I have worked as an academic and for a few years before that as a practitioner in the wonderful world of health and social care. I have therefore got used to the usual shambles, in which people with severe and complex needs can fail to get the help they need, or go through several repeated assessments and get passed between different agencies, each of which applies its own criteria for who it does and does not help. I had assumed in my innocence that this problem was unique to the welfare state, but it is not. Earlier this month, I went to a conference on rural broadband. This was called by our local MP Harriet Baldwin, and included a presentation by another Conservative MP Rory Stewart. Both are people who have achieved much in their lives before becoming members of Parliament. Both seemed helpless before the problem of bringing high-speed broadband to rural areas.
The problem is not technical. The fastest and most effective means of transmitting voice and data is optical fibre. In urban areas, this is usually connected directly to people’s homes or at least to the local ‘cabinet’ (ie the small unmanned station from which lines are distributed to individual premises). Where there is no optical fibre, signals are transmitted by the older system of copper wiring. This is much slower than optical fibre, can carry less data and, worse of all, signal speeds deteriorate the further down the copper wire it goes. In most rural areas, there are copper wires to the cabinet and from it. Download speeds are therefore as low as 2Mbits/second if you are lucky, and a lot less in scattered settlements in the countryside. This inhibits the development of rural employment, which include farms, small trading estates, small office parks next to farms, and enterprises run from people’s homes. There is general agreement that the best and most economical technical solution is an optical fibre connection to each cabinet, with a wireless transmitter from the cabinet to premises in line of sight, backed up by satellite connections for isolated locations.
What prevents this happening? It is not a lack of optic fibres in the countryside: there are plenty - connecting schools and along main roads and railway lines. There are also ‘dark fibre’ which exist in the ground but which is not used to transmit data. The real reason for failure is that optic fibre lines outside the cities are almost all owned by a BT, a giant corporation which was once a publicly-owned monopoly, but is now a private monopoly. And BT knows how to use its monopoly power. The government has stated a target for expanding superfast broadband to rural areas. BT supports this provided the government gives it with several billion pounds of public subsidy. The rationale for this is the supposed high cost of connecting cabinets to optic fibre lines and the limited additional income this would generate for BT in rural areas.
National and local governments do not have the level of funding required to pay BT to meet the target for rural broadband, and would in any case not be allowed by EU competition rules to subsidise a private corporation. So they have resorted to setting up an ‘arms-length’ agency called BDUK to work with competing providers. The competing providers were initially BT and Fujitsu. Both have had appalling records of wasting vast sums of public money in the failed NHS IT strategy. But never mind - the main activity of governments nowadays is to funnel cash to favoured private corporations, irrespective of the quality of service they eventually provide. Since BT owns the existing fibre optic lines, Fujitsu never had a realistic chance of bidding for rural broadband, but they did give an impression that there was some competition. However, this came to an end in March 2013, when Fujitsu withdrew. The system that now operates is that BDUK draws up detailed contracts for each local authority and then tenders them to the sole single provider (BT). All of these contracts involve the diversion of millions of pounds to the usual gang of management consultants, accountants and lawyers who are the real beneficiaries of the privatisation of public services. The other problem with public contracting also occurs: that the key information on costs is held by the provider. A recent report in the Daily Telegraph suggested that BT has inflated the cost of connecting rural cabinets to optic fibre. But these are the costs that have been written into the contracts.
How does this affect life in my village? We are lucky in already having a network of wireless transmitters to enable people in outlying areas to access broadband (Martley Web Mesh). This existed well before any government ever considered rural broadband, and is a product of the sort of local enterprise that is by-passed in an over-centralised state like England. Unfortunately, the main transmitter for Martley Web Mesh is not linked to the optic fibre network, so Internet download speeds are about the same as the broadband received through telephone lines. But there are optic fibres in the village. In fact, BT owns a line to the local high school, which passes both the local cabinet and the main transmitter for Martley Web Mesh. But BT has no plans to connect optic fibre to the cabinet.
Nevertheless, the existence of Martley Web Mesh (as well as several local trading estates near the village) should have made the parish a priority in the county’s strategy for rural broadband. Not so. Rather than prioritise places of employment or even places where an optic fibre connection to a cabinet would make the greatest difference, the county council has organised a competition. Each parish is supposed to sign up as many people as possible and the winner gets funding for high-speed broadband. The winner inevitably is a compact parish (Little Witley) in which it is an easy task to sign up a high proportion of residents. Little Witley has just over 250 residents and few local employers.
In Rory Stewart’s constituency, by contrast, their county council seems to have adopted the Maoist slogan of ‘let a hundred flowers bloom’. Individual villages have taken direct action, including digging their own trenches and installing their own fibre optic cable and installing their own wireless transmitters. It is all to no avail. Once the homemade fibre optic network is installed, BT usually finds it impossible for ‘technical’ reasons to connect to the rest of its network. In the meantime, the months tick by, millions of pounds of public money are donated to a large private monopoly, management consultants etc, and rural broadband remains slow.
