Leeds city centre

o/ folks,

Does anyone have any thoughts on what will happen with fttc/fttp in Leeds city centre now that the the super connected cities project seems to have turned into nothing more than a glorified voucher project?

The main Leeds exchange has no plans for fttc that I can see and looks like our line is connected to a cab rather than going directly to the exchange. Do we think that this means openreach may roll out fttc at some point? All the surrounding exchanges are already enabled so its a bit sad that the centre isnt

Leeds City Centre isn't eligible for BDUK funding and BT have no plans to deploy FTTC there.

The voucher scheme may, I guess, end up with BT being given said vouchers in return for FTTC deployment.

Meh, thats what I thought. Bit of a shame really, i wonder if BT didnt do the city centre in anticipation of getting a wad of cash from the super connected cities malarkey. Wonder how many businesses etc are actually served by that exchange and would sign up for fttc given that there isnt anything but dsl available in the local area.

Or, how many would down grade their expensive leased lines if FTTC was available.......

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Or, how many would down grade their expensive leased lines if FTTC was available.......

This.

Greetings!

I stumbled upon this and thought I'd let you know that Leeds is potential HyperCity - please do encourage your neighbours to register their interest in Hyperoptic via our website.

If there is demand for hyperfast speeds, we'll come Leeds.

A sense a campaign coming..."Register for faster speeds in Leeds!" I know what you're thinking...poetry isn't a strong point.

Sunita

Followed by the complaints when at 6pm on a Friday a large important video conference fails due to congestion as the World Cup runs into overtime etc

There will be those who don't need leased lines who have one, but the decision to drop to lower SLA services like GEA-FTTC needs to be thought of carefully.

Indeed, hence why operators offer enhanced care options.

Alongside this are assured data rates.

Well handled QoS on the part of the IT guy at the site will ensure that the video conference gets all the bandwidth it needs with anything else secondary. A well planned and implemented network should ensure that those who actually genuinely need leased lines for everything are a minority, and either a full FTTC migration or a hybrid running FTTC as a primary and a lower bandwidth leased line as backup are an option.

Some businesses are actually required to carry certain traffic on lines which do not carry their Internet traffic. FTTC is a boon to them.

yeap we know all that, but most I bet just look at the price and buy based on that and a sales person reassurance. Hence the frequency of I am losing hundreds of pounds a business every day, and my broadband has been broke for a week...and turns out they are on the cheapest ADSL2+ package with none of the extra options.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

yeap we know all that, but most I bet just look at the price and buy based on that and a sales person reassurance. Hence the frequency of I am losing hundreds of pounds a business every day, and my broadband has been broke for a week...and turns out they are on the cheapest ADSL2+ package with none of the extra options.

Let the buyer beware.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Followed by the complaints when at 6pm on a Friday a large important video conference fails due to congestion as the World Cup runs into overtime etc

As you reported a while back, not all ISPs were embarrassed by the World Cup streaming

Sadly the business I work for just cant afford to spend the kind of money required for a leased line at the moment. We're a small business and that it represents a pretty significant chunk of cash. We've outgrown our DSL connection which seems to be maxed out at 6Mb/s and, to be honest, we're actually considering moving away from Leeds completely due to the lack of connectivity options here. Shame really but that's just the way things are.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Leeds City Centre isn't eligible for BDUK funding and BT have no plans to deploy FTTC there.

What makes the city centre ineligible if BT have no plans to supply SFBB? Who is the alternative supplier that makes BDUK funding impossible?

Certainly the Leeds/WY state-aid maps show "NGA white" regions in the centre (pictured as red dots in this PDF from the public consultation), and plenty throughout the city. That would suggest that BDUK funding *is* available, even if it doesn't guarantee that it will be used to cover the centre.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

The voucher scheme may, I guess, end up with BT being given said vouchers in return for FTTC deployment.

Even if they don't get given the money directly, when a significant number of businesses turn up, voucher in hand, asking for an SFBB service where a cabinet isn't even deployed, isn't that likely to cause a refactoring of the viability criteria?

I'm pretty sure that the voucher scheme is more likely to lead to more widespread FTTC and FTTPoD solutions, than the fairly narrow plan that Leeds had for deploying ultrafast (narrow, as in a limited geographical area). It'll depend on the limitations placed on the vouchers, I guess.

WWWombat - BDUK funding is for rural areas, and that definition has been quite stretched enough as it is.

There will be no overlap between BDUK and the Superconnected Cities areas both for this and other legal reasons. Both Leeds Central and Wakefield, neither of which have SFBB, are not eligible for funding from the West Yorkshire / ERDF / BDUK pot for this reason.

