Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Talk Talk demand regulatory action on BTs new fibre network
"The regulatory framework today is a little too skewed to driving investment and not enough to driving competition," said Harding. "In 10 years' time when the majority of consumers should have moved on to a superfast product the idea that I will be buying my largest product from my largest competitor is not a credible place to be."
BT countered that at current prices, it will take 12 to 14 years for the company to recoup its £2.5bn investment in fibre.
More : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/08/bt-superfast-broadband
It's quite interesting to see that there is currently no regulation on the fibre network. BT are pushing forward - understandably so - though are having to compete with Virgin media who currently have the largest and largest growing fibre customer base in the UK.
Talk Talk I guess are in a position to be complaining considering the complete lack of regulation in this area and with technology advancing so rapidly it could be fair to assume there will not be an 'end' to the investment so ensuring strong competition is vital throughout. Nonetheless, considering the current climate I'd doubt that Ofcom would decide on anything too far and beyond what prices BT are currently proposing. Or do you guys think otherwise?
Harding makes comments later in the article about universal access taking precedence over speed of services. Technically, I guess this shouldn't have to be an either or. Do you think the regulation imposed regarding universal access, particularly 'last mile' access, on the next generation of internet infrastructure has been too limited?
From the top of my head I think more needed to be done to make use of mobile internet infrastructure and align this with the landline fibre markets...I'd be curious to hear your views!
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ReplyDeleteI think more needed to be done to make use of mobile internet infrastructure and align this with the landline fibre markets
What did you have in mind here, John?
Maybe something to do with Number portability...I don't really know too much about it but started reading some of this information: http://www.strategies.nzl.com/wpapers/2005011.htm
ReplyDeleteFrom my side I would believe that universal access should revolve around a set 'identification' process which mixes landline, mobile and other (technologies such as WiMAX?) and 'access' would be based around that. I'm not sure whether this is a pipe dream but technologically I can see some convergence and am curious as to what possible regulatory solutions there would be to help facilitate and drive this...
Hmm... I'm still struggling a bit to appreciate what you are thinking, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteAre you thinking that a call originated on any network should be capable of termination on any other? If so, I'd agree with you, but I'd probably be looking at the service (i.e. application) layer rather than at the network level — with the increasing deployment of data-centric networks, I'd see an increased regulatory imposition of a separation between network operation and service provider, effectively pushing services into the "over the top" space. With services thus fundamentally digital, accessing any service over the top of another network becomes much easier, subject to security considerations.
To make the services work together, such that a call on one could be terminated on another, would require interconnection — the framework today already envisages this, as you'll know. However, whilst interconnection was fundamental in the days of a service-tied-to-a-network, I'm less convinced that it is vital today — you can see my reasoning for that here.
For interconnection to work, there needs to be agreement between the service providers in question, as well as a technical means of interconnection. Whilst "similar" services may benefit from common interfaces (for example, I run an XMPP server, and it is trivial to interconnect it with another XMPP server, to allow federated messaging), that's not going to be the case with all services to be developed — terminating a FaceTime call on Skype is likely to require a mediation system, to convert one protocol to the other, or else increasing standardisation. I'm not sure I see this happening any time soon, although I'd see it as desirable.
In terms of number portability, much the same problem is faced — for a number to be "portable," all service providers to which the number could be ported must use the same form of addressing. If my identity on one service is "neil_brown", on another "neil@example.com" and another "+4477123456789," porting is going to be a nightmare! Again, we are looking at some form of mediation server, effectively doing cross-service address lookups, but, in this situation, we don't really have portability in any sense, but rather interconnection using a mediated/translated identifier — a user would need to log in to (hopefully a common) platform and specify the identities he uses on other services, to enable translation. But there are considerable practical problems with this, to my mind.
But whether these are the kinds of things you have in mind, I'm not sure — although this could be an interesting discussion to have in person at some point!