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Ben's Talk3G Blog

Getting into the fast lane

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by
Ben
, 5th December 2008 at 12:16 PM (1383 Views)
I was over the moon when we got our 2mbps BTNET fibre Internet connection blown into our offices. Fibre, as most will know, is the holy grail of Internet access, and coupled with 1:1 contention (i.e. the bandwidth isn't shared with anyone else) 2mbps goes a long way.

The price of this, however, would make your eyes water. It made my eyes water, too, but in a business context it's easier to justify large expenses, particularly when there's not much in the way of alternatives (ADSL was not an option).

What made my eyes positively fall out of my head was talking with contacts in other countries who get 50mbps+ over fibre for much less money. Ok, I'm guessing it's not always 1:1 contention, but even so it's a big eye opener as to how behind the UK is in terms of Internet infrastructure.

With the recession rapidly closing in and people trying their best to keep smiles on their faces until Christmas is out of the way (the start of 2009 is set to be dire), it's easy to see now how investment in fibre over the 'good years' could have played a massive part in the recovery of our economy. The UK will no longer generate such a massive amount of its wealth in the City and a proper next-generation IP rollout could have resulted in other industries growing faster, resulting in less pain now and in the future.

Who would have paid for it? The government could have, for all I care. Investment in infrastructure rarely impacts inflation, so the Labour government could have written billions of Pounds into circulation purely for that purpose if it had spread the investment over enough years. Investment in infrastructure such as fibre results in increased productivity in the real economy, and so greater wealth for all of us as a result.

Think of that next time you drive over a pothole.

Now some good news. Businesses who were brave/stupid enough to move into fibre with BTNET over the last few years may finally be getting a reward for the risk they took and high expense they accepted.

BTNET are offering regrades to existing customers, which essentially allow a business to move to a higher bandwidth allocation, at half price. For example, our offices will be moving from a 10mbps bearer (the speed the installed fibre can handle) to a 30mbps bearer at no charge, and then receiving 20mbps up from 2mbps, for the old price of 10mbps. The result is 10x more bandwidth for 1.5x the cost. So, despite being asked to pay more, BTNET customers can actually have something that resembles value for money when compared to the prohibitively high costs before.

I know it's hard to imagine if you're already on a "20mbps" home Internet connection, but 2mbps over fibre at a 1:1 contention is like having a whole different Internet. 20mbps of bandwidth over a connection of this quality is just obscene, relatively speaking. Now I just have to wait for the BT ordering process to kick in...

Updated 5th December 2008 at 02:16 PM by Ben

Categories
Computing , Politics , Opinion

    Comments

    1. Ben's Avatar
        Well, the Openreach survey is done. Now it's just a matter of how many months they can string the install process out for

        For anyone who's interested, they don't upgrade the existing circuit, they whack in a whole new one. Then, once it's working, they switch over and decommission the old one. It makes me quite sad to think of those glowing little fibres I love so much going dark after so little time!
      • Hands0n's Avatar
          Oh don't you worry your head about those little fibres, there is a strategy to BT's apparent madness. The old pair will be used to update you to the next generation whenever it comes along and you decide to pay for it. There is no waste, as you rightly say in your opening blog, because the fibre is regarded as infrastructure, something to be left in the ground for near on forever.

          Fibre itself cannot go to waste as long as the technology to light it up exists. What has happened over the years is that the light technology has improved and been miniaturised. Ever greater transmision speeds have become possible, and we are nowhere near the limits yet. And with technologies such as DWDM we are limited only by the ability to split light into separate frequencies and to modulate them.

          It is indeed shabby that our successive governments, but I will reserve harsher judgement for the incumbent, has squandered time and resource. Our infrastructure is completely beyond its sell-by date. We are in no way positioned for the competition of our European partners, and chances are that it will be many a year, possibly decade, before we get into a stronger position sufficient to build in the necessary infrastructures. And I do not believe that these can be left to private enterprise who will only be looking for a rapid return on investment. Such short returns are not viable in regard to national infrastructures.

          So who will pay? Not the banks, they're all but broke. Not The City which is dead but just does not know it yet. And certainly not our huge industries that have either been sold off to foreign owners or dissolved entirely. And now as we head into a major recession I cannot really see where there is going to be any avenue for national infrastructure investment real soon now. Not unless the government prints the money to pay for it. But the last time a Labour government printed money it nearly bankrupted the country, and that was in a time of global solvency.

          All of this is a rather gloomy picture that I am painting. If the reality is even half of what I am portraying then the future is not immediately bright.

          What I think we will see is a patchwork approach, some of it funded by what is left of our industry, some by new entrants such as the outfit in Bournemouth who are sliding fibres along sewers and soil pipes into people's homes and businesses. Perhaps we will see an analogy of the Cable TV companies, disparate organisations that eventually and inevitably coalesced into what is now known as Virgin Media.

          Nationalisation? Unthinkable a while back, but having seen the government take over the banks I think we might just be at the cusp of a new era of nationalisation. I would like to see our core industries back in national ownership - energy and water in particular. Transport too. But we need visionaries at the top table, and again my thoughts are that the incumbents are too lost in their own idealistic politics to be much aware of what needs to be done to re-take GB.com.

          A strong hint of politics - but where national infrastructures and assets are concerned there is no alternative. These have to be political decisions made by our voted-in leaders. Who will take the mantle?
        • Ben's Avatar
            Well looky here, those clever chaps called "politicians" are actually kicking the idea of investing in fibre around! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7818212.stm

            Any chance it'll happen? Probably not. I mean, why aim for greatness when you can have mediocre?