Cassetteboy vs The Bloddy Apprentice

Absolutely hilarious edit of Sir Alan by Cassette Boy

Marketing Art or Science

Seth Godin makes a good point again, about Marketing being an Art and a Science.

I did Physics at University - but also Art at School. I loved Art but thought science was a better career move. Funny that I landed up doing marketing, or maybe a good compromise.

Time to get going again

A few friends have suggested I should start posting again - especially as I am going to want to drive consulting business for TrueTalk.

So much has happened since my last post - I left Sharedband a year ago and have been working for Stone Computers until recently. (Note to myself to write a couple of posts on my time at Stone, and an update on where Sharedband is now).

Currently I am working on a number of new business ideas and looking around for consulting projects to keep the wolf from the door. I have been developing the proposition for TrueTalk consulting and believe that today there is real demand to understand the value marketing brings an organisation. Not just the tactical comms stuff (which is important) but the whole picture of the customer experience.

Without understanding of the true value of marketing the temptation in today's economic climate is for CEO's and CFO's to cut budgets and resources. Even if cuts are unavoidable it's extremely important to understand how to optimise what is available.

So I am going to pitch a service that gets a dialogue going with customers and partners first so that it's possible to paint that picture with the right perspective.

What’s happening to broadband bandwidth

People can't seem to understand there is a difference beteeen the access network that is the copper loop from the exchange to the customer and the backhaul from the exchange to the ISP network.

I will try and clarify what this means in terms of capability and cost.

The Access Network:-

With the exception of cable network (owned by Virgin Media) almost all the copper connections from an exchange to the customer premises are owned by Open Reach (apart from an area around Hull).

These are leased to BT Wholesale or Local Loop Unbundlers (LLUs) on an equal basis. There is little chance of seeing fibre deployed in the access network for many years to come - as this means £ billions of capital expenditure and lots of road digging. Therefore most customers will have to use the copper already in the ground.

There are physical limitations mainly due to cross talk that mean many people may not get more than 4Mbps bandwidth from one copper connection – at 4kms from an exchange even ADSL2 degrades to that level. Also note that the more people that take up broadband then that increases the level of cross talk – reducing performance.

There are some new software technologies available that enable lines to bond together – (disclosure: like my own company Sharedband ). This will help people scale services to meet their need for more bandwidth in the access network.

The performance is a physical limitation of the copper loop and the equipment deployed at the exchanges not financial engineering by ISPs or even BT. There is no congestion in the copper from the exchange to each customer.

One ISP with 200k customers (Plusnet) in a recent article explained their cost structure in detail and revealed that the cost of the access network was on average £8.50 per customer per month – regardless of how much each copper line is used.

The backhaul:-
From the exchange back through the central pipes to the ISP when provided by BTW or in cases when using an LLU service the ISP has to organize their own backhaul infrastructure. Note: LLU availability tends to be limited to more popular exchanges.

The backhaul pipes are always shared (unless you pay a lot of money for an uncontended service) always fibre and the more data that flows down these pipes the more congested they become unless their capacity is increased – which costs more – either to BTW or in building your own infrastructure.

The PlusNet figures show that on average the cost they are paying for this backhaul today is around £3.50 per customer per month, however that only allows for an average usage of 5Gb per customer per month. It also shows that the maximum bandwidth of their central pipes for their 200k customers is about 3500Mbps.

Therefore if the adoption of new bandwidth hungry applications like iPlayer grow in popularity then they will need to add more capacity to avoid excessive congestion – and therefore they will need to increase prices or more likely charge customers on a usage basis.

There are other costs for peering and transit etc but these are small in relation to these other costs.

Remember:
1) There is no such thing as a free lunch!
2) You only get what you pay for…

Sharedband Press Stories

Last week Sharedband released three great press stories:

1) We signed a reseller contract with BT Wholesale, who will market and sell our products and services to ISPs in the UK
2) A great customer case study, based on a reprint of a story by Talk Internet about the use of Sharedband at the British SuperBike Grand Prix to help journalists upload their stories and photos.
3) Our new alliance status with Netgear as a global solutions partner.

All together they make a great story – not only did BT give our technology fantastic credibility but also a straight forward route to market. The customer angle clearly demonstrated we have a solution for a real problem and the alliance with Netgear was a truly global partnership.

After ringing a couple of dozen editors I was in no doubt we’d get some coverage – but I really hadn’t bargained for such a super uptake. Here are some links to articles and posts published by last Friday:

Techworld.com Peter Judge
Lightreading.com Ray Le Maistre
Telephony Ed Gubbins - also on Communications direct
PC Pro Barry Collins
IT Week & Computing & WiMax news David Bailey
Tech.co.uk Anne Lagerkvist
ZDNet David Meyer
Digital Trends – Christopher Nickson
Comms Dealer
ThinkBroadband
Telecom Paper – can’t read without subscription
Newswireless.net: Guy Kewney
ISPreview
One Stop Click
Broadband - Finder
Satnews.com
Blogs
Broadband Genie
The Hermes project
Tech Taxi

The last post - for Amstrad

The old Amstrad company may have been sold to Sky (R.I.P.) - but the memories of some great times with Sir Alan will live on as long as we all stay friends. 14 ex Apprentices from the 80's gather for some great fun, beer and pies at the Newman Arms last Tuesday evening. See the photos on Facebook.

This maybe the last post for Amstrad - but its my first blog post for months - I have been storing it all up - so there is lots to follow as I have been reflecting on 6 months of new social media i.e. Facebook, Plaxo Pulse, Twitter, Google Reader, Gmail, 400 Linkedin contacts - the progress Sharedband has made and where we are going next, extended stay in Seattle and visiting Portland, LA and San Francisco - meeting up with Robert Scoble, Om Malik and many other intersting people.

Please enter your passcode and press the pound sign!

There is probably a whole book on US v UK differences, but I keep hearing this one on calls to the US and I just don’t understand it – why do Americans call this “#” a pound sign – I always think “£” as a pound (sterling) sign or “lbs” for pounds as a weight measure. Is there another sort of pound? I'd call # a hash sign....!