Superfast North Yorkshire

Yesterday was the official launch of Superfast North Yorkshire, the BDUK project for the county. As well as members of North Yorkshire County Council and NYNET (the private IT delivery company wholly owned by the council who were involved in the procurement process) there was Bill Murphy (MD of NGA), Mike Galvin (MD of Network Investment) and some other BT project managers and engineers.

A website (SuperfastNorthYorkshire.com) was announced which will be regularly updated with information on the deployment (we will see over the next few months how regular these updates really are). A new Superfast North Yorkshire logo was also unveiled which may appear on Openreach vans and FTTC cabs in the county.

It was reiterated that the contract specified that 90% of premises would be connected to fibre broadband with the remaining 10% receiving at least 2Mbit/s down and 0.5 Mbit/s up with the project being completed by the end of 2014. The point was made the satellite would be the last resort and that white space, fixed wireless and 4G/LTE were also being considered. It should be noted that fixed wireless broadband provided by LN Communications (which uses the NYNET PSN for backhaul) covers quite a few rural locations in the county already with typical speeds of 20Mbit/s symmetrical bursting up to 50Mbit/s. BT also said that they wanted to work with communities in the final 10% and would consider extending fibre to these areas if the community could show demand and also do some of the digging etc.

As for areas of deployment only two were actually announced - Amotherby and Ainderby Steeple. These are small villages and will be used to trial a new type of fibre which BT hasn�t used before and which works better over longer distances than the fibre they have been using in their commercial deployment. It looks like the exchange head ends for these two areas are Malton and Northallerton respectively which are already FTTC enabled as part of BT�s commercial rollout. Other areas included in the first phase of deployment are due to be announced in the next couple of months. The first phase areas are scheduled to be completed by Spring 2013 and will cover 11,000 homes and businesses.

As for exchange only lines Mike Galvin said that 80% of EO lines would get FTTC (via hybrid cabinets that Openreach have been trialing in Steanalees, Cornwall) and 20% FTTP. I pressed him on which areas would get native FTTP but he would not say at present.

Bill Murphy thought that it would be another few months before the EU granted state aid approval for the BDUK framework which should give North Yorkshire a bit of a head start as it applied for, and has been granted EU state aid approval separately.

I will try and update the thread with any further information I get.

Is anyone else on the forums from North Yorkshire?

This is fascinating. I'm from Cumbria, waiting for the superfast broadband rollout over there. This part really interested me:

In reply to a post by desouzr:

BT also said that they wanted to work with communities in the final 10% and would consider extending fibre to these areas if the community could show demand and also do some of the digging etc.

Does anyone know if this is the first time that BT have said that they will consider rolling out Fibre due to community demand and self-digging? I always thought they would pick whether or not to use fibre in an area due to return on investment only, especially in rural areas

Edited by deleted (Sun 30-Sep-12 14:27:56)

Well as it would be subsidised with public funds I suppose the conditions like ROI are not the same as with their commercial rollout. As North Yorkshire is the first BDUK project out of the blocks it may well be that we will see more of this in the final 10% in other counties as their projects move from procurement to deployment. Maybe it's also a tactic in response to projects like B4RN. We shall see if any communities in North Yorkshire can persude BT to extend past the 90% mark.

In reply to a post by desouzr:

Is anyone else on the forums from North Yorkshire?

Yup.

Yesterday was the official launch of Superfast North Yorkshire, the BDUK project for the county. As well as members of North Yorkshire County Council and NYNET (the private IT delivery company wholly owned by the council who were involved in the procurement process) there was Bill Murphy (MD of NGA), Mike Galvin (MD of Network Investment) and some other BT project managers and engineers.

Ah - was this at the conference in Ripon? Wish I could have made that - I'm sure it would have been very interesting.

A website (SuperfastNorthYorkshire.com) was announced which will be regularly updated with information on the deployment (we will see over the next few months how regular these updates really are). A new Superfast North Yorkshire logo was also unveiled which may appear on Openreach vans and FTTC cabs in the county.

That sounds very much like the Cornish project - which, I think, very much works to get local people energised in the local aspects of the project. The whole concept of a local website, local company, and re-branding of vans is part of that. Hopefully the website will end up with as much information as the Superfast Cornwall one.

Bill Murphy thought that it would be another few months before the EU granted state aid approval for the BDUK framework which should give North Yorkshire a bit of a head start as it applied for, and has been granted EU state aid approval separately.

That too sounds like Cornwall. I suspected that NY's EU aid would be a similar case - that it wouldn't need to wait for approval. In fact, perhaps that is why NY is amongst the pilots! I wonder if Cumbria turns out to be the same.

