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Latest Blog Article: Rural broadband no change or getting better?
The FTTH picture in the UK is looking rosier every week and FTTH from the incumbents (KC/Openreach) has just past the 1% availability barrier (1.009% as of 31st March 2016) and the news from Openreach of progress in its 'plug and play' FTTH trials will further boost this.
The speed test result shown is from a user in the Haydon Wick Openreach trial area and prior to this they seem to have been enjoying speeds of 2 to 10 Mbps depending on time of day/provider. So far the trial seems to comprise of four live postcodes, but is set to expand to include premises in Ariadne Road, Boatman Close, Clementine Road, Mayfly Road, Metis Road, Minnow Close, Ulysses Road and Voyager Drive. As streets go live we will be adding them to our own availability checker but in the mean time the Openreach Ultrafast fibre website gives details for the Swindon trial and other trials they are carrying out.
FTTH from Openreach is nothing new, but the original roll-out method was time consuming with figures of 7 hours to connect each premise even after the work to roll-out the infrastructure up and down the street was already done. The new plug and play aspect is around using connectorised kit thus reducing the amount of splicing and fibre blowing needed. The G.fast trials can use similar techniques and trials like this are needed to help inform the cost model that will decide which streets get G.fast and which get native FTTH as Openreach pushes the fibre deeper into the local loop.
KCOM in Hull has announced a faster roll-out of its FTTH Lightstream service in the Hull area, so its clear that the incumbents are ramping up their act and it will be interesting to watch the picture change in the next few years. Firms like Hyperoptic and Gigaclear also have big expansion plans, and if the CityFibre joint venture with Sky and TalkTalk starts to deliver in volume we might see the current 1.55% FTTH availability figures vanish into the distance and be talking of 3 to 5% within 18 months.
It is easy to say the UK broadband picture is a disaster but when numerous studies looking at the effect that the digital economy has in the UK suggests otherwise i.e. it is in pretty good health but there is still more to do. Of course for those stuck on glacially slow broadband or with no affordable access to broadband things will feel very different. The Universal Service Obligation announced back in 2015 offers hope that once in place by 2020 everyone will have a legal right to request a 10 Mbps minimum speed broadband connection.
The devil as always is in the detail and this is why the DCMS has started a four week long consultation period for people to digest and respond to its 16 page consultation.
The document makes it clear that existing superfast broadband expansion plans will reduce the number who will need to make use of the USO and also is very aware that sometimes it may be a single property in an urban environment, through to a small hamlet with a handful of homes, i.e. there is no single geographic definition. Currently the superfast roll-out status is sitting at 89.72% of premises with access to a 24 Mbps or faster connection (and if you add alt-nets like Gigaclear, B4RN and Hyperoptic we believe it may even be above 90%), with existing extension contracts in place this should reach 95% by the end of 2017 and if the superfast pilot projects convert into further roll-out and claw back from existing BDUK contracts continues we might see superfast coverage pushing 96 to 97% well before 2020.
We know people will be keen to use the USO to push for more FTTH and Gigabit services but a lot will depend on how precisely the USO is funded and the legal side means that the USO will be technology neutral with a requirement to also be cost efficient, so installing something that may be future proof for 20 to 30 years at a cost several times more than a less capable solution that still meets the USO requirements may prove difficult to justify.
The good news is that the USO will be designed to make use of an escalator so while any USO service has to provide a minimum speed of 10 Mbps initially, if the average speeds continue to increase across the UK then the USO will see its minimum speed raised periodically to ensure the safety net does not fall behind - this is something that has been allowed to happen with the existing USO.
Where the USO becomes more complex is measuring whether a service meets the USO requirements in practice, e.g. if a solution is used that drops to sub 1 Mbps during peak times and delivers 14 Mbps off-peak we believe anyone sensible would say that fails to meet the obligation, but does a service dropping from 12 Mbps to 8 Mbps also fail? Another issue is affordability and the USO will NOT mean a provider can change £1000's for an install fee and we also hope things like usage allowances are also considered, since its not good suddenly having a 10 Mbps broadband connection that lets you watch video online at last for you to use up your allowance in the first evening of every month.
