On the morning of Wednesday 6 April I hosted a conference/seminar on broadband provision in Suffolk at the Waveney House Hotel in Beccles, Suffolk. The program is still available at: http://www.peteraldous.com/broadband_conference
The event was very well attended by people from communities accross Suffolk, including many parish councillors and I would like to thank all of you for your time as well as the speakers, some of who came from outside Suffolk to present to us.
The aim of the Conference was to explore how industry, government and local people can work together to bring broadband to the whole of Suffolk, including the Waveney Valley. Such partnership is central to the Government’s vision for a Superfast Broadband Future.
The introductory presentations from Dr Stuart Burgess and Adrian Wooster made very clear that parts of Suffolk and particularly Waveney suffer from poor communications of all kinds and may require an innovative mix of public and private investment and innovative technology solutions, utilising existing infrastructures, to have access to high performance broadband at affordable cost.
I was very pleased to welcome Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, responsible for broadband, Ed Vaizey who gave an excellent keynote speech, outlining the Government’s vision to provide funding specifically for areas not currently commercially viable for most internet service providers. The Minister answered a number of challenging questions and the session was, I think most will agree, informative and entertaining.
The conference then heard from Robert Ling from Broadband delivery UK (BDUK), the body responsible for delivering the Government’s vision, who outlined the criteria for bidding for Government funding.
Andy Wood and Peter Ingram then gave an excellent presentation outlining the Choose Suffolk bid to be submitted for BDUK funding. My role is as a critical friend to this bid, doing what I can to help, but primarily ensuring that the constituents I represent have a voice.
After a break the conference heard from representatives from BT and other services providers, followed by representatives of publicly owned infrastructure, all of whom gave an insight into the different solutions to providing good quality broadband to all parts of Suffolk
The presentations made at the conference will be available via this site in the next few days and the video recording will also be available as soon as possible for those who were unable to attend or who would like to revisit particular sessions. The site will be updated as necessary.
Please do subscribe to this blog above and feel very welcome to participate, particularly if you are a Suffolk constituent (I represent Waveney but the issues span Suffolk constituencies) and have views or points you would like heard.
Peter Aldous MP 
Hello Peter
Looking forward to your conference.
My intial concern is that you consider a minimum of 2 mb to be acceptable. That may well be a realistic level with the current infa-structure setup; but it is not a speed which anyone should have to settle for.
In practice, during peak periods and as more subscribers attach to the line that 2mb becomes severly downgraded! My remit is both as a private resident and as a business user living & working in Darsham (seperate locations).
Ooops, will now climb down from my soap box,
Michael
I totally agree that 2mb should not be considered as even a medium-term goal – but it is a short-term one for those still having to reply on dial-up or very unreliable broadband connections. I view getting 2mbs to these people as soon as possible then working for higher speeds as more desireable than waiting much longer to get fibre to their homes and leaving them with what they have for the time being. I very much welcome you views. Your point on busy periods is crucial – and will become increasingly important for local businesses. One example suggested to me is the guest house/hotel scenario – whereby a family in a hotel with two children with I Pads/Phones – all want to use high consumption applications – streaming video etc. A hotel with any number of families in an area with poor bandwith will soon struggle.
The concept of fixed line Broadband is, and should continue to be, the primary aim. However, given the enormity of the task it may be useful to consider wireless BB on a large scale. The benefits are little or no requirement to dig or change existing out of date infrastructure and the availability of an off the shelf solution. I think the future will be wireless and as such, the concept should be explored. One only needs to look at the success of the mobile phone
I understand a similar concept is being trialled in Swindon. Maybe an opportunity for information sharing?
I very much welcome that opportunity, either at the event on the 6th or via email: peter.aldous.mp@parliament.uk many thanks.
Thank you, Peter Aldous and Dan Poulter, for taking the initiative in organising this conference. I very much look forward to the discussion and the resulting actions.
Aiming at a 2Mb/s download speed is now too little and too late and could divert investment away from the real broadband infrastructure that we desperately need. For businesses to flourish (or even survive!) and to meet residential needs we should be aiming for download speeds of 50Mb/s+ as soon as possible. In addition, mobile coverage in our area is worse than that in many third world countries. 3G coverage is very limited – and usually non-existent. There now may be a unique opportunity to solve both problems – both fixed and mobile broadband – with the licensing of the low frequency 4G spectrum. This spectrum could provide high speed broadband coverage in rural areas. Mobile operators could be asked to bid for 4G spectrum licences for rural geographic areas at a nominal cost – or even free – in exchange for providing a universal service obligation to premises in a geographic area by an agreed date, a transceiver being installed at the premises to receive the broadband signal. To encourage competition at the service level, the mobile operator would be required to offer this as a wholesale fixed wireless broadband service to premises to other telecoms operators. The wholesale price could be set at the same level as that of the fibre network (‘Fibre to the Curb’) wholesale product. The attraction of this approach is that it would drive the deployment of 4G infrastructure in rural areas for mobile broadband and deliver high speed broadband to premises.
I absolutely agree the 2MBs is not adequate for most. It is only an immediate aim to get it to those with worst provision as soon as possible and should not hinder any programme to get much higher speeds as the core.
But there are a number of issues including whether people are prepared to pay for superfast speeds. I have heard from some industry sources that when offered faster speeds for £20-25 many are happy to pay, but when the prices gets towards £40 – as it surely would for some of the speeds you mention, many people are not interested. So it is about the demand to make the business case for companies to provide these speeds in the first place. Another point I have heard frequently relates to the comparison between speeds in Hong Kong and Japan where the business model tends to rest on multi occupancy buildings. From a business perspective one can’t readily compare these speeds to those in rural England. Interesting points all adding to the debate.
