Convergence Conversation

Following the announcement of the Final Third First Campaign last week, there have been many conversations about what FTFC is about, who are founders, who are observers.

The reality is that we are all consumers where the 4th Utility is concerned -

from the chairman of BT

to the grandparents wanting to keep in touch with family in New Zealand,

to the children anxious to avoid detention for not completing their homework online,

to the person with health problems wanting to live independently in their own home with the aid of advanced tele-healthcare

to Government Departments that want to cut the costs of transactions with the General Public. More...

All aboard for the joys of hereditament courtesy Alan Bradford VOA

All that is is a unit af rateing assessment, RV is the annual value of the hereditament

Valuation date – 2 years before a list goes live – 1 April 2008 for 1 April 2010 list

Rateable Occupier – seems to be the problem area – person able to occupy the hereditament – this is a matter of fact  – can’t contract out of being a rate payer although you can of course contract out of paying the bill.

Main difference between central list and local list – local must be contiguous so if you have eg London and Manchester networks that are connected by your own fibre then treated as one hereditament else two separate H (Hereditament)

Control of use is rate payer definition e.g. More...

Great to see Working Lunch picking up the Fibrestream-sponsored First recorded community FttH dig last May with Wray CIC

There is a rising tide of readiness emerging across the great and good British Public for future-proof Telecoms delivered by FttH, or Fi:Wi to the Human, that is operated on the Community Interest, that puts people first.

Informal gathering of a couple of dozen interested parties from industry, community and public sectors, kindly hosted by Tref Davies here at Timico HQ Newark and organised by Lindsey Annison of Digital Dales

What is interesting is the spread of projects across the UK represented and the different stages that each group or company are at.

Aidan Paul, CEO Vtesse Networks, giving his inimitable perspective on business rates – 1601 poor relief act of Elizabeth I being where it all dates back…. with such delights as the Window Tax along the way

More to follow… More...

An insightful analysis of the NextGenUs NANDS Project over at Broadband Britain

A couple of paragraphs are particularly worth repeating below, as they capture perfectly the possibilities that open up for reciprocal and mutual benefit from sharing and reusing basic infrastructure to enable the economic deployment of Next Generation Access (NGA) networks in conventionally-considered to be marginal market segments e.g. rural.

The challenge for BT is to recognise and get comfortable with the notion that stepping back from owning the First Mile everywhere does make overall commercial sense, that by genuinely and effectively cooperating with Third Sector NGA operators like NextGenUs UK CIC there is a better way to eliminate the Digital Divide than pushing BET

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For a company which does not believe it can invest in Next Generation Networking in market 1 (rural) exchanges, without public support, it would seem appropriate to create a More...

Newton and Stape (NANDS) are two adjoining parishes in deeply rural North Yorkshire where conventional broadband is patchy at best and non-existent for the majority of the 140+ homes and businesses present.

The NextGenUs NANDS project is the first of its kind in North Yorkshire and it is hoped that NANDS can be replicated to enable other local rural communities in the county of North Yorkshire and nationally to likewise benefit from super-fast symmetric connectivity.

Read more about this practical example of Notspot Elimination over at the NextGenUs blog

More...

A framework for discussion and comment on the 23 questions raised by BIS has been set up over at Fibrevolution.com

This is an example of where our shiny computer technology ends up.

http://www.lightstalkers.org/galleries/slideshow/14643

Whilst recycling is a good thing we should never forget the risks to health endured by the kids in Ghana who are doing the hard work for us.

Food for thought.

There follows an invitation FibreStream recently accepted to consult with the VOA as regards the potential imposition of business rates to WiFi and WiMAX networks.

As previously highlighted, this development threatens particularly to discriminate against rural communities by significantly impacting the costs and therefore viability of delivering broadband services to local residents and businesses, as the lower population density in rural areas makes wireless First Mile delivery solutions attractive from a Social Inclusion perspective.

FibreStream invites all interested parties in the wider community broadband constituency to tell us your concerns and opinions about this development which we will collate and share with VOA. More...

Copied below, with appropriate approvals, is a recent BIS email to a rural UK Community ISP.

Worthy of note is the reference to BT ducting being blocked at some point for every one of the 31 route examples quoted!

A better way to assess the true situation re actual BT duct spare capacity availability is to perform a more representative and comprehensive study across various geo-types

- the NextGenUs hypothesis being that rural locations will have a significantly higher percentage of available BT ducting than the single metronode example given.

Put simply:

If there is no space left in ducts etc, then what is occupying the space and what useful work is it doing?

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Thank you for your emails of 27 October, 13 November and 16 November to Stephen Timms on above subject. More...