It's been an exciting time at CBN since Christmas as work has started in earnest on the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (INCA). A key part of Digital Britain, INCA will bring together networks from across the UK to jointly purchase and sell services. A key barrier for many networks is accessing the sorts of services their customers want, from telehealth to video on demand. INCA takes a massive step forward in making this sort of co-operation a reality.
INCA was a CBN concept, which we have promoted and nurtured to the point where it was backed by the Government last Christmas. INCA’s long term future will be as a completely separate entity, but in the meantime, members of the CBN team have been seconded to get the ball rolling. New organisations find the first few months the most challenging, so CBN’s support is critical to its future success and that of the increasing number of networks who will rely on INCA for services.
At the same time, we are working with Advantage West Midlands on their Next Generation Strategy and feeding into the Valuation Office consultation on community networks. |
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In the early part of 2008 CBN did some thinking around scenarios for successful next generation broadband deployment and how they may play out in the UK. This resulted in a short "think piece" being written in June of last year suggesting three possible scenarios, marking the birth of the "patchwork quilt" concept that makes a virtue out of a fragmenting market, and led to CBN's work on the INCA framework and the JON concept. With the emergence of the COTS discussion forum, we have republished this piece here to aid the debate for those new to the concepts. For information about INCA and the JON concept, contact us here. |
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League table of broadband notspots |
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The latest output of the partnership of CBN modeling and Samknows data, and used by the BBC's broadband day reporting, is a league table of the communities with the poorest connectivity in Great Britain: - Rural Communities
- Farming and Forestry
- Urban Commuter
- Mature Urban Households
- Struggling Urban Families
Based on Office of National Statistics classifications, the league table is made up of communities where the expected ADSL broadband speed is 2 Mbps or less and where alternatives such as Virgin cable services are not available. It is perhaps no surprise that rural economies top the list but the high positions of urban commuters, who might otherwise be home-workers creating less congestion and a smaller carbon footprint, and struggling urban families, who benefit most from online access to education and the jobs market, present more of an unrecognised problem. This is from the first wave of analysis being carried out by CBN and Samknows as we model and map broadband Britain - present and future - in unprecendented detail. |
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Samknows teams up with CBN to paint a picture of broadband britain |
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The oracle of broadband information, Samknows, has teamed up with CBN to produce models of the UK's broadband landscape, current and future. Combining Samknows unrivalled data on today's broadband services with CBN's models is providing a unique and powerful insight into the current and future broadband able to answer some of the big questions: - What broadband speeds are available and where?
- Who is likely to fall below the proposed 2Mbps universal service commitment?
- What is the level of competition?
- Which areas are likely to be priorities for Next Generation investments?
This first map estimates where Next Generation broadband is least likely to reach. 
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Read more... [Samknows teams up with CBN to paint a picture of broadband britain]
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