For wondering where the premises are that are likely to be under 10 Mbps, we have a map that updates weekly with postcodes being removed as roll-outs of faster options reach an area . The map comprises of just under 164,000 postcodes which represent around 4.9% of UK premises currently.
The cost of voice line rental at the retail level has continued to increase year on year for some years and diverge from the actual wholesale cost. The reductions in line rental at the wholesale level being the result of regulation by Ofcom and are in themselves a matter for discussion since the pressure to improve fault repair and service levels in Openreach may start to lead to them increasing.
The Culture Minister Ed Vaizey appears to be bypassing the traditional Ofcom regulation path and is asking for round table discussions before Parliament breaks up for the summer so that a solution can thrashed out that will mean those who don't make use of the land line for telephone calls do not need to pay the typically £15 to £18 line rental cost. Ofcom and the ASA are already moving to revising the rules around how broadband packages can be advertised and insisting that voice line rental be rolled into the broadband package cost where it is part of a bundle.
Not paying voice line rental if you make no phone calls would be a massive vote winner, but given that xDSL broadband is reliant on at least some copper loop means something needs to be charged for that element. The debate about naked DSL i.e. where you pay only for the broadband surfaces at least annually, and to some extent the soon to launch at the retail level SOGEA FTTC product which will cover the VDSL2 and copper loop elements in a single product is an industry reaction, no pricing is available yet, but we expect SOGEA to cost less than an existing up to 38 Mbps VDSL2 service when combined with the retail price of voice line rental, not a full £17.99/month less but may save people £3 to £5 per month. The SOGEA product expected is likely to still include a voice service but delivered as a VoIP product but presented in a way that works with traditional telephones.
We believe the reason the voice line rental has bucked the trend in reductions at the wholesale level is that the revenue and thus profit from voice line calls has plummeted in the last decade, driven by people making good use of call bundles and the way that communications is changing with social media replacing the old fashioned gossip phone call.
Oxfordshire saw its first Gigabit premises from Gigaclear back in 2012 in the village of Appleton and the firm has been expanding ever since and now has passed some 10,000 premises, often in areas where people are struggling with sub 5 Mbps connections.
The footprint of 10,000 homes passed may sound small, but it does mean 2.8% of Oxfordshire has Gigaclear as a pure fibre to the premise solution, and has even launched a 5 Gbps product trial aimed at home owners and businesses. Of course Gigaclear is not just in Oxfordshire they cover some 20,000 premises in the counties Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland.
Mark over at ISPreview managed to find a set of coverage figures released by the Superfast Cymru project and as we have our own coverage tracking we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to marry the two sets of data to see how two different models differ.
The key difference between the thinkbroadband figures and those from the Superfast Cymru project is that we include the commercial coverage from the Openreach and Virgin Media. The pace of the roll-out is visible and the impact of the Superfast Cymru project is clearly visible in areas like Bridgend
| thinkbroadband calculation of
Superfast,
USC, USO and Fibre Broadband Coverage across the Wales thinkbroadband (tbb) figures include gap funded and commercial |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Area | Percentage of Superfast Cymru Eligible Premises Complete | % fibre based | % superfast 30 Mbps or faster |
