It really does feel like we live in a developing country; our main office is in London E1, literally a stones throw from Canary Wharf and the City, it's 1/2 mile from the exchange yet we still don't have fibre, and no idea when we will have!

In the meantime we have dedicated fibre from a company called AboveNet, it's 100Mb of which we use 10, we'd like more bandwidth but we still have 12 months to run on the contract. They've offered 100mb for the same price (£500 p.c.m.) if we sign up for another year, but it's such a long commitment, and BTs fibre will be a lot cheaper.

Don't know what to do, and then there's the Leicester office, according to OpenReach they have no plans to connect our nearest cabinet to fibre!

This is not a BT or Openreach problem, it's an industry problem.

The existing network is available for use by any service provider if they are willing to make the investment, and hand on heart would you for such little return ???

I come from a background of hands on network knowledge of the Openreach network and then dealing with the highest level of service interruption problems. There is no way anyone should be running anything business critical over FTTC as the SLA just isn't there. It will go off, and you will loose service for more than a few hours during office hours. Could your business cope with that? If the answer is no then look for another solution.

My whole job was listening to people who were paying £25 a month for their office internet connection shifting 100Gb a month over it, and writing to the chairman the minute it went off. Fools, and I am talking about BT as they actually care about that customer.

Cheers

Cris

As I understand it the only alternative we have is a leased line, this would be way beyond what we can afford. We can cope with the occasional outage, and tbh wouldn't mind paying say £100 pcm for a fibre ADSL service right now, but it just isn't available. I wouldn't even mind paying OpenReach to actually get the fibre to us (if I could). I know it's another example of a poorly designed privatisation, but still...

It's not example of poorly designed privatisation at all, in fact its an example of how it supposed to work. If the market demands it then it would be supplied, but the margins are so tight, that while in your area people will pay for leased lines then why would they put FTTC in ??? I suspect in your exchange area it just doesn't make business sense to put it in.

You can pay for Openreach to put fibre in, there are loads of Ethernet Fibre products delivered through all sorts of SP's out there. And the cost is reflected in the service offered.

Cheers

Cris

I'd disagree, my view is that at privatisation there should have been a separation of the infrastructure and operational companies so that (for example) there had been a single mobile phone infrastructure (preferably publicly owned) used by all the different networks. With BT this separation happened much later, and it meant that supposed competitors like C&W were never realistically going to be able to compete.

Regardless of how well or poorly it was structured the slow rollout of fibre certainly affects many businesses.

How do you find someone at OpenReach to discuss this, this is their contacts page , I fit in none of their categories. I've tried BT but been through so many automated phone system cul de sacs that I just can't bear calling them any more.

At the time of privatisation the world was a very different place, and it's aim was to increase service levels and stop people waiting 2 years to have a phone line installed. The idea of competition in the way we see it now wasn't really on the cards at that point. We are so used to the BT way of life the GPO way is long long long forgotten.

In reality there is little stopping any company from installing fibre anywhere it likes, BT, Openreach, Virgin, Cable & Wireless..... would all have to find the same funding to do the job. It isn't much cheaper just because Openreach has a 100 year old network to look after. Many local communities have installed their own broadband networks to solve the problem on their own, they bare the cost as Openreach/BT has it hands tied in what it can charge.

FTTC is not a product designed to run an entire office off, and I would suggest using it as such is a big risk. My day job used to be talking to people who had lost ADSL service for weeks sometimes, you'd be surprised just how much Openreach care about that for the money they make out of it, but in a product with so many weak points when it comes to redundancy when it's bad it can be really bad! The same can't be said for some of the SPs who just tend to play the blame BT game, which sadly is all too common.

Cheers

Cris

We sort of solved the ADSL problemby having Virgin installed as a backup, and into a different room in the building so that a digger "mistake" or a flood over the other side wouldn't be a disaster. It's not a perfect failover yet though, it involves switching cables and slight reconfiguration (I have a DrayTek router waiting to go in which should mean everything but the PBX should be seamless). We have made use of it twice so far - both times the ADSL was down an entire afternoon.

Sounds like you've got a good cheap solution there.

I remember once having to deal with an irate director of a company once who was going mad that all his staff couldn't work as his ADSL was down. He was complaining that even their backup ADSL wasn't working. No matter how I tried I couldn't get him to understand that is going to happen when someone opens up the box outside his business and steals a 200m length of cable, writing off the duct work (it collapsed when all the cable was pulled out) and taking down about 400 peoples phone lines. They worked 24/7 shifts for almost a week to get everyone back on, but that still wasn't good enough.

He had an office of 30 people all sharing 2 ADSL connections, they were some kind of insurance broker. The compo he got was just a few hundred pounds, he tried to invoice for a weeks lost revenue and costs, but with no SLA in place there is no chance of that sticking given the circumstances.

Diversity and redundancy in supply would always be the top of my list. I even have a (very simple) plan for my home business here should my FTTC go off. We can't get Virgin here, so I swapped my mobile service to 3 a couple of years ago so tethering is included as standard. Whilst much slower, I could manage with this connection and I have checked everything works should I need to use it. Sounds stupidly simple but I was always amazed by how little thought people gave to this on such a critical thing. I think 4G routers could become a really good idea in the future for backups, as we find out prices I might look at them for myself here.

Cheers

Cris

My last chance Internet backup is actually my fastest

My Three 3G connection here, which is my last chance option, at 25mb is 5 times faster than either of my ADSL connections (10 times faster on uploads). Unfortunately no Virgin here either, so one BT Wholesale line and one TalkTalk LLU line is the best I can do

No, but my point is that if the cable network was owned by "CableCo" which then leased capacity to BT, Virgin etc then there would be far less duplicated effort, and I guess government funding could be more closely directed.

