Old Portlethen Fibre Broadband

Background

We are a community of 66 properties on the east coast of Scotland in rural Aberdeenshire. I, like many of the villagers were frustrated by our broadband internet connections. The basic problem was that we were up to 2.5km from the nearest fibre exchange connected by copper cables to our homes. This meant that regardless of which company was providing our internet, the best anyone could get was around 8 mbps for a heavily impacted VDSL service but speeds as slow as 1 mbps were not uncommon, slower still if it was raining. 

We felt like being in a forgotten backwater, 10 minutes drive to the bustling city of Aberdeen, with an internet connection unfit for the requirements of the 21st century. A Scottish Government programme to roll out superfast broadband to 95% of households in the country was just winding up as we made enquiries in 2019, and guess what, we were in the 5%. 

With domestic requirements for ever-faster internet connections expanding year on year, we knew that catching up with fibre to the cabinet connections would not be enough; we needed to go a step beyond to the internet speeds of fibre to the premises (FTTP), given the apparent difficulty in rolling out infrastructure upgrades to a village of our size. For the fastest domestic internet connections, you need fibre-optic cable all of the way to your house with no copper cabling.

We consulted with our member of the Scottish Parliament, Maureen Watt, who updated us on the next phase of improvements. Contracts were being tendered and negotiated for their Reaching 100 programme (R100) to the remaining homes, but this would likely be a drawn-out programme and potentially only allow us fibre to the cabinet speeds at best. She suggested that we consider a Community Fibre Partnership with Openreach.

Community Fibre Partnership

The principle is that a community requests full FTTP connection from Openreach. The company, which provides the infrastructure for cabled communications matches funding to government Gigabit Vouchers obtained by each householder and business in the community. There are different rates depending on whether you live in what is classed as a rural area and whether your property is used to run a business or not. The definition of a business is quite loose; either a sole trader who can demonstrate through invoices or similar that they trade from the address under question, or a small to medium enterprise where business can be demonstrated to take place from the house. We were classed as being in an Accessible Rural area and at the time of our application, each householder could raise a Gigabit Voucher for up to £1500 and each business for up to £3500. Note that the information on the Gigabit Voucher web site is not accurate in its definition of businesses - more information is contained in the individual contracts.

The conditions attached to being eligible for a Gigabit Voucher are that each householder commits to upgrading their current broadband contract to a higher speed when the works are completed. The rule for rural communities is a commitment to upgrade to at least 30 MBPS (Superfast) contract, but is more onerous in non-rural localities where a greater commitment might be required. For us, where our broadband connection was so poor, the decision was simple - if, on completion of the works, you would be prepared to upgrade to a superfast broadband package from our original VDSL service, then it would be easy to meet this requirement. After all, why would you want to pay almost as much (and for some internet service providers, the same amount) for such a poor VDSL or ADSL service. 

We went through a drawn-out process of contract negotiation. Quite a bit of this delay was sorting out which houses to include and which to exclude. We needed to get the scope right - should we include houses near enough to the exchange to get a superfast broadband connection or not? Other issues arose from Openreach's database of properties in the village was inaccurate and we had to go through a jumbled list with a toothcomb to ensure nobody was missed out. By now, the Covid 19 outbreak was slowing progress and it seemed to take an age to reach an agreed quote. My advice to anyone else doing this would be to get the geographical spread of the scheme right at the outset, don't exclude anyone just because you know the house is empty or they don't use the internet. Set your scope and stick to it. Every time we went back to Openreach for a new quote, the price per household seemed to increase. I never got a satisfactory answer from Openreach as to why this was (Maureen Watt also went to the Director for Scotland of Openreach on our behalf with a similar result). So the fewer quotes you request, the better and faster it will be.

In Old Portlethen, there were 66 houses in the scheme and 40 of these signed up for vouchers, of which eight were businesses; this comfortably exceeded the amount that we needed to generate. It wasn't easy to generate this number. Steve Lewis and I knocked on a lot of doors to persuade the reluctant. Some people in the village only use the internet for emails and web browsing and didn't see the point of faster broadband, others were moving away, the house was empty or a multitude of other valid reasons. Conversely, some knew that they didn't need the capability of FTTP broadband, but are so invested in the village and what we were trying to do, that they signed up anyway. Bless them. We put leaflets through peoples' doors, but it was face to face contact that did the trick.

