4G: BDUK Panic

clohamon

Panicked by its waterboarding at the UK Public accounts committee, BDUK has turned to the mobile industry for a face-saving fix.

Get ready for our own DCENR to use the UK for cover.

UK mobile operators invited to rural broadband pow-wow

U.K. mobile operators have been invited to a meeting hosted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on Monday to discuss how to extend broadband to the final 10% of the country.

A spokeswoman for EE confirmed that her company is attending today's meeting. Meanwhile, a Vodafone spokeswoman told Total Telecom that the operator is "engaged with the government about rural broadband" but declined to say whether Vodafone representatives will be there.

As well as discussing how to get rural dwellers connected, Monday's meeting also represents an opportunity for the DCMS to demonstrate that the next phase of its rural broadband plan does not represent merely another set of easy contract wins for BT.

Indeed, the department drew criticism in a recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report for failing to ensure sufficient competition in the procurement process used by local authorities to source networks as part of its rural broadband scheme.

The DCMS's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) arm is spending £530 million, match-funded by local authorities, to provide coverage to 90% of the country by the end of 2017. So far, BT has won more than half of the 44 local authority contracts up for grabs and is expected to win the rest of them.

When the PAC report was published, Vodafone and EE weighed in, claiming the government was wrong not to consider mobile a viable means of providing rural broadband coverage.

Monday's meeting has been arranged so that the DCMS can seek input from the industry on how best to reach the rest of the country, and hopefully avoid landing it in hot water with the PAC again. The government has set aside a further £250 million to extend broadband to another 5% of the country by 2017, and the DCMS is also exploring how it can get the final 5% connected by 2018.

A statement from the DCMS said it is keen to find out how it can "expand the network of suppliers involved in the delivery of superfast broadband". In addition to the meeting, the DCMS is undertaking a consultation exercise and has given potential network suppliers until the end of October to submit their views on the subject.
Vodafone said the meeting indicates that the government is coming round to the idea of using mobile, in particular 4G, for rural broadband.

"When BDUK was set up I don't think anyone really knew how powerful 4G could be," said the spokeswoman. Now 4G services have launched, the government "can see that it offers speeds that are comparable to fixed broadband", she said.

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=483631

watty

Mobile, even 4G can't deliver "broadband" at all, certainly not "superfast" Broadband. At least BT was delivering real Broadband. Fixed Wireless can deliver very low density Rural Broadband, but cost is high above 20Mbps (Busy Hour minimum about 16Mbps). For "super fast" the Fixed Wireless would be about x5 more expensive than 20Mbps. Even 100Mbps 4G can only deliver about 1Mbps MINIMUM "busy hour" to rural users and even that would be x2 to x4 more masts. Average speed figures are useless for Mobile for any idea of Quality of Service.

Mobile is simply totally uneconomic for Fixed Broadband delivery if real minimum "busy hour" broadband speeds are contracted rather than meaningless "up to" or "average" speeds.

The problem wasn't BT but the concept of competition on infrastructure that can only economically have 1.5 Wholesale suppliers (the 0.5 being broadband on urban cable TV systems).

You could maybe have regional suppliers, but for real rural broadband only one wholesale supplier per region makes sense.

This is an absolute blatant lie

"When BDUK was set up I don't think anyone really knew how powerful 4G could be," said the spokeswoman. Now 4G services have launched, the government "can see that it offers speeds that are comparable to fixed broadband", she said.

We knew probably before 2004 how good LTE / 4G would be. It only offers the speeds comparable to BASIC fixed broadband for less than 50% of users / times / locations covered. Less than 1% of users / times / locations covered can get "super fast" speed. This is basic physics and economics. Any one that claims otherwise is a lying or a fool. To have assured minimum speeds comparable to real broadband a Mobile network would need at least x3 spectrum and x10 to x30 as many masts as will be deployed in the next 20 years.

Politicians:
Ignore the "headline", "peak" and even average speeds. These are absolutely meaningless to deliver broadband, it's only "Marketing".