IX Scotland

I went to a meeting about IX Scotland yesterday - basically setting up a regional internet exchange here in Scotland. ISP's such as ourselves can connect to it, meaning that traffic for Scotland stays in Scotland. So that's the good news. 

The bad news is that gaining connectivity in any meaningful way from non-Urban areas remains extraordinarily difficult and expensive. For instance a 100mb/s pipe costing at least £1,500 a MONTH. Scary  

our current 'Bonded' solution over an uncontested link remains the best option till BT Openreach - the part that does the lines - finally offers 'fibre to the premises' outside the FOUR exchanges that it's offered at already. This reinforces BT's monopoly on the market and forces large data consumers into expensive connections or Urban areas. Even the Scottish Execcutive person in charge of Superfast Internet in Scotland couldn't offer a solution.  

We shall of course keep plugging away at this 'first mile' issue. 

In other news, the chaps from B4RN in Lincolnshire presented on their fibre solution. Gigabit to every house, 700 houses, costs at £3.5m so far, all raised privately. It basically costs £1,000 a house to put fibre in, so expect a 20 year break even.  

Oddly their 700 houses peak load was only 340mb - double our nightly peak with 90 properties. I shall have to investigate more deeply.