Broadband for All: Murder on the Orient Express?

‘Broadband for All’ is a key goal for European competitiveness and growth, but achieving that lofty goal is like chasing an elusive, waking dream. Europe has struggled to piece together the missing pieces with slightly blurry vision of the desired end.

Not any more. The EU’s coordination action BREAD, short for ‘BRoadband in Europe for All: a multi-Disciplinary approach’, sought clarity with a long and wide view of the issues.

“The solution is not all technical, or all policy, there are social and cultural elements as well,” says Peter Van Daele, coordinator of the BREAD project. “We wanted to look at the problem from every angle, and to consult every expert or researcher to get their input.”

To that end, BREAD consulted all the BB4All projects under the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) – over 25 in all – and BREAD’s partners were all senior research institutes and consultants on broadband.

“There were no industry partners, which was really a strength,” emphasises Van Daele. “Our findings are impartial.”

The group’s findings? Partly, Broadband for All is a problem of definition. Discussing broadband deployment constantly throws up one obstacle: what is ‘broadband’? So BREAD took over a definition from the Slovakian broadband strategy: simply that broadband means the network is not the bottleneck when using an application.

In other words, once broadband is available to everyone, the network should never be the limiting factor for the deployment of a particular application. Surfers should be able to send email or movie clips, use web-based applications or watch internet TV when they want.

“In reality, that ultimately means ‘Fibre to the Home’ (FTTH),” asserts Van Daele, which is data capable of being delivered via optic fibre all the way to the user’s premises. “But the picture is more complicated than that, because users like mobility and will also want to use their computers or phones wirelessly, either via mobile data, wireless internet or WiMax.”

This gives an indication of the problems. Mobile data delivery through 3G wireless internet, WiFi and WiMax (a faster, longer-range version of WiFi) are just some of the available technologies. Cable, DSL and FTTH are the leading ‘wired’ technologies among the many broadband solutions. What becomes clear is that no single solution will fit all.

Tales of the unexpected

That is perhaps to be expected. But the strength of BREAD’s multidisciplinary approach throws up somewhat unexpected results. “For example, the uncertain legal situation causes constant problems with investment in broadband,” reports Van Daele. “These investments are long term but the long-term legal framework is not certain.”

Local and regional communities and authorities have often sought to deploy broadband in their area, but the rules governing local authority investment vary across Europe and may even not allow such deployments.

“Unlike Japan, Korea or the USA – leading broadband nations – the legal situation in Europe is in flux,” notes Van Daele.

BREAD’s research, contained in four weighty tomes and available online, outlines issues like these and many others. It also presents a variety of roadmaps to help Europe piece together the BB4All vision.

Another major achievement is BBEurope, a yearly conference that gathers over 200 researchers, investors, businesses and institutes to present the latest work on broadband deployment.

“It is not specific to one field, but to one goal,” explains Van Daele. “There are technical presentations, and seminars on applications, legal issues and pilot projects.” It is a yearly who’s who of the European drive to broadband.

BREAD continues to maintain its website, which acts almost as a portal for BB4All, and it will run the 2007 BBEurope conference. But it is now looking for collaboration with FP7 projects to take over the conference and website in 2008.

“Our project ended in December 2006, and all the partners except one made an unsuccessful bid under FP7,” Van Daele explains. So the future of BREAD’s work is uncertain.

One thing is sure. If Europe takes the example of Murder on the Orient Express, aligning all the factors and actors to deploy broadband for all, it will create a killer economy.