Peter,
Many thanks for your reply.
I was directly involved in the roll-out of broadband in the mid/late 90s and the biggest barrier we faced was the strongly held belief that customers would not pay ~£20-25 pm for ADSL(2Mb/s) when dial-up met their current internet needs. The result was that investment in ADSL was curtailed – and the rest is history. Let’s not make the same mistake again. I agree with your comment on prices that residential customers would be willing to pay – however – the price for ADSL (2Mb/s) in comparative developed countries is very likely to be sub £10 pm by 2012/13 and in the range £20-30 pm for higher speeds (20Mb/s+). I would be surprised if we do not see an operator in the UK offering a sub £10pm ADSL service in 2012/13. We also need to make sure that the broadband infrastructure meets the needs of small/medium businesses in rural areas – many of these businesses are heavily reliant on a competitive broadband service and already pay a premium to get a lower contention ratio than that for residential customers – for many though, higher download and upload speeds are essential.
I agree that wireless is the immediate solution for rural areas. A fibre backhaul can come later when the network is underway to give greater bandwidth to those who need it. Fibre into rural schools is one answer and the wireless network can piggyback on the spare bandwidth.
Many thanks. One of the sessions at the conference is on exploring shared infrastructure options. See you there?
Thank you for insisting on the recognition, in the face of the argument that 2Mb/s is a woefully inadequate goal, of the plight of those of us for whom such a speed is still but a dream. In our village of 80 households, many of us struggle with 0.5 Mb/s for most of the day, with one subscriber at the end of an old overhead line experiencing no more than 0.35 Mb/s. Renewal of one section of our telephone cables last autumn, following storm damage, brought a measure of improvement for some parts of the village, but still nowhere near the reliable 2 Mb/s at which your critics scoff. There are two worlds here: I understand their frustration at not being able to move forward from their current base, but they should accept the primacy of our desperate need, and that of scores of similar Suffolk villages, to get somewhere close to where they are now.
Thank you for your interesting and important points. It is areas like yours I am particularly concerned about. I hope to see you at the conference? Best wishes.
In our area, speed via a landline is usually less than 0.2Mb. Those of us who can afford it, pay for a wireless service. Many people, especially those unemployed or retired, want to be able to access the £10.99 deals that the majority of the UK can have in order to get decent broadband speeds. These people are being penalised – they cannot access any “web-only” rates such as lower utility costs, online shopping or booking services. Aiming for 2Mb is not sufficient. In the next few years more and more services from health to finance will be broadband based and 10Mb is a necessity.
I ran a survey in our area and over 20% of households responded, an indication of the high level of interest. That was last year, just after the Broadband Conference in Trinity Park. Little has changed and while I look forward to the Suffolk-wide bid (and hope for its success), I would really like to see some action for our villages.
The secret here as in EVERY other county is to get fibre out to the rural areas. Digital village pumps that others can provide connectivity from and free the people from the bondage of the copper phone network. Market forces will do the rest…
chris
Let’s stop messing about with copper cable and getting upto speeds! I as a home user and ex computer engineer would gladly welcome anyone with fiber optic cable and run flat out @ 100Mb/s. I would therefore have less external junk on my home and make it look alot better. As for businesses it would greatly increase their availabity and profits to the world. Bt wholesale do not want to share their money making na printing press with anyone. It’s about time the goverment stopped talking about upgrading the network and started forcing the issue! Time to catch up with the rest of the world and then over take most via the fast lane.
I have just started a local e-retail and fulfilment business based at the South Lowestoft Industrial Estate. I already employ two staff with another currently on work trial. To my horror, after moving in, I found that the broadband speed is at best 1.5Mb and at worst not working at all! For an online business like mine, this really is make or break. How do businesses like mine have any chance of providing work for the mass unemployed of Waveney when the internet connection is so dire? I live just down the road from BT at Martlesham and even the speed there is not great at 6Mb. This is a complete joke as I know for a fact that on site there they are trialling ultra high speed broadband. Surely it would not hurt to roll it out to the local area when BT are planning on building thousands of houses on our picturesque landscape? How can it be that we are the county home to BT’s Research Laboratories and also some of the worst broadband speeds? Broadband inequality will contribute towards further income equality in the future if something is not done. I welcome the efforts you are putting into this fight Peter.
Thank you for this comment. I agree it is ridiculous that a major town such as Lowestoft has such poor broadband connectivity.
After years of neglect there is a need to urgently upgrade Suffolk’s infrastructure, including road, railways and broadband. Unfortunately we won’t be able to do all the work that needs to be done in the next 4 years due to the significant budget deficit that the current Government have inherited.
However I’m doing I’m doing all that I can in lobbying Ministers to ensure that the Government does make the necessary investment in broadband infrastructure, so that businesses like your’s can then themselves invest in their businesses with some confidence.
Many thanks for taking the time to contribute and please note that presentations and video will be loaded on my main site asap.
Well done for raising the issue again at PMQs yesterday Peter. Keeping the momentum up will certainly help. I am just wondering whether VirginMedia would consider expanding their coverage into Lowestoft. I see their core network already runs through, but bypasses Waveney, without any service provision. Just a thought.
http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/about_us/how_we_do_it/our_network.aspx