Andrews and Arnold (AAISP) UK Broadband ISP Interview - ISPreview
Andrews & Arnold AAISP UK Broadband ISP Interview
By: Mark Jackson - October 19th, 2009 : Page 2 -of- 4
"I really cannot see how this 50p tax is going to work. Just defining a "fixed phone line" is going to be a nightmare."

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?

AAISP: I really cannot see how this 50p tax is going to work. Just defining a "fixed phone line" is going to be a nightmare*. I am also very sceptical that this is not just another tax. Fibre optic solutions are an obvious next step for the technology, and the cost of deploying
any large scale new technology is high, especially in rural areas. I am sure it will happen over time, and if the government offer any realistic money for this I am sure telcos like BT will take the money and spend it to make that happen.

* Defining a fixed line: I have an analogue phone line at home provided by AAISP, as a telco, which means that on the end of an AAISP fibre to my house is a SIP TA (in my loft) with an analogue port which is provided and maintained by AAISP. So does that 2m of wire in my loft
count as a "fixed phone line" and subject to 50p/month tax? If not then how is the same thing provided by BT where there is a SIP TA in the exchange and a longer copper pair in the ground going to a customer any different.

We have a cat5 going to a neighbouring office that is IP/Ethernet but used soley for VoIP (5 phones). It is copper so is that a fixed line. It is 4 pair cat5 using 2 pairs (10M) so is that 1x50p, 2x50p, 4x50p or 5x50p or not at all. Is an ISDN2 on copper a single 50p fixed line? What of an ISDN30 on 3 copper pairs? is that 1x50p, 3x50p, or 30x50p? What of an ISDN30 on fibre? I would have a hell of a job defining a "fixed phone line" myself.

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)?

AAISP: The obvious answer for proper next generation access is some sort of fibre to the home or close to the home. Fibre can scale to massive amounts of bandwidth and will always be more than can be handled by radio. Proper next generation is not 2Mb/s but needs to address the levels of bandwidth that a person can consume and will consume over the next few decades. This sort of investment has to be able to handle a few decades to be viable.

There would logically be some sort of limit to how much information a single person can take in (no, I am not saying "640K ought to be enough for anybody") and there will always be exceptions, but if every person can have a HD stream of their choice continuously (even if only served from disks in the local exchange) that is the sort of capacity fibres can handle. I am sure proper "next generation" services will need that sort of levels of bandwidth and the back-haul infrastructure to back it up.

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?

AAISP: I am slightly puzzled by the question. FTTC is trialled now, and we have FTTC customers using the services which we price the same as ADSL. The pricing is very close to ADSL2+. Once the infrastructure is in place FTTP is much less likely to break. Maintenance of copper is one of the big ongoing costs for existing service. Fibre is so much more reliable that in the long term the ongoing costs should be significantly lower. The issue is the deployment costs.

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