Source - the guy in charge of BDUK at Leeds City Council. I would assume he has some idea what he's talking about.

Aside from any issues related to the super-connected city thing, I think your source indicates that this is a decision about where they *choose* to spend the BDUK money, not an indication of what is *eligible*.

As far as I can see, the BDUK funding may be spent on any NGA-White area, whether it appears in a city-centre, or in a field. The qualification is only that it won't get NGA from any provider at all within 3 years.

The target, for every tier-1 authority, was 90% coverage of NGA by 2015. That means that the authority gets to choose, to some degree, how it wants to focus the BDUK funds. West Yorkshire reckons it will get to 84% in the commercial rollout, so their funds will only target about a third of the remainder.

There are certainly some people involved in BDUK that believe it should be very much targeted at the rural areas - the final portion of the two-thirds, rather than the first portion. And believe that the middle portion should be allowed to become commercially viable in time, and eventually be picked up *anyway*. It sounds like your contact in LCC is very much in this kind of position.

Obviously the UBF funding creates something of an extra headache, or an extra opportunity. With that in mind, I can see why LCC would choose to leave the centre of Leeds out of this round of BDUK funding.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Aside from any issues related to the super-connected city thing, I think your source indicates that this is a decision about where they *choose* to spend the BDUK money, not an indication of what is *eligible*.

As far as I can see, the BDUK funding may be spent on any NGA-White area, whether it appears in a city-centre, or in a field. The qualification is only that it won't get NGA from any provider at all within 3 years.

The target, for every tier-1 authority, was 90% coverage of NGA by 2015. That means that the authority gets to choose, to some degree, how it wants to focus the BDUK funds. West Yorkshire reckons it will get to 84% in the commercial rollout, so their funds will only target about a third of the remainder.

There are certainly some people involved in BDUK that believe it should be very much targeted at the rural areas - the final portion of the two-thirds, rather than the first portion. And believe that the middle portion should be allowed to become commercially viable in time, and eventually be picked up *anyway*. It sounds like your contact in LCC is very much in this kind of position.

Obviously the UBF funding creates something of an extra headache, or an extra opportunity. With that in mind, I can see why LCC would choose to leave the centre of Leeds out of this round of BDUK funding.

Think about why the Urban Broadband Fund has ended up being a voucher system. EU state aid rules.

The exact same issues prevent use of the other BDUK money in these areas. The main BDUK fund is for 'rural' broadband only and while that definition has been stretched out of all recognition it still stands, hence why London has no BDUK programme to plug gaps and you aren't seeing BDUK funding infill in major city centres.

Regarding targeting of funds: they are being targeted towards the 'optimal' deployment; to cover as much with NGA as possible while ensuring 2Mb to all, not biased towards rural areas.

Just FYI I was at the meetings in question, it's perhaps a little presumptuous to assume what my source indicates.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Just FYI I was at the meetings in question, it's perhaps a little presumptuous to assume what my source indicates.

I know your credentials in the area, so I'm not trying to be presumptuous, but I certainly am puzzled. Extremely puzzled.

Think about why the Urban Broadband Fund has ended up being a voucher system. EU state aid rules.

The exact same issues prevent use of the other BDUK money in these areas. The main BDUK fund is for 'rural' broadband only and while that definition has been stretched out of all recognition it still stands,

This, I think, is getting two separate issues seriously muddled.

The state-aid rules only dictate that public funds cannot be used in areas where competition is present, or has been "announced" to be present (to the councils, under NDA, as part of the "open market review" phase) within 3 years - a so-called "market failure". This results in the common "NGA white", "NGA grey" and "NGA black" zone maps.

The councils must then perform a public consultation based on this competitive picture - showing their rules, their intentions and the maps.

Every public consultation I have read, including West Yorkshire's, has specified the state-aid rules to restrict intervention to "NGA white" zones. There are no rules about not intervening within cities, nor within urban areas, nor within certain population densities, nor enforcement of rural areas only, nor the addition of any "wealth" demographics.

The only rule is that competition must not exist.

Here, therefore, is the source of my puzzlement:

On one hand, the West Yorkshire public consultation document makes the following statements:
- �White� areas are those served by no NGA broadband network
- These White areas indicate there is a market failure to provide NGA
- The broadband project will only tackle these White areas
- These maps shows the potential �white� intervention areas for both basic and NGA
broadband
- Maps [and the maps show "white" intervention areas in Leeds city centre]

But it makes no statement about why any of the "NGA white" areas would be considered ineligible for other reasons.

