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:
This to me sounds like competitive politics at work. “Our party promised more than the opposition”. They don’t really take into consideration the fact that the world is moving on very quickly. The only sensible long term solution is to put fibre everywhere. This offer future proofing against whatever the market can throw at you in terms of demand drivers.
This could potentially mean Fibre To The Cabinet and rely on periodic equipment refreshes at the cabinet level. However it isn’t as good a solution as fibre everywhere. I don’t think there is any point in calling NGA anything less than 100Mbps. Everything else is a cop-out.
Q4 - The drive to reach "most" of the population with super-fast Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband by 2015 appears to be too soft of a target. For example, BT alone will have 66% of premises covered in the same year with its 40Mb FTTC service.
However the governments focus is supposed to be upon tackling coverage in remote and rural areas and not areas that will already benefit from private investment. Do we need a more constructive target to help drive NGA and how long do you think it will take to bring "superfast" solutions to the whole country?
Answer:
We have a number of very localised projects going on this year and beyond. The Cornwall project was announced on 30th September. There are three “Big Society” projects happening, notionally as “market testers”, one of which is in Cumbria.
Reality is that these projects are not market testers. They are just government funded rural network rollouts on a very limited basis because the cash isn’t there to pay for more. At the rate of three a year the answer is that it is not going to happen very quickly at all.
We need to put some accelerators in place that make it attractive for business to invest in areas where there is currently not business case. As far as the “last mile” is concerned people can get together to help themselves but they are wholly reliant on someone else to deliver the bandwidth into the area and it is this that needs to become cheaper and more cost effective.
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:
If you compare the two policies there isn’t much difference really other than the coalition has slipped the date for a 2Mbps USC by three years. They have also said that, “…Our goal is simple: within this parliament we want Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe”- Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, 8th June 2010.
If we take this at face value and consider that Finland has promised all its citizens 100Mbps broadband by 2015 then we have to consider that this present government’s policy is vastly superior to the previous one