The final step was to put forward a business to enter into the contract with Openreach on behalf of the community. We could have put forward a number of businesses, but on reading the contract, it was clear that this business would be responsible for any financial shortfall at the end of the scheme. Each household that obtained a Gigabit Voucher has 12 months to sign up for an enhanced service. If they don't do so in that time, this could annul the voucher leaving a shortfall in the contract cost has to be met. For us, this was likely to be low risk, but the company of which I am Managing Director, HiDef Aerial Surveying Limited, was prepared to sign the contract and meet any shortfall in the unlikely event of the partnership falling short.

Once the contract was signed, each householder was contacted by the Gigabit Voucher scheme and asked to agree to the terms of the scheme. The contract looked more onerous than it was - quite a bit of information referred to the conditions of the normal scheme, but refers to the terms for rural projects in an annex. These over-rode all the more onerous conditions of non-rural locations, particularly the issue around the upgrade speeds required for voucher holders.

FTTP installation

There are other web sites that describe this process e.g. Oliver Jobson's excellent account. I'll describe what happened here. I finally signed the contract with Openreach on 1 September 2020. I was warned not to expect much to happen and that they would probably need the full year to complete the connection. There is a reason why I knew it would not take longer than this - the Gigabit Vouchers expire after 12 months and you cannot apply again if you run over this date. 

We went through the second COVID 19 lockdown at the start of 2021. People in the village had to work from home or kids had to do home schooling, all using a broadband service which was not fit for Zoom or Teams meetings. I found myself having to hold important client video conferences in which I had to switch off my camera and microphone until I needed to speak and it was difficult to make out what people were saying. During the lockdowns, far greater pressure was placed on the national network and most people experienced a drop in internet performance. For people with superfast broadband, a 3-4 mbps drop in performance is probably not going to make much difference apart from slightly slower streaming and download, but for a village on 1 - 8 mbps, this can be catastrophic. The village WhatsApp group contained frequent desperate messages from people whose internet had stopped working at a critical point in their working day. As someone who lived at the top of the village, I was able to get an OK 4G signal and set up a mobile Wi-Fi I could use for work, but people at the bottom of the village could not get this at all. My pleas to Openreach to speed up the roll-out were frustrating - I just got radio silence. I'm sure they were being overwhelmed with similar desperate pleas.

In the build up to the works commencing, there were a number of small jobs that took place along the route to the village, but work began in anger at the end of May 2021, with sub-contractors digging along the narrow road to the village. They had to put in extra telegraph poles to get around difficult areas where digging wasn't possible and a couple of extra poles in the village. In general, digging is expensive and not Openreach's preferred option. It would seem that in the village, there were lots of snags to be overcome. The copper cables were buried under the road un-ducted and led to telegraph poles. This meant making greater use of the telegraph poles and less of digging into properties. About 20 properties had cables dug to a Customer Splice Point (CSP) on the property and the remainder in effect have their splice point on the telegraph pole. Other issues arose from ownership of common areas and obtaining permission to dig trenches to that point.

There were one or two moans from villagers, but fewer than there could have been. Everyone knew the importance of ensuring that the project went ahead smoothly. I met the project manager in May, and having direct contact helped. There is a WhatsApp group for the village and I set up a dedicated email address to send out communication to let people know what was happening and direct Openreach to any outstanding snags. For Openreach, it meant fewer questions and support with land access when needed by having that point of contact.

Openreach decided to include a few houses that fell outside the partnership in their work programme at their own cost, or use another grant. At the end of the day, this was Openreach's decision to make and I could not expect them to make this offering, but I'm very glad that they did.

The final connection

The FTTP for all the villagers went live on 23 July 2021. We found out by self-discovery and an email from the project manager, followed eventually by a leaflet informing on what happened next and it was possible on various broadband facility checking websites to see that addresses in the village could upgrade their internet to speeds up to 1 gbps. In reality, you will only be able to order an average download speed of up to 900 mbps and upload of up to 100 mbps. It was interesting that some websites didn't refresh their database as quickly as others.

