Future Next Generation Access (NGA) Broadband

Q3 - Defining what "super-fast" Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband actually means continues to be a huge problem, which allows for political and technological goal-posts to be shifted at will.

The previous Labour government effectively tried to define it, through their Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA), as being any service offering speeds of 50Mb+. The pre-election Liberal Democrats preferred to set the target at 40Mb+, while the pre-election Conservative party even briefly mooted a figure of 100Mb.

By contrast, Ofcom's March 2010 wholesale market review defines NGA as being any service capable of offering download speeds above 24Mb, while the governments tax setting Valuation Office Agency (VOA) has it as 20Mb+. How do you think NGA should be defined and why does nobody include mention of other crucial factors, such as upload speed and latency?

Answer:

The current spread of activity actually highlights the difficulty of accurately determining what NGA precisely is.  For example the term 'fibre' covers BT's VDSL roll-out, co-axial service and some actual fibre implementations.  Applying the title NGA to services such as VDSL also fails to take into account the drop-off in line speed beyond 1km.  People focus on download speed when actually it is more likely that upload speeds will by the critical measure over the next 3 - 5 years.  Therefore I am of the opinion that contention, latency and upload speeds should be part of the definition of NGA.

Q4 - Both BT and Virgin Media are busy upgrading their broadband platforms to support faster fibre optic based Next Generation Access (NGA) solutions, such as 40Mb FTTC (BT) and 100Mb cable (Virgin) services.

At present Karoo broadband is delivered via more traditional 'up to' 24Mbps ADSL2+ technology, which is susceptible to significant performance problems over longer lines. Does KC plan to tackle this by going beyond ADSL2+, in order to stay competitive, and offer its own range of fibre optic broadband solutions?

Answer:

Given BT's 'fibre' roll-out currently is focused upon FTTC VDSL service, the performance of which is poorer than ADSL 2+ beyond 2Km we are taking the opportunity to assess the options to deliver the best possible service to Hull and the East Riding.  In the meantime we are able to deliver line speeds and throughput in excess of 10 Mbps to 50% our customers, and this will be 60% by early 2011, with a further 20% receiving 8/9 Mbps.  I think it is fair to say that BT’s VDSL is simply a staging post and given the right business case then the right move in the longer-term would be FTTH.

Q5 - KC, for reasons of greater honesty, has chosen NOT to advertise headline broadband service speeds. Many might view this as a commendable move, especially given the variability of existing ADSL2+ based broadband services.

However, when KC eventually comes to deliver its new/future generation of truly "superfast" NGA broadband solutions, which are not normally as susceptible to the same problems as ADSL2+, will this not present a problem. How can KC successfully advertise the improved performance without promoting an advertised speed?

Answer:

At KC we advise customers the line speed to their property, therefore in a fibre world I believe that would be our ongoing strategy.  We would prefer to focus our customers’ attention on what the service enables rather than a theoretical line speed.