How do we believe MK can be fixed?
Faster broadband in MK is not about faster video streaming, or
gaming. It's about attracting businesses and business people to MK
as an ideal town to locate, live, work and play in. Without an
adequate broadband and telecoms infrastructure this won't happen.
MK BAG has a very simple proposal to solve the problems in Milton
Keynes. Part of the fix is finding the money and political will to
do so – and that without campaigning in a visible way won’t happen.
Make sure you join the group to help out.
One final note of caution - it's easy to listen to standard
responses from the large ISP and telecoms players, such as "Milton
Keynes is already well served with fibre" or "Sign up to our web
campaign against other exchanges in the country to see who gets the
highest demand for fibre". Remember that they're PR or
marketing plays and need more following up.
Broadband
- Cover the vast majority of MK with fibre broadband from the existing exchanges. This should be FTTP 100Mbps for maximum benefit. Where this cannot be achieved immediately, all MK exchanges should be upgraded to FTTC, even where those exchanges sit on the periphery and serve both MK and non-MK premises (i.e. Woburn Sands, Old Stratford, Newport Pagnell). Where there is limited funding, publically visible priority lists should be published so people and businesses have a clear timescale for availability in their area.
- For significant areas where fibre cannot be deployed, then the existing WiMax technology in use in MK can be re-purposed to facilitate access at best possible speeds. This involves taking a more active view of the technology and being less worried about mast deployment. Masts could be deployed on roundabout sites near “not-spots” without major impact. The current self-imposed 2Mbps restriction on the WiMax links would also need to be removed.
- Villages would benefit the most from this approach. A fibre
line can be run to the village, then WiMax utilised for the
“last mile” enabling hundreds of houses at a time at a
reasonable speed where today sub-standard < 2Mbps speeds would
have still prevailed.
Cable TV network (CATV)
The most cost effective solution is to bypass the existing
mish-mash of technologies and owners of the CATV network in MK. By
deploying FTTP to every property in MK, it would permit a virtual
CATV overlay and increase competition by allowing many different
ISPs to offer a TV add-on to their broadband package in MK, where at
the moment there’s only a choice of Freeview, Sky or Virgin Media.
Replacing the CATV network wholesale would be prohibitively
expensive and divert funds and subscribers away from making a
high-speed fibre optic broadband infrastructure a reality.
Connect>MK
The MK Council owned ISP currently offers limited WiMax packages. WiMax has now been widely acknowledged by the telecoms industry as a niche technology (which would be suitable for use to disseminate broadband as our above broadband example explains). As a result, and to introduce new revenue streams for MK Council, Connect>MK should become a full ISP offering fibre based broadband to consumers and businesses in MK. As Connect>MK develops, it could further offer telephone, broadband and TV (fibre broadband based virtual CATV) packages, creating real competition in the marketplace.