The final stage for everyone was to contact their broadband provider (or if they were out of contract, to a new provider) and request an upgrade. Switching from the old copper VDSL or ADSL system is not trivial, but requires an engineer to visit the property to discuss the routing of the fibre to an Optical Network Terminator (ONT) box inside your house. This either comes from a CSP or direct from the telegraph pole, which uses existing routes into the house. Your ONT needs to be situated close to an electric power socket. The WiFi router provided by the internet service provider connects to the ONT, these factors need to be considered when speaking with the internet service provider's engineer. In my case, it was quite an effort to convince my broadband provider (Vodafone) that my connection was now live. I got him to check the BT wholesale broadband checker and said I wanted to switch providers and this seemed to do the trick and my connection was showing live on their system. 

Because the works took so long, we were left with very little time to order our upgrades. However, at this time, the government a 6-month extension has been granted which gives people more time before their vouchers expire. And they needed that time too - some folks were being made some ludicrous upgrade proposals. EE, for example, told one villager that she was only allowed to upgrade to a 900 mbps service at a significant cost. Given she only uses her broadband for emails and occasional browsing is completely inappropriate. She called back and they 'discovered' they could offer her 100 mbps. She's holding out for 36 mbps.

It's important that before people sign up for their vouchers that people check their broadband contract from their supplier. Consider when the contract is due to expire, what it will cost to upgrade, consider how much the early termination fee will be if they want to change supplier. 

I went for a download speed of 200 mbps and Vodafone completed the works on 10 August 2021. However, after 3 hours it went down. It would appear that another engineer disconnected me and it took three days to get the problem sorted, once I'd persuaded Vodafone that the break was more than line testing interruption. 200 mbps is probably more than I need, but I wanted to be able to enjoy real-time synchronisation with cloud computing systems and to be able to cope with multiple users in the house all trying to stream content at the same time. For my work, I sometimes need to look at extreme high resolution video (16X HD format), so this should do the trick.

Current grant schemes

The Gigabit Voucher scheme is still in operation in 2021 and you should be able to use this scheme to part-fund (or as in our case, fully-fund) getting full fibre to the premises for your community. It works best for rural communities, but is available to any community. What is tending to happen is that companies are using these to pull together projects, mainly in towns and cities, where commercial roll-out is more economically viable. Something to watch out for with these projects is that to qualify for a gigabit voucher, you might have to commit to upgrade your broadband contract to a much faster connection speed than you really need or desire (up to twice your current speed). We used Openreach because they were the only company prepared to deliver this project (so much for competition), but you could use any company to deliver to your community and the Gigabit Voucher web site provides a long list of potential contractors.

Another potential funding route in Scotland is the Scottish Broadband Voucher scheme, which has been made available under the Reaching 100 programme. This offers one-off grants of up to £5,000 per property which can potentially be combined with the Gigabit Vouchers from the UK Government (i.e. up to £8,500).

Postscript

Living in the village provided us with an outstanding quality of life - space, clean air, beautiful views and walks beside the sea and a popular village pub, but we had lousy internet. Now we can all enjoy stable very fast broadband facilities in the village. For many householders and businesses, video conferencing and remote computing are essential for home working. I hope we don't have to go back to home schooling, but that requires good internet access for teaching staff and children alike. More house buyers are seeking more space to accommodate home working and schooling, driving a surge in house prices in the UK, but decent broadband is also a critical factor.

Shall we stay or shall we go now?

If we stay there will be trouble, if we go it will be double.

I haven't used this blog to post any articles of a political nature before, but I decided to write something to articulate my views on the forthcoming referendum on the UK's continued membership of the European Union.  

This will be my second referendum in two years, and while I found the vote on potential independence for Scotland in 2014 a complex and difficult choice, I have found it very easy to decide on whether we should stay in or leave the EU. It's too important an issue for people to ignore, get wrong or for me to leave inside my head.

