Written evidence submitted by Inspired By Technology Ltd (DCS0054)
Written Submission to the Scottish Affairs Committee in relation to broadband coverage throughout Scotland.
Submitted by Kenneth Walker - Technical Director of Inspired By Technology Limited, Scottish Borders.
Introduction and Background
Inspired By Technology (IBT) are a multi-discipline technology supply, advisory and consultancy business headquartered in Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders and with additional premises in Bathgate West Lothian. IBT was formed in 2004 and services clients (mainly SME businesses) throughout Scotland in sectors as diverse as law, logistics, country estates, metal fabrication and food production. IBT partner with industry leaders such as Microsoft, Cisco Meraki and Citrix.
Throughout our history, and indeed since my technology career began in the City of London in 1995 we and our clients have had exposure to and been impacted in a variety of ways some positive but mostly negative by the UK connectivity architecture and the commercial offerings. More recently we have, on behalf of a client, project managed connectivity installations in Krakow and Dublin both of which highlighted how utterly poor the majority of connectivity offerings are in the UK. In both examples, we could order and take delivery of high speed broadband significantly quicker than we can in the UK.
As solutions providers with clients throughout the UK, Inspired By Technology have actively supplied connectivity technologies including standard broadband, leased lines, satellite broadband and have worked with BT (both .Net and retails solutions), Virgin Media, CityFibre solutions in Edinburgh, and Europasat satellite solutions for a cross section of SME organisations.
Key Issues
Lack of penetration of FTTC solutions
Whilst FTTC rollout has increased in recent years and rural availability is noticeably better than it has been issues still remain. The complete reliance on a commercial cabling provider - OpenReach who naturally see no commercial benefit to delivering high speed broadband to lightly populated areas is problematic. Generally in rural locations, OpenReach are the only organisation with actual cables into most premises. There is no natural competitor (e.g. Virgin Media or CityFibre). This leads to ludicrous inconsistencies in coverage. For example, in Eyemouth, Berwickshire, one side of the harbour area has high speed fibre connectivity ( the side with the vast majority of residential property); whilst the other side (lowly populated industrial commercial areas), does not. It should be noted that this inconsistency is not exclusive to rural areas. Standard FTTC is not available in property in the heart of Edinburgh – Rutland Square, EH1 2BW. If you have an office in Walker Street - which is 3 minutes walk - it is available. As part of our service to our clients we advise clients to disregard areas of poor connectivity or lack of affordable connectivity when choosing premises.
Slow ordering and lack of availability even in areas where FTTC is available
Even in areas which can receive high speed fibre connectivity the lead time between order placement and actual delivery can, in our experience, be up to 21 days. As mentioned in the introduction, we have witnessed quicker ordering and delivery processes in both Ireland and Poland. Delivery should in our opinion be not more than 7 days and FTTC should be activated on all BT landlines as standard allowing the property occupant to activate service within hours.
The other popular issue pertains to a lack of capacity even in areas where the customer can officially receive fibre broadband. On numerous occasions our clients have been informed that although fibre is available in their area, there is no capacity at the local exchange. This has led on one occasion to a Borders based business to have to wait approximately two months and intervention by their local MP before their placed order was actually delivered.
Excessive excess construction charges
Should a client require an enterprise grade connection, (leased line) then the obstacles to rural delivery are substantial. Where a rural based client requires a leased line for enterprise class connectivity they will have to pay excess construction charges where their urban counterparts will not. On one occasion recently a business in Berwickshire were quoted in excess of £40k one off connection charges. We have project managed the installation of similar circuits in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Motherwell, none of which was subject to this excess charging.
Future Options
I would like to close this brief submission with an extract from an article I wrote for our website after attending a conference in Aberdeen some years ago. I believe it sums up the boldness that is required to build the type of digital intellectual economy that we all want and address many of the frustrations I have expressed. It is my opinion that the great strides required to create a fully digital economy in the UK cannot be realised with the current reliance on commercial providers to provide the basis for connectivity i.e. the cables going into property.
“I had the pleasure of attending the Transform Digital: Aberdeen conference recently. Whilst it was encouraging and somewhat inspiring to hear of the plans to deliver fibre in that city, we were lucky enough to hear from speakers from Norway and Stockholm who were, it must be said, extremely disparaging about the current connectivity options in the UK. Indeed they gave the distinct impression that they were in some way digital missionaries preaching in an under-developed and unexplored part of the world.
It’s only when in the company of fellow Europeans that you realise that the pathetic speeds, particularly upload speeds and connectivity options that are available in the UK are a hindrance to the full exploitation of the undoubted digital talent and potential that the UK possesses. Still I pointed out to our Nordic brethren that tortoisian upload speeds in Britain gives us plenty of time to drink tea and coffee during the watching of the blue bar that dominates our days.
One project which was of interest was the Stokab (www.stokab.se) project where the city council of Stockholm built and continue to expand a passive fibre network throughout the city. In their own words the Stokab project has the following aims:
“The goal of the company has been to build a competition-neutral infrastructure capable of meeting future communication needs, spur economic activity, diversity and freedom of choice, as well as minimising disruption to the city’s streets.”
In simple terms, Stokab stick in the fibre and the vendors pay them a fee to deliver a service over that fibre. The returns for Stokab have only been generated over a long term, and it takes a 20 year vision to deliver any kind of decent financial return (net profits of SEK 175 million in 2013). Now this length of investment and return cycle isn’t one that a corporate entity could consider, as the gap between investment and infrastructure spend and return is obviously too long.
In my opinion what the Stokab experiences tells us is this type of project must be done by government at some level and requires a cross party consensus to ensure delivery and a long term commitment. Can we really say that the reliance on private providers in the UK has worked? We are only just seeing large scale penetration of fibre to the cabinet (fttc). The economic, social and lifestyle benefits outlined by Stokab were profound. It’s no accident that both Spotify and Skype were born in Stockholm. Surely this is proof, if any were needed, that data connectivity projects must be considered and managed in the same way as other large scale infrastructure projects such as railways and roads.”