The answer to this shambles is a national strategy of the kind proposed by the House of Lords Committee, with a national optic fibre network with guaranteed open access. Our chance of getting this at present seem rather slim.
Links: Martley Web Mesh
House of Lords report Broadband for All
See also: Fire my Light
The problem is not technical. The fastest and most effective means of transmitting voice and data is optical fibre. In urban areas, this is usually connected directly to people’s homes or at least to the local ‘cabinet’ (ie the small unmanned station from which lines are distributed to individual premises). Where there is no optical fibre, signals are transmitted by the older system of copper wiring. This is much slower than optical fibre, can carry less data and, worse of all, signal speeds deteriorate the further down the copper wire it goes. In most rural areas, there are copper wires to the cabinet and from it. Download speeds are therefore as low as 2Mbits/second if you are lucky, and a lot less in scattered settlements in the countryside. This inhibits the development of rural employment, which include farms, small trading estates, small office parks next to farms, and enterprises run from people’s homes. There is general agreement that the best and most economical technical solution is an optical fibre connection to each cabinet, with a wireless transmitter from the cabinet to premises in line of sight, backed up by satellite connections for isolated locations.
What prevents this happening? It is not a lack of optic fibres in the countryside: there are plenty - connecting schools and along main roads and railway lines. There are also ‘dark fibre’ which exist in the ground but which is not used to transmit data. The real reason for failure is that optic fibre lines outside the cities are almost all owned by a BT, a giant corporation which was once a publicly-owned monopoly, but is now a private monopoly. And BT knows how to use its monopoly power. The government has stated a target for expanding superfast broadband to rural areas. BT supports this provided the government gives it with several billion pounds of public subsidy. The rationale for this is the supposed high cost of connecting cabinets to optic fibre lines and the limited additional income this would generate for BT in rural areas.
National and local governments do not have the level of funding required to pay BT to meet the target for rural broadband, and would in any case not be allowed by EU competition rules to subsidise a private corporation. So they have resorted to setting up an ‘arms-length’ agency called BDUK to work with competing providers. The competing providers were initially BT and Fujitsu. Both have had appalling records of wasting vast sums of public money in the failed NHS IT strategy. But never mind - the main activity of governments nowadays is to funnel cash to favoured private corporations, irrespective of the quality of service they eventually provide. Since BT owns the existing fibre optic lines, Fujitsu never had a realistic chance of bidding for rural broadband, but they did give an impression that there was some competition. However, this came to an end in March 2013, when Fujitsu withdrew. The system that now operates is that BDUK draws up detailed contracts for each local authority and then tenders them to the sole single provider (BT). All of these contracts involve the diversion of millions of pounds to the usual gang of management consultants, accountants and lawyers who are the real beneficiaries of the privatisation of public services. The other problem with public contracting also occurs: that the key information on costs is held by the provider. A recent report in the Daily Telegraph suggested that BT has inflated the cost of connecting rural cabinets to optic fibre. But these are the costs that have been written into the contracts.
How does this affect life in my village? We are lucky in already having a network of wireless transmitters to enable people in outlying areas to access broadband (Martley Web Mesh). This existed well before any government ever considered rural broadband, and is a product of the sort of local enterprise that is by-passed in an over-centralised state like England. Unfortunately, the main transmitter for Martley Web Mesh is not linked to the optic fibre network, so Internet download speeds are about the same as the broadband received through telephone lines. But there are optic fibres in the village. In fact, BT owns a line to the local high school, which passes both the local cabinet and the main transmitter for Martley Web Mesh. But BT has no plans to connect optic fibre to the cabinet.
Nevertheless, the existence of Martley Web Mesh (as well as several local trading estates near the village) should have made the parish a priority in the county’s strategy for rural broadband. Not so. Rather than prioritise places of employment or even places where an optic fibre connection to a cabinet would make the greatest difference, the county council has organised a competition. Each parish is supposed to sign up as many people as possible and the winner gets funding for high-speed broadband. The winner inevitably is a compact parish (Little Witley) in which it is an easy task to sign up a high proportion of residents. Little Witley has just over 250 residents and few local employers.
In Rory Stewart’s constituency, by contrast, their county council seems to have adopted the Maoist slogan of ‘let a hundred flowers bloom’. Individual villages have taken direct action, including digging their own trenches and installing their own fibre optic cable and installing their own wireless transmitters. It is all to no avail. Once the homemade fibre optic network is installed, BT usually finds it impossible for ‘technical’ reasons to connect to the rest of its network. In the meantime, the months tick by, millions of pounds of public money are donated to a large private monopoly, management consultants etc, and rural broadband remains slow.
The answer to this shambles is a national strategy of the kind proposed by the House of Lords Committee, with a national optic fibre network with guaranteed open access. Our chance of getting this at present seem rather slim.
Links: Martley Web Mesh
House of Lords report Broadband for All
See also: Fire my Light