1. Value for money

We keep hearing that membership of the EU is expensive and poor value for money.  I received an information note with my P60 tax information return last year which showed the break-down of how my taxes were used for the last tax year.  It showed very clearly that about 0.5% of my taxes went toward payment of the UK's membership of the European Union.  I've seen different, lower percentages than this quoted elsewhere.  That's a bargain in my opinion.  I would go further and say that the EU is punching significantly above its weight in terms of value for money.  Perhaps I should turn the question around and ask why the 99.5% of my tax spend that goes to the UK government only delivers so little value for money.  OK, that was a somewhat facaetious question which grossly over-simplifies the types of things the UK and EU spend our money on, but there's a serious point in there somewhere.

2.  Environment, environment, environment

This is a wildlife blog after all, but you could say the same thing about lots of other things where the EU provides basic protection for the things I value the most, such as my human rights. 

I have worked for over 30 years in nature conservation and I see very clearly how the European Union protects the wildlife I value so dearly and want to see preserved for future generations.  The European Directives that protect our wildlife and our environment are just about the only checks that prevent widescale loss of wildlife habitats and deterioration of our environment.  It would not be an exagerration to say that we would see species extinctions as a result of losing the protections that those Directives give.

Many pro-exit campaigners claim that we would use or introduce our own laws as a replacement for the Directives.  That might be true; our Government is required to underpin all European Directives with domestic laws that translate the meaning of the Directive into out own legal framework.  However, they would not be the same deterrent without the EU Directives because no government would be able to resist the temptation to compromise those laws to rule in favour of over-riding public (i.e. commercial) interest, when push comes to shove.  This doesn't happen with EU Directives in place because if the European Court finds that the UK Government has failed to implement a Directive, either in the underpinning bywording of the law, or by enforcement of the law, then the UK Government can be infracted.  This means that the UK Government is fined 100,000 Euros per day until the damage or law is rectified.  How can a UK-only law replicate that?  We are hardly going to fine ourselves instead?  What kind of deterrent would that be?

If you need to be convinced of how powerful the EU protected sites are and how weak our domestic wildlife mechanisms are, you just need to look at the case of Donald Trump's golf course at Menie Links near Aberdeen.  That site was chosen because it was an undeveloped sand dune system amenable for building links golf courses that only had domestic laws protecting it (a Site of Special Scientific Interest, no less).  It was not classified as a Special Area of Conservation (an EU protected site) which every other undeveloped sand dune system in the UK is.  This explains the cynical targetting of this site by Trump International.  The rest is history, and the site's nature conservation interest has been completely destroyed, if not for ever, for hundreds of years after being allowed to teturn to the wild.  It is another statistic in a sad catalogue of species and habitat destruction here in the UK, which would have declined a great deal faster without European laws as protection for the best sites.

I am fortunate enough to have travelled to other countries and have seen how weak laws and corrupt governments combine to erode wildlife protection, environmental protection and protection of our human rights.  I have worked closely enough to our own government to witness how it is a thin line between what protects our rights here in the UK and the way that our own government would like to allow corporations to erode those rights.  But the European Union makes its citizens stronger.

3. Putting Herod in charge of babysitting

I take a look at the 'Brexit' camp and see a collection of most of the politicians I trust least to defend my interests and who have an unparalleled ability to make my skin crawl.  I can't think of a group of people I would like to see cast adrift in a metaphorical leaking boat less than the out campaign groups.  These politicians want us to leave the EU because they want to have more power than the EU currently gives them. It makes me shudder to think of what this group of politicians would do with extra power.  

Make no mistake, the 'Leave' campaign group has an agenda which is not just about leaving the EU.  It is a Neo-liberal agenda of deregulation which is not in yours or my interest.   Neo liberalism favours the rich and powerful who are best equipped to prosper within the chaos of a deregulated society at the expense of ordinary people who lack the financial means to hire lawyers, buy social services or private health care etc. when the state cannot support or protect them. 

4. The break-up of the UK

I make no secret of the fact that I voted in favour of Scotland staying in the UK in the Independence Referendum in 2014.  If Scotland votes for the UK to stay in the EU and the rest of the UK votes to leave, I would have no hesitation in voting for independence for Scotland in a new vote. I know many other people in Scotland who feel the same way because of the importance of being a member of the EU to them. I believe that if there is a majority vote in the UK to leave the EU, there will be overwhelming pressure for a new independence vote for Scotland, and this time, there would be a yes result in favour of indepndence for Scotland.

