Piers Daniell

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!

Interesting results from ThinkBroadband’s latest comparison between the main internet providers. Unsurprisingly for some, BE and O2 come out on top of everything including speed, which might seem odd considering the most they can offer is 24 Mb/s but Virgin offer 50 Mb/s products. Virgin has even started talking about launching 400 Mb/s services in the near future – so what gives?

Well for those of you who watched one of the many sporting events over BBC’s Iplayer you will have realised that the reduction in cost of broadband over the last few years has reduced capacity levels within core networks. This means that when the need for bandwidth is there, the capacity isn’t and everyone suffers from packet loss, high response rates and low throughput. While Virgin may have its own network it obviously hasn’t made the necessary investment into it, unlike the Telefonica O2 group. BE doesn’t support a legacy BT network, which O2 does offer, which probably explains the difference in performance. Key point is the wholesale platform offered to ISPs must be good if the consumer businesses can achieve so much with it.

Interesting piece on thinkbroadband.com with regards to router speeds over the O2/Be network we did a few months back. Basically as part of the wholesale offering for ADSL2+ we had to collate data on all the types of routers they may use and test them under lab conditions.

Although the Cisco’s came out near the bottom they did perform well with upload and in my mind have proved the most reliable and still what I would recommend to customers.

As 2010 rolls in, I am reminded that a decade is a significant period of time and a good one to reflect on, especially in the world of IT and Telecoms. What have we achieved in the past ten years, and what, if any, predictions can be made about the next ten years? Well, for one, Fluidata couldn’t exist until 2004 on the back of ADSL technology, to launch as its own business until early 2006. Which means that the last decade has seen great advances in internet connectivity speeds and brought the word ‘broadband’ into common parlance.

We might be far behind many other countries in this race, but don’t forget in 2000 dialup was the norm and businesses like Freeserve dominated internet access with products offering up to 56 Kb/s. Now people have the choice of ADSL2+ offering up to 24 Mb/s (24,000 Kb/s in old money) or even 50 Mb/s with certain cable broadband offerings. Fluidata, for one, became a leader in bonding technology providing services over multiple carrier networks at speeds up to 60 Mb/s down and 8 Mb/s up with PureFluid. Even gigabit (1,000,000 Kb/s) speed is achievable with the use of fibre, as well as more affordable especially in urban areas.

Networks not only got faster, but also more intelligent, with quality of service, large wide area private networks and MPLS protocols. Businesses put voice over the internet and now video is seeing a resurgence with advances in HD video conferencing. Which begs the question - what will happen in the next ten years?

With the industry talking about FTTH (Fibre to the Home) and FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) more people will be able to experience the high speeds that fibre can deliver. But remember this isn’t like the previous decade when the main infrastructure (the cables) remained the same. This technology requires something new which not only will absorb huge amounts of money, but also time and resource. The cynic in me would say BT’s 21CN (to provide ADSL2+ and more IP services) offering is aimed purely at the LLU carriers such as Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse, Cable & Wireless and O2. I am sure its reach won’t extend over 2,000 exchanges by the end of the next decade. So FTTH or FTTC products are purely to take the fight to the cable operators such as Virgin. And what will quench our thirst for data? I believe there will still be some advances in DSL with products such as VDSL, but also other completely different technologies which will see in excess of 100 Mb/s over copper. Bonding will become more prevalent and give rise to a larger number of niche ISPs able to aggregate multiple networks together, not only to improve performance, but also reliability. Fibre will of course continue to grow in popularity and while still not being within easy reach of home users, will hit more of the SME market as costs reduce.

Other technologies such as WiMAX will become more widespread as companies such as Intel start to bundle the protocols into their mobile chipsets. I know of one company soon to come to market with a 3 GHz service which, if widely adopted, could bridge the gap between broadband and 3G mobile networks. Another product I am looking forward to seeing more of is BPL (Broadband Power Line), which has the potential to deliver many hundreds of Mb/s anywhere in the country over a normal power line. It has been a long time in the making, but I believe this decade will see its widespread adoption.