It was reiterated that the contract specified that 90% of premises would be connected to fibre broadband with the remaining 10% receiving at least 2Mbit/s down and 0.5 Mbit/s up with the project being completed by the end of 2014. The point was made the satellite would be the last resort and that white space, fixed wireless and 4G/LTE were also being considered. It should be noted that fixed wireless broadband provided by LN Communications (which uses the NYNET PSN for backhaul) covers quite a few rural locations in the county already with typical speeds of 20Mbit/s symmetrical bursting up to 50Mbit/s. BT also said that they wanted to work with communities in the final 10% and would consider extending fibre to these areas if the community could show demand and also do some of the digging etc.

I've so many questions about the breakdown of *all* of these parts. Things like:
- How many more exchanges will get add to the fibre conversion lists?
- How much infill of cabinets on existing exchanges will be performed?
- How do they expect the 10% will be served? ie a breakdown of ADSL1; extra conversion to 21CN/ADSL2+; fixed wireless; 4G/LTE; Whitespace; BET, etc
- Do they see an impact from fibre-on-demand?

I'd also like to know what people are going to be expected to pay if the end up falling into one of the more esoteric solutions.

As for areas of deployment only two were actually announced - Amotherby and Ainderby Steeple. These are small villages and will be used to trial a new type of fibre which BT hasn�t used before and which works better over longer distances than the fibre they have been using in their commercial deployment.

These don't seem to have their own exchanges, so it would appear that this is "just" a straightforward FTTC cabinet rollout. It'd be interesting to see exactly why BT consider this to be worth trialling something new-enough to be worth reporting like this. I thought the standard fibre could go around 20km... so perhaps not!

The first phase areas are scheduled to be completed by Spring 2013 and will cover 11,000 homes and businesses.

Any feeling from them as to whether these will be built out (so market 2, or big market 1), or remote small locations?

As for exchange only lines Mike Galvin said that 80% of EO lines would get FTTC (via hybrid cabinets that Openreach have been trialing in Steanalees, Cornwall) and 20% FTTP.

Now that is pretty impressive - that's a commitment to get fibre to 100% of EO lines, which is the first time I've heard of *any* sort of commitment on EO lines!
Off to google Steanalees next...

I will try and update the thread with any further information I get.

Please do...

In reply to a post by indigobanana:

Does anyone know if this is the first time that BT have said that they will consider rolling out Fibre due to community demand and self-digging? I always thought they would pick whether or not to use fibre in an area due to return on investment only, especially in rural areas

I always remember them being pretty hard-nosed back when Rutland Telecom were doing their first rollout.

Obviously the BDUK funding has gotten to their warm & cuddly side

Or perhaps someone has had a re-think that fewer wholesale providers is a better idea for competition at the retail level.

Wombat- Andrew covered Openreach's plans on EO lines in a news article on the site, in this article below at the bottom.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5223-openreach-co...

I didn't really read that as a definitive 100% commitment. After all, BT are still touting BET for some of the EO lines on the Cornish website.

I suppose, however, it was confirmation that they did have *something* planned for EO.

As for areas of deployment only two were actually announced - Amotherby and Ainderby Steeple. These are small villages and will be used to trial a new type of fibre which BT hasn�t used before and which works better over longer distances than the fibre they have been using in their commercial deployment.

These don't seem to have their own exchanges, so it would appear that this is "just" a straightforward FTTC cabinet rollout. It'd be interesting to see exactly why BT consider this to be worth trialling something new-enough to be worth reporting like this. I thought the standard fibre could go around 20km... so perhaps not!

The new fibre being used can go up to 40 km apparently.

The first phase areas are scheduled to be completed by Spring 2013 and will cover 11,000 homes and businesses.

Any feeling from them as to whether these will be built out (so market 2, or big market 1), or remote small locations?

I don't know but will try to extract some more information.

As for exchange only lines Mike Galvin said that 80% of EO lines would get FTTC (via hybrid cabinets that Openreach have been trialing in Steanalees, Cornwall) and 20% FTTP.

Now that is pretty impressive - that's a commitment to get fibre to 100% of EO lines, which is the first time I've heard of *any* sort of commitment on EO lines!
Off to google Steanalees next...

I don't know if they will commit to 100% of EO lines getting fibre. I think the percentages were a rough approximation when I put him on the spot.

I see there are some videos on yourtube now: YouTube - broadband NY.

I'll have to watch later...

Just found out (unofficially) that my cab is due to be fibre enabled in Spring 2013. If this info is correct I guess my exchange (MYPBG) should be on the next quarterly Openreach list which is due out in December. Fingers crossed.

Edited by deleted (Wed 07-Nov-12 17:10:10)