Sorry for no blogging of the first session. Was still writing my presentation for this afternoon! Rough transcript of first afternoon session follows. My comments in italics. Hope this gives readers a perspective of broadband in the wild and windy fringes of Europe!
Intro by Sandy Cumming CBE, Chief Executive, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).
Discussion of new conference centre. Not a minor thing for a small town like Aviemore.
For those not familiar with the UK’s geography, you would hardly believe that London is on the same island as places like the Isle of Skye in the Highlands. The far north of Scotland is bleak and beautiful, and economically isolated. Broadband is much more of a social issue than elsewhere. Aviemore is in the eastern Grampian mountains, near the Cairngorm National Park.
90 inhabited islands. Over 50% of households have access to ADSL (available, not subscribers.)
Target of 100% coverage to affordable BB by end of 2005. “Speak up for BB” campaign to help with demand creation.
Focus on moving from plumbing to winning the benefits. Spread the word on how it helps business and communities.
Traditional and roots music from Highlands being placed online for downloads (http://www.tradtunes.com/).
Young people using SMS instead of talk. No futurologists predicted in 1990 that tiny emails would be the future. So we can’t predict future so easily.
Rt Hon Jim Wallace MSP QC, Deputy First Minister, Minister for Enterprise & Lifelong Learning
Via videolink from Edinburgh. .
Survey of businesses by Institute of Directors. 84% of businesses reported tangible business benefits. 61% cost savings. 64% linked BB to increased profits. Was low BB penetration in Scotland compared to rest of UK and elsewhere. Allocated GBP24m to get 70% of Scottish population with access. Incentive scheme for business take-up of BB. Over 8000 applications for assistance compared with initial target of 5000.
Scotland has benefited from UK govt funds (Dept of Trade and Industry). Penetration in remote ares of British Isles. Achieved 70% coverage ahead of target and within budget. Demand generation has encouraged more private sector supplier involvement. Now have 91% coverage, expect 95% by end of next summer.
Business take-up gone from 4% in 2002 to 27% in 2004. Almost 40% of businesses in Scotland are on-line (inc. dial-up and ISDN). Aiming for 100% BB availability by end of 2005.
Note that everyone will have the opportunity to talk for free, but PSTN charges linger on.!
Hard to provide commercial service in some parts of the country. Focus shifting from availability to take-up of BB. What makes people want to use BB? Content and applications. Increasingly clear many are only partly aware of what the technology can achieve.
Need to re-frame this debate around connectivity rather than BB per se. Human-centric rather than technology-centric. Faster group forming. Seed the virtual meeting spaces, much like chambers of commerce have done in meatspace.
Various UK regional development agencies working together.
Have comissioned independent research into deploying next-generation broadband for Scotland.
Q: Research into content that stimulates BB use? (Question slightly unclear.)
A: Recapped survey details. BB development as important as the physical transport. Every hotel in US with BB. Need the same expectation here.
Q: Pleased to hear 100% BB community access. I am trying to reach isolated English farms etc.
A: Have not made a commitment to 100% of people, but 100% of communities. Want to have BB access in every Scottish census area — smallest geographical community unit. Contains about 50 households.
Q: Reference to 2nd generation BB research program. Timescales, and who? Do you have plans to create media and creative industries in parallel ways (apps and content)?
Seeing a theme here - people as concerned about creating compelling reasons to have BB as much as BB technical access. Internet is simulaneously global and parochial.
A: need to be quick, technology changing fast. HIE and Scottish Enterprise exists to support creative industries. Support for traditional music distribution to large US audience.
Video of John Baldacci, Governor of Maine
Maine like Scotland. Opportunities for regions that were once only available in places like New York. Maine overwhelmingly rural. Portland, ME fastest growing town in New England, just like Inverness in UK. Rural Maine companies every bit as cutting edge. Similar growth patterns.
Bob Downes, Director BT Scotland
Intro: a GBP16bn business
After 9/11, 3% of Internet users using web as primary news source. 26% at onset of Iraq war. Joe Trippi (Dean campaign manager) believes 2008 US election will be won and lost on Internet.
References to encouragement of blogging in Argyll region, centrally encouraged.
Euan Semple whipsers in my ear how BT still see a top-down model. Blogging is ground-up revolution.
Opportunities for NHS to use BB for telemedicine.