5. Can we just stop making enemies out of our neighbours, please?

It's hardly surprising that our neighbours on the continent make life difficult for us.  All this negative talk about the EU, about how we are better off without it etc etc does not make for good neighbourly relationships with people we have a great deal more in common with than we choose to admit.  Imagine if your own next door neighbour moaned continuously about how terrible the village/town/city was where they lived?  You would just say "well fuck off then, and don't expect any help from me".  OK, maybe not you, but that's what I would say, and that's what many of my European friends say about our very public national moans about Europe and the EU. We come across as a nation of Carl Pilkingtons turning our noses up at everything about Johnny Foreigner Europe as if we are in some way superior and they are inferior.  

We would do well to stop moaning, respect our European neighbours as equals and try constructive criticism instead. 

A visit to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

Monday 26th.

After the thrills of yesterday's pelagic it was time to get into South Africa's land birds.  Kerstin and I took a taxi out to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in the morning and slowly worked our way up through the different habitats and the different birds that they held.  The gardens are a celebration of the fantastically diverse flora of South Africa, with the main section dedicated to the local 'fynbos' habitat, dominated by ericacea and proteas. Stunning really.

The birding was good too, and we enjoyed African Goshawk, African Dusky Flycatcher, Sombre Greenbul and Cape Batis in the taller vegetation.  Southern Double-banded Sunbirds were widespread in the fynbos, but the star was a Cape Sugarbird sitting quietly in the middle of a bush in the midday sun. Somewhat bizarrely, Helmeted Guineafowl (apparently introduced) and Cape Spurfowl are common and tame in gardens around Cape Town, which given that they are also popular to eat doesn't seem like a sensible strategy for survival.

We used Uber taxis in Cape Town, and given the controversy surrounding this service around the world, I was interested to see what it was like.  Firstly the 'app' is very efficient, having posted your location as the start point, and your destination, it assigns you a driver and tells you which vehicle to look for.  A newish car turns up on time (you can see its progress on a map in the app) and you take a very comfortable journey to your destination.  The price is less than the city taxis, and from speaking to the drivers, they earn more money.  You get to rate the driver and his vehicle, and the driver gets to rate you as a customer.  We got to try out a conventional taxi later in the week and the difference in quality and price were noticeable, and the driver did not seem happy with the amount of work he was getting.  It seems like a win-win to me, unless you own a taxi company of course!

The gardens with Table Mountain in the background

Kerstin in full birding mode

Part of the gardens with Table Mountain in the background

African Dusky Flycatcher

Cape Sugarbird

Cape Spurfowl

Helmeted Guineafowl

Karoo Prinia - later to become an 'ever-present' species

Common Waxbill

A Cape Town pelagic

I got up early and joined a group taking a pelagic seabirding trip.  We were driven to Hout Bay where we boarded a surprisingly small boat with two monster 250 hp engines at the back.  Steve, the skipper took us rapidly out to the continental shelf edge.  Bruce Dyer was our guide, and very good he was too.  His careful identification of the adult and sub-adult albatrosses was exemplary.  We passed a group of breaching humpback whales, which was pretty spectacular.  The first albatrosses we saw were Shy Albatross, which was a new species for me.  However, the species I really wanted to see were Atlantic and Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross.  We saw a number of these, which made for good practice in how to separate these.  We found a trawler eventually, and it was mobbed with seabirds and also Cape Sea-lions, which were following the trawler too. That is, until a pod of Killer Whales tried to take one out.  I don’t think they succeeded.  

Leaving Hout Bay. Bruce Dyer, our guide, is on the left

A Shy Albatross

Great Shearwater - notice the pale panel at the greater coverts

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross - note the grey head

Cape Gannet

Sub-adult Black-browed Albatross

Pintado/Cape Petrel

Part of the seabird flock at a trawler

Dusky Dolphin

Cape Sea-lion fleeing Orcas

More of the seabird flock

Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross

Stunning coastal scenery just north of Hout Bay