Andrew Wade
Senior reporter
Going by the government’s attitude towards broadband, you could be forgiven for thinking we were trapped in 2006 rather than 2016, when Facebook was but a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye, and Netflix was gearing up to deliver its one billionth DVD.
Today, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) – part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – classes broadband speeds over 24Mbps as ‘superfast’. Now, while 24Mbps is by no means a shoddy internet speed – and would certainly have been something to shout about 10 years ago – claiming this as ‘superfast’ in 2016 is verging on the embarrassing.
Yesterday’s decision by Ofcom to leave Openreach under the control of BT is unlikely to help the situation. Openreach, established in 2006, has a monopoly over the infrastructure and cables that make up the ‘last mile’ of the UK’s broadband network – the part that runs from cabinet exchanges in the street to homes and businesses. It does this on behalf of the hundreds of communication providers (CPs) around the country that sell services directly to end customers, including BT itself. Unfortunately, underinvestment in the underlying infrastructure has led to record numbers of complaints, and fears that the UK is falling behind when it comes to broadband speeds and coverage.
On the surface, the current state of affairs doesn’t seem terrible. According to 2015 rankings from US company Akamai, average connection speeds here are 13Mbps. This puts the UK ahead of countries such as the US and Germany, but behind nations such as Romania and the Czech Republic. Sweden is the highest ranked European country with 17.4Mbps, while South Korea tops the list overall with 20.5Mbps.
Dig a little deeper, however, and the underlying problems become more apparent. The vast majority of the fibre broadband offered by the UK’s main service providers is Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). Fibre optic cables rather than copper wiring transfer massive quantities of data at the speed of light, dramatically improving broadband speeds. But with this fibre only running as far as the exchange cabinets in the street, customers and businesses have to rely on old copper wiring for that ‘last mile’, which dramatically reduces speed.
What the UK needs, and what Openreach has been dragging its feet on, is Fibre to the Home (FTTH). As the name suggests, this bypasses the copper problem, with fibre going direct to the premises and providing speeds as fast as 1Gbps. In fairness to Openreach, delivering FTTH across the UK would be hugely expensive. But it’s an expense that needs to be met if the UK is to remain internationally competitive, and the sooner it happens the better.
Some companies such as Hyperoptic are offering FTTH, but only where it makes economic sense, such as in apartment blocks or business parks where they know there will be substantial take-up. I happen to live in one such block, and Hyperoptic have been making noise about going live in the building for an eternity. The fibre has apparently been laid, but residents have been in limbo for months waiting to hear back from the company as to the current status. With no other access to fibre, Hyperoptic knows it has us over a barrel and is very much moving at its own pace.
These are, I freely admit, first world problems. Having said that, the UK is a first world country, and internet infrastructure is about as important a first world problem as you will come across. Broadband connectivity has become almost as vital as the water and electricity utilities that we depend on for our existence. Granted, you won’t die of thirst or hypothermia if your router goes down, but you will find your channels of communication with the world severely limited, and you will almost certainly find it extremely difficult to do business.
As for Industry 4.0, you can forget all about that for the time being. Currently just 2.6 per cent of premises in the UK have access to FTTH. In Sweden, this number is 56.2 per cent, and in Spain it’s 62.6 per cent. South Korea and Japan have penetration approaching 100 per cent. The fact that BT/Openreach is currently squeezing the maximum out of its weary copper network is helping to paper over the cracks in the system, but if British industry and business is to flourish in the coming years, the fibre infrastructure needs to be upgraded as soon as possible. Ofcom’s decision won’t help that happen.
Thank you for a very useful and thought-provoking article, I certainly did not realise that we were behind our competitors in this area. What to do now???
Embarrassing.
Time to dump the 100 year old copper lines completely. Land-line phones can be IP.
Won’t happen while Openreach (the poles and ducts) are privately owned.
Out here only 45 miles from London, 6Mb/s and that stops when it rains! And we have “superfast broadband” – according to all the hype. UK a first world country? I don’t think so.