China rising - large proportion of computer, electronics, enginerring graduates, telecom exports.
UK BB projected entertainment spend due to explode. (Oops, centre makes content, you consume. Not.)
UK has low usage of government web sites.
A new type of literacy.
Map of US, only green areas (sparse) can get DSL. Many questions. Will DSL etc. give us the capacity we need? BT proud UK is moving to #1 globally in coverage of BB.
Map of UK showing BB coverage from BT. Not good in Scotland — 399 of 565 unenabled exchanges are in Scotland. Many local partnerships. People used to see BB as a jargon word. No longer. Local partnerships have added 1m households to footprint.
Oh my god. Convergence, 21st Century Network. Sell any remaining BT stock, quick. Where’s th fibre?!?!
Users with many software and device problems.
Can get more through with less with better compression techniques. Innovative solutions for DRM.
(If this is BT’s best vision, it’s a bit sad.)
Bt Rich Media enables thousands of content publishers to reach millions of people. (Lucky BT are there to help me, otherwise how else would I ever get this blog published…)
Seamless on-line experience for businesses. BT research project for monitoring elderly people. Internet helping kids do homework. Streaming sites.
For a distressing experience of legacy telco think, visit btrichmedia.com.
Technology needs to be hidden inside appliances.
Malcolm Matson, Entrepreneur and Business Dude
Many great men in Scottish history. Alexander Graeme Bell - “Watson come here”. Over 100 years later. “Matson come here”. First ever broadband local network in the world. 1983. Local community network. Lost my shirt.
Goals - a sharper and clearer understanding of big picture. Insighs from history. How to unlock and accellerate BB revolution. Educate you about Open Public Access Networks (OPLANs). Brief insight into Open Planet. And will try not to be oo rude or offensive. Have to speak the truth, however.
1982 was IT year. ITAP - Information Technology advisory Panel, reports to Thatcher govt. Some succinct conclusions. World going digital. Will be common digital formats. Will go over a new infrastructure, not copper. But no country in world has public policy and legal framework for network for voice, video and data. And Telecom Act 1984 and Cable & Tv Act 1984 gave birth to these networks, of which the Aberdeen one (above).
In 1982 BB was 2Mbit, symmertical. Now it’s a fraction. Right them, wrong now.
1984, incumbent operator should not be anointed with power. Right them, wrong now.
Local networks vision. Right them, wrong now.
1984. country must be rewired soon. Now trying to patch up with compression and ADSL.
Carlota Perez book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. Worried UK falling behind. Carla is Professor at Cambridge University. Five technology revolutions over last 100 years. Since 1971 in IT revolution. has looked at the change of pace. 20-30 year period initially where old paradigm creaks, 20-30 years of flowering and wealth creation. In the middle there’s a turning point, turmoil. We are there now. Each of these revolutions has its own supportin infrastructure. Wasn’t brought by any of the preceding ones. Why are we trying to extend the old paradigm? Western world stuck into a policy formulation method through industry consultation. Ask the industry if they want new technology deployed. Instead of public policy being driven by industry, we need it to be driven by technology.
1761, first canal. Lots of prosperity. 40-60 years, sensational growth. 4500 miles of canals in 1825. If we had a regulatory body and public policy. The Office of Canal Operation and Management (pub on OFCOM, UK telco regulator). Genius introduces steam engine. If that happened today canal industry would claim to see the benefit. Canal barges would have been pulled by steam engines. Seems the everyone wins. Even the horses would have loved it.
Of course, what happened was a burst of railway mania. 6500 miles of track by 1850. Uses and benefits many.
Railway reached Blackpool, gave birth to leisure industry, which in term caused street lighting.
Milk to cities, calcium in diet improves teeth. 275000 people in Uk working on railway. Canals declines and disappeared in 20 years.
Malcolm’s map of telecom world. Friend who wants to make a telephone call. Signals we wants to be connected. Shows money flowing through smart network. Intelligence within the network, scarce resource is the network capacity. Riding in a train, the control is in the hands of the track authority. Doesn’t matter where the users want to go.
Gneerate revenue for exclusive right to copper loop. Charge for access to long-haul network. Charge for value-added services. A $1,232 billion business in 2001. Same everywhere. www.itu.int. Runs incredible accounting system. I promise not to put wires into your country and vice-versa. Interconnect and pass money around.
