There are some exciting new developments in how broadband is being delivered to businesses in Staffordshire and the Midlands. The Humans at D2NA predict that these changes will have a big impact on how businesses use technology.

The experience of working from home or on the move will become far closer to the experience of working in the office.
  • Video conferencing will become common place, lower cost and easier to deploy
  • Connect to your office phone system using IP based telephone handsets at home or on the move
  • Business Continuity will be radically improved with live data replication achievable for SMB’s
  • Share larger files with co-workers, suppliers and customers
  • Collaborate more effectively with shared workspaces “in the cloud”
  • Access to company data from home will become almost as fast as being in the office
Many of the above benefits are already known to larger business that have invested in high cost leased lines, but the changes in low cost broadband will bring about a revolution in smaller business. BT are aiming to rollout their new super-fast broadband services to two thirds of UK business and homes by 2015. However, the rollout has already begun in Staffordshire, with plans already in place to reach 55,000 businesses and homes.

Recent Broadband History

Over the last few years low-cost Internet connections (collectively known as ‘broadband’) have been delivered to your office or home using a technology called DSL (“Digital Subscriber Line”). In fact most low-cost broadband uses ADSL (“Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line”). It’s delivered on your copper telephone line.

The one notable exception to this is ‘cable broadband’ (In the UK, cable broadband is delivered via Virgin Media's fibre optic cable network).

However the majority of small businesses currently use ADSL. The copper telephone line extends from your premises to the nearest BT Telephone Exchange. Typically your premises will be anything between 0.5 and 4 miles from the nearest BT exchange. And therein lies the bottleneck in this technology. There is only so much data that can pass along a single copper cable of that distance.

New Developments

So what to do? In recent years BT have been busying themselves installing new fibre optic networks – and there are two distinct phases which have a positive impact on small businesses:

21CN
BT’s 21St Century Network (21CN). This is a new BT core network and will replace what was known as the BT “Colossus” Network. Your existing ADSL connections are switched to the new 21CN Network when your local BT Exchange is upgraded.

This is known as upgrading from ADSL to ADSL2+. In theory you will not see a big improvement in bandwidth; however experience shows that because the old Colossus network is so busy and because it uses older technology, a switch to ADSL2+ will usually bring reasonable improvements, though nothing earth shattering.

There are many other interesting benefits and changes being led by 21CN which will affect businesses in Staffordshire and the Midlands. For a more in-depth look at 21CN see here.

Local Loop Unbundling (LLU)
Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) is where a non-BT operator installs their own equipment in the BT Exchange, which connects directly into their own independent networks.

Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) who do not have their own equipment installed in the Exchange are reliant on BT’s own equipment to provide your Internet Connection, and in such cases your Internet connection is first connected to one of BT’s core networks (Colossus or 21CN) before being passed to your own ISP’s network.

LLU operators are still reliant on BT OpenReach for “the last mile”, but the Humans at D2NA always encourage businesses to consider using an LLU operator if a reputable one is available in your area as service levels are in our experience higher.

Annex M
Annex M is a relatively new variant of ADSL2+ which allows greater upload speeds – potentially up to 2Mb/s, or double what’s available without Annex M.

Fibre rollout in ‘the last mile’ – Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC)
The last mile is what is known as the cable run between your local BT Exchange and your premises, and it’s managed by BT OpenReach. And this is the exciting bit. In many areas BT are installing fibre optic cable from the Exchange to the street cabinet (you will recognise these as the green cabinets on the kerbside) with the remainder of the connection - from the cabinet to your premises - using copper wiring.

This combination of fibre and copper can be used to support far greater speeds of up to 40mb/s initially, potentially rising to 60Mb/s in the future. Initial upstream speeds will be between 5 and 10Mbit/s rising to 15Mb/s.

The importance of Upload not Download
The benefits of higher upload speeds are where businesses will see the greatest benefit. Upload speeds are what governs the speed of data travelling out of your business or home network, and most the benefits listed in the introduction of this article are gained from the increase in upload speed, not download speed.

How to find out when the new services will be available in your area
Sam Knows is a free and independent resource to check what broadband services are available in your area. There are two key search tools provided:

- UK Broadband Availability Checker - search for what broadband services are available to you by entering your postcode or telephone number
- UK Exchange Search - search for telephone exchanges by entering your postcode and to map them via Google maps

Further reading
Find out more information about the Government’s plans for next generation broadband. How BT defines Next Generation Broadband

Talk to the Humans at D2NA to find out more