Q5 - In your view, is the new coalition governments policy towards "super-fast" Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband deployment an improvement over the previous Labour government's plan of action (please explain your answer)?
Answer:
The highlight/lowlight of the previous administrations ideas was arguably the mooted 50p per month telephone line tax that whilst providing a funding stream from a related-to-broadband source would have been discriminatory against those who choose not to want broadband.
The coalition government is to be applauded for its efforts to create a level investment playing field on the supply side and demand stimulation on the demand side – all efforts in this regard are welcome as they help to accelerate and deepen deployment rather than distort.
Q6 - The coalition government recently abandoned pre-election Conservative party plans to conduct a review of the controversial Fibre Tax (tax applied to newly activated fibre optic broadband lines) and instead issued new guidance that still appears to penalise smaller ISPs and benefit larger ones. What is your opinion on this, did the new guidance offer any benefit at all?
Answer:
Good question again!
The Eden Declaration calls for zero-rating fibre tax in the Final Third until the networks are established and actual receivables/costs determined with which for VOA to adjust the tone of hereditament.
There was supposed to be a round table with Ed Vaisey MP, broadband minister, recently to expand on the subject cancelled due to snow and its rescheduling is awaited with interest.
Previously, NextGenUs has called for the reassessment of BT fibre in the access network as that would be relatively easy to quantify (being new build fibre ie grandfathering the legacy assets over time).
As the tax regime stands, BT is clearly unfairly advantaged vs new entrants and smaller ISPs, for no conceivably justifiable cause other than accident of history and legacy of nationalised monopoly becoming privatised monopoly.
End.
BIG Versus Small
Q7 - How is it that a major operator like BT can quote huge sums of money to bring basic broadband into small rural 'not spot' villages and yet a tiny niche ISP can often deliver a "super-fast" solution to the same place for a similar amount or significantly less. Practically speaking, what makes the difference in cost, why are smaller operators able to do such costly things for less than the big boys?
Answer:
NextGenUs treats the actual building for FttH and FIWi networks as a necessary evil, an unavoidable burden required in order to deliver service – ie there is no incentive to ramp up costs as NextGenUs is the infrastructure customer.
Speaking from experience, the costs that OFCOM allows BT to charge for Excess Construction Charges (ECC) are quite astonishing for what is supposed to be a true reflection of actual deployment costs.
On the Ashby FttH project, NextGenUs was given a £250k+ (and that may have been in excess of £1Million as the detailed planning breakdown was never produced to justify this amount) ECC notification from BT Openreach and instead NextGenUs dug to BT for a tenth of that amount.
The other aspect is that because BT Openreach is part of the BT group, merely functionally separated then where is the incentive for BT to be productive and cost-keen when the customer gets saddled with the bill?
Full structural separation of infrastructure from retail services is essential to end this ECC nonsense.
