Update on Broadband:

Issue 1 November 2010

Background

As almost everyone in Appleton with Eaton knows by now, there are many reasons to be extremely concerned about our broadband service. More than fifty local businesses depend on it. Many other people need it to work from home. Everything from our children’s education, to access to the health service, to shopping, to entertainment – even to our tax returns – will depend on it before long. Appleton cannot afford to stand still. If we do, our house prices will be severely affected. Households may soon be measuring the cost in tens of thousands of pounds if we do nothing.

Following a public meeting on 13th February 2010, arranged by Howard Thomas in his capacity as chair of the Parish Council, the Appleton-with-Eaton Broadband Action Group (ABAG) was formed in March 2010 by a group in the parish concerned about Broadband speeds and what future plans BT have for the Cumnor Exchange – the exchange which currently serves the parish.

Julian Morris and David Hine were elected co-chairmen. Active members of the group also include: Lee Rennie, Bernard Martin, Ian Bowen-Morris, Richard Readshaw, Graham Rose, Keith Stammers and, representing the Parish Council, Cllr Phil Neale. The Parish Council has recently decided it supports the aims of the group and is willing in future to set it up as a sub-committee of the Parish Council.

The group has met several times and all notes of meetings can be found on the village website at http://www.appletonwitheaton.org.uk/broadband_in_parish_november2010  

David Hine has attended meetings at District and County Council levels and Julian Morris has conducted some high-level research to establish what is technically possible to speed up Broadband. Several people in the parish have regularly tested the speed of download and upload connections.

The group has established beyond doubt that with copper wires as the means of connectivity, the speed of broadband transmission drops dramatically the further subscribers are from the exchange. Speeds at Appleton Common are, for example, of dial-up proportions. But everywhere, right back to Eaton, they are already unacceptably slow, and as the wiring and ducting deteriorates, and the volume of data to be transcribed increases, the service is set to deteriorate further.

BT responded to various enquires by saying that:

1. The cost of upgrading the Cumnor Exchange and replacing the copper wire connections to the parish would - at about £324,000 - not be economically viable.
2. The Cumnor Exchange currently has no date for upgrade. Many exchanges in the UK are included in a programme announced this year by BT for upgrade by 2015 but currently (see below) Cumnor is not one, and even if it were, the upgrade would not extend right out to us.

November 2010 and a meeting with BT

ABAG (Appleton-with-Eaton Broadband Action Group) held a second meeting on 10th November 2010 with Peter Cowen, BT's Director of Retail Services for the South East. Much of what is reported below was learned during that meeting, with additional information from BT, Government, and other web sites.

BT, Infinity and Future plans

BT's “Infinity” advertisements refer to a 5-year, £2.5 billion plan to provide “super fast broadband” in UK. BT's motivation for the plan is twofold. Faster broadband means higher prices and increased income. But there is also significant competition in the most profitable parts of the market from companies like Virgin. (More on Virgin later.) The Infinity plan is intended to maintain BT's dominance in the market.

Almost all UK broadband today is delivered using the wiring installed when telephone exchanges were full of mechanical “multiselectors” which connected one telephone, through a series of exchanges, directly to another. As exchanges were upgraded with electronic systems, it became possible to send additional digital signals along the same wires, without interrupting the basic speech telephony.

Speech can be transmitted along many miles of wire and still sound clear at the other end. But broadband signals degrade much more rapidly. Furthermore, the faster the broadband, the less distance it can travel along telephone wiring. As we know to our cost, even today's most basic broadband (ADSL) barely works over the 6km of ancient cabling between Appleton and the Cumnor exchange.

For each main exchange (there are 5,400 in UK), BT's Infinity upgrade will create a series of sub-exchanges in small “cabinets” at the roadside. The idea is that every household will be within no more than 1km of a cabinet, keeping the phone wires short. (To achieve the advertised 40 megabits per second, houses will need to be within 300-400m of a cabinet.) Cabinets will be connected back to the exchange by optical fibre cables which carry the digital signals used by broadband much more efficiently. The scheme is known as FTTC (fibre to the cabinet).

