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?

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.

Company branding has always held a level of interest for me and when running your own business something that needs direction right from the beginning. I believe it evokes strong emotion and that without any actual evidence can sway a decision to buy a product or service. Over the years the Fluidata logo has remained the same but the look and feel has evolved. But what does it stand for? And how is it perceived by our clients? Questions I will be asking in the near future.

Branding is so interesting and even shouting out some loves and hates around the office the feedback is interesting and surprisingly similar. For example why is opinion divided so heavily on British Airways and why am I so keen to defend it? Have they given me great service? Not really. Are they cheap? Getting there but still Ryanair are cheaper as long as you don’t use the toilet and agree to share your seat with someone else. But something deep down makes me love the company and I am not someone who flies very much.

Then on the other side you have Virgin who not only run an airline (successfully from what I can make out) but also slap their logo on everything else you might want to buy. Does it make me love the brand? No. Why? I don’t know but obviously see through the marketing pretence and see the service underneath.

Others banded about the office included love for Innocent, Diesel, Lexus, Nike, Apple, Audi, Waitrose and Adidas. Hates included ASDA, Starbucks, Gap and Mercedes. What made people shout out these names in the first place? Let alone have an opinion on why they like or disliked them.

As I said even the smaller company can’t ignore the impact a brand has and the importance of ensuring you have a good one.

Interesting report on Digital Britain has been released today. Not much there to help connectivity for business, the government seems to think it is important to offer faster speeds for those who share videos and illegal content rather than meet the need to help Britain’s economy grow.

For one they seem intent on forcing ISPs to delivery 2 Mb/s to every home in the UK. Such a demand won’t affect us as we don’t invest in the last mile and instead deploy the best services available to our clients but will be crippling for the likes of Virgin/BT. The Government don’t seem to understand that homes are geographically diverse and something called physics prevents services working at 7 KM from the exchange. And no, satellite is not the alternative especially as they imagine everyone will be using interactive TV and video conferencing.

Why when producing such reports don’t they actually call companies who deal with these problems on a daily basis? They currently rely on the management of the larger Telco’s who are so far removed from what is actually happening the picture is all wrong.

I am interested in the high publicity that the third runway at Heathrow is getting, especially as I don’t have any strong opinions one way or the other.

However I don’t understand why it would have not have been easier and cheaper to build a second runway at both Stanstead and Gatwick providing London with the runway capacity of places like Paris and Amsterdam. These would be geographically spread to ease the impact on one area. With this extra capacity I am sure airlines such as Virgin would have been keen to move to Gatwick completely and BA could take over more slots at Heathrow. All have existing railway links which could be upgraded for faster trains and then consumers would have the choice of which airline to choose, not only for the flight but the whole experience.

Why is it necessary for example to fly all the budget airlines out of Heathrow? If it is such an important hub for business in London then surely all the national carriers should fly into there and independent airlines should use Gatwick and Stanstead. At least they would get a better service as they won’t be bullied by the larger carriers and their handling staff.

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.