% Openreach FTTP | % Under 2 Mbps USC | % Under proposed 10 Mbps USO |
| Source | Superfast Cymru | tbb | tbb | tbb | tbb | tbb |
| Combined Welsh Total | n/a | 90.6% | 85% | 0.4% | 0.9% | 8.3% |
| Blaenau Gwent (*) | 96.23% | 99.1% | 95.4% | 0.3% | 0.5% | 3.1% |
| Bridgend | 83.42% | 96.5% | 92% | 0.09% | 0.4% | 2.3% |
| Caerphilly | 84.75% | 97.5% | 92.8% | 0% | 0.5% | 1.7% |
| Cardiff | 49.38% | 97.3% | 95.2% | 0% | 0% | 1.6% |
| Carmerthenshire | 60.35% | 75.3% | 67.7% | 0% | 1.8% | 19.8% |
| Ceredigion (*) | 53.87% | 65.9% | 52.4% | 0.73% | 3.7% | 36.4% |
| Conwy (*) | 84.11% | 89.9% | 81.1% | 0% | 0.8% | 9.9% |
| Denbighshire | 67.73% | 82.7% | 76.4% | 0% | 0.7% | 14% |
| Flintshire | 70.87% | 92.9% | 85.6% | 3.35% | 0.6% | 7.5% |
| Gwynedd (*) | 74.44% | 84.8% | 73.6% | 3.22% | 2% | 17% |
| Anglesey (*) | 75.14% | 86% | 75% | 4.09% | 1.7% | 16.9% |
| Merthyr Tydfil (*) | 94.24% | 99.4% | 93.6% | 2.25% | 1.1% | 2.5% |
| Monmouthshire | 55.99% | 82.3% | 71.8% | 1.64% | 2.2% | 15.1% |
| Neath Port Talbot | 79.59% | 94.4% | 90% | 0% | 0.5% | 4.1% |
| Pembrokeshire (*) | 71.38% | 78.7% | 69.8% | 0.1% | 1.6% | 19.4% |
| Powys (*) | 57.22% | 64.5% | 52.5% | 0.17% | 2.9% | 32.8% |
| Rhondda Cynon Taf | 92.75% | 98.2% | 93.1% | 0% | 0.9% | 2.6% |
| Swansea | 72.35% | 95.5% | 92.9% | 0.24% | 0.1% | 2.4% |
| Torfaen | 85.45% | 96.2% | 93.4% | 0.06% | 0.3% | 2.4% |
| Vale of Glamorgan | 69.85% | 93.6% | 89.4% | 0.11% | 0.9% | 5.7% |
| Wrexham | 71.63% | 92.5% | 84.4% | 0.99% | 0.7% | 6.4% |
In theory the superfast coverage percentages should be directly comparable between Superfast Cymru and the thinkbroadband figures for the rows marked (*) and we usually quote a tolerance of +/- 1% on our data since with the dynamic nature of the roll-out, exchange only conversions, new build premises and simply building the model we know you cannot be 100% accurate. This means that for Conwy we are suggesting coverage lower than the project, our 24 Mbps figure is 82.7% is closer of course and it may be that the difference is more about how you model the drop off of VDSL2 speeds over distance. In the areas where we've checked against what Openreach estimate we find our estimate is towards the bottom end of the range i.e. we are pessimistic. The other area is Powys and there we estimate 54% can get superfast at 24 Mbps or faster which is still below the projects own figures so will shift Powys up our cycle of areas to manually review and check the modelled cabinet positions and status of exchange only work. It may turn out that we find no significant extra coverage and the difference is just our pessimism over the impact of line length and crosstalk.
Wales is increasingly adding native FTTP to various areas and even though we updated our analysis on the 14th March, there are another three FTTP areas to add in the Newport area. The project overall has an aim of 96% fibre based coverage by the end of the year, which looks like it will be hit at the current pace, the next phase pushing on into 2017 is an additional 42,000 premises (3 to 4%) which is likely to take superfast coverage to 95% and we expect that this will be a mixture of infill for premises not getting superfast from an existing cabinet as well as cabinet areas seeing work for the first time.
Update Friday 18th March We spent Thursday evening doing a full manual review of Powys and in the process found a chunk more native FTTP and also Exchange Only upgrades that were more widespread than previous thought. Additionally three cabinets for previously exchange only that the model presumed to be in the exchange yard were spotted by virtue of users speed testing to be located further from the exchange. We are confident now that for Powys the difference is in the methodology and our adoption of a near worst case crosstalk scenario. There may be some improvements to be found in Conwy as we have not completed the sweep in that area. Newport saw a small boost as we had spotted earlier in the week some new FTTP areas that had previously not been processed for the statistics.
