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[Weaver]

@ejs -you're not out of touch, my good friend, just not in my unusual situation. Very best wishes to you.

[Ronski]

We've just returned from a week in the Lake District followed by a week in Scotland (Aviemore). Both cottages being holiday let's only had ADSL installed, both at sub 8Mbps speeds (they both had FTTC available with good speeds), and whilst we were out and about during the day time, come evening we'd like to relax, except sometimes my two daughters would end up having a minor argument because they were both trying to catch up with different sports in the Olympics and there wasn't quite enough bandwidth to go around. Dad was of course browsing the Kitz forums, and planing things for the next day. I'd also need to leave my photos uploading to Dropbox overnight, as there simply wasn't enough speed to do it quickly.

So I can quite easily see the need to be able to stream multiple videos streams at the same time for any house that may have 2 or more residents, or it could be a B&B, pub hotel etc.

I will say that the areas we visited I was constantly spotting FTTC cabs, and loads of all in ones, even places that seemed to have very few houses had cabinets (this exchange had a new PCP outside it), saw a few small exchanges with new cabs outside.

[aesmith]

I must admit that I can't see the ability to stream HD films as a measure of social inclusion or external.  Maybe in a year or so when that content isn't available any other way.   I'm not a Netflix user, but I understand it's a paid for on demand streaming service.   It would be interesting to know how many people whose Internet connections are up to scratch, don't in fact subscribe to one of these services.

[ejs]

It'd also be interesting to hear from all the people who have something faster available to them but haven't taken it. I expect the details of the USO will be determined by whoever shouts the loudest about whatever amount of bandwidth they need but can't get, and paid for by someone else.

If people really wanted to watch the Olympics, why go off on holiday during the Olympics?

[Ronski]

If people really wanted to watch the Olympics, why go off on holiday during the Olympics?

There's many people in the position we were in whilst on holiday all the time not on holiday!  You totally missed the point,  just look at Weaver.

PS My TV server has around 70 recordings of the Olympics that my daughter's set prior to going, they were quite happy to watch what they wanted when we got back. But after  long days out they decided to watch in the evening, and in doing that it proved a slow adsl service was not up to the job!

[niemand]

[rant]Distance-related services are arbitrary, unfair and ridiculous, and invariably not future-proof. Shared services like long range wireless are bad news, simply because they are shared and so completely unpredictable, uselessly so, totally unsuitable for businesses especially, useless for time-critical services. A pig in a poke: users pay, but can have no idea what they will get for the money.[/rant]

Is this your view of cable and PON FTTP as well?

I'm not sure most of those businesses running on GPON and HFC would agree.

By this model about the only technology that is adequate is point to point FTTP with guaranteed backhaul. Is that in any way realistic given how frankly absurdly stingy most people are with their 'wireless'. They think it should be free and fast, not cost 3 figures for a few Mb/s 'guaranteed'.

Of course there's also non-neutral networks which would overcome some issues with shared networks. I'm fine with those as they are potentially the only way to ensure decent user experience for time-sensitive applications at the kind of prices we demand, your mileage may vary.

[WWWombat]

People are still getting side-tracked by the Newspapers' headlines, I see. One person? One video stream?

BT's response included the diagram from Ofcom which Ofcom used as a justification for why a 10Mbps USO was worthwhile...



Note how it has 4 users and 3 examples of video simultaneously?

6Mbps for HD streaming? Perhaps that's really aimed at the old-hat H.264, and doesn't yet take account of HEVC ... which ought to be rather more prevalent by 2020 (it is in Amazon's newest Fire TV STB, for instance).

Attached is a graph of the savings that the IBC came up with for HEVC in subjective quality tests (summary: 50%+). Those kind of savings imply we'll be able to get twice as many streams into the same pipe.

BT's response included a graph of the impact of improving video codecs over time, which originated in a report to Ofcom on DVB. I've attached the original below too.

@weaver's rant is on the right side - we need to expect that a line can achieve more over time.

But we can't escape the fact that, as time goes by, "more" increasingly becomes synonymous with "more video", and the bitrate needed for video is going in the opposite direction. Can we ignore that video which was 30Mbps in 1995 might be just 3Mbps in 2020?

[niemand]

@weaver's rant is on the right side - we need to expect that a line can achieve more over time.

But we can't escape the fact that, as time goes by, "more" increasingly becomes synonymous with "more video", and the bitrate needed for video is going in the opposite direction. Can we ignore that video which was 30Mbps in 1995 might be just 3Mbps in 2020?

BT painted themselves into a corner over expectations that a line can achieve more over time. BT maxed out FTTC in 2011/12 and there's exactly zero prospect of better for many until the 2020s due to implementation of G.fast in the cheapest way possible. I guess they were smarting having wasted a bunch of money implementing FTTP in about the most expensive way possible.

