CEO View

On-Communications is an alternative wireless Broadband network for Business customers, free from regulatory interference.  On-Communications provides both primary internet access and diverse resilient backup connectivity to its customers and therefore benefits from ever greater uptake of high-bandwidth broadband usage.

Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), BT’s recent proposal (which has yet to receive regulatory approval) will increase the business requirement for ‘absolutely always on’ Internet connectivity, whilst reducing still further the number of competitive last mile network operators.

This plays exactly to On-Communications’ strengths as an alternative UK Broadband network, as ‘absolutely always on’ Internet connectivity is what On-Communications delivers to its customers.

A significant (and fastest growing) element of On-Communications revenue is as a backup network to fibre provided by BT Openreach, as either Assured Backup or Diverse Backup, our new product launched this week designed for businesses which already have fibre and other high end primary network connectivity.

The benefits to UK plc of an overlay Wireless Broadband network to single provider (i.e. BT Openreach) fibre can clearly be seen as having both tactical and strategic importance to UK businesses and the nation.  Every day someone digs through a fibre cable somewhere, and when fibre ducts or local exchanges get flooded, large-scale disruption occurs.  On-Communications’ network means business disruption doesn’t also have to include the loss of Internet access.

On-Communications provides guaranteed performance Primary Internet access for businesses (not best efforts as residential FTTC will be), and is optimising its network to support integrated, next generation cloud and mobile applications from the enterprise.

As CEO of On-Communications, I believe in a high speed online world, the important role we have in that world, and welcome all developments that increase the competitiveness of UK plc.

Cheers, Ian

I was very fortunate and somewhat humbled to be asked to make the opening remarks at an industry ‘do’, which was attended by an array of talented executives and associated industry alumni at the Finnish Ambassador’s Residence in London recently. 

The topic was Fixed Wireless Convergence (FMC) and I opined and whined that none of the mobile operators were yet giving me what I wanted for my version of FMC.  This I summarised as:

1. A single handheld device for both my office and mobile phone
2. Private and mobile billing from the one device
3. PBX capability e.g. call transfer
4. Integrated business and social contacts
5. Uninhibited WiFi access including for internet calls

There were enough senior execs from all the mobile companies there to hear my plea; we shall see whether or not they were sufficiently moved by it to act.

We shall of course be happy to work in detail with any of the operators that would like to partner in such a joint venture and are looking for a company to provide symmetrical wireless Internet connectivity to allow in building calls to be routed over the Internet rather than the mobile network.

If my own view on what would be useful FMC comes to pass, it does pose some interesting questions for the industry though.  Two of my favourite ones are:

• If I don’t need a land line phone, why do I need a Wireline telephone system?
• If I don’t need a Wireline telephone system, why do I need a telephone line?

At our offices, we don’t have telephone lines, just a big fat intelligent Internet connection. 
Perhaps not such off the wall questions to pose after all!

The evening’s event was rather splendidly organised by Perry LeDain of Finpro http://www.finpro.fi/en-US/Finpro/ and sponsored by Concilio networks of Espoo, Finland. 

Cheers, Ian

There is a big battle going on in the mobile equipment vendors and standards market, with the makers of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Mobile WiMAX.

Vendors of both technologies have laid their bets, analysts have made their judgement calls and vendors who get it wrong will be very severely damaged if not taken out of the game.

For me, if both technologies fulfil their promise (though I doubt they will), LTE will win where existing networks need upgrading, and Mobile WiMAX will win when new ones are being built – but we’ll see, neither are yet ready for prime time.

What I pose is a question about WiFi?

It’s an insidious technology, everywhere and nowhere, yet thousands of devices have been WiFi enabled, Blackberry and Apple have just turned Mobile WiFi into a prime time mobile technology.

Now I don’t think there will be a (UK) wide WiFi network like we have 3G (did I say UK wide?), and the makers of both LTE and Mobile WiMAX position themselves as WiFi killers, however…

I offer the thought that maybe, just maybe, WiFi has the momentum to become a mainstream third mobile technology.
Certainly we are seeing some interesting developments in our own backyard.

