ANSWER: Personally I would have set a series of goals over a period of time, 2Mbps by 2012 then 10Mbps by 2015 and then 20Mbps by 2020. By doing that you set the groundwork for the need to invest in long term solutions rather than trying to fix quick wins.

By doing this it becomes clear that the solution should be based on building a national wholesale fiber infrastructure, designed to deliver countywide networks that reaches all villages, this would then allow a retail service to use the most efficient local access solutions and be guaranteed backhaul capacity to link to the internet.

Building such an infrastructure is vaguely mentioned in the Digital Britain report with the NGA fund, but the amount of funding available seems to woefully low and without the commitment to an escalating USO there is no commercial incentive to build anything more than the bare minimum.

3. The final Digital Britain report also attempted to spur interest in future next generation access (e.g. Fibre Optic broadband) solutions, although the only real meat appeared to come in the form of a controversial 50p per month tax on all fixed phone lines (Next Generation Fund). Do you think this tax is a good idea and will it be enough to push related next generation broadband services into 90% of UK homes and businesses by the government’s 2017 target?

ANSWER: The idea of a dedicated fund is a great ‘idea’, but both the level of money being made available is pitiful, estimated at £170 million per year, and the source of the funding doesn’t make much sense as it will impose additional costs on service providers (such are redesigning their billing systems to collect the tax) and Ofcom (who still don’t seem to able to collect all the monies they should be doing under the Communication Act 2003).

By the time the money has been raised, placed into the fund, tenders submitted, board members been paid and the money disbursed you are looking at maybe 750 miles of dark fiber being put into the ground each year. If you look at the costs to Verizon (i) of deploying their FIOS network in urban areas you could reach 250 thousand homes per year but that will get you a very expensive service (15Mbps for $50/month). What the cost per home in none urban areas (i.e. the last 10%) who knows but I would expect it to be a lot higher.

4. What do you think is the best solution for deploying next generation access (i.e. what technology would you prefer to see adopted and why)?

ANSWER: The best solution for the location is the only way forward. In cities we should be looking to deploy FTTH, as you move out into more rural areas you need to switch to FTTC (but a lot further out than BT are currently planning) beyond that you need to tailor the situation to local environment rather than trying to shoe horn the solution.

5. BT is currently deploying its own mix of fibre optic based broadband services ( FTTP and FTTC ), which will start to surface in 2010. Initial trial pricing suggests that these might be more expensive than existing ADSL (8Mbps) and ADSL2+ (24Mbps) services. Do you think this runs the risk of making them too expensive for consumers to be enticed?

ANSWER: This is part of the issue with having a USO solely based on speed, if there is no social justice element to the USO then the carriers will charge what the market will bear rather than a price to encourage uptake. Overtime, like ADSL did, the price will fall. 

6. Following on from the above question; for awhile some ISPs could find themselves selling several different broadband technology services (e.g. ADSL2+, FTTP, FTTC etc.). Is there a danger that the added complexity could cause real confusion among customers?

ANSWER: It’s a challenge for an ISP, but over time I expect to see the way that Internet access is sold move from being based on technology to being based on service. If you look at the way mobile phones are sold you don’t really ask them whether connectivity to HSPA or EDGE but how much data can you use each month and how fast will go (if I hold my phone just right and get a following wind).