Posted: 22nd Mar, 2011 By: MarkJ


BT's
Broadband Enabling Technology (BET), which can deliver fixed line DSL broadband ISP speeds of 2Mbps (Megabits per second) to UK rural homes and businesses that reside up to 12km away from their local telephone exchange, appears to have won crucial support from network access supplier
The Kenton Group (TKG).
TKG claims that BET, which it has adopted, will help to deliver broadband into
160,000 homes that were previously considered unreachable (i.e. "
Not Spots"), while "
1.5 million UK households with low bandwidth" connections would benefit from faster connectivity. These days many people would probably consider 2Mbps to be "
low bandwidth".
John Larkin, Managing Director of TKG, said:
"BET is a truly innovative and unique solution not only in the UK but globally. We are very excited by what its launch means for the future of broadband and providing services to previously inaccessible customers."
BET itself is better known as
Single-pair High-speed Digital Subscriber Line (
SHDSL) technology, which has been around for awhile and is a cousin of the more familiar Symmetric DSL (
SDSL) service for businesses. SHDSL combines elements from ADSL to work using frequencies that are not as prone to deterioration over distance.
Existing ADSL (up to 8Mbps) / ADSL2+ (up to 24Mbps) based broadband services become slower the further away you are from a telephone exchange, with
homes at 6.5km distance usually suffering from extremely poor performance. Being able to deliver 2Mbps to such locations would be a small miracle and BET certainly appears to do that. Even Point Topic welcomes it.
Oliver Johnson, CEO of industry analysts Point Topic, said:
"After a year in which the Broadband Forum announced the passing of the 500 million lines landmark, The Kenton Group in a position to make a real difference to the availability of broadband and improve available bandwidths. We welcome BET and will be keeping a close eye on the interest it receives from operators and how they choose to adopt it, particularly as the drive continues for broadband to reach more challenging, remote areas to meet targets for Europe penetration."
BET certainly sounds like a good idea for meeting the governments
Universal Service Commitment (USC), which aims to make a broadband download speed of at least 2Mbps available to everybody in the country by 2015. However ISPs have historically shown no interest in BET (
here), which is mostly down to its cost.
Firstly BET requires
2 pair copper cables (i.e. two phone lines) to deliver its maximum speed of 2Mbps, otherwise you only get a meagre 1Mbps. BT's official pricing (
here) suggests that the
connection itself costs a whopping £1,094.00 +vat and an upgrade to 2Mbps requires a further charge of £549.00 +vat; that's just the basic line charges.
Trefor Davies, Chief Technology Officer at UK ISP Timico, said last year:
"It is seen as too expensive, to the point where it is not dissimilar in price, if you need 15 users in an exchange to sign up [BT's estimated minimum requirement figure], to the installation cost of running fibre into the area."
In fairness BT has gone some way towards improving BET's attractiveness. For example, where BET is ordered as an upgrade to an existing
IPstream Connect ADSL line then standard connection charges will not be raised. We also note that BET's pricing, for the majority of lines, will cover any excess construction charges up to a limit of £5,000 per line.
Even so, for most ISPs the economics just don't make sense. Faster and cheaper Satellite solutions are already available, although admittedly they cannot beat the lower latency and greater usage flexibility (usage allowances) of fixed line solutions. As it stands we're still waiting to see the first consumer products.