From the Foreword to Beyond Broadband:

Broadband has transformed the way that many of us live, work and play. In the words of the Digital Britain report: “We are at a tipping point in relation to the online world. It is moving from conferring advantage on those who are in it to conferring active disadvantage on those who are without.”

Yet many people live in parts of the UK where broadband still isn’t available or cannot deliver the performance they need to become fully engaged online. And already many countries are moving on to the next level – broadband over optical fibre – to enable video-rich applications and entertainment, to facilitate small businesses and home working, and to support multiple users in each household.

The UK has been slow to deploy next-generation access and fibre-to-the-home. As a country we do not feature in the FTTH Rankings – a league table of nations where at least 1% of households subscribe to broadband over fibre connections. Indeed, analysts estimate that the UK lags the leading fibre nations like Japan and Sweden by at least five years.

Our device came with a mobile sim from Three, universally recognised as the best data network in the UK. Suitable data sims are available for £15 per month and the WiBE device costs £249.99 incl VAT , delivery and a free 1GB SIM.

The WiBE uses multi-beam antenna technology and some clever electronics to extend the range and throughput of a 3G mobile network. This allows the 3G network to be a viable option even in areas where there would appear to be little or no 3G signal.

The device can bring speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, and an average of at least 2 Mbps to rural areas. Replacing a 3G dongle with a WiBE could really enhance the user experience and thanks to the inbuilt wireless router, is capable of providing ‘whole house’ access to the Internet.

We found the device easy to set up. Unpack it, plug it in, place on a window ledge and wait a few minutes for the electronics to work their magic. Search for the WiBE WiFi network in the usual way on your laptop, iPad, or smartphone (or WiFi enabled PC/Mac) and enter the key. That’s it. Done.

We immediately opened our SpeedSurvey page and ran a test and were amazed at the first result;

3.6 Mbps download and 1.3 Mbps upload speeds! Incredible. We immediately switched back to our wired household broadband and ran the test again. Initially thinking the Speed Survey was having a wobbly. We were reassured to record our ‘normal’ speeds of 1.8 Mbps down and 0.54 Mbps up.

Back to the WiBE and things kept on improving. After 20 minutes continuous use the download speed exceeded 5 Mbps.

We maintain a charity website from home and over the past year have had terrible difficulty using the site’s content management system, with the dashboard page fragmenting and the simplest editing tasks becoming near impossible. A source of regular frustration and tension in our household! Connected via the WiBE we logged into the back end of the charity site and immediately noticed the difference – no presentation difficulties, navigation very fast and image uploads lighteningly quick!

It’s really hard coming to terms with mobile 3G broadband being so much better than our home, copper phone line based service. But better it certainly is. For those residents in FibreValley who are currently struggling to get online at all and in those areas where we know BT are not going to improve the infrastructure any time soon, a WiBE really could be the answer.

We’ll report on our trials in more detail in due course. In the meantime, if you are interested in hearing more about the WiBE please get in touch.

The EC wants every person within the European Union to be able to access at least 30Mbit/s broadband connections by 2020.

“In Europe, we face several problems in deploying broadband, with insufficient investment, problems in accessing capital, and a weak business case for rollout in less populated areas,” said vice president for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes.

“This is potentially a serious barrier to growth. So, first, at least seven billion of the proposed €9.2bn would be made available for investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure.”

The EC said that providing this access would have significant benefits for SMEs, by allowing them to access the latest software, applications and storage capabilities via cloud computing, as well as allowing more staff to work remotely and from home.

“Over just 10 years, the right broadband development could give Europe over one trillion euros in additional economic activity, and create millions of jobs,” Kroes added.

“An increase in broadband penetration of 10 percentage points would increase Europe’s annual GDP growth by between 0.9 and 1.5 per cent.”

Kroes explained that the remaining part of the proposed €9.2bn would be invested in creating public networks that could be accessed by public authorities to help deliver a co-ordinated approach on a raft of key issues across Europe.

“Such projects would make it easier to provide cross-border online public services: setting up a business, authenticating identity, delivering government or health services, setting up an intelligent energy network, or responding to cyber-threats across borders,” she said.

The funding forms just part of a huge €50bn plan announced at the same time by Commission president Jose Barroso to improve all aspects of Europe’s network infrastructures, including transport and energy systems.

The plan will now go before the European Parliament and the EU’s Council of Ministers for approval.

From the Foreword to Beyond Broadband:

Broadband has transformed the way that many of us live, work and play. In the words of the Digital Britain report: “We are at a tipping point in relation to the online world. It is moving from conferring advantage on those who are in it to conferring active disadvantage on those who are without.”