Mobile broadband still has a long way to go so that future services, such as cloud computing, can be widely used. And what else is in store? Well to be honest, it can be anybody’s guess. The great thing about this industry is the fact it continues to innovate and change - I’m, for one, looking forward to the next decade.

Quite a few members of the company are unashamedly into football, and while I can’t see the appeal, have started a Fluidata football team. They play six a side at the ELMS League in Battersea.  I can actually see the appeal of kicking the pig skin around after sitting at a desk all day, not only getting fit but also on a social basis. Good teamwork is required to win the game bringing people not only closer within Fluidata but also other businesses involved in the league. We have had people from Cisco, Alternative Networks, O2 and Citi Group involved making a good social atmosphere – so much so that I even considered (for a microsecond) the benefits of getting into football.

I think my involvement is best served from the sidelines, probably in a duffle coat shouting orders in a Mancunian accent.

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.

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.

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.

The playroom in the office is finally up and running. Bit difficult to make it out from the photo but sits alongside the video presence suite and gives visitors a chance to view all of Fluidata’s connectivity products in action. I think it must be a first for an ISP to showcase all their products but I think it is important in helping customers decide which service is best for them.

It is all well and good saying to a potential customer on the phone that the solution being proposed will do what they require but it is a different matter all together to demonstrate it. Too many in the telecoms industry hide behind contracts and long lead times, so to cut all the red tape and just show the product will give us a distinct advantage. Visitors can either see the products being demonstrated or can bring in their own equipment to test with. The room has a couple of screens and a generous number of power and connectivity ports alongside the mandatory Wii and kick back area.

One of the biggest aims of the playroom is to effectively demonstrate the range of failover and aggregation products which customers are skeptical about prior to purchasing. With Fluidata being the only carrier in the UK to successfully bond multiple technologies and carriers it is important for prospective clients to see it cope with VoIP, Video and Data. Also with the range of different ADSL2+ technologies available across the country it is useful to test the Telefonica O2 product next to the Cable & Wireless and BT 21CN products. Next to all the copper there is even a fibre line so pretty much any topology can be copied and tested.

If you are interested in seeing this room in action, then give the sales team a call and arrange an appointment. In the meantime I’ll keep you up to speed on any further developments.

Virgin Media this week launched their 50 Mb/s home service. I have written here before on their offering and misuse of the term ‘fibre’ and will be interested to see exactly how this service fairs. Theoretically at this speed users should be able to download at 5 MB/s meaning a 700 MB video (such that you get on Sky or BBC Iplayer) should take no more than a few minutes.

However I don’t believe take up will be high for a number of reasons. Firstly it costs £50 per month which is too much for the vast majority of home users – kids who are going to want to use this kind of speed are going to have a hard job convincing their parents that £600 per year is well spent. Secondly even though we are a business only ISP are seeing more attempts by media owners to track down IP addresses from where they believe illegal downloads have taken place. It must be a complete nightmare on consumer networks so companies like Virgin are either going to have to put restrictions in place or media owners will make more effort to prosecute. Problem is that if you remove the ‘free’ aspect of videos and music then I believe a lot of the requirement for high downloads will reduce, not increase.

Until HD video is widely distributed through IP home users aren’t going to see much of a difference between 20 or 50 Mb/s. Be There for example have been selling ADSL2+ in the UK for the past few years and with their extended footprint on the back of Telefonica O2’s investment have I believe a kind of glass ceiling in how many users require their service. Their service and quality of network is better than Virgin, so if they are selling a vastly cheaper but not much slower connection then how is Virgin going to compete?

Another factor is the speed at which the websites operate at. We have had 20 + Mb/s in our office for a number of years now and I know that downloading video or music can take an age, even though I know there isn’t any problems with the network (as it is Fluidata’s!). So the line can support more than 2 MB/s but real world tests show only 300 KB/s is possible due to capacity issues with the website.

Something else that is in the small print is the measly 1.5 Mb/s upload (equates to 0.15 MB/s) which I think will be a bigger problem going forward. More people are now logging into their home from outside or getting their home to send data like video out to the internet using technology such as Slingbox. The speed Virgin is offering is ok for most current services buy why pay more for less than half the speed other carriers offer?

As I say, consumers watch this space.