It looks like again Ofcom are dancing to the tune of BT. If the lack of real progress has told us anything its that BT/Openreach are incapable of doing anything but clawing as much profit as possible for their shareholders. When they do anything its usually with the tax payer funding a large part of it.
The only real solution is to take openreach into public ownership and get the taxpayer to fund the vital infrastructure this country needs . I don’t believe in government owning things but sometimes with infrastructure the government has to lead the way, BT certainly can’t.
Now is the time for heads to roll at Ofcom including that of CEO Sharon White, this is the second showing of her incompetence – Its what happens when you put a civil servant in charge of something that needs to be led by someone with a business and engineer background rather than an economist!
One complaint that can’t be cast at Open Reach is that it gives priority to BT Retail customers when it comes to network repair/maintenance. As a BT Retail customer I had to suffer ten weeks without a working telephone/broadband line while Open Reach ‘fluffed’ around inefficiently to replace about 20m of copper cables that had knocked about 20 homes in our village. Open Reach’s excuses ranged from inability to get local council approval to dig up roads (which the council claimed had been granted within a few hours of the application), to the inability to find suitable contractors to do the ground-work. We were not impressed!
Having worked for GPO/BT, I remember when they offered to run fibre throughout the UK if HMG would help with the cost of the infrastructure. (I think this was back in the 1970s.) Needless to say, HMG turned the offer down – presumably they couldn’t see the point. It’s still the same problem; HMG is unprepared to see decent internet connectivity as a utility, especially in non-urban areas with low population densities. (To be fair, it’s the same with Gas distribution!)
I live in Dorset, where there was a concerted campaign to re-use the huge capacity installed for the Olympic Sailing events: rather than have it stripped back out, let’s use it to provide improved internet access to the area. You can perhaps imagine my incredulity when we asked what speed ‘Superfast’ would mean to our rural customers? The answer – 2Mb/s!
I’m lucky, as I live where the FTTC only leaves me with a few hundred meters of copper to worry about and get 37Mb/s downloads, but I still think that ‘Superfast’ refers to ‘over 100Mb/s’ . What we have currently could legitimately be called ‘Fast’, but ‘Super’ – no way! – it’s just sales hype.
My. Advice move to a new town. I have virgin fibre upload 6.16 Mbps download 85.52. Same advice for flooding protection.
The other part of the broadband speed issue that is not given enough attention is upload speed. Even where you do get decent download speeds, most ISPs limit your uploads to a measly 1 or 2 Mbps (primarily because the exchange and network currently couldn’t handle higher speeds). In these days of cloud data storage and remote backup, that just isn’t tenable. And many more people now work from home and rely on a solid and high speed internet connection, so having adequate infrastructure that supports high data speeds for both down and uploads is vitally important, especially if we are serious about decarbonising the economy and improving ‘digital democracy’.
Although FTTH is expensive it surely a more worthwhile investment than HS2. We should be encouraging working from home (as I do) because it has the lowest carbon footprint, and least time wasted stuck in traffic. In my own case, BT recently installed a fibre into my village, but because I live in an isolated farmhouse they missed me out. I am now using a G4 mobile internet receiver and get 20 to 40 Mb/s most of the time, but suffer from hold ups at busy times.
May I suggest that people reading this sign the Petition to the UK Government to make all broadband connections FTTH: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/122924
The article is absolutely right to highlight the problem of the copper network. This “last mile” for the copper cable to the fibre-linked cabinet is being “stretched” in my case: I am told by the BT website that I have fibre broadband, but with over 2.5 miles of copper cable to my cabinet, the speed I can get is less than with my current “bog standard” broadband! I fear that I am still counted has having access to “superfast broadband”, however. Also, there is a fibre-connected cabinet only 0.5 miles away – but we are not connected to it!
Did you ever get your phone/broadband connections moved to the new cabinet?