Yet many people live in parts of the UK where broadband still isn’t available or cannot deliver the performance they need to become fully engaged online. And already many countries are moving on to the next level – broadband over optical fibre – to enable video-rich applications and entertainment, to facilitate small businesses and home working, and to support multiple users in each household.

The UK has been slow to deploy next-generation access and fibre-to-the-home. As a country we do not feature in the FTTH Rankings – a league table of nations where at least 1% of households subscribe to broadband over fibre connections. Indeed, analysts estimate that the UK lags behind the leading fibre nations like Japan and Sweden by at least five years.

Download Beyond Broadband (PDF format)

Some tasks are better addressed outside ‘normal office hours’, so full attention can be given. Remote access to the office systems at evenings, weekends and even during holidays is necessary in order to keep on top of admin and systems management for the company itself, as well as to provide backup to office based support and sales staff.

Ms T’s home is only 1.7 miles from the nearest telephone exchange, yet during office hours her ADSL broadband connection from her home, at between 2 & 4 mbps download speed is only just adequate for remote access tasks. As the speed has a tendency to fluctuate significantly even during these ‘off peak’ hours this connection is not reliable enough for streaming video or voice data, so video conferencing and VoIP, whilst desirable, are not feasible.

Outside office hours, when many other residents in her area of Oakworth, including her own children, are using the internet for homework, online gaming, shopping, music and video downloads and TV on demand etc.), there is so much contention that the connection often slows to below 0.5mbps download speed. Uploading data to the office systems becomes impossible at these times as the VPN connection drops when the transfer rate is too slow. Remote control of office machines is not feasible at such slow speeds either.

Some ISPs limit the amount of data each user can transfer (bandwidth throttling) at peak times in order to ‘share out’ the bandwidth, but this means that everyone gets a slower than desirable connection. For those users on the busiest stretches of cable, and especially those more than a mile or so away from the exchange, the service is poor, unusable or even unavailable.

Mr H. is on the same tariff, with the same ISP as Ms T. He lives about 1 mile from Haworth exchange on a seemingly quieter stretch of cable. He is only 0.7 of a mile closer to the exchange than Ms T, yet for the same monthly fee he receives between 2 and 6 times the download speed Ms T gets, even at peak times.

Both Ms T and Mr H found that during the snowy periods last winter there were times when it was safer to work from home, rather than attempting to drive 2 to 3 miles to the office in Keighley. Mr H had the bandwidth to be much more productive than Ms T.

In theory the internet provides the means for people such as Ms T and Mr H to improve their work life balance and reduce their car usage through working at home whenever possible, or by even running an entire business from home should they choose to do so. The reality is that the rural residents and businesses, who, arguably, could benefit most from increased internet usage, find that without a reliable connection and good data transfer speeds the internet is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Ms T and Mr H would both prefer to live further up the Worth Valley to further improve their respective lifestyles through living in a calm and quiet environment, and to reduce their car usage still further by increasing the proportion of work they are able to do from home via the internet. Without reliable internet connectivity in the upper Worth Valley this can never be anything but a (‘fat’) ‘pipe dream’.

To some extent technology has been used differently by the pre-16 (compulsory) education sectors and the post-16 (FE & skills).  Compulsory education is still largely classroom based so, as long as a high speed connection is available to each school premises, technology-based-learning can take place.  However, FE & Skills and HE is based in a variety of settings and, increasingly, teaching & learning is being delivered via the internet. However, increasingly pre-16 education relies upon technology in terms of homework assignments and remote access to and submission of, course work.

For the past decade education establishments have been building “virtual learning environments” (VLEs) and e-portfolio systems where classes and resources can be downloaded and assessments can be uploaded.  Pretty much every secondary school and Further Education (FE) College in the country has a VLE and, as exam boards start to recognise e-portfolio systems, FE colleges, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), Work Based Learning Providers (WBL) and Independent Specialist Colleges (who provide education for those with profound learning needs) are putting a great deal of their assessment online.  Adult & Community Education (ACL), widely thought to enhance and regenerate communities, is also moving online, with 80% of Yorkshire & Humber providers using a VLE and 13% developing one at present.  VLEs don’t just contain text based resources, but also video and audio files, or links to those on external hosting sites (e.g. YouTube).

In recent months, many post-16 providers have been moving from resourced based online sessions to “webinars” (i.e. lessons with everyone connected, using streamed video).  At least 2 ACL providers and half a dozen FE Colleges in the region are examining moving a portion of their classes online.

There are some exceptions in terms of ACL and WBL providers however, in the main, FE&S providers and HEIs are connected via the very high speed JaNet connection, providing them with broadband links in excess of 50Mbps.  This is normally extended to all college campuses, though often at a reduced speed.  The problem comes with the large number of students now working off–site.  Several colleges in the region now run online courses that require no or minimal attendance on campus.  HEIs have been doing this for decades and, even when campus based, routinely offer their lectures to students as recorded audio or video files.

