Rural Broadband
A Computing2u Point of View Paper
The Problem
The general consensus is that the BDUK rural broadband rollout to date has been less than successful with ALL tender offers going to BT Openreach (BT). The Commons Public Account Committee have been very forthright in their criticism of the process.
Can those of us who suffer from poor broadband speeds expect to see benefits from planned upgrades to Superfast broadband? Superfast is defined as download speed greater than 24Mb per second. We define here poor broadband as having a download speed of under 3Mb per second.
Current Planning
Government targets for broadband speed improvement have been based on the use of fibre optic delivery. For those in major city areas who can have fibre to their house or premises (Fibre To The Premises – FTTP) they can expect speeds of up to 70Mb per second. For most rural users however, the fibre optic link terminates at a cabinet in the street (fibre to The Cabinet – FTTC), with their broadband being carried by the same copper used for existing phone line. See Performance Characteristics below.
The Government and Local Authorities issued all 26 initial contracts to BT. In the second phase (at date of writing) they have issued all 18 further contracts to BT, effectively assuring BT keep a monopoly on broadband provision. In total BT have been given £1.2 billion pounds in taxpayer’s money to deliver broadband to the detriment of the taxpayer and other broadband providers. Unfortunately it is unlikely this investment will deliver the predicted 90% coverage, never mind deal with our rural needs for usable broadband. The expectation of what will be delivered and the actuality are generally significantly different for the rural user.
Performance Characteristics
In order to understand why this should be you need to have some understanding of the delivery mechanism for rural users and the performance characteristics of the existing copper cables used to deliver broadband. As may be seen in 
Fig 1, rural users who are more than 1.5 kilometres away from the cabinet will see little or no improvement to their service levels. The rapid speed degradation in the first 600 metres, as you move away from the cabinet means that many users may not be able to achieve Superfast broadband. A fact obfuscated by the marketing use of ‘speeds up to’ by BT and other operators. There are just not enough cabinets in place or planned to achieve Superfast broadband speeds to achieve stated coverage.
Is there any hope?
Achieving Superfast broadband even in the most remote locations should and is viable. To date however plans to achieve this by government and local authorities have been via the ‘one trick FTTC pony’. Coincidentally this has also strengthened the BT monopoly.
The reality is that there are a range of technologies that could deliver broadband to rural areas, however to date the ONLY technology the Government department responsible for broadband rollout (The Depart of Culture Media and Sport) and local authorities have supported has been FTTC. The author acknowledges that a robust and resilient fibre infrastructure is central to success, however delivery to remote and rural areas can only be achieved by adopting and implementing complementary technologies to extend the fibre speeds.
In an ideal world every property would be connected with fibre, but this would cost many billions, and with taxpayer subsidies, sparsely populated rural areas would require a disproportionate amount of the funding. By adopting alternative technologies and using these to complement the fibre backbone we can deliver viable broadband to rural areas and at a price that is a fraction of the cost of fibre.
Hybrid networks
We have argued long and hard for the “digital village pump” concept. This would involve a subsidised fibre point of presence being installed within a community or at a strategic location.
From here, local independent providers can radiate service to remote properties primarily over a wireless network. Such networks are very cost effective; they can be configured to provide microwave links to very remote areas, which can then have a distribution hub. This could consist of multiple hops of tens of kilometres.
There are many examples across the country where this has already been done by small providers working with local communities. The technology is reliable and well understood. In parts of Europe fixed wireless has actually overtaken copper in the last mile.
Over time, wireless and copper could be replaced by dedicated fibre as communities and landowners install ducts or use existing BT ducts and poles. OFCOM have required Openreach to grant access to such infrastructure and whilst progress is slow it is hoped local and government pressure will ensure this becomes viable..
So what benefits could we see?
The illustration shows coverage of an existing fixed wireless broadband network in North Wiltshire. The green areas covers approx 150km2 and shows where broadband speeds of 24Mbps and over are possible. This shows how a location fed by a single fibre can provide cost effective coverage to a large rural area.
Using a repeater from such a central hub to a suitable location (churches, barns, silos etc) we can further extend the coverage at minimal cost. The investment in terms of hardware is less than £250. Contrast this with the cost of laying fibre, which is in the region of £40 per metre. The example shown would have cost in excess of £150,000 in laying dedicated fibre. Delivery by the fixed wireless cost less than £500 (0.3% the cost of fibre).
Putting aside the cost benefits, such hybrid delivery solutions also have the advantage in being more resilient to flooding, units can be powered by small standby power supplies (battery, solar, combination). They can also offer fall-back solutions for service critical systems in the event of fixed line outage. They are quick to rollout and flexible in their configuration.
Are they future proof?
In a word yes! Compared to the gradual, incremental improvements of long distance copper circuits, wireless technology has evolved exponentially giving far greater speeds and capacity over long distances within the same timeframe.
Wireless can also address one of the issues users are already seeing with typical FTTC based solutions. Namely upload speeds being significantly lower than download (Asymmetric broadband). Whilst this has not been a major issue for many, the change to Cloud based computing and storage, the adoption of photo and video sharing and the increase in businesses using e-commerce, social media and particularly voice over IP (internet telephony) means that upload speeds are now very important to many companies.
A fixed wireless network connected to a fibre backhaul is ready to deliver symmetric connections from the outset. We believe that the funding model should take this into account and actually focus less on headline download speeds, and more on overall usability, delivering holistic, flexible services that are suited to all users’ requirements. The analogy being a people carrier and a sports car. One is more impressive, but the other is a lot more useful!
Conclusion
To date the roll-out of Superfast broadband has been costly and slow. Technologies based on wireless and mobile technologies exist to-day that can provide rural communities with Superfast speeds either as complementary technologies extending the existing fibre rollout or as stand alone solutions with their own dedicate fibre links.
Government and Local Authority planning needs to revisit their delivery planning and technology adoption process to benefit from the complementary technologies available to-day that can extend rollout without the need to spend another £1.2 billion of taxpayers money and ensure the taxpayer get value for money from this process and specifically ensure rural communities benefit from speeds that are fundamental to any business or household. Communities who have poor broadband should discuss broadband planning and rollout with their local authority and MP.
The uncomfortable reality is that it is extremely unlikely most people in the countryside will see anything like the headline rate of 24 Mb per second, in fact based on testimony to the public accounts committee only about 30% will see any difference at all to their current situation.
This is clearly unacceptable since we have spent £1.2 billion to get here. We must ensure the current tranche of public money does what it ‘s intended to do and delivers fast access at 24 Mb or above to the countryside. This means using alternative technologies such as wireless to reach wide areas at low-cost,without this the digital divide in the countryside will grow even wider. What can you do to help? Raise the matter with your local councillors and MP tell them it’s not acceptable to be left in the slow lane no matter where you live.
Computing2u are happy to assist communities’ progress initiatives to enhance their broadband.
Contact us on ruralbroadband@computing2u.com