Broadband News

There are many people eagerly anticipating Stephen Carter’s Digital Britain report this week but long-time ‘notspot’ campaigner and author, Lindsey Annison, is fearing the report’s recommendations will not go far enough in bringing broadband to rural communities and those on the wrong side of the existing digital divide.

For her, the only option to bring Britain truly in to the digital age is fibre to every home, a plan which she believes should be funded by government, private and community partnerships so the network becomes a mutually owned asset.

“I fear there will be a reliance in the report on mobile to bring broadband to rural communities but a lot of the time you just can’t get a decent signal, so that’s not going to work,” she says. "We need to help raise awareness of the problems lack of broadband and mobile coverage is causing for the nation's businesses and citizens, not just anecdotal evidence, but facts and real people's stories. We hope to help bring the issues to the forefront, and provide information and hard evidence of the scale of the problems, and assist in seeking the right solutions for all.

“It looks like BT’s universal service obligation might be changed to provide broadband at speeds of at least 2Mb but there are still those who cannot get a landline which meets the existing universal service obligation. The present USO has been in place for 28 years and we need a USO which will endure and provide services for this and the next generation. The SamKnows survey will help to identify those areas and people for whom there are existing problems, and hopefully contribute to creating a future-proofed USO.

“The Carter Report is now due out on Thursday and from what we’ve seen from leaks and commentary, it would seem that it may be very focussed on the media in the digital age rather than tackling the huge issue of notspots and quality of broadband services, now and in the future. One of the main problems has to be the lack of information and consumer grassroots evidence and expertise available to those attempting to make once in a lifetime decisions for this country. ”

Annison has campaigned for better connectivity since the mid ‘90s when she received her first internet dial up bill for £1500. As a young, single mother of two, who had recently returned to the UK from travelling, the bill was massive and led her to start a campaign for BT, telcos, communities and the Government to bring affordable, accessible broadband to all - The Access to Broadband Campaign. Although the country has since had unmetered dial up (FRIACO through the actions of the Campaign for Unmetered Telecoms) and then the roll out of ADSL, Annison believes there is still much further to go, particularly in rural areas.

“ADSL is an interim technology, it’s asymmetrical for a start, so to me it’s not proper broadband as your upstream speed and capacity is severely limited,” she says. "Despite the data from the broadband checkers, provided on the whole by BT, there are still too many people who find that the checker says they can get ADSL but technical issues prove they cannot. Meanwhile, the definition of broadband has slid down to mean anything better than dial up, whereas in 1984 it was at least 2Mbps symmetrical.

“The only way truly forward is to give the country fibre to the home, not to the cabinet, because that means you could still be on aged copper for the first mile. FTTC is another interim solution, sweating the copper asset, that will stymie innovation and prevent us reaping the full economic as well as social rewards of unlimited symmetrical bandwidth.”

National asset

In her open letter to Stephen Carter Annison recently argued that wireless should only be the core broadband option if FTTH can be proven to never be viable to a particular hamlet or small village. Should the money be spent on providing wireless or mobile broadband to all those rural and remote areas where fibre is expensive to deploy, then her main contention is that the country will not get the fast fibre networks it needs to compete in the modern digital age. She argues that the Government needs to think beyond the traditional telco model in assessing economic viability, remember that data transfer costs are now approaching zero and include the social capital in the calculations.

“When you think of how much they’ve put in to the banks, the sums for a national fibre network don’t seem that bad,” she points out. "The return on investment for deploying Fibre To Every Home will be felt across the whole of UK Plc, not just within the telcos.

“The figures for fibre deployment in the UK range from £6bn to £28bn but I think that top figure is misleading as it’s really worked out on a worst case scenario. To build it, I think you have to consider it as a national asset we all own mutually, rather than a private company because the required national infrastructure shouldn’t be rolled out that way. Looking at the banks, it is the mutually owned financial institutions that are surviving the current crisis because of their structure and responsibility to members rather than shareholders. A mutually owned asset will be self-regulating and self-optimising.”

Annison herself has gone some way towards bringing broadband to her small Cumbrian village by asking a group of ‘long line’ community broadband specialists (South Witham Broadband) to improve her connection so she can receive 1Mb (“on a good day”) and share some wireless connectivity with neighbours who cannot get ADSL. However, there are many around the country who are struggling to be heard about the problems getting a broadband connection or to find affordable solutions for poor connectivity.

Writing off notspots to no or poor connectivity, she believes, is not only unfair and divisive, it also means the people are not as productive as they could be.

“The cost of giving Britain fibre really must not be just about the cost of laying the fibre,” she says.

“You have to consider how much more productive and innovative people can be with better quality connections and higher speeds. My small business can be more competitive, innovative and profitable than it currently is able to be if we had a decent connection. There are many small businesses and individuals in this country struggling to compete in a global marketplace with existing broadband. There would be a huge payback to the country’s GDP, particularly from those who are post-industrial exporters, like myself.

“Then there are the social, educational, environmental and health benefits from fibre. In my village shopping and banking online is difficult, if not impossible at times, so imagine the environmental improvement if we didn’t all drive the 40 mile round trip to the supermarket but had a single lorry deliver our shopping instead. Similarly, imagine the cost savings to the NHS and patients if the local surgery could use telemedicine to send x-rays and so on down the line rather than have everyone take the long drive (80 mile round trip) to our nearest hospital. Then there are all the educational things our kids are unable to do online that other kids can that have decent connections. There’s so much more to fibre than the actual cost of rolling it out, the payback would be huge and it wouldn’t only be economic.”

Annison’s passion for community and rural broadband schemes led to the start up of the Association of Broadband Communities in 2000-2001, her being co-founder of the Access to Broadband Campaign, Broadband Stakeholder Group member, Membership Services Director of the Community Broadband Network in 2004-5, and has led her recently to become a director of the recently-formed National Community Broadband Association. The NCBA has been put in place to support communities, large and small, in achieving next generation access. The NCBA has started by organising events to bring together all those interested and already involved - the first meeting is in Ulleskelf, near Leeds next week.

She has also written two books on community broadband projects at South Witham (Lincolnshire) and Wennington (Lancashire) which are available at Lulu.com.