Piers Daniell

I am fed up with the apparent lack of education when it comes to our national broadband networks. Call me old fashioned but I believe in a world where what you sell is what you get and that calling something you are selling one thing but delivering another is surely illegal? So why do the majority of consumer internet providers, namely Virgin and BT, believe it is ok to tell consumers they are buying fibre technology when, in fact they aren’t.

We have been selling fibre to businesses for many years and know all the heartache that comes with planning consents, excess charges and slipping deadlines. You aren’t telling me that somehow Virgin is managing to bring on thousands of customers a day to its 50 Mb/s fibre product without these complications? And why too are their services not symmetrical (ie same speed up and down the line), when fibre delivered to a business premise is – and hence the main driver for having it?

The reason is because the actual cable coming into your house is actually copper. With BT it is your phone line (even with the new and advance ‘Infinity’ product) and Virgin coaxial cable. So the only fibre you are getting is to the cabinet at the end of the street rather than to your actual home. So surely they can’t then tell you that you are getting the ‘power of fibre’ or so on? Yes it is faster but only because they have shorten the distance of the copper, but the delivery is no different to that of ADSL where the cable is just longer going back to the telephone exchange. From here the network is, and for a very long time, have been fibre supporting high levels of bandwidth.

Surely with Ofcom’s apparent hatred of miss selling in the industry, such as broadband speeds, they should be bringing this nonsense to an end?

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 laughed in the office on the news that Easynet is finally being sold off by Sky as I have been saying it would happen for over a year. Some believed me, some didn’t but my reasoning was sound. Ever since Sky bought Easynet it has been an uneasy marriage of a vast consumer brand and a very business focused one. Easynet was one of the first to get involved with LLU (local loop unbundling) in the UK and were able to launch products way ahead of BT. Something Sky obviously liked when they paid well over £200m for the business even though, by then, they were actually buying an old network and much of it needed to be upgraded.

Unlike O2, who at the same time, paid a fraction of that (£50m) for BE. They had a much newer infrastructure, and after all the upgrades to make it fully national was less than Sky originally paid for Easynet. But when you look at how Sky treated Easynet it was still segregated within the organisation and divisions were created to ensure a nice clean break when the time came to offload it. I think they did very well to get £100m for it, especially as the actual valuable part, the network, has remained in Sky’s hands meaning Easynet are now just a third party with a good supplier agreement. But again, like when Sky bought Easynet originally, it was done by a company who didn’t understand data communications and this time they found some bankers who obviously were taken in. I don’t think the amount demonstrates value for money and it will be a difficult business to float/sell in a few years when the venture capitalists decide they want their money back.

Obviously for us it probably means a bit more competition in the coming months as the business gets some much needed direction, but with no innovation over the past four years they are going to struggle to catch up. While they have an enviable client list, I am sure the customers coming to the end of their dire 5-year terms will be ready to for a change. So good luck Easynet – you are going to need it!

With the announcement last week that BT will be offering Sky Sports through its BT Vision product, I am convinced, more than ever that BT will focus on becoming a media company rather than a telecom provider. By using the premise of providing fast internet access (BT has earmarked over £2.5 bn into the investment into fibre based products, FTTC and FTTH), it has been able to create a platform to compete directly against Sky and Virgin Media.

While the rollout of these products is currently low, the footprint will bring the fight directly to Virgin’s door. And while Virgin may offer internet access it gets nowhere near the support from government as it is perceived as being a media company and not as a technology enabler, like BT. So while BT gets good press on bringing faster internet to the masses, and not its actual intentions on competing against Sky & Virgin, the others are treated, rightly, as a media companies.

This action further ruins BT’s reputation within the telecom industry as customers needs are being put to the bottom of the pile, while saying publically they are at the top. The BT Vision product, for example, is given priority across the BT backbone to ensure the TV quality is comparable to the competition. This means that other traffic is left to fight it out over the remaining space reducing quality. A niche ISP who has worked with BT for many years even put a public notice out on their blog about the issues their customers are experiencing because of the reduction in capacity. And this situation can only get worse as BT’s plans to become a media player grow.

My message, therefore, is don’t believe the headlines. Unless you are going to become a direct BT Vision customer then I can only see you being disappointed with BT’s connectivity plans.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about FTTH (Fibre to the Home) and FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) replacing DSL in the UK. However I think we are looking at many years before these technologies make any significant impact on the market as a whole. For one BT is protecting its business customers as much as possible, so the product is very much consumer oriented with high downloads, but crucially low upload speeds. Granted 2 Mb/s is a good upload for a customer but that speed is already served nationwide through the plethora of ADSL2+ exchanges with the likes of Carphone Warehouse and O2.

My feeling is that BT will continue to lower the cost of fibre to businesses, who still put a lot of value in this technology, to help drive access so that it can serve consumers in the long term. I have previously talked about their trials with FTTC with the issues surrounding the technology and scale needed for wide adoption of this technology.