I do miss the days when I had cable and saw a speed increase at least every other year. Having no prospect of matching the performance I had in 2011 until the 2020s is a bit pants.

[WWWombat]

BT can't know what the user needs. Users' circumstances vary.

BT can, at least, make a stab at guessing (aka research). Individual circumstances vary, but aggregate circumstances can be turned into statistics.

There was a presentation to the BCS a year ago, from one of BT's researchers, into just this kind of question over usage. The presentation is one of those on this page (then search for "Bandwidth" on that page), but it'll be slow to load (too many links to youtube?). Instead, I can point you directly to the presentation slides and
the YouTube video to save a trip to that BCS page.

Slides 21-24 show how they attempt to build a model to make the guesses as to users' needs - doing exactly the kind of activities you listed. I imagine you would fall into their group of "older adults"

It is well worth looking at, but there are two conclusions worth repeating:
- 2018: 35Mbps is enough to meet the needs of all but the most demanding 5th percentile.
- 2025: We predict streaming video demand and normal internet usage can be supported with ~50Mb/s but note that faster file download times and larger file sizes may create occasional demand in excess of 500Mb/s.

The latter looks like the numbers come from busy families, at peak hour.

And I haven't even thought about very small local businesses with a few employees, which desperately need various grades of upstream bandwidth.

Others have thought about them. Here is the BSG's report on small business connectivity requirements (ironically, it looks to be written by the same guy who wrote that NBN article on Linked-In). It models a wide range of business types with differing needs.

When I originally read that document, the striking thing was that the requirements were generally lower than domestic needs. IIRC, upstream needs are relatively modest overall, but for a significant minority, cannot be met by ADSL. FTTC-like speeds work well through 2025 - but a few certainly need speeds more than the minimum "superfast" levels.

[WWWombat]

BT painted themselves into a corner over expectations that a line can achieve more over time. BT maxed out FTTC in 2011/12

A strange interpretation there, @ignition. Perhaps those "free" speed bumps on VM clouded the view.

Surely, in that sentence, you are talking about "maxing out" a technology, not a line?

In terms of "maxing out" a technology, BT have done that at every phase of DSL deployment. Fixed-ADSL, ADSLmax, ADSL2+ were all maxed out on day 1. FTTC is the only one that didn't ... but that soon changed.

In terms of "maxing out" a line - each of those technologies largely says otherwise. Most lines have improved at something like 5 year intervals.

As for VM ... they've gone through the same thing, having to "max out" various components and technologies in their network. The only difference is that it is a little more hidden from view; from the perspective of those people who connect to heavily congested segments, perhaps a little too hidden.

I'm not sure that "maxing out" is a particular differentiator here.

[ejs]

There's many people in the position we were in whilst on holiday all the time not on holiday!  You totally missed the point,  just look at Weaver.

Perhaps you have missed my point: there are other ways to watch TV.

Of course there is always going to be a certain amount of bandwidth required to perform a particular task at an acceptable level of quality. It's not a question of how much bandwidth is required to watch Netflix or whatever, it's a question of is watching Netflix or whatever some sort of necessity that the USO should be for. Since there are other ways to watch TV, why should the USO cover TV watching?

[Ronski]

@EJS I'm would think they are just using TV as an example that most folk would understand, I'm sure I don't need to tell you all the other uses broadband could be used for do I?

[ejs]

But which of those uses necessitate the spending of someone else's money to upgrade a small number of connections? On one hand, we've got the digital minister saying "We're committed to a Universal Service Obligation for broadband, because broadband is increasingly not a nice-to-have but a necessity.", but then it's mostly entertainment, in the form of streaming video, which seems more like a nice-to-have, that's requiring the bandwidth.

Should there be a legal requirement for you to have an Internet connection sufficiently fast to watch the best quality video that Netflix streams? Should it be some sort of universal right to be able to stream in HD?

[Ronski]

Should there be a legal requirement for you to have an Internet connection sufficiently fast to watch the best quality video that Netflix streams? Should it be some sort of universal right to be able to stream in HD?

Yes, because how else are you going to force these companies (making billions in profit) to provide decent broadband to the customers that are not economically viable? How many would be without decent broadband without BDUK?

And lets dispense with the notion of a right to watch TV, it's a right to a decent broadband connection, not what it's used for.

[Black Sheep]

Playing devils advocate, why should they be forced ?? They're a privatised, share-holding business ............. they should be allowed to make decisions based simply around good fiscal sense, as a duty to their investors.

How's about the company that you work for Ron, begin transporting goods out of your own pockets once you reach a certain profit margin ?? In fact, their should be a USO ensuring you do.