Twicket Live from Wray

http://bambuser.com/channel/FibreGuy/broadcast

Couldn't ask for better weather :)

Behind the scenes AquilaTV interviews commentator and Pimms lover Brenda

Breakdancing meet tug'o'war - it's all happening Wray way!

And for the #twicket hattrick - the inimitable organiser and originator of this world's first broadcast, John Popham!!!

BDUK Quackers

On the Broadbandcumbria blog, Louis Mosley, political advisor to Rory Stewart MP, made some revealing comments that surely confirm the Government's BDUK intervention in First Mile broadband is both ill-conceived, unfit for purpose beyond redemption and in need of decisive rectification.

Here follows the NextGenUs reply:


Louis,

2013 is rather more serious than "a bit of a wait" and the real concern is your presumably informed observation that "it may take just as long to see the first benefits of BDUK’s £530m investment in fixed line broadband."

Decent broadband for Cumbrian communities is being delayed right now by the total lack of delivery by BDUK on the one hand and the uncertainty of where and how any invention by BDUK might take place on the other hand.


Who benefits from this delay Louis?

Certainly not the residents and businesses of Cumbria that's for sure!

No, the only beneficiaries of delay are those who have most to lose from communities getting affordable future-proof access to Digital Services.

BT is an obvious candidate, with its obsolete access network of legacy copper wires.

The copper club goes wider than BT of course and includes others whose business models all depend on the same cosy commercial ecosystem that xDSL offers - creating unequal scarcity from actual abundance and profiting from perpetuating this situation.

NextGenUs has now been informed from reliable sources that even the proposed pilots are unlikely to result in beginning to deliver before 2012 and that means over a year since Rory's Rheged broadband conference got folks fired up to JFDI.

So much for Big Society delivery beyond empty rhetoric.

Prior to that conference and the subsequent announcement of BDUK market testing in Cumbria, NextGenUs put forward clear proposals to build FttH and FiWi networks WITHOUT PUBLIC SUBSIDY for any community ready to step up.

The existence of BDUK has prevented this from progressing and seriously damaged the business of NextGenUs and its partners in the process.

The reality of the funding mooted as being on offer, rumoured to be a paltry £400k, has served as a shiny bauble to disrupt the market and prevent progress for rural communities across the UK.

This situation is an emerging national scandal and a matter that ministers can no longer credibly blame on the previous Labour administration as we approach the first anniversary of the last General Election.

With Fujitsu's recent announcement regarding £multi-billion market-led investment in rural FttH, it is time for Jeremy Hunt as the responsible minister to step up, admit his mistake in prematurely intervening in the market and accept that the advice he was given and rejected as "unproven" last summer was accurate after all.

How much more proof is required than the stalled process we see today in Cumbria?

It is time for an end to BDUK activities in the First Mile.

BDUK, to have any case to justify any of its expenditure of OUR money, must curb the no-doubt well-meaning enthusiasm of its staff, particularly Mike Kiely, for meddling with the market and refocus on delivering something useful for a change:

e.g. steering county council PSN procurements towards including Dark Fibre to provide distance-independent affordable Fat Pipe backhaul for Digital Village Pumps.

Even here, the effect is akin to using scaffolding to build a house - once the building is done the scaffolding can be removed and dispensed with, similarly PSN has a 2-5 year usefulness to provide backhaul for First Mile Islands of Fibre until such time as those grow and directly interconnect.

Otherwise BDUK must be consigned to the recycling bin of history without further ado,  as Lindsey Annison helped to promote last month

Access to Digital Services is too important for the UK as a whole to be left in the hands of those who have neither the experience nor wits to deliver.

Wray aims for Parish Wide NGA

An essential element of any complete local broadband plan is providing affordable access to Digital Services to the real outliers.

The folks living on upland farms for example, beyond the theoretical benefits of Copper the Home (FttC).

Rather than putting up with sub USC speeds delivered by unfit for purpose ADSL, and with no prospect of getting anything better in the next decade, Wennet CIC, a small community Fi:Wi network, with a little help from NextGenus UK CIC, have tapped into a flowing digital village pump in Lancashire and started to spread those bits parish-wide and beyond.

Although some of the subscribers are in Cumbria and Yorkshire, with none of them able get any ADSL at all, only dial up, real internet access has no boundaries.

A great example of JFDI in action and a major step forwards in rural Lancashire that shows how through community action we can find better ways to deliver broadband.

Cumbria Thingstead UDI

With the advent of Spring, thoughts turn to growth, regeneration, vigour and NextGenUs is ready for a 90 Day NextGen Challenge:

From community meeting to Next Generation service delivery in 90 days

The timing is right for a certain Cumbrian community to hold an extraordinary Thing and choose to find a better way to get future-proof Digital Services, gigabit FttH the destination, FiWi and VSAT the stepping stones for Ubiquitous Digital Inclusion.

More news on the Thingstead location to follow...