By Peter Cochrane, 6 May 2009 15:17
COMMENT
Never has a subject been so studied, debated and reported with such little understanding and positive action as broadband in the UK. For me this came to a real head recently with the publication of the Carter Report, compounded by my appearance at a broadband conference - the last one I shall ever attend.
The Carter Report is a travesty of misunderstanding, misconception and missed opportunities. On one day our Prime Minister announces that every home in the UK will have 2Mbps broadband in 2011, and the next a Korean minister announces that everyone in his country will have 1,000Mbps in 2012.
We should also remember that the 1,000Mbps in Korea is yours and yours alone - it is not contended, or shared, like broadband pipes in the UK. In the UK it might say 2Mbps on the tin but that isn't what you are going to get!
At that recent broadband conference there were a number of 'take your breath away' statements from network and broadband suppliers. My favourites were:
- If you can figure out what anyone would use 100Mbps to the home or office for - let us know.
- There is no proven market for anything above 8Mbps.
- In the UK there is no demand for high-speed connections.
This was then compounded by comparing the UK's broadband with the rest of Europe. Ouch! What about the rest of the world? Talk about selecting the data set to make yourself look good. As far as I can tell the UK goes from the top three in the EU to around number 20 in the world league tables. All I could think was that these people don't get out much and need to take a trip or two into the real broadband world.
So what are we to do? The present economic recession will most likely preclude any effective government initiatives, while also curtailing the investments by carriers and ISPs. In my view we are definitely on our own - and will have to scavenge for what we can get.
I'm going to use my own situation as an example as it happens to be extreme in some sense as I live out in the sticks of Suffolk, well away from any big town - but I have two phone lines, both with broadband. One gives me 6.5Mbps and the other comes in at 3Mbps. In addition, I can, with the aid of a one-metre parabolic dish get at least two 3G broadband suppliers giving around 5Mbps each. (For more details on my set-up, see a blog from last year.)
I have therefore selected a broadband aggregation service to realise 6.5 + 3 = 9.5Mbps. In the next phase, adding two 3G suppliers will give a further 10Mbps and extend my bandwidth to 19.5Mbps.
Below you can see a diagram of my combined ADSL and 3G aggregated broadband system.
In order to increase the reliability and resilience of my connection, while at the same time avoiding correlated contention, I have selected different suppliers for each service. And I do mean supplier and not reseller. A lot of the potential advantages on offer here would be lost if the service was in fact terminated on the same server.
Now before anyone jumps to the obvious objection about the cost of such a set-up, there is now a solution that achieves a very similar objective at a much lower price. You just need good neighbours! Aggregating the broadband of several collocated households or offices is easy and gains a good deal of the advantages of my situation.
Below I've drawn a diagram of how you could combine the ADSL bandwidth of several collocated homes or small offices.
There are now a couple of things to note. An aggregation provider may opt to put the software onto an existing DSL router, or they may choose to include it all into an additional box. Also, the choice of a hard-wired local LAN may be replaced by a wi-fi variant.
So my two diagrams are purely illustrative to explain the basic configuration and operation. There are many more options, including the extension to more than four aggregated lines, the inclusion of wi-fi, WiMax, and of course 3G.
In my home, we reduced the potential for contention at the server end by using multiple different suppliers, while in the multi-home example we introduced the potential for a new form of contention at the user end. But this turns out to be a minor loss compared to the overall gain. In short, everyone benefits enormously but it means achieving a given level of public spiritedness, or bandwidth desperation, to get home owners signed up.
My personal extravagance involving two ADSL lines and two 3G services is of course down to bandwidth desperation for my business. But even so, two ADSL lines is well within the grasp of many, as is a 3G addition, especially if they are mobile workers who already own a dongle.
Depending on where you live - village, town or city - it is also worth looking for public or open wi-fi services you can tap into. Every little helps!
I make it a general rule to never advertise specific services and technologies but if anyone has a problem tracking down a suitable aggregation service, I will be pleased to link you directly to mine, which is active in the UK and USA. Just email me direct. Best of luck!
Comments
There are 29 comments. Join the discussion
1. karen challinor
"If you can figure out what anyone would use 100Mbps to the home or office for - let us know.
There is no proven market for anything above 8Mbps.
In the UK there is no demand for high-speed connections."
these are the people who are providing the UK with broadband ?
well that explains a lot
2. Ant Norris
Did the people who made those offensive comments about not needing more bandwidth also believe the world is flat? Sounds like they are eating their own spin, it makes no sense.
Regarding your bandwidth aggregation, I'd like to know some suppliers, we recently had a Draytek installed that groups two ADSL lines together, which works remarkably smoothly, but no more than two for that unit.
Also while you've in theory got 19.5Mbps, it is contended, unless you are REALLY rich and can afford SDSL, so you could more likely have 1Mbps or less at busy times.
I fondly remember being very close to an exchange that had Be on it with a 24MB connection, made my life so much easier and so much more productive, and productivity should be a key word with this subject, the goals they are aiming at presently come across as more gimmick than a real business/economic need.