Our joint press release with BT about our landmark project with the Manchester Velodrome deploying end user WiFi connected to the Internet via our Symmetrical Fixed Wireless Internet Access is the first of a number on our radar of similar projects.

Ubiquitous genuinely high speed, low cost mobile broadband (where one has the time and a spare hand to use it) sounds like a winner to me!

Ian Roberts

This was one of the headlines on the newswires this week.  We have long believed that the idea of WiFi enabling an entire city and giving away the service for free or minimal rates was a total fantasy.  Aside from the issue of local authorities competing with private enterprise, there are at least two substantial truths related to this issue.

1) Nothing is really for free, someone somewhere pays.

2) Whilst the model is largely download and light usage, XDSL technologies are a very efficient consumer solution for broadband, and wireless will simply not compete on the residential commercial math where a copper infrastructure already exists.

As the year progresses, more and more bad business models will be exposed, and the subtlety that ‘not all wireless businesses are alike’ will become very obvious.

Ian Roberts

The eagle eyed among you will have noticed the appearance of BT Openzone  on the site recently. 

This really is a very important milestone for the company, and indicative of the type of relationships and services we expect to offer going forward.

As UK market leaders in our field of Fixed Wireless Internet Access (FWIA), our product roadmap naturally leads us to work with the best companies in the industry; BT Openzone are the UK leaders in hot spot provision.  The relationship and BT Openzone service is part of our strategy to layer in additional value and services around an intelligent, symmetrical broadband connection, importantly including enterprise mobile voice.

De facto, as a result of all the work we have done integrating our network with BT Openzone, we now have the capability of supporting BT Fusion Phone calls over our network wherever there is WiFi access into one of our connections – hence the availability of BT Openzone to and through our customers.  This is our first proof point around adding enterprise mobility VoIP to our portfolio.

There are a number of other exciting projects we are currently working on around just this subject, and in a variety of flavours, but all have the focus of enabling our FWIA circuits as a bridging network between the worlds of enterprise data and mobile VoIP.

Watch this space.

Ian Roberts

Don’t hold your breath

Extract from an article originally published in The Register, 27th November 2007

The Whitehall summit on next generation broadband on 26th November 2007 concluded with government, regulators and industry firmly agreeing that they definitely need to start thinking around what to do about the UK’s creaking internet infrastructure at some unspecified point in the future (perhaps).

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) meeting, held behind closed doors, was chaired by the competitiveness minister Stephen Timms. According to a statement today, the “emerging consensus [on next generation broadband]… included the need to collaborate across industry, government and the public sector”. Wowzer.

The papers were full of stories about the UK falling behind on broadband yesterday, in anticipation of a major leap forward for the Knowledge Economy™.

But no such luck. “It was a constructive and open discussion which anticipated the demand for reliably faster and more symmetrical broadband. It is my job to bring people together so that this need can be met,” proud host Timms gushed.

He promised to get to work on something called a “vision statement” for next generation broadband. A vision statement is like a mission statement, only served up to the public as well as within an organisation. They’re equally nebulous and specifically designed to contain no policy information whatsoever.

Ofcom chief Ed Richards made it clear that the regulator won’t be intervening to encourage early investment. He said: “Ofcom’s role is to deliver a robust regulatory framework allowing industry to deploy when there is a clear business case for doing so.”

So like we said, don’t hold your breath. ®

Ian Roberts’ comment on this article:

Faster and more symmetrical broadband is exactly what is required, and radio has a significant role to play in the delivery of high speed symmetrical broadband to UK plc.  The symmetrical element is the edge that radio has over DSL type technologies.   Our own high speed symmetrical broadband network for business is also independent of BT Openreach, so for big business, it also provides a genuinely cost effective resilient data connection.

As for Ofcom, they are right, there needs to be a business case.  In a competitive market, if the Government wants to provide subsidy, then it must offer it to all Broadband operators to bring down costs for all technology types and solutions, not just one.