Aylesbury superfast pilot another overbuild nightmare?
We last week wrote a news item on Aylesbury Vale District Council planning to set up a broadband company to improve superfast broadband coverage in the area and we have since learnt that the project will utilise fixed wireless broadband.
The Bucks Herald in last Wednesdays print edition actually highlighted that there is a small commercial operator (four full and six part-time employees) Village Networks already operating in the area providing an up to 24 Mbps service to the exact same areas.
With no clearly defined broadband speed goals there is a real risk that the firm the District Council creates may really just be a vehicle to squeeze out an existing operator and not actually deliver much more in terms of speeds. The local rumour machine is already running with talk of the council broadband company having done a deal to sell the as yet non-existent network to a FTTH provider, which is probably just wishful thinking but could give decision makers the idea that the new firm is a stop gap leading towards FTTH/FTTP.
If the council really wants to go ahead and spend some £1.5 million of tax payer money while also effectively forcing an existing firm out of business they need to ensure that the speeds the new wireless network deliver are seriously fast and not just a Meg or two over the base line superfast definition of 24 Mbps and faster.
Comments
I am not surprised about BT's monopolistic instinct to drive out any competition but surprised that the BDUK contracts allow them to give this priority over coverage.
@ gerarda - Why the BT rant here? Is it relevant to this story?!
Isn't the root cause the Council generated OMR which put those properties as white, and if and why current service or plans were ignored?
Its not a rant against BT but about overbuilding so yes
@gerarda
This is not a BDUK contract, nor is it anything to do with BT.
I find it intensely annoying that there is no joined up thinking and cooperation between the public funded projects and the private fixed wireless providers.
Please, please, get together for phase 3 of the BDUK project to sort things out for the final 10% of us who get poor speeds in rural areas.
@kijoma
Which fixed wireless (wimax) ISP was offering 30mbps speeds 10 years ago? In rural Kent I joined Telabria back in 2005 and they were one of the first wimax isps in the country yet could only offer a 3mbps/0.5mbps service...though they went tits up a year or two later and were bought out by Orbital/Vfast.
"We last week did a . . ."
Eh? It looks as if the grammar tester was taking some time off!
Baby_frogmella , Kijoma was formed in 2000 , our first full commercial network was live in early 2005, we were offering 13 Mbps at the start. this increased shortly after. I should of worded it differently but 30 Mbps+ has been available on all our networks since 2009 . this is a per customer set ceiling, not a total network capacity. I believe we were one of or the first to exclusively use the 5GHz band.
and you refer to WiMax, nobody i know uses wimax, it is out dated and far lower in capacity to what is available and in use now.
@theEulerID
The headline of the article is "another" overbuild nightmare
Is any of this future-proofed?
is anything "future proofed"?, broadband, cars, roads , tv etc.. ADSL was a heavily funded roll out.. it wasn't "future proofed" no more than FTTC is :D
Is this actually overbuild if the proposal is for superfast (presumably >24) and the existing is <24 ?
Would seem more cost effective to work with village networks on an upgrade, rather than using State Aid to create a competitor.
@herdwick all depends on what is actually delivered, e.g. is it a 25 Mbps max system so ticking box.
Have talked with a few journo's that believe the 24 Mbps superfast means that is the maximum speed, i.e. confusion reigns
- andrew
- over 2 years ago
@andrew
Before someone else points it out, the apostrophe in "journo's" is not needed. The word is simply in the plural.
Would you like some shocking examples of councils overbuilding with public funds? I can provide some .. I am talking running FTTP for miles for 2-3 properties , all of which have had a measured fixed wireless 30 Mbps service for 10 years. Meanwhile other populated areas are going without because there is no network to overbuild.