I am really jealous of those people who think 2Mbps download or upload speeds are slow. I only live 3 miles from the exchange and get a max of 0.25Mbps downloads because I and probably the majority of the UK population suffer from plummeting off the performance cliff that you get over about 2 miles of copper cable. According to the BT speed checker this is the best I can expect unless I upgrade and pay an arm and a leg for fibre cable.
For those who want to test their own speed try the following site:
http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/
What would really help is if the authors of web content (including The Engineer) put some thought into minimising the size of their content such as by compressing images before releasing them and not automatically running videos on landing pages.
I do believe that there is a general conspiracy at all the network providers (particularly those providing PAYG wireless data) to bloat content and ultimately profits. For example when I go to the BT home page to logon to email it downloads 1MB of junk before I have even got started. Software that by default automatically downloads updates is a pet hate of mine.
Of course the real solution is a properly funded rollout of fibre to every household and then and only then can we start to think seriously about implementing bandwidth hungry new technology such as the “Internet of things”.
I live “out in the sticks” (according to many)yet I’m able to enjoy 17Mb uploads & a stable 75Mb download.All because I opted to have all my phoneline services provided by any company other than BT(I know they own the infrastructure)When I had BT as my ISP/phone provider,they frequently would cut off my phone(contacting them produced a “there’s a fault on the line,an engineer is dealing with it but this will take 3 days”)and having waited the 3 days,told I needed to pay an outstanding bill which they had ALWAYS neglected to notify me of.As soon as I switched my provision (including line rental) to another company,I ceased being cut off every few months.My internet speeds increased slowly at first,initially all I could have was 500k,then 2Mbs for many years,then a couple of years ago it suddenly jumped to my present speeds without any additional cost per month.
Interesting read. I live in Zimbabwe, where FTTH (or business) is very common. Our biggest problem is not speed, but bandwidth caps. The unlimited bundles are very expensive, but 100 Mbps both ways is achievable locally. International browsing slows considerably. My own solution is a WiMax (uMax) router, which runs reliably at 3 Mbps, and for an extra fee could be moved up to 5 Mbps.
I comment, because my brother lives in Oxfordshire, near a fairly large town, and has – supposedly – the best possible package. However, when staying with him a few months ago, I was astonished at how often he would lose his connection altogether, sometimes for minutes at a time. It took me three attempts, and as many days, to get the full Windows 10 upgrade package onto my laptop, and working. That same operation for my wife’s laptop, in my office in Zim, with a fibre link, but operating through a wireless router, took me just over three hours, for the download (admittedly in the evening, but that was the same condition as in the UK)
Government is not funding the infrastructural development here, nor are our user densities anywhere near those of the ‘first world’ However, if we, as a beleaguered ‘third world’ country can get this together, it boggles the mind that the UK cannot.
Fellow bloggers may have noted my absence from communication(s) for the past few days: I was abroad on holiday: and hence left all ‘links’ behind! A friend did however manage to receive his daily newspaper 2000 miles from his ‘home’ (in the middle of a rather large sea) at speeds he believed were quite acceptable. [It took him longer to complete reading it and doing the ‘puzzles’ than receiving it!] Actually, do we need full-speed links to be active 24/7/52? Lets be honest; how many ‘decisions’ are life threatening all the time? Not many.
I am constantly amazed that there are complaints about ‘speed’ in what (to recipients and suppliers of data) are believed to be critical matters. When surely the most critical aspects of ‘life’ -the settlement of disputes- are still in the hands of a group who have in the past found the advent of new technology in the form of quill pen, parchment and ink, daunting. Time to perform, let alone expedite anything to them (you/they know who you/they are) is measured in months, years even: for as long as they increase their rewards the longer and more complicated they make any matter, little will alter. Complain about that (as I have done for 40 years-including several threats of fines and proposals for imprisonment for really sticking it to my opponants’ paid thugs) and we might see some advance in our society. Pigs may indeed take wing, but not as long as they are weighed down by the public money in their private pockets: is that an analogy or a simile, I am but a simple engineer.