FTTC is not BT's invention, however, and it will certainly not make the UK the best-connected country in the world. FTTC technology was developed over 10 years ago and is being installed in almost every developed country in the world.

Since the upgrade plan will require replacement of both exchange equipment and old copper wiring with new optical fibre, it is a much larger step than the original introduction of broadband. BT will carry out the programme in two phases. Over the next two years, exchanges serving 40% of UK households will be upgraded. By 2015, that proportion will have increased to exchanges serving 66% (two thirds) of all households. The remaining third of households will not get the new, faster broadband services. There is no current plan to upgrade what BT themselves call the “excluded third” even after 2015.

But this is not the whole story. Without significant subsidy or contribution from government or other sources, BT has no plans to invest in long optical fibre upgrades to bring improved broadband to households a long way from an exchange. Even in upgraded exchanges, approximately 20% of households will not be benefit from the FTTC upgrade. Their broadband will remain in whatever state it is today.

So what of Appleton-with-Eaton?

We learned that our exchange, Cumnor, in common with most of rural Oxfordshire, is currently not on the list of those to be upgraded by 2015. We are part of the “excluded third”. Worse, even if the Cumnor exchange were upgraded, Appleton-with-Eaton itself is almost certainly too far away to be included. The additional income we would generate for BT would not justify the investment.

So, is there any point in continuing our discussions with BT? Hopefully, yes. There are two key prerequisites to improving our situation:

1. The Cumnor exchange must be upgraded to FTTC. BT is keen to upgrade more exchanges but says its decision to do so will depend on additional subsidy (partnership) from national or local government. In Oxfordshire, in areas adjacent to major town centres that will be upgraded, there are exchanges that could be added to the plan for relatively little additional cost. Cumnor is one of these. The case for local-government subsidy hinges largely on support for non-urban businesses. In Cornwall, this support has been very strong and BT now has a plan to upgrade the entire county, as compared with less than half of Oxfordshire. Effective political pressure is essential.
2. As explained earlier, even if Cumnor is upgraded, Appleton-with-Eaton would probably not be included unless part of the optical fibre laying cost is found from the community itself. The total cost and the exact mechanism for generating the contribution are not yet known and will require a lot of additional thought and discussion.

One further important point came out of our meeting with BT. Aware of the incompleteness of their current national plan, with a third of households “excluded”, they are looking for models - “exemplars” - of cooperation and cost-sharing between local government, individual communities, and BT which could show the way for the upgrade to benefit closer to 100% of UK households. We were told that BT feels that Appleton-with-Eaton, which they describe as a “failed broadband community”, could be a excellent exemplar. We are not yet sure what this means but we believe we should work to find out.

Finally - a big question - shouldn't we, as of right, get the same broadband services as our neighbours in central Oxford? Didn't the (last) Government promise a minimum of 2Mbits per second broadband for every household in UK?

One day that may be so, but for now the reality is that BT and all other companies in the broadband industry only invest where they can see a good return. Virgin, for example, only offers broadband in the densest urban areas and would not come anywhere near a village like ours. To get the service we want, we can, we hope, get an indirect contribution through local government subsidy from those in more favoured locations (in broadband terms), but as individuals and as a community we will almost certainly also have to put our own cash on the table.

Next steps

The Appleton with Eaton Broadband group is pursuing the leads described above energetically. We shall get back to the village with more information, including ideas for a campaign targeting the media and elected representatives. We shall probably hold another parish public meeting on Broadband shortly. All this needs careful planning and management, however, so please don’t start quite yet. But please do pass this report on to friends and neighbours, by whatever means, and if you haven’t registered your support for better broadband for the village on the BT Race to Infinity website, (www.bt.com/racetoinfinity) please do so quickly.

We will keep the village website up-to-date with any news of developments, and if there are any questions about our Broadband position please do contact a member of the committee or email appleton.website@dsl.pipex.com  

David Hine and Julian Morris

14 Nov 2011