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[tickmike]

https://theconversation.com/a-full-fibre-network-is-the-only-way-to-future-proof-britains-digital-economy-50941

[burakkucat]

Thank you for providing the link. I had to double check to see if the author was Walter . . . 

[Weaver]

No, I wrote it.

[AArdvark]

I had to smile ....... we do not make it onto the chart. 

[Weaver]

So now full-fibre (or was it ‘pure-fibre’?) is fibre, and our old friend ‘fibre’ (IE FTTC) is copper no more.

Hero.

[phi2008]

I’ve been to the UK.  No offence intended, but you lot live in dog boxes.

That's a pretty good description of affordable UK housing. 

As to the article, it is pretty pathetic we aren't rolling out a national fibre network for most premises. We know full fibre is the future, it is easily affordable over say 5 years, but Ed Vaizey has stated recently that he won't touch a national fibre broadband network with a barge pole(he believes it sunk the last Australian government). 

[WWWombat]

For a minute, I thought this was going to be a decent article. One that raised valid points. I loved the comparison with water - and the value to public health beyond mere profitability. A perfect analogy for why we must include our rural brethren.

Then the author penned this missive (which I'm sure I've seen elsewhere):

the updated aim for every home to have 10Mbps (megabits per second) broadband by 2020 is a welcome increase ... But this is orders of magnitude behind what’s available: more than half of Japanese and South Korean homes are connected to a fibre service faster than 1Gbps (gigbits per second)

#RantOn

Once again, a comparison between what is being set as the lowest catch-all for the final unprofitable 1% in one country, against a capability being offered to the top profitable portion of another country. Obviously such a comparison only catches out the naive readers, but it also tells knowledgeable readers that there's nothing of interest in this article for anyone with a spare brain cell or two.

Lets do it properly...
1) In this country, half of subscribers can choose 200Mbps if they wish to.
Isn't that somewhat closer to Japanese capability?
Comparing the right end of the population makes for both a valid comparison and a lot less lop-sided one.

Of course, not that many subscribers choose to pay for 200Mbps - around 5-10% of all VM subscribers are top-tier, which makes it about 1-2% of those premises who *could* choose 200Mbps if they wished. Incidentally, that's roughly the same proportion of the country who are currently stuck on sub-2Mbps.

Why do we care what half the country could do, if the vast, vast, vast majority choose not to bother? That isn't a sign of a burgeoning digital economy being held back.

2) At the other end of the population, what is happening in rural areas?
In South Korea, there is a 5-year program currently running to give rural areas the 50-100M scheme that urban areas completed in 2010.
Rural areas are about 5 years behind the urban areas.

We're still behind Korea, yes. But things look rather different when you attempt to compare British apples with Korean apples.

To me, the item of interest becomes the OECD graph - not for what it shows, but for what it doesn't. The graph might show availability of mega-giga-fast fibre, but it doesn't show two really key things:
- First, it doesn't show what the non-fibre people are using. How does Japan treat the ones who aren't low hanging fruit for fibre? Are they left languishing on poor speeds that are sub-USC? Or are they using decent mid-speed equipment?
- Second, what speed are people making use of? What packages are they spending money on? How much of the fibre is being used in a way that non-fibre equipment could have coped with? How much of the non-fibre equipment is providing a perfectly adequate service?

Remember that water analogy? We need widespread water for public health reasons, but we don't all need a water supply that can fill an olympic swimming pool in 5 minutes.

Three professors penned this article, and couldn't manage to put together meaningful comparable statistics? Grrr.

The final straw, for me, come from this quote, when combined with the OECD graph data:

Calling these a “fibre service” hides the fact that they are at best a stop-gap measure

Of course it is an interim measure ... just like every single development in dial-up modems, DSL modems, cable modems before. If you write an article that attempts to depict the current status-quo as an end-result, rather than just another step on the way, is doomed to fail.

What is *utterly* missing from this missive is where this current "fibre service" is *not* a stop-gap measure - but where it is setting down permanent infrastructure for future (but still interim) services.

