
What future for BT and the UK's broadband? - robhodge
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35657807
======
bainsfather
"Perhaps one of the most interesting conclusions was a perceived conflict of
interest between having the company responsible for the UK's broadband network
part of the same company that is a leading internet service provider."

 _Perceived?_

~~~
dangravell
I don't quite understand why these natural monopolies are run by the private
sector.

I can see why you might get sub-contractors to help maintain the network, but
shouldn't the infrastructure be in public hands?

Is it just market dogma?

~~~
rayiner
Originally, it was all just British Telecom, which was a government-owned
monopoly. That was split up into BT and OpenReach and privatized in the
1980's, as part of a general market movement.

Putting the infrastructure into public hands has upsides and downsides. If the
public is willing to invest money, you can get a pretty workable system: e.g.
the Paris subway. If the public isn't willing to invest the money, you can get
a very bad system, e.g. Flint Michigan's water supply.

More often than not, public ownership leads to under-investment. In the U.S.,
for every enlightened municipality like New York that carefully manages its
water supply, there are dozens that keep water rates far too low and
consequently lack the money to upgrade miles of decaying lead pipes.

All told, BT OpenReach is probably one of the better ways of organizing this
function at scale. It's ostensibly private, but it was privatized with a
carefully-designed system of incentives to keep investing in infrastructure.
OpenReach is, for example, much more profitable than Verizon's wireline
division. That's why they're still at least building fiber, instead of trying
to get out of the business entirely.

------
aaren
Someone linked to B4RN [1] the other day: community owned, non profit,
symmetric gigabit internet in the north west of England, for £30 / month.

If more of these networks spring up, then maybe something good will come of
BT's tardiness in laying decent infrastructure. Granted, B4RN is strongly
enabled by being able to easily lay fibre under farmland, but there are other
models that are more appropriate in urban areas - see e.g. the guifi network
[2] in Catalonia.

[1]: [http://b4rn.org.uk](http://b4rn.org.uk) [2]:
[http://guifi.net](http://guifi.net)

------
cm2187
FTTC is just putting more lipstick on the pig.

In France I am not aware of anyone using FTTC. FTTP is the standard and is now
widely deployed in large cities. That comparison alone should hurt the pride
of the British people!

[http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/](http://www.superfast-
openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/) try the post code "SW1A 2AA" (i.e. 10 downing
street). Status of the exchange: no plan for optic fiber roll out.

I hope the CEO of BT always keeps on himself a one-way ticket to a country
with no extradition treaty with the UK!

~~~
james246
FTTC provides a decent connection speed ("up to" 76Mbps according to BT) but
my main gripe with it is that I have to continue with the archaic process of
"renting" the copper telephone line between the exchange and my house - for a
sum almost the same as the broadband itself. Openreach have clung onto this
cash cow by opting for FTTC over FTTP, forcing customers to rent a telephone
line they don't want

~~~
ymse
I recently changed ISP and told them the copper line was part of the broadband
package with my previous ISP (for an extra £10/month) and was assured
everything was fine.

One month after the transfer, Openreach ceases the PSTN line and the reaction
from my new ISP was "well it's your responsibility to keep up your BT
subscription" (never had BT).

Two weeks later, the PSTN line is still dark, and I'm waiting for Openreach to
install a new MPF line provided by my current ISP (for an extra £10/month of
course).

Apparently the reason for doing this rather than re-start the PSTN line is
part of a process called "Local-loop unbundling".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-
loop_unbundling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling)

~~~
teh_klev
I'm amazed they still can't get LLU -> BT/LLU -> LLU migrations right. We sold
ADSL as a second tier provider and once upon a time if you were on an LLU
service and needed to migrate to another LLU provider the only sure-fire way
of doing it so it didn't fuck up was to migrate back to a BT based service
then migrate again. We once had a business customer, paying proper business
coin migrate from one LLU provider to another. On the day of the migration the
gaining provider's engineer didn't turn up to pick up the pairs and jumper
onto their rack which left the customer without service for over 24 hours. So
glad I don't have to deal with that crap any more.

------
SimplyUseless
There is a lot of bureaucracy in getting anything done with BT/OpenReach. Most
of the contracts have to go through BT first who sub-contract to OpenReach
even though they are the same company.

The partnership where OpenReach does everything for the infrastructure and BT
adds absolutely no value. The split of the partnership would have been what
the consumers wanted.

Th decision falls short of bringing much needed change in the industry. There
is still huge number of people who have super-slow internet which is a HUGE
shame for ofcom for not having been able to get this problem sorted.

In my area, I get internet speed of 2MBps. I cannot get even basic things
done. To put things into perspective, to download 100 photos, it would take 10
minutes.

Ofcom - This is the twenty first century and you are still living under a
rock.

 __Edit - Thanks Xophmeister for spotting the typo

~~~
Xophmeister
It's actually the 21st century, which I suppose makes your complaint even more
justified.

