London Assembly Warn City’s Broadband and Mobile is “frankly embarrassing”

A new report from the London Assembly’s regeneration committee has described the quality of mobile (4G) and fixed line broadband connectivity in the city as “frankly embarrassing.” The report also calls for more ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) to be deployed in order to “bypass the copper problem.”

At present most of London (96%) is already covered by a “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable network, with Openreach’s (BT) ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology being the most common form of connectivity (they also have some FTTP, as do Virgin and a few altnets like Hyperoptic).

Meanwhile Virgin Media’s 300Mbps+ cable DOCSIS network has quite a significant level of coverage and this helps to push the city’s “ultrafast” (100Mbps+) network coverage to an estimated 70% (details). Mind you all of this still leaves some pretty big gaps left to fill and the London Assembly appears to desire Gigabit (1000Mbps+) performance.

Navin Shah AM, Chair of the Regeneration Committee, said:

“London’s digital connectivity is frankly embarrassing in some areas and will no doubt lead to major issues in terms of London’s global attractiveness as a place to live, work and do business. We need to act before it’s too late and London’s success is threatened.

More can be done to solve London’s connectivity problems and with the imminent appointment of the Chief Digital Officer, the Mayor can provide real strategic leadership in this essential area.”

Suffice to say that the London Assembly’s regeneration committee, which has just completed its investigation into the city’s digital connectivity (Digital Connectivity in London), doesn’t mince its words.

London’s Digital Connectivity Report (Extract)

* The lack of an extensive fibre network

London does not have extensive full fibre connections. Spain now has 83 per cent of all of its buildings across the country connected to pure fibre. The UK has much less – around 3 per cent or even less – and not in London.

The vast majority of the fibre broadband offered by the UK’s main service providers in London is Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). In this setting, fibre only runs as far as the exchange cabinets in the street and customers have to rely on old copper wiring for the ‘last mile’. This reduces speed dramatically.

Fibre to the Home (FTTH) is needed to bypass the copper problem, with fibre going directly to the premises and providing speeds faster than 1 Gigabit per second. In competitor cities such as Paris or New York, there are fairly substantially large full fibre investment programmes underway in those cities that are not to be seen in London.

* Too many ‘not-spots’

London is also held back by limited mobile 4G coverage. From December 2016 to February 2017, consumer group Which? and analyst OpenSignal measured data from mobile phones across 20 cities in the UK. London ranked in the bottom 5 with 73.6 per cent of 4G coverage.

In the capital, areas that have very low or no broadband access and/or mobile connectivity are numerous. These ‘not-spots’ and ‘digital deserts’ are usually found in remote corners of rural Britain, but even central locations such as Westminster, the City of London and Southwark are affected, because of the length of copper lines, the street layout or the height of buildings.

The new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has already promised to “do all [he] can to improve digital connectivity in London, establishing it firmly as a key utility central to planning and new development” and to that end he will soon appoint the city’s first Chief Digital Officer (CDO) and setup a so-called “not-spot team” to tackle problem areas. The report may at least give the CDO a few ideas about where to start.

Recommendations

* The Chief Digital Officer must support Londoners, especially renters, to make well-informed decisions about their connectivity needs. There is little reliable information available before moving into an area.

* The next London Plan should encourage boroughs to produce local connectivity plans to ensure sufficient access to a minimum level of broadband service. Applications for new developments should provide upgrades to connectivity to meet what is outlined in local plans.

* The Chief Digital Officer should encourage Transport for London to grant providers access to the ducts they own, so that they can use existing networks as opportunities.

So far we’re not seeing anything radically different from the sort of lip-service that the former mayor, Boris Johnson, similarly paid to the subject. The new report does identify some areas that could be improved (e.g. inconsistent wayleave processing, local authorities refusing new infrastructure etc.) and calls for “strong levels of public investment,” although it doesn’t put a price tag on the problem or propose detailed solutions.

Hopefully the new mayor will be able to come up with something that doesn’t involve merely claiming credit for work that the private sector has already done of its own accord.