Broadband fibre

Connectivity, the last Frontier and the Great Divide

Pro
Image: Stockfresh

13 November 2015

In inner suburban Dublin an ordinary family — kids in school, parents at work, five days a week — can have 200mbps broadband for a modest monthly rate. As for mobile devices, 3G delivers up to 7mbps or so and 4G is generally delivering what it promises. Over in the West of Ireland, a village with 1,200 permanent residents, a 500-pupil secondary school and over 200 hotel bedrooms is still stuck with Eir ADSL and a theoretical maximum of 7mbps. If anyone achieved that (although 04.00 might be good) it would be local news. Most business and professional users can tell when school’s out without looking at a clock.

There are some alternatives. Mobile data is still 3G and a couple of megs is the practical top speed, of course, but it is functional. A relatively recent saviour, and perhaps a sign of the future, is fixed wireless. One provider covers the entire village and another its northern edge and both can deliver up to 20mbps. Once again with a youthful population contention is an issue. But at least the average speed is around 8-10mbps and the minimum tends to hover around 3-5mbps. In the meantime, local ADSL slows to 0.2 — or even slower — and that frustrating ‘connection timed out’ message from your essential web site.

“The salient point is that broadband, like electricity, has long passed the point of being a privilege for the better off or even a free-for-all commercial and competitive market. Like electricity, we can now see that a key part of its national economic value is that it is universal. The final 5% or whatever it is may be, in business terms, disproportionately expensive to provide services for” 

Yes, this is a bleat from the ‘Wesht’. Yes, it comes from a deep resentment of the comparative advantages enjoyed across so many aspects of personal and business life by urban and above all city area. Mostly, we country folk understand the reasons and the economics perfectly well. We do not expect a multiplex down the street or an airport or even a choice of more than a handful of pubs. Our compensation is a more congenial life style, for those it suits. On the other hand, we do expect education, healthcare, electricity, a reasonable quota of Gardaí — and telecommunications. This is the second decade of the 21st century. The Internet is in its 40s, the World Wide Web is over 25. Earlier this year the US Federal Communications Agency re-defined ‘Basic Broadband’ as 25mbps downstream. Is it too much to suggest that internet access at viable speeds is a civic right at this stage of Ireland’s development?

Bleat over, the whole point is that in today’s ICT world it is all too easy to take connectivity for granted. When it fails or is not available, the smartest systems on the planet are about as much use as a car with no fuel. The best analogy is electricity or indeed energy generally: in modern life, for the individual as well as for a business, our dependence is effectively total. The IT industry used to talk a lot about ‘joined up solutions’. Without always-on connectivity at reasonable bandwidth, we are still at a digital stage like the first scratchy crayon steps towards handwriting with nibs.

Ireland now has an excellent fibre network, extending even to MANs in country towns with populations of no more than a few thousand. The Enet coverage list suggests that the smallest has perhaps just 1,500-1,600 inhabitants. So far so good. The economics of running fibre in ducts along streets are clearly pretty good compared to long distances with few users tapping in. But there are problems. For a start, the commercial providers are vying with each other so that quite a few small towns have more than one MAN. That does seem rather daft in the context of national planning. Mobile telcos share masts. Why could broadband providers not share fibre infrastructure?

The other problem is the last mile… or furlong. There are many parts of the country where the only broadband options within a few hundred yards of a MAN are ADSL or mobile. So ordinary households are in the position of the kid with a nose to the sweet shop window… and empty pockets. For a business, the investment in a fibre spur or link may have a good business case but not always. Fixed wireless is the saviour around the country. With a nearby MAN for backhaul, many small providers can provide reliable broadband at a reasonable speed and subscription rate. But since there is no national scheme or incentives, that is all arbitrary. There are places where two or even more fixed wireless providers are competing. But there are considerably more where there is simply no such option in prospect. Yet in Cork city, for example, there are 30 different service providers utilising the Enet MAN.

That is the gap. Commercial market imperatives are driving broadband in urban areas and the reflated economy is looking healthy for the future. But out in the sticks, bogs, backwoods, boondocks and other digitally deprived areas, there is a clear and growing divide. It is going to be a serious problem unless some government leadership is shown… and given. The electricity analogy is valid. It is not just a question of ‘civic rights’ although that argument has to be strong as we pass the mid-point of the second decade of the 21st century.

The salient point is that broadband, like electricity, has long passed the point of being a privilege for the better off or even a free-for-all commercial and competitive market. Like electricity, we can now see that a key part of its national economic value is that it is universal. The final 5% or whatever it is may be, in business terms, disproportionately expensive to provide services for.

But that is to look at the picture from the RoI per customer perspective. That is narrow. It is valid and understandable in any given service provider but from a national point of view it is simply not. In today’s world, a major element of the economic, social and cultural value of broadband is that it is universal and comprehensive, available 24×365. Take what we used to call e-government (with great fanfare and fuss, now a lingering echo): you cannot have e-government if a significant section of the public cannot participate. They are digitally disenfranchised, quite literally. Logically, you could take the view that the omission of those people on the wrong side of the divide actually invalidates the entire concept. You cannot have e-government without the e-.

So from a national perspective, it would be economically and politically justifiable to allocate resources to bridge the gap and bring universal broadband to the citizens. The potential cost per user or premises is going to be higher than average, but that is not what we should be looking at. Given the noises we like to make internationally about our talent and technology and being ‘…the best little country in the world to do business in’, claiming 100% broadband penetration would be a boast of significant value.

The other side is that the countries which are already there like Singapore or Norway or the UK are forging ahead every month. Singapore has now launched its Smart Nation initiative as a follow-on from its leading position as a smart city. We may well find, as we have done in other areas, that we have slipped down the league tables to some undistinguished position. We are currently 55th (fixed line) and 53rd (mobile) in the rankings according to the International Telecommunications Union. The costs of clawing back up to near the top might be out of realistic reach in the very near future.

We are currently in the early hype cycle about the Internet of Things. The potential is huge and our government, as always, is abreast of the hype. The spin has begun, playing the talent card and, in fairness, pointing to the significant research and participation in EU projects already under way. Our intellectual infrastructure is well up to it. But in harsh reality our national connectivity is somewhere above serviceable (and world calls for urban multinationals) but far from leading edge. Sensors and other potentially useful devices would be economically clobbered if 3G or 4G were the only connection channels available. So are we looking at a sub-variant for Ireland, the IoMT — the Internet of Most Things / Internet of Many Things?

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie