Convergence Conversation

OFCOM recently announced a fast-track consultation as regards K-C, the incumbent telecoms operator in Hull and parts of East Yorkshire, being able to bundle together lines, call and fixed access broadband.

If other interested parties wish to make their views know, please be aware the consultation closes this Sunday 5th September 2010.

There follows the NextGenUs response.

“NextGenUs UK CIC would genuinely welcome the introduction of bunding of retail telecommunications services in the Hull SMP area as soon as there is equivalence of wholesale access and pricing as available from BT Openreach in the rest of the UK. More...

Taken from Wikipedia:

The term “bobbins” appears in northern English slang, meaning “rubbish”, i.e. something worthless or incorrect. Taken from the cockney “bobbins of cotton”, meaning “rotten”. This may be related to the contemporary British slang usage, where “bobbins” can be used to denote something negative, particularly in theatrical circles.

Not so long ago, I was having a Chatham House chat with a certain Political Advisor when the subject of Final Third Lobbying came up.

The point was made that “if you spent as much time at Portcullis House as XYZ, then you would understand why XYZ gets such a hearing”. More...

There are many proposed definitions of NGA, Next Generation Access:

Ranging from an uninspiring 5Mbps asymmetric through 20Mbps to 100Mbps symmetric and beyond (the latter being the NextGenUs NGA 2010 benchmark, i.e. real-time world-class, itself increasing to 1000Mbps symmetric in 2012 inline with the current world leaders, our cousins in Japan and South Korea).

In order to deliver the 4th Utility the UK needs, we must look beyond the pseudo-equality of so-called technology-neutrality and recognise that the only infrastructure capable of upscaling to meet any bandwidth demand scenario that local communities can call for, is Fibre to the Home. More...

Disturbing reading re Broadband Britain, definitions of NGA and concerns over the use of Taxpayers Money to undermine the Open Market are emerging from the South West:

NGA – Next Generation Access – all very fluffy and singularly lacking in any quantitative or qualitative definitions of service delivery on offer.

Now, VOA amongst others have clearly defined NGA as being a service that exceeds 20Mbps.

To quote from the above blog post:

The bid was about delivering a number of NGA pilots – which simply put, means you have to deliver broadband speeds of 20 Mbps into a number of areas.

More...

Another insightful post over at 5ttH and followed up here

What is perfectly clear from the waste described in the above blog post is that not a penny of public subsidy must be allowed to go to BT unless and until there is transparency that best value for Taxpayers Money is being achieved.

No more repetitions of Iwade in other words!

The UK’s copper wire network grew in what is euphemistically referred to as an “organic” fashion without sufficient attention paid to least cost operations/maintenance.

This was largely a legacy of the Nationalised GPO years and seems to have persisted since Privatisation some quarter a century ago. More...

Both the market-testing FttH networks in the audio segment below involve not a penny of Taxpayers Money and started out with a round table discussion, just as the recent gathering below in Cumbria, where NextGenUs, AFL Telecoms and CLEO Instigator Barry Forde (pictured left) collaborate with local community representatives to find better ways of delivering Community Interest future-proof FttH across the Eden District of Cumbria and beyond:

For all the talk about broadband, shiny superfast NGA or otherwise, what matters most is to remember the old maxim: More...

Final Third First underway

Inspired by 5ttH and Lord Kelvin’s maxim (supposedly:

Can ye make a model of it?

If ye can, ye understands it,

and if ye canna, ye dinna!

Once the Low Hanging Fruit are proverbially picked, what then of the remainder?

The High Hanging Fruit?

A statistically significant sample of the Final Third (quarter, fifth, tenth?) would be good…

The three Theoretical Exercises currently being open source supplied by some of the Industry Day attendees to BDUK and in between each other cover areas that are each and all challenging – high hanging fruit

Consider this:

1000 logging routers to capture SamKnows info across each of the 3 localities – do this for a month, for 90 days and onwards. More...

The most useful unsolicited email received in a long while.

Captures in a simple highly visual form the key facts about present day broadband in the UK.

Well done Mobilebroadband.net and thanks for the tasty spam Claire!

Infographic by MobileBroadband.net

Excellent blog post from Rick Waghorn in Nor(th)Folk and interesting how folks the length and breadth of the land are awakening to the increasing importance of connectivity to enrich people lives by its availability – and likewise the impoverishment that comes with lack of broadband – the dreaded NotSpot situation.

As Cyberdoyle noted in the blog comments, the initiative being championed by Rory Stewart in Cumbria is both welcome locally and promising nationally.

What is worth considering is what happens after the building is over, how is this new 4th Utility to be operated, in whose interests and for whose benefit?

Telecommunications decisions that we make over the course of the next 1-2 years will set the terms of trade for the next century ahead. More...