So the short and medium term DSL still has a very important part to play in internet delivery and more so as businesses look to increase their reliance with the adoption of cloud and voice applications. We have been bonding DSL products for many years and with services capable of up to 80 Mb/s down and 10 Mb/s up there is a compelling case that FTTC and FTTH have a way to go.

A customer of ours recently suffered a complete outage when another ISP tried to install a line into their premises. Obviously wasn’t the ISP’s fault, just a bad job by a BT Openreach engineer eager to get the job done and leave site as quickly as possible. It meant however that the customer had to survive four days of complete outage while numerous engineers came back to site to repair the damage and resolve further issues.

The client was understandably upset with the quality of the work carried out and the time it took to resolve. An experienced engineer, it turns out, should have been able to get service restored within a few hours at most. So he put together a detailed report and sent it to no less than Ian Livingston, BT Chief Executive. And you know what? He got a personal email back from Mr Livingston within 20 minutes detailing his concern on the matter and best course of action the client should be taking. To say I was a little cynical that this was actually the big man himself emailing and not a team of PAs working from outside the UK is an understatement. However the replies kept coming and our client kept responding and today he was met by the BT regional manager at his site.

The manager spent time to go through the client’s concern and has organised for a number teams to visit the site to inspect existing cabling and ensure every precaution is made to prevent a future outage. Not only that but also a fault report for us to escalate through our account manager to claim compensation on behalf of the customer. He also confirmed with the client that this matter was escalated at the highest level and that a number of Director’s were aware of the issue.

What amazes me was Ian’s direct response to the client, especially considering we are talking about a PSTN line here and that he took direct control of the matter to resolve it to the client’s satisfaction. For me it has been a very impressive display of his desire to turn BT around and that no client, no matter how small, would be left behind. Ian, like Willie Walsh at BA, has one of the most difficult jobs in the city but this kind of attitude will resonate throughout the business – even a company as large as BT.

This action alone has made a big impression and I wish Ian all the best in turning BT into the business this country deserves.

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.

I am one for endorsing the merits of cloud computing, as previous articles will testify, however it does have one very major headache to overcome, the connection to it. As I have pointed out in the past if you want to use ‘The Cloud’, and by that I mean centralise your systems and work, thin client style, then you need a good, fast reliable internet connection. This obviously goes against those happy to buy a cheap service from any of the thousands of providers reselling BT services but as my holiday in Palma goes you can’t put a price on a good internet connection.

The first time you notice you have a bad one is that mid sentence your screen locks and you think for a moment that your server at the other end has had a midlife crisis. However it then dawns on you that you can’t see the weather report locally (it’s going to be sunny but just to make sure) and as you start to ping every IP you can remember. Suddenly it all comes back to life. Sure, I am from a technical background, but I there are many CEO’s out there ready to throttle their IT man (not that it his fault be he suggested this stupid Cloud thing) when they are out of the office unable to send that important memo (about how great there holiday is).

Obviously in the UK, Fluidata can come to the rescue and sell you something that won’t break but when at the mercy of other internet connections you must have a backup plan. It has taken me an hour or so to write this in between drinking my G&T, good thing it isn’t very important otherwise I would be demanding my PC went to being a laptop again.

Interesting article about BT’s new street cabinets that are being used as part of the FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) roll out. Due to the size and cost of the technology that needs to be deployed in these boxes have had a revamp, but it looks like appearance wasn’t a big concern at the planning stage. As the 80,000 or so boxes across the country get upgraded it is likely this new story will become bigger as more councils and residents start to object.

Looks like BT will have to go back to the drawing board quickly if they want to prevent a negative reaction to the new technology.

News from Thinkbroadband on Andrews & Arnold’s (AAISP) recent success installing FTTC into one of their client’s premises. Just goes to show BT are going to really shift their focus over the coming year towards fibre and away from their failing 21CN project. From AA’s recent issues with BT in providing their clients with a reliable 21CN they are obviously keen to find an alternative technology.

Essentially the FTTC is putting VDSL equipment into the local cabinet (instead of the exchange) dramatically lowering the distance from the DSLAM to the clients office. This ensures the speeds are better but also means that BT doesn’t have to go through the costly exercise of getting fibre into every building. This way as BT upgrade their existing 80,000 or so cabinets they can look to run fibre to them and hence offer VDSL services. I believe this is their preferred route to market as it would jump all the existing LLU carriers who have been deploying ADSL2+ for quite a while now.

However on first inspection it seems like a lot of work for not much gain. In this example the customer reportedly received 40 Mb/s down but was impressed by the upload of 1.7 Mb/s. Agreed that this is a big increase on what BT can currently deliver using their small ADSL2+ footprint but nothing compared to the 2.6 or even 2.7 Mb/s we have achieved with some of our clients using ADSL2+ Annex-M. Admittedly this is using the Telefonica O2 network, who we have an interconnect with, but still not the giant leap BT were hoping for. Also by installing two lines customers can receive over 40 Mb/s down with over 5 Mb/s upload as one service taking away the current gains of FTTC.

Obviously over time the footprint and technology will grow in very much the same way ADSL did when it first arrived in the UK. However I think we are looking at 18-months or so before you see any wide adoption of this promising technology.