| Updated thinkbroadband calculations of
Superfast,
USC, USO and Fibre Broadband Coverage across the Wales thinkbroadband (tbb) figures include gap funded and commercial |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Area | Percentage of Superfast Cymru Eligible Premises Complete | % fibre based | % superfast 30 Mbps or faster |
% Openreach FTTP | % Under 2 Mbps USC | % Under proposed 10 Mbps USO |
| Source | Superfast Cymru | tbb | tbb | tbb | tbb | tbb |
| Combined Welsh Total | n/a | 90.7% +0.1 | 85.1% +0.1 | 0.45% +0.05 | 0.9% = | 8.2% -0.1 |
| Conwy (*) | 84.11% | 89.9% = | 81.1% +0.3 | 0% = | 0.8% = | 9.9% = |
| Powys (*) | 57.22% | 65.8% +1.3 | 53.7% +1.2 | 0.79% +0.62 | 2.9% -0.1 | 32.8% -0.5 |
| Newport | 72.81% | 96.4% +0.3 | 93.6% +0.2 | 0.23% +0.14 | 0.2% = | 2.5% +0.2 |
A month ago talk emerged of a mystery FTTH network for Southend and we speculated that the wording used sounded very like another CityFibre Gigabit City and now it has been confirmed with Southend-on-Sea Borough Council selecting CityFibre to deliver a 50km future proof dark fibre network to interconnect 120 public sites across the area in a contract worth £3.24 million over ten years.
"Connectivity is a critical issue for today's businesses, so this has the potential to be a massive boost to jobs and investment in the town.
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council is delighted with its selection of CityFibre as its provider of ultra-fast network connectivity for the borough. The solution will not only provide a stepped improvement in connectivity for Council premises and schools but also offer solutions for businesses and residential premises. The partnership reflects the Council’s commitment to sustainable economic growth and improved opportunity for all."
Cllr Ian Gilbert, Executive Member for Community & Organisational Development
Southend is a long way from being an Internet backwater with 96.8% coverage at 24 Mbps and faster and Virgin Media cable coverage at 59.7%, so when the press release talks about "many of these key sites are currently served by legacy BT Openreach connections, frequently delivered over out-dated copper wires" we are a little surprised, since Ethernet services should have been readily available perhaps more correctly it was a case of the price not being right.
The dark fibre network is not destined to supply just the council, once the core contract has been fulfilled the build will expand to the point where the majority of the 6,000 businesses in Southend will gain the option to order a CityFibre Gigabit service and CityFibre will also be hoping to sign up mobile operators to use the dark fibre to interconnect mobile mast sites and the cherry on the cake some time down the line might be a Fibre to the Home roll-out. We have asked for an update on the York FTTH progress and whether a FTTH roll-out in Southend is a certain or something that has the potential to happen if an operator takes an interest.
The reason people like councils and business with multiple sites love dark fibre solutions is that you just pay for the fibre, how it is lit and the speed it runs at is down to the council/business, so every site could be linked with fibre at speeds of 10 Gbps for the same price as 100 Mbps essentially putting multiple sites on a LAN that is better than the connectivity between two computers in the same office.
CityFibre has numerous Gigabit Cities now across the UK delivering services to councils and businesses, but to date only York has started down the FTTH route with a limited size joint venture with Sky and TalkTalk. There is a legacy FTTH network that covers around 20% of Bournemouth but this is not part of the modern CityFibre roll-out plans. CityFibre declare in the press release that they address 3.5 million homes, which we know this does not mean homes passed in the traditional sense but is rather the number of premises in the cities where the CityFibre dark fibre network exists.
Update 12:30 We had a few questions that we thought people might like an answer to, and below is an exact copy of the questions and responses.
The Budget has sometimes been when lump sums for investment in broadband infrastructure have been announced, but the March 2016 Budget had no such presents for the broadband world. The full Budget 2016 Report has a few little gems of hope that show that digital infrastructure has not been totally overlooked by Westminster.
"1.252 Affordable broadband is essential for a connected household sector but pricing in this market can be opaque. The government expects quick action to ensure the price of broadband provision is as clear as possible. New proposals from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will ensure broadband adverts do not mislead. A new cost comparison measure for telecoms services will be developed by Ofcom this year.
