Piers Daniell

BT announced with great fanfare the launch of Annex-M services on their ADSL2+ (21CN) platform allowing up to 2.5 Mb/s upstream (from standard 1.3 Mb/s). Whooohooo. Excuse me if you detect a tiny bit of sarcasm but really how can BT talk about this being new technology when we have been offering it for over four years? We interconnect directly into the BE network (wholly owned by Telefonica O2 group) and have been delivering up to 2.5 Mb/s upstream to customers for all of this time, even using Cisco hardware.

I mention Cisco hardware because most businesses like to buy it. There is an old saying in the industry that goes ‘you don’t get fired for buying Cisco’. Granted it is pretty expensive but in all the years of doing it I can count the failures customer have had on one hand rather than the calculator I would need to tot up other ‘cheaper’ manufacturer’s hardware.

So you would think that if you were building a national network and launched a new variant (ie Annex-M) you would want your technology to work with Cisco hardware so you could conquer the business market? Well believe it or not, BT have followed the route of Tiscali and ended up with a network that we can’t make work with Cisco hardware! We are struggling to make it work at all to be honest, and that is with a not insubstantial client base already using Annex-M on the BE network which we have been supporting for years.

If this is the best they can do, I assume we are going to have to wait for the fibre to the cabinet services before we start seeing anything near impressive. Or, most likely, someone else will come and do that first so BT once again follow rather than lead.

We have been selling our BURST service for a number of years offering clients up to 20 Mb/s downstream and 2.6 Mb/s upstream across the UK utilising Telefonica’s ADSL2+ Annex-M network. Our recent announcement that we have lowered the contention guarantee to 5:1 further enhances this product offering. The VOX 2.0 product, which is delivered over the same network, offering (confusingly) up to 2.6 Mb/s symmetrically has had a reduction to 1:1 pitching it directly against IP Frame Relay and SDSL products.

So now businesses can be further assured of the high availability of these products and continue to benefit from the short contract term of 3-months, install time of a day and no download restrictions. It also means that bonding these lines together using PureFluid puts it directly in the path of leased lines delivering up to 60 Mb/s down and 8 Mb/s up.

Interesting development over the past few weeks has been BT Openreach actively telling

end users about BT’s new (or old depending on how long you have been waiting for it) 21^st Century Network (21CN). This from your perspective may be perfectly normal, however when you understand that Openreach should remain independent it shows flaws in Ofcom’s control over the carrier.

Openreach was formed to serve all ISPs independently, especially those with their own technology in the local phone exchange. Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) has become widespread over the past few years, mainly due to the demands for new technology which BT has been unable to provide. O2 and BE for example have been delivering ADSL2+ for many years prior to the launch of BT’s 21CN offering. Even now the BT product is second-rate (no Annex-M support). Therefore if they, or any other LLU carrier, need Openreach to visit their client’s site to fix a fault they should receive just that.

A lot of focus on the wholesale platform is giving other ISPs the ability to bond multiple lines together to get EFM speeds using the nationwide Be ADSL2+ network. We have had a lot of success recently with Cisco’s MLPPP protocol enabling multiple lines to act as one end to end. As you can see from the below graph showing a thinkbroadband.com speed test that it achieved 26.7 Mb/s download and 4.0 Mb/s upload on two lines bonded at over 1,500 meters from the exchange. This accurately doubles the capacity of the individual lines.

We are continuing to work with our partners on developing this offering to include more than two lines so that leased line speeds are achieved across this network.

Interesting article on BBC website regarding BT announcing that their network is ready for the extra demands the swine flu pandemic may put on the broadband network. Looks to me just like a press release but with the buzz word of the moment and the big news agencies are sitting up and taking notice. The fact that the announcement is completely pointless hasn’t put them off.