On the other, you are saying that, from your contacts, some of those "white" intervention areas depicted in the public consultation are actually ineligible.

If you are correct, then the West Yorkshire public consultation is a sham. It isn't telling the public the truth - it is misstating the state aid rules, and misrepresenting the areas that are to be included for consideration.

Hence my puzzlement.

The main BDUK fund is for 'rural' broadband only and while that definition has been stretched out of all recognition it still stands,

I agree that it has been touted as a "rural" project, but it is actually run as a "final-third, anything-commercially-unviable considered" project - and the 'optimal deployment' that you mention has a tendency to promote in-fill of unviable cabinets on viable exchanges.

In part, I'm sure this is because Ofcom's definition of "rural" happens to amount to a final-third of the country too, and back in 2011 all we knew of BT's commercial project was that it would target two-thirds. It was reasonable, in many spectator's minds, to believe that the viable two-thirds was the urban two-thirds.

We didn't know for fact, back then, how much rural would be included and how much urban would be excluded. Now we know that a reasonable proportion of urban properties are deemed unviable - and the knock-on effect is that a matching portion of rural properties therefore made it into the commercial project.

With this knowledge, it seems the actual BDUK projects are responding in the best way possible - they are including urban unviable properties as within-scope.

hence why London has no BDUK programme to plug gaps and you aren't seeing BDUK funding infill in major city centres.

Back in 2011, when the funding allocations were made, the government allocated London no funds - justified by the statement "presumed covered by private sector".

It turns out, 3 years later, to have been the wrong presumption. Obviously it is too late to now start a BDUK project in London, given that the money has already been allocated. Who knows - perhaps London will choose to use their UBF money to run a BDUK-equivalent project.

I think the other major city centres haven't been seen yet because they are all late within the BDUK process, and have relatively little funding. But it isn't zero, unlike London (or Hull).

UBF certainly complicates the issue for the few major cities that got money, but again, this may not prevent a BDUK-like project to provide SFBB capablities (not UFBB). Bristol, for one, was aiming to use a portion for exactly that - but who knows whether that will have survived.

Openreach did say in the last list of the rollout that their may be further exchanges and areas added to the commercial rollout.

Take WARRINGTON it was left out right until the about the last list on the commercial rollout, so its possible that Wakefield and Leeds City Centre will be enabled its just a case of getting through the large amount of urban exchanges nearby.

Some cities in the UK have had all their exchanges enabled (cabs will vary) such as Manchester/Bristol and others such as Leeds/Liverpool and even London still have exchanges that are not currently in the plans but should eventually be upgraded in the coming years to hit the coverage target as they wont be met without them.

Edited by deleted (Thu 11-Jul-13 21:43:15)

Have a read of http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/2432...

I've looked at it before. Is there any particular bit you want to point out to me?

But just to be clear, those EC guidelines don't support the case that state aid is only for rural areas.

Under the section "Description of the measure", the objective is described (Para 12) as providing NGA access to as many premises in each LA area as possible. No mention of rural/urban.

In the same section, the rationale (Para 14) only mentions the "final third".

In targetting (Para 20), there is the usual description of "White NGA areas" without restriction to rural or urban.

However, there is a paragraph (Para 21) that specifies that "this commission decision covers projects in the so-called 'final-third' of the UK." but that "urban broadband development projects are subject to a separate state aid notification."

Further on, paras 39-41 deal with targeting of state aid support:

Para 39:
Analysis and mapping of target areas, designated "NGA white" areas.

Para 40:
Run public consultation, which describes the target areas, to validate the mapping and to seek feedback from suppliers and other stakeholders.

My best conclusion is that the whole EC decision allows state aid for the "final-third", and for any areas designated NGA-White. There is no restriction that requires the areas to be urban or rural.

Yes, the context of the document makes you believe that the final-third is rural - and it is, mostly. But there is no requirement that it be rural.

The paragraph that does indicate an urban restriction just mentions the urban projects being subject to a different state-aid notice. I take this to refer to projects done under the guise of UBF.

What it comes down to is this:
If an exchange/cabinet area is not upgraded to SFBB within the "commercial two-thirds", does this automatically place it in the "final-third" for inclusion in BDUK, even if it is urban?

If it doesn't what are the criteria for deciding?

Just to fill in some missing information a major issue in Leeds City Centre is that the ducts are full. There's no space and digging up the centre of the city to deploy new ducts isn't a trivial exercise.

Got into work this morning to find an email from BT saying that we can now get fibre broadband... we cant. Thanks BT

Not sure why the email, I think another exchange went live over the weekend so maybe thats it, shame it doesnt cover this city centre.