Westminster eForum “Building 21st Century Broadband” – Robert Sullivan, Broadband Delivery UK

The opening talk at yesterday’s Westminster eForum meeting was given by Robert Sullivan, the relatively new head of Broadband Delivery UK, itself the quite new organisation charged by Government to facilitate the roll-out of superfast broadband in the UK.

He first addressed the objective as set out by Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport: “within this parliament we want Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe.” This clearly begs the question what one means by “best” - Sullivan said BDUK was working on a definition and thought it would not be a single measure, such as headline speed. Instead it would be some sort of “scorecard” based on “outcomes”. They wanted a dialogue with stakeholders about this. If one were being sceptical one might think the target would be set in a way which pre-figured success.

Sullivan discussed the “Theoretical Exercises” that had examined the economics of providing superfast broadband in three challenging real-world areas – a paper is being written on this and will be out “soon”. But some particular points had already emerged:
• Delivering the USC is not a separate issue
• The cost of backhaul is a major factor in the economics
• Getting revenue to cover opex is difficult enough even if capex is 100% funded
• A mix of technology solutions is likely

The key obviously is getting a viable business case. Sullivan covered the three primary ways of doing this:

Reduce costs: duct and pole sharing as in Ofcom’s Wholesale Line Access review – BT reference offer due by January 2011; reuse of other utility infrastructure – electricity poles seems the most promising; reuse of public sector networks
Increase demand: through community engagement; demand registration (eg BT “Race to Infinity”); and increasing online activity by demonstrating benefits (Race Online 2010)
Public funding: £530m was secured through the Comprehensive Spending Review (ie taken from BBC); ERDF funding is available; other public sector bodies (eg councils, Devolved Administrations) might wish to contribute; and a variety of business models could be explored – gap funding, revenue share, public asset ownership.

The four Pilots announced – in North Yorkshire, Highlands & Islands, Cumbria and Herefordshire – will be funded to the tune of £5m to £10m each. These pilots will test the reuse of public sector networks and infrastructure sharing.
A BIS strategy paper is due in December.

In questioning, Sullivan explained that he thought the scorecard would be more about applications than headline speeds, and that performance requirements would follow from that. Tendering for pilots would be done locally through the usual open procedures – details are being worked out now, but they will not all be ready at the same time. Finally, we had the inevitable question about “fibre tax”, the rating system applied to fibre networks. To which we had the civil service answer of “ongoing round table discussions”, need for a level playing field etc etc.

So on the plus side there is some money available and pilots are soon to get under way. On the other hand. BDUK seem to be a classic civil service outfit, Sullivan has no telecoms experience and no real decisions have been made yet. It will still be for community groups to drive things forward.