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.

Westminster eForum Building 21st century broadband

Sub-titled "paying,laying and simulating demand", this WeF meeting today went over much of the common ground on "superfast broadband"- things do move forward but not exactly in leaps and bounds.

I'll be writing more detailed reviews of each session over the next couple of days, but to give an overview, here is my summary

"Same old barriers" - Robert Sullivan, Broadband Delivery UK: a classic civil servant session: we're reviewing what "best broadband in Europe means" ("When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean); a strategy paper will be out "soon"; we must have a dialogue about all this. There were some real points too: eg backhaul is an issue.

"Delivering next generation infrastructure" - Liv Garfield, BT. Impressive roll-call of statistics, a sound grasp of reality, and no bullshit. But no solution to final third.

"Making rural broadband a reality": Charles Trotman, Country Land and Business Assocaition; "our members own half of Britain", "The Duke of Westminster's estate has not-spots in it" - perhaps the Duke could cough up a contribution to rural broadband himself !
Malcolm Corbett INCA; "patchwork quilt of initiatives" - INCA is stitching together (not stitching up, I trust)
Jonathan Freeman, Arqiva - surprise, a common radio network would be a good thing
Mark Falcon, Three - surprise,surprise, Three do a lot of mobile broadband.

"100Mbps Britain", Duncan Higgins, Virgin Media
Fast broadband is selling. VM broadband is fastest and most accurately advertised

NGA and 100Mbps demand
Martin Scottt, Analysys Mason: demand comes from multiple uses of known technology (eg HD, P2P), then from increased cloud computing and then who knows (Rumsfeld "unkhown unknowns")
Adrian Crook, Fibrecity: customers buying 100Mbps - offered on a "suck it and see" basis
Colin Browne, Consumer Panel: very anxious that the superfast broadband debate doesn't eclipse the 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment.
Antony Walker, BSG: customers view headline speeds as a proxy for quality of experience; industry needs to understand demand levels for business cases and network dinmensioning; public policy should not be driven just be headline speeds, but by opportunities for innovation and improved productivity

Delivering and laying the 21st century network: Ronan Dunne, Telefonica O2 UK.
Glossy presentation and corporate speak (eg "O2Learn") got in the way of a real message, but clearly there is an investment challenge, a need to revise business modela and a concern about inclusion.

"paying for the laying"
Tim Johnson, Point Topic: £530m not enough (no evidence though)
Andrew Riseley, Berwin Leighton Paisner: Australian Government is investing £26bn and structurally separating Telstra - but will it happen and will it work ?
Simon Loe, Alcatel-Lucent: understated presentation given all they are doing, but highlighted a key issue of how to capture benefits of eg TeleHealth within the business case.
Aidan Paul, Vtesse: usual complaint about ratings system and "fibre tax" - doesn't mean he's wrong though.

Watch this space for more over the coming days.