NEXTGEN09, LEEDS — None of the consumer applications being discussed at Fibrecamp Britain today really require fibre, but in a perverse kind of way that might be a good thing. Today’s community networks are severely constrained by backhaul; until this problem is solved then innovative applications don’t stand a chance.
“Backhaul is the bane of our life. One, we can’t get it, and two, we can’t afford it,” said Kevin Wood, team leader for Cybermoor, a community network in Cumbria. Cybermoor currently has around 360 users on a wireless network sharing 5 Mbit/s of backhaul. “We’ve got a very clever bandwidth management package that keeps most users happy,” he added, “But we’ve decided that if we’re going to put new kit in, we can’t carry on like this.”
A three-year service provider contract to establish 10 Mbit/s of backhaul capacity would cost £295,000, according to Wood. Instead, Cybermoor has decided to install its own microwave backhaul link. This involves raising a new 25-metre-high mast, and putting in a relay station in order to reach the network of neighbouring County Council Northumberland. “It’s quite a lot of work,” he adds, proving himself to be master of understatement.
Even FTTH networks in the UK appear to have backhaul bottlenecks. West Whitlawburn is a housing co-operative that has installed fibre to a new-build social housing estate in Glasgow; it has just been given the go-ahead to extend its network to six existing high-rise blocks on the same site. The fibre network has around 100 subscribers, which probably makes it the largest FTTH network in the UK (BT’s FTTP pilot site at Ebbsfleet is believed to have around half that number of end-users). All 100 homes on the West Whitlawburn network are being serviced by a 20 Mbit/s bonded-line DSL connection, although an upgrade to 100 Mbit/s should be complete in the next few weeks.
Lack of backhaul capacity has other ramifications. “Until you get decent backhaul, you don’t have to worry about open access. Service providers aren’t going to want to offer their services on your network if they have to pay to get to it,” said Jez Willcox, senior network consultant for Allied Telesis, the firm supplying new Ethernet equipment for Cybermoor’s upgrade.
“We’re putting 100 Mbit/s into houses, we shouldn’t be in the position where we’re struggling with 10 Mbit/s of backhaul,” he concluded.
One Comment
And why is backhaul so expensive? Because it is market-driven, pricing apparently. Currently, as you all heard today and as many have been saying for years, there are a reduced number of customers because none of us can afford it! How is that letting the market decide?? It’s a market with only one or two stalls, and very few punters wandering around.
This Govt has focused very tightly on competitive markets etc in broadband, and yet, as we have seen, when the competition is so limited that the majority of ISPs are reselling a single company’s “product” – BT’s ADSL – what happens is that everyone is held below the glass ceiling (hmm, fibre – glass- etc) a private company has set.
Worse, we are still operating to a legacy model – charging by distance etc. This is no more relevant today than the idea of a phone call being charged by distance. This model immediately discriminates against those in rural areas for starters.
There is little to no access to affordable backhaul and longhaul for many of the networks currently planned. There is no logical reason for that, except corporate greed. For far too long, the telcos have got away with over-priced products. When the customers looking to purchase it were blue chip and Fortune 500 companies, all well and good, but the world has moved on.
Now, the people who want access to the fat pipes are you and me. Normal families, small businesses, rural primary schools, remote pubs, farms – pick a constituency, they all want a fat pipe. Though some may not know it yet!
This is a problem that needs solving nationally. It is exactly the same as FRIACO and should be dealt with in the same way. That campaign was started by a group of concerned individuals who managed to get FRIACO adopted across Europe. It looks like this one has started with the noise coming first from grassroots, and there is now a need to co-ordinate the action, just like FRIACO, and sit the telcos round a table and explain why, in words of one syllable if necessary, it IS IN THEIR INTERESTS to do precisely the same as with FRIACO.