In our stepwise, breadth-first approach, we are exchanging an average of 2.8km of copper for fibre in every line (*) in 90-93% of the country (by the end of this year). That's fibre that is reusable in the future - either for FTTH or for another interim step such as G.fast. Using averages again, that amounts to dropping 86% of the copper in 90-93% of the country, = 78-80% of the copper.

80% in a 6-7 year period? Even Japan hasn't reached that yet...

(*) - Sorry, that raw calculation really deserves a better discussion on take-up. I'm not sure it is worth it here, though.

#RantOff

[kitz]

Thank you wombat for that post.  You explained perfectly some of the thoughts that ran through my own head when reading the report.

[WWWombat]

Thanks for the reply, Kitz.

Seeing that reminded me about the post I made, so I went looking to see if I could answer my own questions about Japan and South Korea, and what packages people were actually buying/using.

I couldn't quite get the most comparable data, but I did get something close - nicely comparable for other countries, such as Netherleands, Sweden and Belgium, but the data for Japan and Korea is more limited.

OECD data on this page:
http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/oecdbroadbandportal.htm

From section 5.4 on that page, this XLS has details of speed tiers for many countries:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888933224603

For most countries, it has tiers for sub-2Mbps, 2+, 10+, 25/30+ ("superfast"), and 100+. It graphs take-up in these tiers, and the UK data seems to correctly reflect my understanding of take-up in 2014.
The South Korean data merely distinguishes between the sub-50Mbps and 50+ packages.
The Japanese data distinguishes between sub-100Mbps and 100+ tiers, but is only an estimate.

The graph (included below) does, at least, show that these 2 countries are the only ones with a different pattern of high-speed take-up ... but doesn't give enough details to say how well those countries take care of the people at the bottom end of the connectivity pile - the social responsibility part that the USC is all about.

If I step back from that graph, and look critically at the UK and all the other countries, I'd say that the country's biggest needs are
a) to stimulate more people to choose to swap to a superfast-level tier
b) eradicate more of the 2-10Mbps tier.

[JGO]

If I step back from that graph, and look critically at the UK and all the other countries, I'd say that the country's biggest needs are
a) to stimulate more people to choose to swap to a superfast-level tier
b) eradicate more of the 2-10Mbps tier.

Why ?
There is no virtue in improving performance for it's own sake -  and it usually has to be paid for in other ways, say worse reliability.

[burakkucat]

I must admit that I am in agreement with JGO with respect to those two points.

I am currently in the 2 - 10 Mbps DS tier and I have no need for any greater bandwidth.

[Black Sheep]

I must admit that I am in agreement with JGO with respect to those two points.

I am currently in the 2 - 10 Mbps DS tier and I have no need for any greater bandwidth.

Is that maybe what W3 is trying to say ?? That the UK are apparently behind in the FTTP race, with a part of that (amongst the other salient points he makes) being down to EU's like yourself B*Cat being happy with their lot ??.

If aggressive marketing, or other stimulus were applied to get this particular demographic to move to FTTx, then the stats showing where we as the UK are with average speeds, would improve.

At least I think that was his point ?? Hope he doesn't mind me sticking my fur in ?? 

[WWWombat]

Yes, @BS has it. So, sorry @JGO, I wasn't very clear in the last post, because it was a continuation of my sentiment in the first one. I have no belief that performance should be improved for it's own sake.

I prefer the option of offering improvements (including offering them to rural locations), and reacting with new investment to what people choose to use. To this end, I agree with the conclusion of the Nesta study: that there is no evidence yet that gigabit applications are coming, and the best strategy is to watch out for such usage starting to appear in specific hotspots.
http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/ultra-fast-digital-infrastructure-uk-are-we-missing-trick
http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/exploring-costs-and-benefits-fibre-home-ftth-uk

I do believe, however, in helping people to exploit their connectivity better - which might make them increase their bandwidth usage and choose to upgrade of their own accord.