The only time we've had extended downtime on an ADSL service is when ViaNet somehow managed to close our account and cease the line.

I'd much rather have a leased line service but we can't realistically afford it, latest quote I got was for £2650 setup and £6040 p.a. for a 12mb EFM leased line.

ETA: We already have 2 leased lines between our London offices and the AboveNet fibre to the internet.

I believe that A&A offer routers with SIM slots, and included 3G plan, so you can use that for transparent failover...

Indeed they do, it isn't cheap if you actually need to use it though

I have considered it, but instead I am busy virtualising my servers and moving them offsite, then my wired Internet connection will become a lot less critical.

Then there is the Stockholm model (stokab), where the dark fiber is owned by the city and leased to any taker. Has worked fine for 18 years now...

Urmmmm, replace the word CableCo with Openreach and that is exactly how it works in the UK. The customer facing arm of BT doesn't own any of the network, and has to pay the same as everyone else to use the network.

I don't see the investment as just BT or Openreach's to make. A whole new network needs to be put in, Virgin stopped doing this a decade ago because it is flipping expansive !!!

Cheers

Cris

This is all very interesting and reminds me of what happened in the US during the mid to late 1990s. There was some sort of legislation passed that further deregulated the phone companies and forced them to lease space to competing data services inside the local switching station. I experienced the result of this first-hand during a time when Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) was only offering ISDN for very short runs, and the local cable company didn't have anything.

Practically overnight, there were a bunch of companies willing to run DSL to my house. The first one (I can't remember the name) actually buried a wire in the ground from the switch to me over a couple days. I used them for a few months, then they went out of business. I was back to dial-up for a bit. Then, Telocity was offering cheap ADSL and I signed up for that. They sent me a modem in the mail after a few weeks, and my old line was up and running again. Then, DirecTV thought it would be a good idea to buy Telocity. About a year later, they must have decided it was cheaper to launch satellites than maintain ground-based communications and shut down the service.

By that time, all the other third-parties stopped offering service out of my local switch and I was back to dial-up for quite a while. It felt like an eternity before Cablevision finally rolled-out their service to my area.

To this day, the DSL situation in this area is pretty bad. Verizon determines if you can get service or not based on distance. If you can get service, you have a choice of ISPs (including Verizon). If not, you have to opt for something else entirely. ISDN, cable, satellite, or wireless (as far as consumer services go).

I'm in a place right now that Verizon still doesn't offer DSL, and you can forget about FiOS (FTTP). So, if the cable company closes-up shop (unlikely), 3G is probably my best option. It's a sad situation.

Not the same thing -- it's missing the critical detail that separates transit from the Telco's own ISP business.

We have a similar situation to you here in Ontario, Canada -- the incumbents (Telco, CableCos) are required to sublet their connections, but they also still run their own ISP businesses. The amounts they charge thirty-party internet access providers (TIPAs) is an order of magnitude higher than what they "charge" their own ISP business units.

Ugly, but at least we still have somewhat of a choice.
It would be so much better if we had true separation of wholesale transit from retail ISP.

I wasn't aware of that.

I agree entirely that the investment shouldn't be just BT/OpenReach (or any other CableCo), it should be at least partly government funded and directed.

Both our London locations are adjacent to the city and in the middle of pretty high density residential, lots of "creatives". I'd have thought plenty of demand for fibre, doesn't it make sense to target services to where there's a high demand?

Exactly, this makes perfect sense:

"Theses days, high bandwidth is no longer required by a just a few users, but rather by close to every household, business and public sector service"

We're one of the wealthiest cities in the world, I can't believe how poor our digital infrastructure is.

My only DSL option is Century Link (formerly QWest) and the fastest speed I can get is 12mbit/s. I've pretty much given up hope of ever getting FiOS.

Totally, from the users point of view I am 100% with you.

But from Openreach's point of view, why would they put in a product which would slash it's income overall in that area as people switch away from private circuits and leased lines.

I think that is the hard fact of it. Their business just doesn't have the money to do everyone all at once, so they target it, I would say to areas they offer them the best overall return.

I personally think the idea of the state putting in a dark fibre network is an excellent one, and I think it could be the only possible way of us all getting FTTP here in the UK. But is there the political will ???

Cheers

Cris

I guess that's the question, and even if there is how does it translate into something tangible? The Swedish model is I believe a really sensible one, I think they do the same with the railways.

My post goes on to describe how things were, not how they are now.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was like the wild west. All these companies came out of the woodwork willing to run their own infrastructure from your local switch to your house. The DSL lines that were run to me were not installed or maintained by Bell Atlantic, nor did they themselves offer DSL services in my location at the time. The lines were dry. Unlike today, the services varied widely between ISPs (SDSL, ADSL, RADSL) and the price structures did as well.

Today, if you want DSL, you can have a choice of ISPs. But, like you said, it's all over Verizon's infrastructure and the speeds offered are uniform. Prices can vary by a couple dollars, but that's the only difference the customer will notice.

In the NY metro area, Time Warner Cable was deregulated and has to allow other ISPs on their cable modem service. It works just like DSL does now. Most people call Time Warner and use them as an ISP by default, but you can also choose Earthlink, AOL, and a handful of other smaller ISPs. The speeds will be the same, but the third-parties don't charge you a $10/month penalty if you don't also subscribe to cable TV. When I lived in a Time Warner area, I chose Earthlink as my ISP. It saved me $10/month over 5 years. The majority of people don't realize they have a choice.