Sir Michael Blake Affair and the Secret of Getting Broadband at Notspots

The latest news that has been intriguing the broadband world in the United Kingdom, is obviously the recent development in the Oxfordshire village that has greatly upset the good residents here. The immediate cause of the village folks’ upset is the prominent fixed-line broadband provider in the United Kingdom giving the fruit of broadband to its dear Chairman – who is also a resident of the village – ahead of the others in the village.       

This has to be weighed against a more intriguing fact that Hambleden, the village that bears the controversy, located near Henley-on-Thames is ironically a broadband notspot or has been stamped thus by the authorities and other pertinent bigwigs, which obviously include BT. To be more precise the lamenting residents had been asked to wait for eternity by the broadband provider citing the line length issue that made it impossible for it to serve the area with regular ADSL broadband internet service.

Then how could the internet service provider that is currently engaged with the heavier duty of rolling out the next generation superfast fibre optic broadband service in the nation, manage to find a path to provide its Chairman Sir Michael Blake with a reasonably fast broadband connection? This too, despite the fact that Sir Michael had only moved into the village, an year back.

Let us see what the locality has to say. According to Gary Ashworth, a local businessman, the whole thing stank of corruption. In fact, he was lamenting over the plight of the villagers to the popular news portal The Daily Telegraph, where he also revealed that BT’s chairman was being given preferential treatment overlooking the long-serving consumers in the area. He substantiates his part with the claim that he has been running a business where he probably had thousand BT lines. He concluded his words brimming with indignation saying he thought it was a disgrace.

Now coming back to the secret behind BT’s delivering broadband to its Chairman at a notspot; this perhaps could not have been possible but for the development of a fresh broadband coverage enhancing technology called Broadband Enabling Technolgy (BET). The expectations placed on this new technological advancement by BT is more than apparent in its explanation – also with a view to extricate itself as well as its Chairman from the turmoil that it finds itself in currently – that at present they were trialling the BET at ten locations in the United Kingdom, and it was a standard practice of theirs to conduct small field trials involving its own staff.

The spokesman of the broadband provider that gave the firm’s explanation to the newspaper further confirmed that Sir Michael Rake was trialling the BET at his home. As a matter of fact, BT is considering to deploy BET across the country as soon as the funds announced by the then communications minister Lord Carter are made available to it for the purpose. Incidentally, BET technology is one advocated and conceived by BT Openreach with a view to receive as well as send fast symmetrical data streams at rates of anything between 192Kbps to 2.31Kbps. This concept is based on the Synchronus High bit Digital Subscriber Line technolgy (SHDSL), and is expected by the ISP to serve more than seven to twelve kilometres of distances from a local exchange.

According to Chuck Doherty, the broadband analyst at Broadband Suppliers, the BT act that irked a good number of Hambleden residents cannot be considered as corruption, as it is no more a company run by the government of the state and their chairman, not a public servant either. However, taking into consideration the fact that despite these respites, BT obviously owed to the people in the United Kingdom for the good will it enjoyed today as part of a moral obligation of a former public firm to the very same people it is still serving, but as a private entity.

Doherty added that on the other hand, the company cannot use this issue as an advertisement for its BET technology that is definitely in doldrums – being flayed by a good number of people in the country on the grounds that it might be simply a makeweight since fibre optic broadband network rollout has already started in the country – for the fact that a real test for the BET efficiency cannot just be carried out with a single subject and this too the chairman of the company, instead it should be a honest approach participating more people – load over distance – to get a clearer picture of its efficiency.

Doherty sums up, “Therefore the argument that the broadband provision to Sir Michael Rake was part of any trial of the internet service providing firm, could be nothing but a glorified lie.”