"Where’s my hoverboard?!" was the collective cry that went up this week on Wednesday 21 October 2015, the date travelled to from 1985 by Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part II.
What has become referred to as ‘Back to the Future Day’ was, somewhat ironically, steeped in nostalgia for one of Hollywood’s best-loved film franchises, and the predictions it made in the late 80s about what life would be like in the not-too-distant future.
Anyone who has seen the movie will remember the flying cars and the hoverboards .Incidentally, one scene also sees the arrest of one of the film’s main antagonists, Griff, reported on by a robot journalist, which fortunately do not exist yet either (gulp!).
From a telco perspective though, the results are mixed.
If the McFly household of 2015 is typical of Back to the Future Part II’s fictional vision, then most people have telepresence in their lounge, but still rely on fax machines for writing messages to each other.
The teenage kids are also glued to Google Glass-like screens, even at the dinner table, and even when doting grandparents are visiting. This is probably closer to reality for many real households today, except it’ll be a smartphone or a tablet.
Presum ably, the connectivity, rich communications, and media are all underpinned by universally-accessible, affordable, high-speed broadband. If that’s supposed to be the case, then forget "where’s my hoverboard?" We should be asking, where’s my ultrafast broadband?
According to figures released by the EU this week, 88.5% of U.K. households have access to next-generation broadband – defined as download speeds of 30 Mbps delivered via VDSL, DOCSIS 3.0 or fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) – falling to 45.9% in rural areas. 47.7% can access broadband at 100 Mbps or above.
Despite those figures coming in well above the EU average, there are still many people in the U.K. crying out for a high-speed connection.
Earlier this week Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge made headlines when he called on the U.K. government to end subsidies for ultrafast broadband rollout, arguing that incumbent BT doesn’t need the money and that numerous private companies are waiting in the wings to spread faster connectivity to areas that don’t yet have it.
Rural broadband specialist Gigaclear proved Mockridge’s point, announcing the start of its latest project in the Cotswolds and noting that its infrastructure now reaches 10,000 U.K. premises, with a take-up rate of almost 40%.
But Mockridge was less-than-convincing about Virgin Media’s role in the whole thing. Sure, Virgin is spending £3 billion on a network in-fill plan that will add 4 million homes to its footprint by the end of the decade, but the company is being decidedly cagey on its plans for other parts of the country.
Speaking of cagey, TalkTalk was choosing its words carefully this week after a security breach resulted in the loss of personal data belonging to. ..well, we’re not yet sure how many customers.
As a result, by Friday many of the ISP’s 4 million subscribers were asking "where are my bank details?" (Not to mention, "where’s my email from TalkTalk?", given that at the time of writing the telco wasn’t doing a great job of "contacting all our customers straight away with information, support and advice" as per CEO Dido Harding’s promise. Yes, I am a TalkTalk customer, why do you ask?!)
Back to broadband…
Much maligned BT, which by now is doubtless tired of explaining that it got all the BDUK funding because noone else wanted it, this week turned its attention to copper, which Mike Galvin, the telco’s managing director of next generation access, described as "the answer, if the U.K. is to have widespread and affordable ultrafast broadband sooner rather than later."
BT shared the results of a trial of XG.fast technology, in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent, that saw it reach aggregate speeds of 5.6 Gbps over 35 metres of line, falling to 1.8 Gbps at 100 metres.
Inspired by BT’s efforts with G.fast, Australia’s NBN on Wednesday announced it carried out a successful trial of the technology and plans to deploy it commercially in 2017.
But for some, it’s all about fibre.
A week ago it emerged that Telecom Italia plans to resume talks with Metroweb’s parent companies that could see the pair develop a joint fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network.
Of course, in this day and age – of flying cars and a fax machine in every room – fixed access networks are not the only option for delivering high-speed broadband.
3UK is deploying an extr a 5 MHz of 1800 MHz spectrum across its network in a move it claims will boost 4G speeds by as much as 50%.
Meanwhile, operator group the Next Generation Mobile Network (NGMN) Alliance is looking ahead to the fifth generation of mobile technology, calling for the issue of 5G spectrum – that is, the allocation of spectrum above 6 GHz for 5G mobile services – to be added to the agenda at the World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15) next month.
5G is still some way off, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for what’s ahead. Those robot journalists are going to need a low-latency connection in order to do their jobs properly, and you need a reliable IoT network to support self-tying Nike high tops.
