Fibre-to-the-Home is normally thought of as a preserve of high-density urban areas, with some commentators saying it will never reach more rural areas. But is this a reality?

A Fibre-to-the-Home Council study carried out by The Yankee Group suggests the UK will account for just 0.5% of the EU's fibre-based broadband subscribers by 2009 - a position which puts us just ahead of Germany at the bottom of the EU league.
 

This short paper looks at the dynamics of the FttH market in the UK, and argues that possibly investors and operators are looking in the wrong place; that perhaps the focus should be on market towns and villages rather than our cities.

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GTC's Adrian Wooster gave a presentation at B2bEvent's Next Generation Services conference at the beginning of December entitled "OpenSource & Voip - Free as in Freedom and as in beer".

The presentation focusses on how re-thinking telephony as a "voice application server" rather than a PBX creates novel opportunities, and that OpenSource software is the key driver in this world. With some clear warnings to today's voice market and to the nascent VoIP providers, we describe a world where all calls are unmetered, and where other differentiators will become the key to success. In this world, tools like Asterisk will be as important to service providers as Apache is today.

Nuenen is  a small market town in the Netherlands - with fibre optic broadband services passing 100% of its homes and buildings, and with 96% of their inhabitants taking the service.

The technology they used to achieve this feat comes from Hawick in Scotland. While UK plc falls behind in the broadband stakes for the second time, its encouraging to see that UK businesses are  benefitting from their clarity of vision, even if it means focussing on exports while their native market matures.

The existence of "not spots" in rural areas is often an indicator of economic activity, penalising those who have done exactly as government policy asked - they tried to diversify the rural economy. Now those who have suceeded are being penalised with second-rate access to broadband.

This short report by Adrian Wooster was put together in an attempt to develop the thinking around the plight of the UK's broadband deserts. Its aim in this regard was not to be wholly even-handed but to give grist to a deeper debate on why it is important to seek out solutions to the UK's not-spots.

GTC developed this short paper, explaining the characteristics of satellite-based broadband services, some time ago. It became apparent that not all satellite services were created equal, and that explaining the differences was difficult as it involves very complex theoretical issues - it is rocket science, after all!

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Presentation given to Osney Media's "Wireless Applications in the Public Sector" conference in December 2005.

This presentation focusses on what could happen when the Public Sector engages with communities to deliver exciting and new services.  In particular, it focusses on leveraging community broadband schemes, many of which have been partly funded by local authorities but are rarely used to deliver eGovernment services.

PDF of presentation