How BT can make a generic statement that people will be able to work from home is beyond me. However it is true that businesses who have adopted home worker technology will be able to cope with such an outbreak well in times of crisis. The fact that an employee could be at home working on their computer as if they were in the office, use the office phone and even video conference with other members of staff ensures the business can continue to trade. And with the advent of cloud computing this kind of scenario is easier for businesses to deploy, they just need to make sure the corporate network is up to scratch.

On a recent meeting I was surprised to hear that one company looking at Fluidata’s offering has plans in place to start sending people home this week on shifts to ensure there are enough staff to man the factories if swine flu took hold. He was also well prepared with systems being upgraded to cope better with remote working and VoIP deployed throughout the organisation. What he needed though was a fast, resilient corporate network with the capability to easily bring home workers into the network. One of the problems with this is making sure that the voice and data requirements are met so that the user experiences perfect quality.

Technologies such as ADSL2+ with Annex-M make this possible by giving users up to 2.6 Mb/s upload which is twice the capability of BT’s closest offering. The upload is just as important as the download when looking at voice and video requirements and therefore needs careful investigation when looking to deploy home workers. Certainly home lines have always focused on download rather than upload with poor contention guarantees making BT’s statement about the UK network being ready to deal with a national crisis slapdash especially if the businesses are using BT technology.

Exciting developments in the world of Fluidata with the latest announcement of us partnering with Be to offer their ADSL2+ technology to other ISPs. We have been using the network for the past two years and have developed some of our own unique technology to make the most of the 20 Mb/s down and 2.6 Mb/s upload speeds that the product can support. With this latest announcement we will be able to offer this platform directly to the rest of the industry giving more access to this leading edge network.

Wholesaling the network is different to dealing directly with consumers as it is important to give as much control to the partner so that they can add their service rap to the product. We believe we have achieved this with the L2TP interface and direct access to the DSLAM at each exchange giving partners unparalleled visibility of each customer. This not only gives the partner better tools to support their clients but also reduces the burden on us to invest in a call centre and instead we can continue just to invest in 3^rd level engineers.

One interesting aspect of this network is the support for Cisco hardware. Tiscali recently had to announce to their channel that their ADSL2+ with Annex-M wouldn’t work with Cisco whereas we have been using it for a number of years without a single issue. This is probably due to the Alcatel chipset being deployed in both the routers and the exchanges. This is an important point as most businesses like to deploy Cisco hardware as ‘you don’t get fired for buying Cisco’.

Hopefully all the years at the receiving end of the channel will have translated into a superb partnership experience for ISPs looking for alternative providers.

At a recent partner meeting with Cable & Wireless conversation turned to BT’s ongoing 21CN rollout. This multibillion pound investment by BT seems to be floundering especially when it comes to converting the legacy phone system onto it. Currently BT have unbundled some 3,000 lines so with a further 29 million to go we can be confident that the expected completion will be way into 2014, a few years behind schedule.

What was interesting was the near unanimous acceptance that BT 21CN will not reach all the exchanges and that realistically they will stop rollout at around 1,100 exchanges. This observation confirms other rumours I have heard within the industry and makes a lot of sense. When you are multinational business with a project requiring such massive investment why take it to areas that will not provide the necessary return. With BT suffering from a dramatic drop in share value, parts of the group loosing vast sums of money and a pension deficit I can not see there being the resources, let alone the desire, to roll out new services to exchanges that do not have the demand.

I suspect any announcement on such a plan will be a long time coming from BT as they will have to withstand pressure from Government on the ‘Digital Divide’ and the partners who have invested heavily in equipment to talk to BT’s new network. Currently only BT Retail and Enta have made the necessary investment into WBC and I am sure will be very upset if BT only provided the same footprint as to most LLU carriers.

Fluidata has always invested in LLU relationships just because the technology is years ahead of BT. We have been selling ADSL2+ with Annex M technology from Telefonica O2 at over 1,200 exchanges for over 18-months now and by the time BT gets to the party it will be time to go home. Maybe this is what BT are slowly waking up to.