1.330 The government will distribute £14.5 million in grants to extend ultrafast broadband coverage in the South West – £4.5 million more than the £10 million allocated at the Spending Review. As part of its assessment of how the UK can become a world leader in 5G, the National Infrastructure Commission will use the South West as a case study.
2.320 5G strategy and tool – The government will deliver a 5G strategy in 2017, based on the National Infrastructure Commission assessment of how the UK can become a world leader in 5G. The government will also support the development of a network planning tool, to be trialed in Bournemouth. (67)
2.321 Broadband Investment Fund – The government will, in partnership with the private sector, establish a new Broadband Investment Fund. The fund will operate on a commercial basis to support the growth of alternative network developers by providing greater access to finance.
2.322 Digital standards in construction – The government will develop the next digital standard for the construction sector – Building Information Modelling 3 – to save owners of built assets billions of pounds a year in unnecessary costs, and maintain the UK’s global leadership in digital construction.
2.323 Ultrafast broadband grant scheme – The government will distribute £14.5 million in grants to extend ultrafast broadband coverage in the south west.
2.324 Open address data – The government will provide up to £5 million to develop options for an authoritative address register that is open and freely available.
Extracts from Budget 2016
The ASA/Ofcom changes have already been announced, though precise detail is still to emerge, but difficulties will emerge as invariably mandated rules tend to be designed for the largest operators and may cause confusion for smaller operators who access the various wholesale operators and have not gone down the bundling route where the phone and broadband must be from the same provider.
Bournemouth as a trial location for a new network planning tool is a little odd, as it has a large chunk of Gigabit coverage already, and extensive Virgin Media ultrafast and Openreach VDSL2 coverage, so 99.5% superfast coverage (this excludes Gigler) and 87.2% ultrafast (>100 Mbps from Virgin Media and Gigler).
A Broadband Investment Fund was mentioned back in the Autumn Statement and it seems is still waiting to be fleshed out and it is impossible to assess the impact until some idea of how it will work and how it will change the current purely commercial or community funded route many alt-nets are taking.
The ASA has told Sky to never show an advert again in its previous form and if it uses Ofcom speed test results to ensure it is made clear the testing refers to fixed line performance only.
This latest ruling was made after BT challenged a "Fastest peak time speeds measured by Ofcom" in a Sky advert and raised the issue with the ASA. Given the advert claim was based on the testing by SamKnows for Ofcom the presumption by many will be that BT got it wrong and people may find it odd that the ASA upheld the ruling. The devil though is in the detail and below is what Ofcom had to say about Sky and peak time speeds in its last speed report (November 2014 data).
"Broadband can slow down at peak times (between 8pm and 10pm on weekdays) due to a large number of people going online at the same time. This is known as network ‘contention’.
Sky’s ‘up to’ 38Mbit/s broadband showed the effects of network contention the least, with 96% of panellists taking part in Ofcom’s research receiving 90% or more of their connection’s maximum speed at peak times.
EE’s ‘up to’ 38Mbit/s broadband performed the least well, with 7% of panellists receiving 90% or more of their maximum speeds at peak times.
Cable services also suffered from slowdown at peak times. As Virgin Media delivers maximum speeds faster than its headline ‘up to’ speeds, peak time slowdown for its services is also measured against headline ‘up to’ speeds. The proportion of Virgin Media panellists getting at least 90% of their headline speed at peak times were: for Virgin Media’s ‘up to’ 50Mbit/s broadband it was 100%; for 100Mbit/s it was 59%; and for 152Mbit/s it was 33% in November 2014."
Extract from Ofcom February 2015 reportThe key is that Ofcom is saying Sky showed the least effects of network congestion, which is different to the claim of the advert which was "Fastest peak time speeds measured by Ofcom". In the Ofcom report Sky did have the highest speeds on the up to 38 Mbps FTTC based products, but crucially this table does not feature normalised results - i.e. no correction has been applied to compensate for variation in line length/quality, something which has been done for the ADSL2+ speeds for some time. Why Ofcom does not correct for cabinet distance is unknown and with a panel size of 1,711 connections spread over 14 services in the peak time panel it should be possible to do so. Though if going to normalise FTTC speeds, you also need to know something about the testers in home wiring, e.g. a bad star config, slow speeds due to modem on an extension or the ideal set-up of a master socket faceplate filter. Another issue even if the data is normalised is whether maybe 100 connections for a service is a wide enough sample to detect the variation in congestion that often varies by region or even town/exchange/cabinet area.
