A-Bard-News, presents a mix of news items, developments and events relating to rural broadband uptake in Europe. This quarterly publication will highlight best practice, technology developments, relevant applications as well as broadband roll out issues facing rural communities.

Analysing Broadband Access for Rural Development (A-BARD) is a 6FP Coordination Action to research rural broadband provision and use.

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Welcome to issue 10

Welcome to this November issue of the A-BARD newsletter.

The A-BARD project is coming to an end at the end of December 2006 and it is now a time for reflexion over the lessons we learnt but also a time to draw some conclusions for policy makers across Europe.

The A-BARD recommendations will be presented at our A-BARD European Broadband for Rural Development Policy briefing which will be held in Brussels on the 30th of November 2006. To register go to www.a-bard.org and See article for more details.

A-BARD held a very interesting workshop in Jihlava (Czech Republic). The workshop in Jihlava has been interesting and allows us to challenge our perceptions for in many ways.

The roll out of fibre in the Vysocina region shows us that all countries and areas in Europe can aspire to fibre and that decision to deploy it should never be ruled out as unviable until the business case has been explored.

It is also refreshing to see good practices emerging from newly accessed countries in terms of broadband but also applications (see articles on emergency services and precision farming).
Finally, this issue touches on the issues and potential of convergence for rural areas

A-BARD European Broadband for Rural Development Policy briefing

Analysing Broadband Access for Rural Development (A-BARD) is a Coordination Action to research rural broadband provision and use, as part of the Scientific Support to Policies (SSP) in the EU Sixth Framework Programme.
A-BARD aims to continuously identify views on the issues and barriers to widespread broadband provision and the extent to which broadband can act as an external driver of change in rural economies.
This final dissemination event will bring together policy makers, academics and stakeholders working with broadband and broadband applications in rural areas. Its objective is:
To present A-BARD’s findings
To outline A-BARD’s recommendations
To review and discuss the implication of the EC rural policies in the context of the A-BARD recommendations

To see the full agenda and register please go to www.abard.org

For more information contact Martine Ruzza

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Vysocina (CZ) Regional Development Strategy

Is Vysocina a Region based on Knowledge or not? This is a critical question for the region.

With a total population 510,000 people and 704 Municipalities Vysocina remains a very rural region. The region has a lower business activity than the Czech Republic average. It also has a lower GDP per head but is experiencing a fastest growth rate in Czech Republic. There is still insufficient infrastructure for innovative enterprise but there are a large number of industrial zones on offer to IT companies.

Most of the region’s businesses are local services. Most of the industry is based on machinery, food and wood-working. Bosch Diesel (automotive electronics) is the largest employer with 6000 employees.

The Region’s Enterprise Support Strategy has 4 main measures. The first 2 are linked to business grant support. The third measure is focused on development of the ICT network infrastructure and the fourth is Sustainable Development.

Direct Support to Business SMEs in 2002-2006 has represented about €2m (30 applications), Developnent €1m (16 applications). In addition the Region has about 31 Industrial Zones/98 Brown Fields, but only 10% occupancy. Issues surrounding ownership have limited the latter, so the Regional Government has focused on the 9 High Probables to attract investors.

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ROWAnet - Technological infrastructure for Vysocina Region

ROWAnet is the regional backbone fibre network. It is owned and operated by the Local Government. It provides non commercial use for public administration services. It provides a MAN & Regional Authorities Network (RAN) on municipal and micro level. The network gives support to Academic and research projects for a new University in Jihliva.

The total cost of ROWAnet was about €1.2m and it was co-financed by – the Region (54%), ERDF & National sources
The Project outputs are thus:

• The backbone (6 fibres of up to 16G each) based on CWDM
• 6 big & 4 small cities,
• 10 new PIAPs,
• 20 WiFi HotSpots
• A full data network interconnecting public organisations administrations & the academic network CESNET.

Benefits for the region

• More competitive – as it’s in a stronger position.
• Improved basic technical infrastructure.
• Better communications with dispersed workplaces.
• Same communications between integrated rescue systems (15 base stations in the region) unit of the Vysocina Region.

ROWAnet Services.

• WiFi Hotspots
• Free for a limited time per day for tourists & travellers. It appears to be working well. The output is the profile and knowledge that people will have of the region, and also Regional Authorities now know from the traffic what people want and use (>150 users/day in average).
• Paid-for for permanent use by commercial workers
• EDUROAM for academics (part of a pan-EU of such sites)
• MAN & Regional Authorities Networks are using various technologies from WiFi, Cable, to fibre

Future

• Other cities connected by dark fibres – but it requires political will & can offer great benefits.
• Distribution of National network services
• Starting new broadband services
• Alternative distribution of backbone service –
• There is also a WiMax project to support very remote rural area of 25 villages that have their own local community WiFi networks. ROWAnet is also looking at new model of open networks of agreements & prices etc. The issue of models for implementation is an important one, as the EU said that models that are open may get EU support and aid. The project is currently working out the distribution coverage – and building their own (first) tower

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Broadband to support precision farming

At the Jihlava’s workshop we were presented with an Advisory system for farmers on Web developed in the Czech Republic.
PREFARM – Precision Farming service— is a complete integrated crop planning & fertilizer use service, using GPS, GIS, Map & data Servers & Internet wired & wireless access. MJM is a commercial company that evolved from supplying fertilizers to providing precision farming services.

The system offers real time collection & use of metrological data. The system used to use a lot of satellite imagery for that. Now they have more online sensors on the ground. The data is collected & sent to the central Database Server, rather than requiring local collection & aggregation.

There is a data sensitivity element to such services Every farmer has a secure access to it & it can’t be shared with anyone else (or even used for research purposes without specific agreement). It is all documented in legal agreements with each farmer.