------
tonylemesmer
On a lot of the green street cabinets is effectively a massive advert for BT
by Openreach (big white sticker, covering most of the cabinet). The green
cabinets are supposed to be discreet, I wonder if the banner pasted on the
side is included in any of their planning applications?

~~~
kennydude
One near to me last year said "Superfast BT broadband is here". Apparently
superfast to be BT means unreliable 8mbps

~~~
elthran
I also hate having to do this mental adjustment - in my head, even 40Mbps
isn't "superfast" \- it's above the national average, sure - give me 100Mbps,
then maybe you can justify using that label

~~~
signal11
Sadly, superfast broadband has a different definition depending on who you
ask. [http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/08/lets-stop-
diffe...](http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/08/lets-stop-different-uk-
definitions-superfast-broadband.html) And now I see Ofcom are throwing terms
like "ultrafast" broadband around. I wish they'd just quote minimum speeds
(Ofcom's universal service obligation minimum is 10Mbps).

------
colinramsay
Cornwall (where I live) got trumpeted as a target for superfast broadband. As
far as I can tell, it's mostly a marketing exercise. The town I live in (~25k
people) has loads of green boxes with the livery and I see vans quite often
but in the five years I've live here (four different properties), I've never
been able to get superfast. I know precisely one person who has it and
describes it as "rubbish".

I'm sure there's people that it's working out wonderfully for but I've never
found them.

Some kind of shake up is needed in the industry, similar to when cable came in
around 2000(?).

~~~
rossriley
Yes it's interesting. Fellow Cornwall resident here and it's the same, every
check on the site says that my area is in consultation.

I moved down from Worcestershire last year, only a few miles outside of
Worcester but also very slightly rural and exactly the same happened there.

What I guess is happening is they connect up the very centre of large
towns/cities and then don't really have any intention of providing fast
broadband to the more rural areas, probably because it's not economical.

~~~
colinramsay
I actually think it might be somewhat the opposite; there's less messy
infrastructure in smaller places and so they're perhaps more likely to get it.
I know that a few little places outside of Truro got it, for example.

------
ropiku
Some new buildings are wired by OpenReach with FTTP.

What amazes me is that Hyperoptic sells 1gbps internet over OpenReach fiber
but BT only sells 300mbps (at a higher price)
[http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-
technology/2015/08/hand...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-
technology/2015/08/hands-on-with-hyperoptic-gigabit-fibre-the-uks-fastest-
residential-internet-connection/)

~~~
yalooze
Yeah, a friend of mine just moved into a new build with FTTP. Signed up with
BT for a 12 month contract. Then got a letter in the post saying Hyperoptic
was available in his building :/

The price difference, let along the speed difference, between the two
companies offerings is insane.

------
ksec
Not a single mention of G.Fast? WTF

BT is leading companies around the world testing out G.Fast, the next
generation of DSL technology. Which should give you 500Mbps over 250M of
cooper cables.

Because there are no upgrade done on users part other then a modem. This could
be quickly rolled out many UK citizens, while others will wait for cabinet to
move a little closer to them. Both will be much cheaper and quicker to deploy
then FTTH.

------
jonatron
Nobody seems to want to invest in laying new fibre. Openreach already offered
access to ducts and poles, and OfCom have only said that they're making it
'easier'. If you look at the price of residential broadband, I can see why
nobody wants to invest - broadband is too cheap, and I'd bet people wouldn't
want to pay a large installation fee.

~~~
dangravell
Note that speed is not the only thing that separates rural and town broadband;
it's also price.

Yes, broadband is cheap in towns and cities. But go to the countryside and
it's a different story. For me - £25/month (Andrews & Arnold) plus £8/month
line rental (Primus).

~~~
teh_klev
I'm with A&A as well, and rural based, wouldn't touch any other provider with
a 100ft long barge pole.

Our village finally got FTTC cab#1 activated at the end of December (cab#2
which served a much smaller segment of the village went live in September),
has made a world of difference for us folks working from home.

------
SimplyUseless
__Elsewhere in the world __

Google 's project Loon has done an amazing feat that they will achieve full
internet coverage for the entire country Sri Lanka by end of next month using
4G LTE network.

------
tgpc
Anecdata: I live in central london and the best connection I can get is a
12mbit ADSL2+ line :-(

~~~
tallanvor
Sounds about what I was able to get when I lived there in 2006-2008. Can't say
I'm surprised they haven't improved.

On the other hand, in the past 5 years, my cable speeds in Oslo have increased
from 20/5 to 250/20, and supposedly I might have an option to get 500/50
sometime soon. Would still prefer fiber, but I can't complain nearly as much
as a lot of people!

------
alblue
Given that their 21st Century Network was built upon IPv4 with a complete
ignorance of IPv6, you'd have to think a split and replacement with someone
more competent would be a vital part of growing the UK's technical economy.

~~~
darkr
It's largely irrelevant that 21CN runs IPv4 as it's implemented as MPLS VPN
switching network. What the customer (i.e an ISP) gets presented with is
basically an L2 ethernet connection, over which they can run whatever protocol
they want, including IPv6. There are competent ISPs available that will
utilise OpenReach and that do offer IPv6. BT Retail is not one of these.

The real issues with 21CN are that many parts of the edge network have
multiple SPOFs (so a single failure can result in multi-hour or longer
downtime for customers served by multiple ISPs that connected to an exchange)
as well as insufficient bandwidth provisioned for those links in some areas.
Another issue, is that backhaul from exchanges is metered at a fairly
expensive rate.

