In reply to a post by jimsym:

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.

Not really. Business are assumed to be able to afford a leased line if it matters that much. Otherwise they probably aren't worth treating much differently to consumers.

We are in the process of getting a leased line (paperwork actually being signed and monies committed at last). It wasn't that expensive. Works out at about £15k for an office park just outside a large town. The BT part to blow a fibre from the nearest PCP is only a grand and might actually be waived altogether. The kit for the park and cabling is the bulk of the cost. A lot of that would have to be paid even for one hookup but the entire park is being done and four companies signing up to start with. Works out at £3k per head which is nothing really and monthly rental of £250 for a 10Mb/s pipe which can burst up to 40Mb/s depending on what the other people are doing.

Edited by Andrue (Wed 30-Jan-13 14:13:58)

Sorry, disagree. Complaints to ISP about need for better service get no more response than a "Sorry". How else are we supposed to generate demand?

How else are we supposed to generate demand?

By buying the available products that offer the better service. Simples.

Currently much of the small business landscape consists of people using bargain basement residential ISPs on home services while complaining on Twitter or in forums about the lack of better services.

If there was a business need services are available, like bonding lines etc, but use of these is as common as hen's teeth.

While the 832Kbps upstream did fall off with distance we have seen people getting good speeds from it out to 5 or 6km. The technicalities of ADSL mean the upstream can often be better than downstream on long lines.

In short if someone was getting 448Kbps upstream chances are the switch to 832 would have given a welcome boost.

One aspect often not mentioned and based on the few business parks where I've worked is that line lengths can be pretty long due to spread out nature which affects economics of FTTC.

If the commercial side is ignoring you then your local authority broadband project should not, as those projects are meant to be skewed towards economic benefits for the local economy. Particularly if you can act as a coherent group, e.g. local chamber of commerce or similar group to represent everyone.

While I know there is truth in this, there are also those who buy business class services from top providers. Things like bonded lines are too expensive and don't necessarily work that well. All that is required is FTTC on a business service.

Yup, had them sign up to the Local Authority broadband project. Now we just sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

That's a nice solution. £15k is far too much for the SMEs I deal with. £3k is more realistic but still expensive compared to FTTC business tarriffs. I'll suggest that and see if they have neighbours who are prepared to join in.

In reply to a post by jimsym:

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?

As you quite rightly suspect one of the major considerations for fibre deployment is the amount of premises passed by a cabinet. In the case of many business parks the amount of premises passed by the cabinet is relatively low compared with residential areas.

As far as I can tell there's no particular bias from Openreach and no conscious attempt being made to protect leased line revenues, just as you thought originally unintended consequences.

Openreach don't get any extra revenue from a business using a 80Mb/20Mb service over a residential one so can't view the business areas as a more favourable commercial proposition. They have to be judged under similar criteria to residential areas.

ADSL Max Premium's traffic prioritisation was a life saver when I was connected to a small congested market 1 exchange.

Exactly so. How do we get this changed?