3. Richard Howlett
I'm not even sure you can blame a specific government for this (although obviously I can think of a few ministers who could do with a fat pipe being taken to them). It's deeper than that.
The Humphreys in the Civil Service have no concept of how services are used by real people. After all, this is the same group of people who were sure that 3 lanes each way on the M25 would be more than enough, failing to realise that if you make a previously impractical journey possible, more people will make that journey. Similarly, there are indeed currently very few companies who curse the lack of a 100Mps connection. However "if you build it, they will come" and technologies will very quickly develop to make best use of any additional bandwith that may appear.
Until we as a country stop allowing ourselves to be dictated to by technically intelligent but practically very stupid people, it isn't going to get any better. OK, rant over, I'm off for nice cup of tea....
4. Matt H
"There is no proven market for anything above 8Mbps."
In a way I suppose they are right, hardly any ISP to my knowledge provide more than 8Mbps so there isn't a market! In order for there to be a market, there needs to be suppliers and customers!
"In the UK there is no demand for high-speed connections."
I think that they got the wrong end of the stick with that comment, there is no demand to pay extortionate prices for high speed connections. If the ISPs price out the majority of people, of course they're not going to ask for it!
For the record, I'd like as fast a connection as possible, around the Korean mark would suffice, but I want it at a reasonable price, about what I'm paying now (£25 for 10mbps allededgly). They make me sick!
5. Peter Cochrane
Karen = These people seem to move into any industry understanding very little and expect to run successful business. I have heard these words all my life! Peter
6. Peter Cochrane
Ant = The point is I reduce the correlation in the contention - it is the best you can do. And by the way in my old house I had 8 optical fibres and an early version of WiMax! Peter
7. Peter Cochrane
Richard = Spot on! Peter
8. Peter Cochrane
Matt = Unfortunately it aint going to happen whilst we are governed by the technologically ignorant and the marketing stupids of this life. Peter
9. Simon Allen
This reminds me of the failed introduction of Cable TV into this country. The Tories in the early 80s(?) trumpeted about cable to every street - but failed to support it and practically nothing happened. If we had have had a good cable installation, it would have made a difference now.
Your idea of collaboration between collocated dwellings reminds me, in the early 90s (before the web) one techhie I knew had wired up his pals in the street with Ethernet on Co-Ax! It was strung across the back gardens and they played MUD together.
10. Peter Cochrane
Simon = I had that experience with my kids during the early 1990's - they would string anything together to form an ad-hoc network. And as we had lots of wifi to my home we were a focal point in the street!
BTW - Cable was always a bit of a dumb idea for the UK. We nearly had FTTH in the early 1990s but Thatchers lot stopped it all because Cable was the true way!
Peter
11. Ralph Beales
Interesting article Peter. I've got a smidgeon under 8 mbps on my two home phone lines. I suspect my neighbours enjoy a similar speed (although of course, that's only one way the other way is half a meg) however, if I approached my 12 neighbours, of whom 4 have dual lines, we would have a combined total of 18 phone-lines, all with broadband but every single household is with BT. Doesn't that negate your plan? We all connect to the local exchange, which is about 1000 yards away but surely we'd have contention problems?
However, very interesting and definitely food for thought.
12. karen challinor
peter = yep I agreee it's the old adage "a good manager can manage anything", this may be true but there are very few "good" managers out there
so the much larger remainder find themselves out of their depth and vastly less knowledgeable about the work than the staff they manage, so they concentrate more on the timesheet than the work because they lack the tools to make sense of the work
new ideas and innovations generated by the staff get dismissed in this kind of environment because they cannot immediately show a cost benefit so the manager does not understand and then berates the staff for wasting their time rather than dealing with the project at hand
small wonder we are losing most of our technical expertise, pretty soon the only things this country will lead the world in is .... I was going to say tourism but we haven't even got that, there are much nicer places that are cheaper than here
13. Peter Cochrane
Ralph = Sounds like heaven! But as I pointed out - to get the best results you need as manny different ISPs (not resellers) as possible otherwise the common (correlated) contention will get you! Also - the more suppliers you have the better you reliability gets vis an ISP electronic/software failure. Nothing will save you from a cable being cut - other than wifi and 3G that is. Peter
14. Peter Cochrane
Karen = It seems to be a modern disease in the western world. The good news is it is helping create a huge start up sector. The bad news is that this is then confounded by the finance houses and the big multinationals. Progress is always tough! Peter
15. anonymous
It would be interesting to see what hardware exists to support Peter's setup, AFAICT routers designed to connect to two ADSL lines use one, the other is only used as an emergency fallback. The other great scourge is Skype: if you are on a network with other users who you can't control, their use of Skype, particularly video Skype, uses a lot of bandwidth especially if they become a 'node'. Although there are routers which block Skype, these are not available at the consumer end of the market. Blocking Skype and other p2p network traffic is going to become essential in the future, I think, if it isn't done by the ISPS themselves
16. Peter Cochrane
Anonymous UK = Skype really is a non-problem and a great service - not to mention all the P2P services. Just get some bandwidth and enjoy! Peter
17. karen challinor
I think a strong contributory factor to the relatively poor broadband offerings we get in this country, is there is no incentive to give us anything better
the broadband suppliers are charging us pretty much the maximum they know we will pay for any broadband service, and they know there's not that much competition so the prices aren't going to come down
they know only a very few will pay more for a faster service with no data capping or contention ratio and thats unlikely to change because the countries infrastructure will throttle any service that could take advantage of the increase and if there's no service like IPTV what use is the speed and bandwidth
whats the point of paying for an uncontended, unlimited 500Mb/s connection, that gets as far as the exchange and then effectively steps down to a 0.5Mb/s connection once the contention ration of all the users using the exchange is taken into account
so without a major national backbone upgrade there will be no bandwidth hungry services like IPTV and therefore no end users will pay more for bandwidth, so the providers have no incentive to give us more bandwidth
it's a vicious circle thats turning the much vaunted information superhighway that we were promised into a one lane country road with no passing places and a ton of tractors going the opposite way
18. Mike Kiely
Meraki is a good box to mesh broadband together - very popular in San Francisco - pool your broadband and give the elderly neighbours some connectivity.
