Broadband Community Champions Event
South East Region

BT Tower - Maple Suite
Wednesday 22nd September 2004

Agenda

There are still many disappointed souls in our modern city who are being denied broadband.

Is BT planning on try to capture these people in some way, or is it deemed acceptable?

Is BT going to invest in new cabling?

Key areas in Milton Keynes are Loughton, Great Linford, Newton Longville.

How is it possible, with all the new specs, new rollout, new publicity, for a hi-tech guy in the middle of Loughton, only a few hundred yards from the City Centre, to *STILL* fail the distance/'acceptable dB loss' tests?

DSLAM Upgrades?

Did BT upgrade the DSLAMs, the broadband equipment within their telephone exchanges, to obtain the extended reach?

1Mbps and faster

We know the 1Mbps has been extended to the old 512k level of 60dB, but it seems we are now in the same position with a service we really wanted 5 years ago. We expect this next level of service.

How does BT intend to offer 1Mbps and faster to those who are over 6km? Sooner (rather than later) people will need VDSL and not just ADSL?

21st Century Network

How do we get onto the 21CN fibre trial? Any further details?

Who will be invited to participate, and when? Or will BT simply connect up all the houses in an area and see what happens?

What services will be offered - will they replace ADSL, broadcast TV/radio, cable TV service?

Will the fibre connection be made available to ISPs as usual?

What is the legal position, e.g. in relation to the NTL ownership of cable services in MK?

Pricing Perception

Broadband at £20 a month is expensive for “ordinary” folk. When will the price drop?

Marketing versus engineering solutions

South East Region Development Agency and BT seem to have moved the focus to marketing. What about tangible engineering and real deployment solutions, not vaporous marketing?

NTL Wireless Trial

(NTL recently pulled the plug on their 10GHz wireless trial. The users were very impressed by the level of service.)

The NTL Wireless Trial has been great for the trialists involved. Will BT take this over?

Wireless deployment

The issue of speed and SDSL roll-out is key to businesses particularly who need a high outbound bandwidth - the existing plans for just MK city & Aylesbury town centre are inadequate with the range limitations in this area. In the short term wireless provision seems the only sensible approach - where is BT with the Northern Ireland trial & when will it hit Bucks & MK?

Is BT planning on a wireless trial at, say, 3.4GHz that doesn’t require line of sight?

Regional disparity

Buckinghamshire, SEEDA has a disparity with our neighbouring county Bedfordshire, EEDA.  Bedfordshire has over £300K to support wireless enhanced Broadband. Why does the UK have different levels of development everywhere? How do we get a push for sensible national funding to a common standard rather than piecemeal evolution?

International disparity

When are we going to see fibre to every newly-built home…? How can we expect to compete economically with the "Tiger economies" in the coming century, when they already have broadband to the home at 10Mbps and have 50Mbps planned?