When business comes last

It seems to be an irony of the current strategy for high speed broadband that businesses are treated as lower priority than domestic users, when they need it every bit as much, if not more.

The targets for high speed broadband coverage are expressed in terms of population coverage. BT/Openreach seems to set its FTTC priorities in line with this, not to mention the fact that a cabinet serving an industrial estate is likely to be much less lucrative than one serving a residential area (which has many more potential customers).

Businesses in this country and particularly smaller ones are being held back by this, which is perhaps a case of the law of unintended consequences.

How can this be fixed?

Maybe there is not much demand?

Really speaking if you require 40-80mb bandwidth you are a bigger company and what most businesses require is something with high up time which means a leased line. BT will not eat into that business quickly by providing you with a cut price residential service.

Many businesses will be quite happily serving hundreds of users on a 2mb leased line. I work for a place with 7000 users, we 'only' have 2x40mbit to the internet yet 10gbit between sites.

You only really need the bandwidth if you are extending your LAN and doing that across *dsl is not wise.

I can think of a few exceptions I suppose, graphic design people or photography houses but most people who want it, will want it 'just cos' and don't really need it.

In comparison with the volume of residential demand, small business will of course be much less.

I am sure you are right in that BT and other carriers will wish to protect their lucrative leased line business for as long as possible.

A 2Mb leased line is vastly expensive for a small business. Their issue is generally one of remote access to their server. This requires a good upload speed, and you are lucky to get 0.5Mb with ADSL copper services. Your 2Mb leased line is 2Mb both up and down. At least FTTC, even with a basic option gives around 2Mb upload, a vast improvement.

Roll on FTTP on Demand which is being pitched at businesses.

FTTP on demand looks fine - but only if the nearby cabinet has been done for FTTC. And if that is done, the business could get FTTC anyway. That's my point - they are not doing these cabinets, or if they are, the priority is way down.

small business hasn't done well at demonstrating demand - the faster upstream Office ADSL products for example have offered 832k upstream for ages but are seldom used.

I suspect supply is matching perceived demand.

If only one could always get 832k upstream! I can think straight away of at least 5 of my customers with line lengths that are too long to achieve that.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-Jan-13 11:09:09)

In reply to a post by jimsym:

If only one could always get 832k upstream! I can think straight away of at least 5 of my customers with line lengths that are too long to achieve that.

sure, it's rate adaptive and 832k seems to work out to about 45 dB downstream attenuation give or take.

Thing is many just didn't buy it. How many of the five did ?

Some have tried, but frankly it does nothing for you if the line is too long, so for those it would just be a wasted effort.

In reply to a post by jimsym:

Some have tried, but frankly it does nothing for you if the line is too long, so for those it would just be a wasted effort.

as expected. The higher traffic priority was ignored too I guess. Demand side failure.