Convergence Conversation

News came through today that the Pakistan Telecoms Authority is to take the lead in a newly formed Broadband Stakeholder Group in Pakistan. The group have identified a range of issues that, on the surface, appear very similar to those that the BSG were tasked with addressing back in 2001.

Pakistan are not alone in examining the BSG model. There is already a Broadband Stakeholders Group in the Lebanon (which has produced a Broadband Manifesto), and other countries such as Chile have shown an interest in the concept.

For me, these developments highlight two things. First is the acceptance of the central role and importance of widespread coverage and take-up of broadband for the economic and social wellbeing of a country and its citizens. More...

As someone who spends a lot of his time discussing the importance and value of broadband, in all of its forms, to the economy and wider society I’m struck by how few manage to articulate a worthy vision for the impact of broadband.

A recent example of this was Ofcom’s timid attempt at a vision in its recent superfast broadband consultation (see section four). The Caio review made a good effort with broadband as an ‘essential digital utility’, but still didn’t quite capture it to my mind.

So it was pleasing to read, in an article in the Guardian early last week, that Stephen Carter is able to set out a vision superior to most efforts, referring to broadband as ‘commercially, socially, culturally, economically and politically transforming’. More...

On Friday last week the government announced it would be undertaking a Digital Britain Report, led by the new minister for technology, communications and broadcasting Stephen Carter. This represents an opportunity for Government to tackle a range of issues in a coordinated, strategic way. Hopwever, doing so requires that the report is not a stock-taking exercise of ongoing issues, but a proactive plan of action that provides strong government direction.

The value of this report would be in bringing together the various activities going on in the area of convergence, across different departments, in a coordinated, strategic way. More...

September has been a busy month in the world of next generation broadband. Government reviews, UK and EU regulatory consultations, not to mention our report on the cost of fibre-based next generation broadband, have certainly moved the debate on in the UK.

The month started with the BSG publishing its report ‘The costs of deploying fibre-based next generation broadband‘. This report used geographic and cost data specific to the UK, allowing us to model the cost of deployment across a variety of geotypes. The long and the short of this is that the report suggests that fibre to the cabinet will cost up to £5.1bn, and fibre to the home up to £28.8bn. More...

According to the latest UK Internet Access Report from the Office of National Statistics those students with home broadband access are likely to do better in their GCSEs.

This is not really surprising. Broadband provides students with access to a wealth of resources that previously were simply unavailable. It can aid independent learning by encouraging independent research and discovery, and increase collaboration not just within schools, but across schools, countries and continents. At its most effective, it can completely transform the learning experience.

In 2003 the BSG published a report highlighting the opportunities that broadband presented to the education sector in the UK, and the barriers against wider take-up and use within the education system. More...

Last week saw the publication of what has become a bit of a bible in the TMT sector – Ofcom’s Communications Market Report for 2008.

Perhaps some of you who are more diligent than me and have worked through the 2inch thick report by now, may have more detailed views, which I would certainly be interested in hearing.

However, even the headline themes and stats make for initial interesting reading.

Working for the Broadband Stakeholder Group, it is no surprise that my attention immediately went to observations about the development of the broadband market.

There are no great surprises in here. More...

Rather under the radar this week, KPN, the Dutch incumbent, announced that it would be opening its FTTH networks to its competitors, in order to maximise the utilisation of their network.

In a deal with Reggefiber (a fibre network construction specialist) KPN will take a share in existing local FTTH projects and build on these as they deploy their FTTH network.

This is an interesting development in the EU context. The majority of incumbents within the EU are less than enthusiastic about opening up their networks having made such a large investment, but KPN have positioned this as an appropriate way to share the risk and ensure utilisation of the network. More...

BT today announced that they plan to spend £1.5bn to provide superfast broadband to around 10m homes by 2012. The BT press release can be found here.

The BSG has issued a statement welcoming this development, which can be found here.

uSwitch.com has collected data on the speeds received by those who visit their site, and compared them to the maximum speeds these users signed up to receive. Similar to the recent research from the BBC and thinkbroadband.com, they found that the majority of users did not receive the maximum speeds that they signed up to.

This is not a surprise, of course. The speed of a broadband connection depends on many factors, including the number of other users online at the same time, the distance of a connection from the local exchange, the tuning of the modem in the home, and even faulty electrical goods within the home, which are clearly outside of the control of ISPs (see this excellent atricle in PC Pro for tips on how to improve your broadband speed). More...

Following the earlier piece, I thought I’d briefly set out what the economic benefits are that are identified in our ‘A Framework’ report, in order to illustrate where we think value would accrue.

The largest categories of private value in the report are: doing things that we do now, but more efficiently; doing more of what we do now; and doing new things.

Each of these categories of value has the potential to be very significant. We make no attempt to quantify the last two, as it would be difficult (if not impossible) to do so.

Doing things more efficiently we have attempted to quantify. More...