While the offsite issue applies, in the main, to post-16 sectors, it is becoming an emerging issue in the compulsory sector.  The various agendas around personalising learning are examining whether choice of venue could be an option for some students, as a method of engagement.  Additionally, during the recent snowfalls, many classes were quickly switched to VLEs.  VLEs in the complusary sector are also used to report data back to parents – school information, classes, homework, letters and in some cases grades, may be shared via a VLE facility or similar.  In the Worth Valley, all the primary schools use a “Moodle” VLE to share newsletters, policies or similar.

To access a VLE effectively, it is essential to have a speed of only around 0.5 Mbps, however, if the VLE has high quality picture files and, more crucially, audio and video files, a speed in excess of 1 Mbps would be needed.  A webinar system would need a dedicated 1.5 Mbps connection (dedicated meaning that, if a home had a 1.5 Mbps connection no one else would be using the internet connection during that webinar) and needs upload speeds of greater than 1 Mbps if presenters are going be sending data (e.g. webcam footage) of reasonable quality.

Currently, according to tests carried out at broadbandspeedcker.com, the core of Oxenhope has an average speed of just over 2 Mbps and a mode of in excess of 2 Mbps.  However, when the outlying farms are taken into account, the mean speed falls to 1.5 and the mode to below 1Meg.  Stanbury has less available information, however the mean is just short of 1.5 Mbps (thanks to just one suspiciously high result) and the mode is significantly below 1 Mbps.

In Oakworth, the homess outside the core report a mean of just 0.6 Mbps and even with the main is only a mean of 1.2 Mbps with a mode of 1.5 Mbps.  (N.B:  this excludes customers using Virgin fibreoptics in parts of Oakworth.  With this taken into account the average rises to just short of 3 Mbps, demonstrating the importance of fibreoptic broadband).

As a result, it is safe to conclude that the majority of learners in Oakworth and Stanbury are unable to access modern learning methods and many will struggle to access any VLE content at all. Users in Oxenhope should be able to if they have sole use of the internet in their home.

Content by Kevin Campbell-Wright (@kevupnorth)

PostScript by David Robertson-Brown (@DavidR_B)

As a Dad of three young lads in Stanbury, I regularly help out with homework and try to expand their minds and connection to the wider world.

The adoption of technology within a learning environment is continuing to grow and the local school is rightly encouraging kids to use specific web sites to help with their projects both within and out of school hours. They have a fibre broadband supply which runs straight through the village, but residents had no opportunity to pay to access this when it was being installed.

It’s essential that the rest of the village and neighbouring farms are kept up to date with such technologies and services, so we can continue with the further learning of our children at home. A decent broadband service is central to this and I fear that kids in the Upper Worth Valley will be disadvantaged by the commercial attitudes of large internet service providers and BT whose only focus is profit. Fair attention should be given to this by our authorities so that fair access is available. This  is REALLY important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCEj0pKPto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZcOGbZt5mg

?hd=1

Derrick Murphy welcomed the government’s decision to match the council’s £15m bid for the network, with private firms set to add £30m.

Norfolk was one of only four counties to be given government funding due to its rural location and slow speeds.

“It’s a fantastic day for Norfolk,” said Conservative Mr Murphy.

“It’s what we’ve been crying out for in this county for ages and it is a truly historic day now that we’ve got it,” he added.

Other counties to receive an share of £49m funding from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) are Wiltshire and Devon and Somerset, which launched a joint bid.

Currently more than 50,000 homes and businesses in Norfolk are in broadband “not spots”, having no broadband access or experiencing speeds of less than 2Mbps (megabits per second), Norfolk County Council said .

It promised every property in Norfolk could access a minimum connection of 2Mbps by 2015 and superfast broadband would be available for most of the county. Superfast internet would be at least 10 times faster.

Independent research carried out by SQW consultants predicted the superfast rollout could bring an extra £401m into the Norfolk economy by 2025.

It also shows that about 1,330 jobs could be created.

Chris Starkey from Shaping Norfolk’s Future said the news was “at least as important as the A11 dualling” and would benefit “thousands of businesses, schoolchildren and older people”.

Caroline Williams, chief executive of Norfolk Chamber of Commerce, said she believed the pledge would “help people to embrace new technologies” and “help the economy at a time when we really need it”.

Sarah Lee, head of policy for The Countryside Alliance Foundation, said: “We welcome this new funding package but it is important that there is competitive rollout of broadband services.”

The government said it wanted to make the UK the best place for superfast broadband in Europe by 2015.