One of the UK Government's most contentious plans included in the new Digital Britain report is the proposed minimum 2Mbps broadband to every UK household , with many parties suggesting that the minimum speed is not adequate.

Fusion suggests that, for business at least, perhaps it is�
To be honest, there weren't too many surprises for ISPs and the broadband marketplace in the Digital Britain report. Although, having said that, most of us may still be ploughing through the full 245 pages.

The 50p tax per month per copper line to help finance FTTC et al was somewhat painful for most consumers to digest but, then again, where else was the money going to come from to build a true Next Generation Network? By the looks of their recent financial reports, not BT directly, that's for sure.

In the broadband community, even though we knew it was coming, perhaps the most interesting bullet point from Lord Mandelson and Ben Bradshaw's report was the proposed Universal Broadband Service Commitment (USC) of 2Mbps to be delivered to all UK households by 2012.
As an ISP, this is hugely important to us, as we have previously struggled at some remote locations to find cheap solutions beyond 512Kbps, often less, so we will be intrigued to watch progress with this.

Watching the launch of the document to the House of Commons (yes, we really are that sad) recently on IPlayer, along with the two dozen MPs who bothered to turn up, really highlighted the mixed messages the politicians are putting out. There were plenty of dissenting voices that 2Mbps wasn't adequate for local rural businesses, but this was muddied somewhat by other arguments that entertainment streams such as BBC IPlayer would not be enjoyed fully on a 2Mbps circuit. In fact, what "fully" really means is that the content could not be enjoyed as an HD broadcast, which requires a minimum 4Mbps circuit.
 
Once again, the distinction between business and residential broadband services becomes blurred in all the rhetoric. Yes, home users will continue to demand higher bandwidth at next to nothing prices, but where does that leave businesses? Particularly small rural busineses? Does watching the snooker in HD on his laptop really benefit Farmer Smith's livestock trade? Will sales in the village store double because the owner can catch up on Eastenders HD during her tea break?

Or, in reality, is a 2Mbps actually just about right for most small businesses?

What can 2Mb do?

A painful truth is that 2Mbps is fairly adequate for most small businesses. The most frequently used business application remains email, and most emails are tiny (unless your staff are in the habit of receiving multiple comedy videos from their friends, in which case allotting them more bandwidth probably isn't the answer).
Web browsing again is an office standard, but most web pages themselves are still relatively small and take up precious little bandwidth, with the recommended file size for universal access still hovering around 200KB, which downloads over a 2Mb line in about a second.

There are some emerging technologies that do impact more on bandwidth usage, such as Skype and VoIP, but even these are relatively light users. A good quality 2Mb line should support three or four simultaneous VoIP calls. The minimum recommended bandwidth for a Skype call is 512Kb so, in theory, you could have two Skype calls running and still have 1Mb free for other applications on your 2Mbps line..

Really pushing the envelope, you could get Fusion to apply Quality of Service (QoS) to your line, so that 1Mb of your 2Mb line is always ready to prioritise your voice or video over other applications.

The key to business strength broadband is not simply the allotted bandwidth, but the quality and consistency of that bandwidth, which is why businesses should always opt for the lowest possible contention within budget. Bear in mind, some of our clients are streaming High Definition video conferencing calls over our 1:1 contention SDSL and Vita DSL lines very comfortably - and these services do not usually exceed 2Mbps.

What Goes Up?

One interesting omission from the Digital Britain report is any guarantee of upstream service delivery on the proposed USC of 2Mbps downstream. 2Mbps downstream will be pretty useless for business if the guaranteed upstream rate is only 128Kbps or similar. As we at Fusion stress very often, businesses tend to be "givers" as much as "receivers" when it comes to broadband.

In most cases, whether it's e-shots, delivering files, hosting sites or making calls over video/voip, generating business is a pro-active, outgoing activity, far more so than average residential usage. Residential ISP's will scream from the rooftops about their headline download speeds, but tend to be slightly more cagey when it comes to the upload rates.

The good news is, 128Kbps upstream on a 2Mbps line is unlikely with the new BT technologies based around ADSL2+. Fusion has been offering ADSL2+ since last year over its existing 800+ LLU exchanges, and this is due to increase rapidly in the summer as BT's 21CN rollout gathers pace. ADSL2+ comes complete with those very fast headline speeds, but also tucked away in there is an improved upstream ceiling of up to 1.6Mbps - although in fairness you would need to virtually live in the exchange to attain the top level performance. However, even at longer distances, ADSL2+ has proved to still hold a decent upstream rate, which means even the most remote users should still expect at very worse around 256Kbps upstream, probably closer to 512Kb.

The name's Bond

So, smaller business should be fairly happy with a 2Mbps service, but how about slightly larger remote companies, with maybe between 10 to 30 staff? The argument would surely be "we can't cope with a measly 2Mbps broadband service". The answer (apart from "well how have you been coping to date?") would be "you don't have to".

Even if you only get 2Mbps under the USC proposal, you can install as many of these 2Mbps lines as you wish.

Fusion will be launching a new product later this year that will seamlessly bond two, four or more lines and double or quadruple your bandwidth accordingly, all through the same IP addressing.

Yes, the costs for the service will increase as you are using more than one line, and some hardware is required to work the magic but, if high bandwidth is essential to service your thirty members of staff, the additional expense must surely be justified by the benefits to your business.

Essentially, bonding multiple 2Mb lines would produce minimum performance of 8Mb down and 2Mb up, for an estimated cost of less than �200 per month.

Scaling Up

So, that's the smaller business sector taken care of under the USC, but how about the bigger corporates who, perhaps unwisely, took the decision to set up headquarters in the middle of a rural community with poor copper connectivity?

Bonding multiple lines to achieve high bandwidth for 100+ users stops being practical when dealing with this sized operation, but the good news is there is almost certainly plenty of bandwidth available to you in any case. When companies reach this size, DSL-based connectivity ceases to become a viable option (apart from backup services), whether the company is based in the middle of Dartmoor or in the City of London.

Fusion can deploy fibre connectivity virtually anywhere in the country and the costs of these services have tumbled in recent months. We can provision a basic 1:1 contention 2Mbps circuit, right up to a 100Mbps line, or even faster.

The Future

Of course, more long term, business bandwidth requirements across the board will become higher. Virtualised environments mean that more and more applications will be hosted remotely rather than on a local machine, and this is expected to increase bandwidth usage significantly.

But we should remember that the 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment is already only a relatively short term goal. This level of connectivity should remain fairly comfortable for most businesses (bearing in mind the alternative options mentioned above) into 2012 and some time beyond.

As the USC is in progress, BT will be leading the rollout of Fibre to the Home (FTTH) and Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) Next Generation services which, while only initially expected to reach 10% of the population by 2012, has been recently revised to possibly reach 90% within the same time frame, thanks to our monthly 50p contributions.

Theroretically, with a total rollout of fibre to the cabinet/home, the whole of the UK could be on a 40Mbps platform within, say, 5 years.

So, a 2Mbps commitment from the Government may not suit everyone, principally the home users who wish to stream iPlayer HD over four different machines in the same house. However, it is definitely a step in the right direction, particularly for remote businesses who can barely maintain dialup speeds at present.

The important factor is that even faster services will inevitably follow beyond 2012, as broadband increasingly continues to be considered a utility rather than a luxury. Meantime, 2Mbps will come as a welcome relief to many businesses and, either through deploying more than one line or extending to fibre, there remains plenty of scope to get faster broadband nationally if needed.