Logic suggests that any new infrastructure investment should be as future-proof as practicable - ie a strategic ‘leap frog to NGS’ is appropriate, but based on a rational approach to the timing of investment.
On the other hand in this area we have small not spots, some of which are rural, some urban, but where overall coverage of current generation (ADSL) is otherwise pervasive. The not spots tend to be to do with relatively small areas where distance from the exchange is the issue. Such areas call for a locally focused approach to infrastructure investment, where any programme should concurrently upgrade to or towards NGS, along with a detailed cost-performance approach that brings not spots up to the highest practicable / justifiable performance. Its inappropriate to define a universal service committment in terms of speed alone.
Even with the speed approach, ‘up to 2mbps’ cannot at any time beyond 2009 (or even today) be a sound basis for any kind of universal service. Any universal service should surely be based on an ‘at least’ approach. Defining ‘at least’ means properly considering what minimum level of performance is needed to encourage and enable the user to ‘join in’ and start making the behaviour changes that will keep them joined in and participating from a social and economic perspective. But there is a second perspective, namely consistency and reliability of performance. Much depends on what we regard as the reason for having a universal service. If it’s only to provide marginal access to a marginal population, then almost any arbitrarily chosen level of performance might suffice. But this cannot be a rational goal. Politicians might more readily grasp this we approach the question from the perspective of behaviour and outcomes rather than technology performance, which always makes their eyes glaze over!
The national goal should be to enable and encourage society and the economy as a whole to make the behaviour changes that will bring the social and economic benefits of high performance ICTs. Realistic access to the types and range of services and facilities that encourage behaviour change and participation cannot be enjoyed at lower performance levels, indeed our local observation (and my experience over the whole internet period) is that users who initially buy in to the idea and (more literally) start spening money on access and use, very quickly get turned off when their experience is any combination of slow speed, inconsistency or unreliability. Only the enthusiast will work through such problems. This suggests an argument that a universal service should relate to the totality of the user’s need rather than to notional connection speed. So, taking an example based on ADSL, service to a rural user who cannot be provided with more than (say) 2mbs should be supported by a significantly lower contention ratio than is applied to a user who is provided with (say) 10mbps, giving the rural user a closer parity of experience.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I find the following principles being adopted in Norway very uplifting as a user.
This is a subject the UK as a whole has ignored. The principles are summarised as;
1.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection with a predefined capacity and quality.
2.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that enables them to
- send and receive content of their choice
- use services and run applications of their choice
- connect hardware and use software of their choice that do not
harm the network.
3.) Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that is free of discrimination with regard to type of application, service or content
or based on sender or receiver address.
Full pdf is here.
Of course there are limits but the customer gets to choose!
While the Digital Britain report has what I am convinced must be an error in Page 22 on this subject, perhaps we can take this best practive and include in the final version of the report.