APPENDIX 3
Memorandum submitted by Mr S Walsh (S6)
I should like to provide you with my experiences
and thoughts with respect to the availability of broadband services
and other high bandwidth services in rural areas.
My family has been living on Exmoor for some
three years. We moved to Somerset from Hampshire. When we moved
my wife and I took the opportunity, albeit that there was little
choice, to make significant changes to our working lives.
My wife established a marketing business which
was based from home. I changed my working patterns such that I
was able to work from home for two or three days per week.
Such changes have been well worthwhile as we
both spend less time and money travelling. This has allowed us
to spend more time with our young children and allowed us to play
a more active part in the local community.
Other benefits have been:
— Bringing a small business to an otherwise
largely agricultural area.
— Bringing some diversity to the area.
— Bringing some custom to other businesses
in the area, eg printers, stationers, etc.
— Reduction in travel—with the
green benefits which this brings.
— Bringing our children to a small
village school which has had falling pupil numbers.
However, managing our business interests from
Exmoor has presented more than a few challenges with regard the
availability of communication facilities.
Whilst we respect that there are some challenges
in providing network services to such areas we also feel that
insufficient pressure is being brought to bear on the network
providers to serve such communities.
In reality there is no choice of network providers.
BT owns and manages all of the local infrastructure and therefore
has complete control.
We have approached BT on several occasions requesting
any high bandwidth service only to be advised that they are not
supported in our area. We have even been advised that it would
not be possible to provide additional standard analogue telephone
lines as the local infrastructure does not have sufficient capacity.
The services which we have been provided with
are two basic analogue telephone lines. However, because of the
shortage of local infrastructure these lines are provided via
a DAX box on the BT pole.
A DAX box effectively splits a single analogue
line and provides two "digital" lines thus increasing
the number of customers who can be supported from a pole in any
given area.
This sounds great until it is appreciated that
the introduction of a DAX box reduces the maximum line speed which
can be achieved by at least 50%. (A DAX user may only transfer
data at 28,000 bits per second max as opposed to at least 56,000
bits per second on a non DAX line). This reduction in possible
line speed is not mentioned by BT during the order or provision
process but is discovered by the user once the provision is complete
and in use.
This reduction in performance makes a huge difference
to the actual speed at which a user may work.
The DAX boxes are also prone to failure when
lines are hit by lightening. The lines themselves fair pretty
well but the DAX boxes are almost always destroyed and require
replacement. The repair activity can and does take many days.
Because the lines are split, if a user has more than one line,
all lines are rendered unserviceable.
There is clearly advantage to be gained by coaxing
new businesses into rural areas if we are to protect and maintain
our rural communities. However, there is clearly much to be done
to provide barely adequate facilities if such businesses are to
be competitive.
Broadband would be a huge benefit to our businesses
and would allow us to further reduce the amount of business travel
which we undertake in the course of a year. It would even be a
distinct advantage to address the basic provision of analogue
services such that DAX provision were to cease. This would allow
performance of the analogue services to be increased to at least
a basic acceptable level.
I hope that you find these observations of interest.
Sean Walsh
1 February 2003
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