Looking at our speed test results for February 2016, for all connections on the big five providers (we could talk about others but sample size means we are not confident enough to give peak versus off-peak figures) the peak time speeds (6pm to midnight) as a percentage of daytime speeds (7am to 3pm) were BT 99.3%, Plusnet 100%, Sky 90.9%, TalkTalk 95.5% and Virgin Media 81.3%. Of course we don't have all those who do run our speed test running it at both peak and off peak periods, but the volume involved means we observe a much wider geographic sample than Ofcom. The Plusnet results have been a little odd as at peak times some months they exceed their off-peak speeds and this is thought to be down to the way traffic management is utilised across the Plusnet network. In an ideal world there would be a way to combine the Ofcom testing and our data so that observation of what the public see and the formal Ofcom testing produce could be discussed and used to better inform the nation as a whole.
[ Topic: Regulation | 9 comment(s) | link to this item ]Gigabit is go for Salford council housing
Wednesday 16 March 2016 09:40:17 by Andrew Ferguson
Salford which is in the midst of a variety of investment and regeneration projects looks set to gain Gigabit broadband from Hyperoptic. As part of the Salford Council's Digital Together campaign a supply deal has been reached that will see Hyperoptic roll-out its Fibre to the Building service to thousands of homes that comprise the council housing portfolio in Salford.
"We offer a compelling and innovative alternative for council’s that want to future proof their buildings with broadband infrastructure that will stand the test of time. Gigabit connectivity enables limitless opportunities – it supports and exceeds the government’s digital by default initiative. The UK is fast becoming a gigabit nation - we have pioneered this shift and we are delighted that Salford Council has taken the leap to become the first council to offer its residents world-class connectivity."
Dana Tobak, MD, HyperopticThe full range of Hyperoptic services will be available, from the entry level 20 Mbps service to the 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps symmetric products and they will be available on a contract free basis, removing the worries some may have about committing to a 12 month contract. There will also be a free 100 Mbps service covering communal areas.
The installation is already underway in Beech Court, Salix Court, Thorn Court, Spruce Court, Holm & Plane Court, Whitebeam, Hornbeam and Malus Court with the service due live in summer 2016.
Our digging reveals that Salix Homes took over ownership of Salford City Council housing stock after a vote in 2014 and this comprises some 8,300 premises and if this is all the premises that Hyperoptic are rolling out to then it means Salford will reach between 8 and 10% FTTH coverage by the summer with the current Hyperoptic coverage sitting at around 2% in Salford.
[ Topic: Internet Service Providers | 2 comment(s) | link to this item ]Reward cards from £25 to £125 on BT Retail broadband services
Wednesday 16 March 2016 08:49:06 by Andrew Ferguson
The cycle of rewards is back on again at BT Retail, with a range of BT Reward Card values available, starting at just £25 on any ADSL2+ service with a usage limit through to £125 on the Infinity 2, 3 & 4 products and available to new customers ordering online before the end of 21st March 2016.
The Infinity 1 service (up to 38 Mbps download, up to 9.5 Mbps upload) is probably the most popular one and this is available at £10/month plus the £17.99/month voice line rental and a £100 BT Reward Card (after the 12 month contract broadband monthly price rises to £25/month). As with previous cards it is in the form of a pre-paid MasterCard.
The 500MB, 2GB and 20GB 12 month SIM contracts all gain a £40 iTunes or Amazon Gift Card which makes the £5/month 500MB bundle very attractive for existing BT Broadband customers (non BT Broadband customers pay an extra £5/month). The Gift Card burst coincides with the last few days of an £8/month offer (£13 for non BT Broadband customers) on the 2GB 4G SIM (Unlimited texts and 500 minutes of calls).
[ Topic: Internet Service Providers | 0 comment(s) | link to this item ]