Should revive Openspectrum UK given the Meek Spectrum proposal. How much of the sub 1Gz band is needed? That plus 802.11r (which was great work) could make a difference and be part of the mix.
At least the Spectrum review shows (but does not state) that access the internet is critical.
19. cyberdoyle
how far are you from the nearest fibre POP?
We have just dug our own fibre to the home, it isn't as hard as we thought, and see it as the only way forward for rural areas, mixing in wireless feed until we can reach a fat pipe. great blog you have btw
20. anonymous
I have had a fiber connection to my house since November 2001. My ISP supplies me with a 100/100 Mbps which in real life means about 90/90. Since then I have experienced 2 outages with a total of 2 hours. I'm usually connected 12 to 15 hours a day.
The electrical energy company in Sollentuna just north of Stockholm supplied the connection. 2500 of the 11500 houses and 11000 of the 12000 flats are connected as of today. The network is "ISP neutral" and we have four ISP's that will sell you 100/100 Mbps as well as IP-TV and IP-telephony. I pay the ISP 19 pounds per month for the 100/100 Mbps Internet access.
The onetime cost for the fiber (6 pairs in my case) was 1150 pounds in 2001 and today it's 1300 pounds.
21. cyberdoyle
Well said and well done Peter! At least you are JFD something about it at your neck of the woods! We are using wireless to get the signal to people who can't get it at all, and between us we shall try to help as many as we can won't we? Power to the people.
22. Peter Cochrane
Karen = It will either get fixed or the UK will become another IT backwater relegated to a dismal GDP and zero public services. If we can't move atoms and bits we can't compete. It really is as simple as that. Peter
23. Peter Cochrane
Mike = I hadn't heard of Meraki - I'll take a look thanks. My service uses an IP tunnel to aggregate instead of bond or mesh at just one end! Peter
24. Peter Cochrane
cyberdoyle
Unfortunately it is about 4km by road and some 3km across the fields - but they are not my fields! I installed 8 fibres into my old house - but that was only 150m of underground duct! And yes - it is soooo easy. Peter
25. Peter Cochrane
Anonymous Sweden
I think I'll have to move to Sweden. I am paying £50/month for a near 10Mbit/s ADSL (two lines) . It is a joke, but the Telcos here just don't get it!
Peter
26. Peter Cochrane
cyberdoyle
Great to hear from you - and so pleased you are finding your own solutions
I'm never passive, I never sit and do nothing. BUT I just need more JFDI people around me to make a bigger difference.
In the mean time I keep exploring and innovating.
Peter
27. Michael Dixon
Having chaired a number of telecoms conferences in the UK and around Europe, with regulatory telecoms visits to Ghana, Bulgaria and Nepal, I never cease to be amazed at UK shortsightedness.
My father always used to say that we would never spend £5 today in the UK to make £10 tomorrow - he has been dead ten years and still nothing changes.
And continental Europe continues to marvel at what we call broadband and they know is really UK slow-rate narrowband.
28. anonymous
However, in many cases, sharing internet access may be more problematic - some will have quota limits, and many have T+C restricting use to the one household.
OK, it's not quite the same as being 'sold on' to someone else, but I'd like to know a lot more about my neighbours before letting them use my internet link, and possibly share an item with copyright restrictions on it, leaving me with an accusation of film / music piracy.
29. anonymous
in response to Matt H, Staffs
"hardly any ISP to my knowledge provide more than 8Mbps so there isn't a market!"
I trust this was an ironic comment, given the number of services offering 16 or 24 Mbps, if you live near to an exchange they serve... and then live within 2-3 km of the exchange, to boot.
Of course many do not have such options and in all honesty, I'm not convinced many will make good use of 100 Mbps let alone 1000 Mbps - difficult to get a 100 Mbps LAN working near 50% unless lots of people are doing lots of multi-GB file transfers.