Adam Smith qoute on conspiracy of minds. Book 1 Chapter X.
Circuit only lets you alk to one person, the phone company. And they might then let you connect to someone else.
Digital computer, silicon fibre, spread spectrum: 3 seminal world-changing pieces of technology.
Communications constrained by nework control replaced with one awash with abundance. _(Sonic booms from fighter aircraft!)
1976, $500k for storage, now, $1. Even bigger improvement for fiber. One strand of fiber can carry all UK traffic. Now awash with it. Now dozens of operators. 95% of it not lit, some transactlantic being decomissioned. Most of Uk public live within stonesthrow of ocean of bandwidth. Free market price without scarcity is zero.
How telcom industry deploying these great technologies? Used fiber for long-haul. Lots of computers. As we all know, digital computer invented for benefit for telcos! Ken Olsen of DEC in 1977 thought nobody would want one in their home. Wrong.
Want to interact with a dumb network that just connects us to other places — down the street even. Telco trying to make old business model fit this new paradigm.
Started Colt to create passive optical network in City of London. No extra cost to you. Funding story, didn’t fit with legacy telco model. AT&T involved, tried to go up value chain. Never got to see OPLAN vision come to fulfillment.
One of the highest-value UK companies. Boom and crash. Telecom meltdown. Patently obvious it was going to happen. There is no scarce resource. Routing of content is in hands of users.
Mother of all [business] battles. The first mile, who controls it. Will we have a toll booth? Will be we able to communicate within out communities? Doesn’t need to touch the Internet. Net is just one BB service.
Free trade of good we have. But what about moving bits between ports of computers without taxes and tolls?
Bandwidth is free. It should be free. Once you’ve paid for the hardware. Who pays for the cabling and hub, then you’ve got a network. Who pays for the radio. Lots of creative answers to this. Could split cost, or pool purchases. Get somone else to buy it, lease it. But n ongoing usage charge. Wouldn’t let a 3rd party own it and charge per bit.
ONCE YOU’VE PAID FOR THE HARDWARE, BANDWIDTH IS FREE.
Home owned by mortgage company. Invoice for crossings of threshold. Use of stairs bill. Use of WC and bathroom, $1 etc.
Aviemore conference, eTV broadband in room, GBP12.00. They don’t charge for the light, why should they charge for this?
Industry revenues for telecom. What we pay for $6000bn on the table that wouldn’t go into hands of an infrastructure owner.
ADSL IS NOT BROADBAND. Wasn’t in 1984, and not now. Assumes content and value in the middle of the network to be downloaded. All value and talent is at the periphery. Highlands music has to beg someone to host their download environment.
Anything that tries to build a business model over that separates content producers and consumers will fail.
VoIP is greatest money-making opportunity of our time. Opportunity to keep the money in our pockets.
Quote from 1981 Citicorp chairman. Commercial history full of dead companies that failed to change.
Now there are millions around the world who know
Sunday Times article on BT. Telecom minnows heading to the wall. Haven’t seen nothing yet of meltdown in telecom.
Should have open public access networks. Gigabit, symmetrical. Abundant low-cost connectivity. Services a real geographic community. Open for access to anyone inside that community. Infrastructure controlled separately from services.
Have 100 years of public buildings connected to telephone conpany. In 1984 saw fibre beyond central office. Also competition in biz market. But rest of us held hostage with copper. All FTTH fiber still gets channeled back to central office.
Empowers us in our existing socioeconomic relationships. Suits telecom to say about accessing other side of the world. No, it’s about accessing neighbour. Networks will then branch out.
Dozens of OPLANs emerging, just not in UK. Utah, Amersterdam (450k homes). 35m euro saving because elderly people can stay longer in homes rather than going into care. Denmark, networks on farm grain silos. Some are aiming higher — gigabit plus in California and Japan.
Many elements to being these OPLANs about in a community. A tough long-term assignment for public sector.
Q: John Wilson. Recommends Scotland establish broadband stakeholder group, like they have in Wales. Urge delegates to come together.
Q: Railways vs canals. Do we need more or less regulation?
A: Technology adopted based on its being useful. If there had been a railway stakeholder’s group in 19th century, the canal owners would have been involved. In 19th century nothing stopping you beuilding railway. Nothing stopping the same in the UK. No regulatory inpediment from UK govt or Brussels [EU]. Go do it!
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