The security & trust are very big issues in the successful operation of the service

The cost depends on level of usage & services, ranging from everything to a small subset. Annual fee are approximately €5/hectare, e.g .for 100 acre (40 hectare) farm is €200. Typical user is between 700 & 1200 Hectare (which is 80% of farmland in the Czech Republic from their previous very large communal farms.). 20% of owners have 80% of the usable land.

PREFARM is based on results from Wirelessinfo (& Premathmod (2000) EU IST projects. This is an exploitation of their results.

It offers easy GUI to the service based on a map of the user’s farm fields, at www.bnhelp.cz

Precision farming is a very specialist area & not widely used in many countries – but it does allow significant saving of costs & environmental impact while retaining the same levels of production. And it is fundamentally dependent on advanced ICT tools, and mobile broadband access (e.g GPRS to the farmer in the field) & broadband services in rural areas.

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Emergency services’ use of broadband technology

ROWAnet is used by a large number of emergency & rescue centres. Being broadband, it allows easy GIS & other multimedia data to be readily interchanged on an ongoing basis.

Director of Information Department of Vysocina Region

showed an example of a map of the coverage of emergency vehicles over a 6 month period, to see how each village is covered. It is useful to determine the optimum positioning of emergency vehicles. Thus, the application besides being useful to emergency response team is also a key policy support decision tool.

The administration is collaborating with the State Police on this for their vehicles. They are using it a lot, but the traffic police speed-traps are not on it!

Overall the project was quite low cost (about €500/vehicle) and low cost broadband mobile communications – The region expects very useful and high impact results to be provided for the future.

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Convergence – a change in the telecommunication industry

Up to a few years ago the telecommunication model was simple it was made up of state-owned companies with a monopoly to provide universal fixed line services. Telecom companies were seen as utility type and question surrounding cost of last mile, availability of access were chiefly the problem of the companies and not of the consumer.

Provision is no longer a universal duty for any operator, and cherry picking means that rural areas are at higher risks of not getting access to those data and voices services offered by broadband.

For a country to achieve its aspiration of 100% broadband connectivity, the network(s) must use many different technologies (from cable to wireless) depending on what suits the situation best (demographic, geographic, market laws, etc)

However, convergence also means potentially a consolidation of telecommunication means and seamless relay for those rural populations whose lifestyle means mobility. To date mobility in ICT term has always meant:” a loss of quality in connectivity” unless your company could afford to give you the latest mobile phones and data cards, etc.

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Convergence and Mobile broadband

The boundaries between the broadband and mobile networks are now blurring.

On one hand broadband connections is going mobile with extensive use of wi-fi, broadband content is increasingly being formatted with mobile access in mind and on the other hand mobile phone technologies are starting to reach proper broadband type speeds with better geographical coverage. This means that rural dwellers should now have access the same content rich information without distortion linked to access time wherever they may be in the country.

There is of course a need to modulate this optimism and for now heavy duties applications such as real time streaming of videos are still best trialled with wired broadband solution.
However, through their 3G and eventually 4G offerings mobile data provisions are a reality and farmers can certainly access short clips like weather forecasts or market information.

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Issues surrounding convergence

As more services will be delivered via the internet (IP), quality of service will become increasingly important. As customers stream video, make phone calls and use applications via their internet connection, congestion on the network will lead to degradation of some of these services. A skype call made in Washington DC has perfect call quality, on a remote rural WiFi network, there are delays and break ups, rendering the service unusable.

Cybermoor, a wireless ISP in the North of England, uses O2 XDAs which move between WiFi and the O2 network for data and voice calls. In the village of Garrigill, there is no mobile coverage, but customers can access the WiFi network to send SMS and make calls via Skype.

Cybermoor complements both O2 and Skype. They take a small commission on Skype out vouchers sold via their website and customers save on calls abroad which are not be included in their O2 calling plan. Customers get unlimited data downloads via the Cybermoor WiFi network, which is much better value than £1.50 per Mb from mobile operators and also faster than GPRS available in the area.

Unlimited data also offers customers access to Cybermoor.TV and Cybermoor Radio with local TV & radio shows streamed to their XDA, PC or laptop using Windows Media.

O2 also subsidise the XDAII handsets, spreading payments over a year. This example sums up convergence – a number of partners are providing services and the consumer will “mix and match” services.

All operators, regardless of type, will fight to retain "ownership of customers." There is a complex relationship between network access, service delivery, and end-user choice. With the advent of multi-mode handsets, there are potential revenue risks for mobile and wired operators. This could occur if handsets are able to connect to alternative networks outside of an operator’s domain. It is possible, however, that through intelligence of the network, choices may be made for the end-user. From the end-user’s perspective, determining factors may also be time, location, lifestyle, and cost.

It changes the current situation of rural population having to compromise and adapt to technologies that may be dearer and less efficient than those deployed in urban areas to a situation where the intelligence placed in the devices and networks used facilitate the access to telecommunication anywhere anytime. The potential for convergence can only become truly apparent to rural population when applied and above all when the everyday use becomes apparent. When the traveller will be able to access live and gis mapped traffic updates from his mobile, when phone calls dialled to your mobile number will be directed to your landline because you are at home.

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Convergence for rural areas

Convergence for rural areas should guarantee ubiquitous access for the rural population. It means an adaptation of the communication network to the lifestyle of the individual and not the other way around.

There will always be better networks in urban areas which are capable of supporting more advanced services. Rural areas will have less capacity in their networks and will support fewer services. However, most revenue is still generated by SMS and voice calls – until the wider population get an appetite for the more advanced applications, the gap will not critically disadvantage rural dwellers.

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