What is Highnam Broadband?

It is a broadband Internet access service that will be provided by Loop Scorpio Ltd.

Who is/are Loop Scorpio Ltd?

We are a new entreprenuerial company established in 2001 to explore and then progress "broadband" related opportunities in and around Gloucestershire. Our first real "presence" was SURF: Scorpio, the Internet cafe and LAN gaming centre we opened in Gloucester in May of last year (www.surfscorpio.net).

Who is behind Loop Scorpio?

The driving force behind the company (and its source of capital so far!) is Peter Cartwright. He is what some might call a "veteran" of the telecommunications sector, having been involved in it for over twelve years now, including seven years with Deloitte & Touche Consulting and four years as an independent consultant. He has worked on projects for operators (incumbents and new entrants) and regulators in many different countries, and it is the insight gained from these that gave him the inspiration for Loop Scorpio. A couple of years ago he published a report through BWCS (a Ledbury-based telecoms consultancy) on a specialised area of telecoms known as "Interconnect Costing" that has now sold into over 80 countries around the world. If you would like a copy, it only costs £2,300 + vat (well, we did say it was specialised)!

What are the company's goals?

Our goal for Loop Scorpio is to turn it into a regional powerhouse for cost-effective "broadband" internet connectivity, though as you might appreciate given the current investment climate for technology companies, we do need to take things one step at a time!

What's wrong with BT's ADSL service?

There is nothing inherenetly wrong with BT's ADSL service - it is certainly introducing hundreds of thousands (and now over a million) of people to the benefits of Internet access at speeds far in excess of those available from dial-up modems. However, it does have a few pertinent limitations:

• it is distance dependent (max around 5.5Km from an ADSL-enabled exchange) - sorry villages, you're out of luck!
• it is local loop quality dependent (in the 1970s a significant amount of aluminium was used in the local loop - the connection between your home and the exchange - and this can impact on the line quality, effectively reducing the achievable distance)
• it is asymmetric. For the current "normal" home users the difference between a download speed of 512Kbps and an upload speed of 256Kbps is not too significant. However, if you are on a 1Mbps or 2Mbps service, the limited upload speed can be very frustrating!
• it is unlikely to be able to develop with the market. We are all used to the performance of PCs doubling every two years or so for the same money. The same is happening in the "core" of the telecoms and Internet networks. There is NO WAY that ADSL over copper local loops can keep up with this!
• and perhaps most importantly... ... IT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN MANY SMALL TOWNS AND VILLAGES!

Why are you using Wireless Lan technology?

In order for small companies such as ours to be able to offer a commercial service we need to control our costs particularly during those early, vulnerable years all new companies must progress through. This, for example, precludes us from being able to, say, dig up the roads and lay new cables to homes (at least for now!). Wireless technology allows us to provide service to homes and businesses that are not immediately next to each other, without having to invest significant amounts of money "covering" buildings that are not yet ready to take our service. Wireless Lan technology has the added advantages that it uses licence exempt parts of the frequency spectrum (ie we don't have to hand over loads of money to the government just to get the "rights" to use it), and, being designed for the consumer market, the equipment can be very cost effective.

Wireless Lan technology also provides us with the ability to offer a "local" community network within Ledbury that runs at speeds more normally associated with local area networks than the Internet. Over time, this will allow you to do things locally that are just not practical on the Internet.

Surely Wireless Lan technology has limitations too?

It would be great to be able to say no! The basic limitations are those that come with the "benefit" of the spectrum being licence exempt:

• we have to share the spectrum with other people/businesses (more of a problem in large towns and cities than more rural areas). So if you have a wireless router in your house, please do try to choose a channel away from your relevant "node"
• the distances we can cover are limited as the Government has imposed strict limits on the power levels that can be used - they are significantly less than a mobile phone, for example (and we don't have the "benefit" of being able to use higher powered central masts as Vodafone, Orange and the others do)

Wireless Lan technology also has an often quoted "limitation" of being vulnerable to eavesdropping. Whilst this is true, it is also true of the Internet proper, and you really should never send information over a Wireless Lan or the Internet that is very sensitive (eg credit card details) without it being sent over a secure link (eg a page that starts https rather than http). At the moment, we have not "switched on" the encryption that is currently available with Wireless Lan units, due largely to the fact that the encryption algorithms used are hackable to those determined to do so and prepared to invest in the necessary time and effort. However, we intend to keep this policy under review particularly once more secure algorithms become available. We will also be exploring other possible methods of offering a more secure wireless service, perhaps by providing a local VPN capability between a customer's premises and our main Internet connection point.

What about the future?

Our initial services are designed to offer an equivalent amount of performance to the basic ADSL services - except of course that ours are symmetric (equal speeds up and down) and you benefit from the higher speed Community Network locally. The current pricing levels available to us for our own aggregated Internet access provide a significant "kick" when we can justify a 34Mbps circuit rather than our initial 2Mbps one. At this level, we will be able to at least double the performance of our standard services and/or offer a "cut price" basic service. To justify the investment in this, we would need to reach a subscriber level of around 800 homes and/or small businesses in any one area. We believe we should be capable of achieving this level of customers within a couple of years - afterall, broadband Internet take-up nationwide is currently increasing at the rate of around 10 per cent a month!

We are also following current developments in wireless lan technology. The standard of the equipment we shall be using during 2003 is 802.11b, which "peaks" at 11Mbps. Two other standards are emerging this year that will increase this peak to 54Mbps! It will probably take a little while for the equipment price to settle down to a level that makes it cost effective for us to use, and the achievable distances are still not really known, but rest assured we shall be following events closely.

I'm interested - what should I do now?

Please register your interest with us and let us know where you are. There are absolutely no obligations in this registration process, it just helps us with the planning of our rollout across the town, and lets us know which nearby villages also have significant levels of interest.

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