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Broadband Enabling Technology pilot gets ready for take off
Openreach has developed Broadband Enabling Technology capable of turning Not Spots (areas where people cannot access broadband) into Yes Spots (areas where they can). It has already been deployed in nine telephone exchanges across Britain - Twyford, Badsey, Llanfyllin, Leyland, Ponteland, Wigton, Wymondham, Culloden and Dingwall.
We’ll soon be asking communications providers with customers covered by these exchanges to provide us with 200 trialists for broadband services running at up to 1Mb or up to 2Mb. If all goes well, another 800 trialists should be connected to 70 more enabled exchanges by March 2010. National availability is planned from April 2010 onwards.
While a market exists for Broadband Enabling Technology*, deployment is expensive.
Given the additional costs, it’s difficult to construct a viable business case for the national deployment of Broadband Enabling Technology.
That said, we fervently believe that this solution could transform the dream of a universally available broadband service into reality. We are therefore hopeful that the costs could be met by the Government’s Digital Britain scheme, or by other sources of external funding.
*Around 160,000 households cannot currently access broadband services and another 1.5 million cannot download at more than ½Mb.
How does it work?
Broadband Enabling Technology utilises a modified business class Digital Subscriber Link platform - along with compact unit installed at trialist homes - to provide a stable broadband service.
This combination enables broadband to be transmitted over very long copper pairs with very low latency. What makes this solution totally unique is that it is not dependent upon existing systems. It therefore offers our 450 communications provider customers a completely equivalent product (i.e. one that’s available to all of them on an equal basis, regardless of size or influence in the marketplace).
Benefits
Broadband Enabling Technology offers benefits to our communications provider customers, to their customers and to society as a whole:
- Quick and easy to install - An Openreach engineer can install several remote units a day
- Quick and easy to provision - No need for special switches at the exchange, just a signal booster provided and maintained by Openreach
- Easy on the eye - No ugly or bulky boxes in the home or dishes or antennae on the roof - just a compact box not much bigger than an existing telephone point
- Quality and continuity of service - Guaranteed low latency over copper. Not affected by weather or atmospheric conditions that can cause drop-offs with wireless and satellite services
- Quality of life - With broadband, work is what you do - not where you do it. If you can work from home and want to, so much the better - for your work life balance (as an end user), and for the environment (less travel on the daily grind to the office equates to reduced CO2 emissions)
- Digital inclusion - It’s increasingly viewed as unfair to be unable to take advantage of the benefits of broadband that the vast majority of the population (99.6% based on an Ofcom figure of 512Kb) takes for granted, such as flexible working, online shopping and online banking. Exclusion is not just unfair to the people who cannot access broadband. It’s unfair to their friends, relatives and business associates as well
- Regeneration and eGovernment - Local authorities and Regional Development Agencies are continually looking for ways to improve the quality of life and the quality of the services they provide for citizens. Broadband can be the enabler.