A new aspect...
The article linked in the original article posited that the UK can only progress through commitment to FTTP (ie taking a long-term view to the deployment choices being made in the short term), with specific comparisons to Japan and Korea. The whole argument I put in the first response was that you couldn't *just* reference the fibre in these two countries without also taking account of both what tiers people are actually buying/using there, and how the countries have treated their rural kin.

However, what I didn't say was that you should also consider the choices that were being made by those two countries in the context of the time they made those choices.

Remember that these two countries are running a good few years ahead of everyone else, in wanting higher speeds, and deploying networks to achieve it. Good in one sense (it gets fibre there) but bad in another (deployment choice was limited to the technology of the day). Korea had finished their urban ultrafast rollout in 2010, when fibre to the home was the only plausible option to choose.  G.fast wasn't even being researched until 2009, and didn't start to look like promising technology until long afterwards (a history of g.fast here)

Japan and Korea didn't install FTTP because they had plenty of choice for ultrafast speeds, but still plumped for the "future-proof" one. They installed it because it was the only option. And they'll have paid plenty for it.

In the decade since those countries were making their choice, the deployment technology has moved on. Installation of FTTP is no longer the sole option. We *do* have a choice. Why wouldn't we make use of the choices available to us? To at least consider them?

It appears that I am not the only one who believes we should adapt to the changing technology landscape either. KT - Korean Telecom (yes, from South Korea) seem to have decided that FTTH is no longer the way to go, and are set to use a hybrid approach (G.hn instead of G.fast, though).

In the context of South Korea, though, they are looking at how to upgrade MDU's from an "FTTB with VDSL in-building" solution (which is how they get the current 50-100Mbps speeds). Rather than choosing to put fibre in for the final drop, they are looking at retaining copper, but using "up to 800Mbps" G.hn instead. This (old-ish) story about KT's choices is fascinating. It shows that Korea would have done things differently if they originally had the choices available to them.

[Black Sheep]

Very insightful W3. You should be employed by someone, somewhere .... that needs to know this stuff. 

[WWWombat]

I must admit that I am in agreement with JGO with respect to those two points.

You include (a) with that? You don't think it is right to stimulate people to make more use of their connections? To educate those who are digitally excluded through their own knowledge/fears rather than availability? To offer more services over the connection? Better services? Better quality services?

There's a very wide spectrum to cover in persuading people to make use of their connection - some of them are in getting people online at all, while some will be in persuading people to use OTT HD video instead of satellite. I think they're all worthwhile - and they'll all gradually improve both take-up and migration to higher tiers.

I am currently in the 2 - 10 Mbps DS tier and I have no need for any greater bandwidth.

Hehe. You can take a cat to milk, but you can't make him drink, right?

Actually, it highlights an important point.

What I *meant* was about making higher tiers *available*, in terms of actual speed availability rather than marketing tiers. I didn't mean to force an individual property to have to take a higher-priced tier. I probably didn't make that point well, and it isn't represented on the graph well either.

It also happens to be one of BT's points about a 10Mbps USO (stated in their Ofcom response). There are plenty of people happy on slower speeds than 10Mbps, and paying less for those slower speeds. Why enforce a 10Mbps USO?

I guess the answer is that people are not premises. The inhabitant of one property today could be happy with 2Mbps, but tomorrow wants 25mbps. Perhaps that happens because the owner changes use (eg, signs up to an IPTV package), or because the owner changes (eg, a three-teenager family moves in). What people need is freedom of choice for their property, wherever it is.

What kind of USO should we choose to set? One that sets a minimum speed for a property? Or one that dictates the choice should be available to the users, if they wish? Should we set a smaller 5mbps USO, because some people are OK at that speed? Or set a higher 10Mbps USO to respect the needs of some, while simultaneously allowing sub-USO tiers that respects the lack of immediate need of others. Should it be a USO that sets some minimum expectations for freedom of choice?

Hmmm. It makes you realise that a USO to cover a variable quantity like data is very different from a single-service USO like voice. It isn't just the competitive landscape that makes this decision harder.