The Financial Times - July 22, 2014 Sajid Javid faces fight to boost UK broadband access By Daniel Thomas, Telecoms Correspondent Case studies in frustration: After being told they would not be able to get superfast broadband connections for their companies, the founders of London-based Umi, Deeper Blue and DrDoctor have had to struggle with a much slower and unreliable internet connection, writes Jonathan Moules. Steve Lowy, Umi Steve Lowy’s digital marketing business, Umi, moved from an office in the shadow of London’s BT Tower 16 months ago because the street did not have the infrastructure to connect his building to fibre optic broadband. His team of a dozen software developers, designers and sales people are now based a stone’s throw from the Old Street roundabout, the home of London’s Tech City start-up cluster, but he still does not have a superfast internet connection. “Sometimes I will go around the corner to Starbucks to make a Skype call because it is easier to connect to their WiFi and the service is more reliable,” Mr Lowy says. “We occasionally have afternoons where our internet grinds to a halt so some of our developers can’t do their job.” Umi, a services company in the hospitality sector, has not lost any business because of its slow broadband connection, Mr Lowy says. But he admits it does not make them look good. “Bearing in mind we are so close to the so called Silicon Roundabout it really is crazy.” Mr Lowy said that BT and Virgin Media have told him that running a fibre line to his current office, which is down an alleyway just north of the Barbican centre, would be too expensive, so he agreed to a slower service instead. “We are in a contract now that is both expensive and really doesn’t provide us with the level of provision we need,” he says. “We could move into serviced offices, where the internet is included in the rent, but they are a lot more expensive.” Laurence Croneen, Deeper Blue Laurence Croneen, founding director of Deeper Blue, which helps companies with their advertising and other communications campaigns, has been told it cannot have a superfast internet connection at its Wimbledon office because it is “at the end of the broadband line”. Like Umi, Deeper Blue has never lost a contract. But it has had to develop some unusual working practices to ensure client work is done as quickly as possible. “We now have an unwritten rule that any large scale-downloads need to take place outside normal working hours,” Mr Croneen says. “Wherever possible, we slim down our transferable assets to the minimum onscreen quality, and remain conscious of overuse of streaming video and music on the web.” Although this generally works, it means the company operates less efficiently than it could, Mr Croneen says. “Fortunately we have a back-up: Cafe Nero a few metres away from us which has proved a lifesaver when there’s a meltdown.” Mr Croneen also takes work back to his home in Fulham to access the superfast broadband line he has been able to have installed there, although this is an hour’s commute away. The shortcomings of the local broadband service in southwest London have become more obvious as Deeper Blue has expanded overseas, Mr Croneen notes. “With a new Deeper Blue office opening in India, access to the best quality, superfast broadband is no longer a luxury, it’s a business essential.” Rinesh Amin, DrDoctor A fibre optic line has been installed at the company next door to DrDoctor’s headquarters in a former Victorian school house on Hoxton Square, in east London’s Tech City neighbourhood. However, because DrDoctor’s office was created by subdividing the building a few years ago, the company has a newly created postcode and its address is not recognised by the BT Openreach database. Founder Rinesh Amin has been told that for this reason he cannot have a fibre optic line from any of the superfast broadband providers. This is a problem because DrDoctor, which builds booking systems for GP’s surgeries and NHS hospitals, relies on the internet to connect to the patient data held by the healthcare providers it works for. Without a fast internet connection, DrDoctor’s programmers and system designers cannot manage the service or make software upgrades. The company waited for a month before a BT engineer installed a basic broadband line. In the interim, the company had to rely on a 4G wireless service, using a dongle supplied by EE. This cost £35 a week, about as much as a fixed line would have cost per month, and it had a cap on data use. “We got to the point where we just didn’t care how we got the service,” Mr Amin says, adding that the lower speed broadband service they are using is officially a residential contract, because no one would give them a business service. Every now and then one of the development team shouts in frustration because the internet connection has been lost from the broadband router the 10 office computers are connected to. “We don’t know what causes this,” says Mr Amin. “We are probably overloading the box.”
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 11:39:37 +0000
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