I was interested to see reference to gas distribution. Unless I am mistaken, in the period of several years before privitization (you remember the sell-off of the family silver and the seed-corn by the grocer’s daughter and her ilk-the spivs?) former state owned utilities were encouraged ‘at public expense’ to upgrade the ‘old’ systems of distribution.. so that the whole shebang could be sold to punters. The ultimate conn!
fellow bloggers might enjoy a letter I felt able to write to a very senior ‘Lord’ -reference delay.
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Here, in Lithuania situation in cities can be described like this:
100mbps = slow
300-600mbps = normal
1gbps = fast
Slow DSL <10mbps only in villages.
it’s not just a speed thing – that’s a useful byproduct of FTTH. The real benefit is that lazer light through fibres are the only technology known to mankind that can deliver consistent speeds irrespective of distance – certainly over the piffling distance used in FTTH. This means that where ever you live int he UK, you’d be able to get the same level of service whether on top of a mountain or in the middle of London.
What’s needed is a USO not for a feeble 10Mbps download, but for 1000Mbps symmetrical.
This may sound absurd, but the reason for it makes sense.
BT is footling around with FTTH, but their FTTH is asymmetric and in FTTH terms, is very slow with 300Mbps download and something like 50Mbps upload.
B4RN, the remarkable community FTTH provider in rural Lancashire, is deliver 1000Mbps symmetrical.
The point is that not all FTTH solutions are the same – we need the BEST solution to set us for the next 50+ years.
We would have fibre to the house if Thatcher had not put a stop to it. Openreach people work hard with what they have and yes the network is old but we need to remember The GPO and latterly BT paid for it not the likes of sky and talk talk et al. Would you pimp in millions of ££££ just to find the company snatched out of your hands ?
Privatising the telecoms network was another mistake leaving us wide open to foreign companies buying yet another vital utility and leaving us at their mercy.
Let’s stop the Openreach bashing and return the industry to public domain. And before I’m asked… No I’m not an Openreach employee
It’s worth checking these sites out to see what Openreach are currently doing to boost speeds. A lot is being invested in these trials.
http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=1F647C20-6F61-4E0F-A545-E23443E128AB
http://www.ultrafast-openreach.co.uk/
Why does everyone blame Openreach? They aren’t the only company who can provide these services but they get the flack. They are a business run to make a profit like any other so why would they invest where it’s not going to make money and also then have to give access to their direct competitors to that same infrastructure for them to sell. Would you invest billions of pounds knowing that lots of it will take years to recover if you ever did and that your competitors can also use it albeit just paying for what they want in the areas that are profitable for them. Now I also agree that Openreach have been under investing and offer poor service but it’s regulation from Ofcom and the government that doesn’t help as well
I think it’s very naïve, everyone had the opportunity to invest in BDUK but no one except BT was willing to take the long pay back period. If you split off Openreach, where is the investment going to come from exactly?
I live in a house with 5 other people, and I’m a gamer… or at least I was and still want to be. I can’t online game with a shared connection of 6Megabits/s shared between 6 people (100KB/s per person!!!). Openreach refuse to provide our street with fibre, whereas everyone within a mile-possibly more have very high speeds (some have virgin vivid). People are complaining that their 6MB/s with just them connected is slow! Please raise awareness for people like me left in the dark past decade and push on BT and other fibre providers to not leave people 10 years behind. Thank you.
This feels a bit like Python’s Yorkshiremen sketch but… In rural Norfolk village we get 3mbs if we’re lucky. All too frequently we have no access at all and then the exchange reins back to 250 kbs for days on end unless we contact our (excellent) ISP who kick arse at Openreach to reset our connection. A local Internet businessman pays for satellite.
Whilst not defending Openreach, the article almost makes out that Openreach don’t provide a complete fibre solution. In fact Openreach call it FTTP or fibre to the premise and they do provide it it some areas but I agree not enough areas. I have had FTTP for the last 3 years and it gives me a speed of 75mb and can be turned up to 300 for an extra charge.