Broadband aggregation takes first steps

The government's broadband aggregation scheme will have to up operational by the end of the year if it is to include the purchase of the high-bandwidth N3 network for the NHS.

The Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI's) Broadband Taskforce was launched last November to take forward the government's strategy to use the combined telecoms demand across the public sector to help persuade suppliers to invest in infrastructure.

The group's Broadband Aggregation Project (Bap), supported by ecommerce minister Stephen Timms, was started in March and is currently working on what organisations need to be created, both locally and nationally, in order to make the scheme a reality.

Bap has two aims says project director Peter Craine.

'One is to develop the availability agenda and the other is to deliver best value for money for public sector customers,' he said.

The team is in discussion with potential national customers such as the NHS, the education sector and parts of the Home Office, as well as groups that procure on a regional basis, such as emergency services and local government.

'It is about a dialogue with potential customers about what they want and how they want to obtain it,' said Craine.

But the pressure is on because the advertisement for the high-speed replacement for the health service's NHSNet network has already been placed and the contract winner will be buying the connectivity early next year.

'The timescale is tight and we have to make quick progress,' said Craine.

'If we are to meet the requirements of the NHS for N3 we have to have our organisations operational by the turn of the year.

'We will have to proceed with the project at a fairly brisk pace if we are to do that,' he said.

Education and local government will be the other main parts of the scheme.

The education sector is looking at the current arrangements using Regional Broadband Consortia to do their buying. Ultimately that procurement function will have to pass through the organisations being set up by Bap if aggregation is to work.

Local government is a disparate customer and in some areas is already aggregating demand, says Craine.

'We are in dialogue with councils and representative organisations about how can obtain better value for money by using the mechanisms we are designing,' he said.

The main issue facing the plan is the complexity.

'This is not a complicated project in IT terms, and it is not an expensive project, but it is complicated in that there are so many different stakeholders.

'The organisation, ensuring all the stakeholders are brought in and have their interests reflected, is a challenge,' said Craine.

NHS

The broadband N3 network will be crucial to the delivery of the £2.3bn National Programme for NHS IT.

NHSNet currently links the majority of the country's hospitals and GPs. The upgraded network will be one of the four main elements of the government's strategy to modernise health service IT, alongside an integrated care records system and electronic bookings and prescriptions.

N3 will not just be a replacement for the existing network, says Kevin Caldwell, director for programme assurance and infrastructure at the National Programme for IT.

'We are also looking to provide mobile and remote network access, not just fixed links into buildings, and most critically it will underpin new applications and support new ways of working,' he said.

'N3 underpins the National Programme and the full ambition could not be realised on the existing network.'

The extra bandwidth will also support new technologies like video conferencing, says Caldwell.

One pilot scheme currently in place uses video links between a local health centre and consultants so patients are saved the travel and potential trauma of a hospital visit.

'It's only suitable for certain situations, but it's an example of using the network to do something actually helpful to the patient and to the process of diagnosis and treatment,' said Caldwell.

N3 will also support the electronic transfer of xrays.

'It's a long way from sending emails and Word attachments, this is carrying a lot of sophisticated high-density information,' said Caldwell.

The initial advertisement for the N3 contract was placed at the end of May and by the end of the month the procurement team will have produced a longlist of between four and 10 suppliers. By the end of the summer that will be reduced to a shortlist of three, with a view to signing the seven to 10-year contract by April 2004.

The current NHSNet network is worth around £100m a year. N3 will be a very high value contract, but it is hard to put an exact price on it at this stage, says Caldwell.

'The running rate will be affected by a whole series of factors - our ability to manage the network integrator, their ability to manage their supply chain, the consistently falling price of telecoms, set against our demand for a lot more capacity,' he said.

Education

Alongside the NHS, the other major public sector broadband customer is the UK's primary and secondary schools.

Broadband connectivity in schools currently stands at around 32 per cent, and is expected to go up to 40 per cent by September.

The vision is for all schools to have 2 mb/s links by 2006, with secondary schools upgraded to 8 mb/s as soon as possible. Last November the Prime Minister committed the government to funding the programme.

The main challenges are managing costs and ensuring a level playing field for all schools regardless of geography or location, says Mel Philipson, chair of the National RBC group and manager of the Northern Grid for Learning.

Making best use of the resource is also an issue.

'We need to engage schools to maximise the connections and infrastructure to develop new paradigms of teaching and learning,' said Philipson.

A degree of demand aggregation is already in place in the sector. Ten Regional Broadband Consortia (RBCs) represent groups of Local Education Authorities for the purposes of buying bandwidth for the area's schools.

The DTI's public sector demand aggregation initiative will give RBCs, LEAS and schools greater opportunity to compare existing prices - and where possible to drive down costs for connectivity and services, she says.

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: 'We are committed to providing broadband to all schools by 2006.

'However we must ensure that we get best possible value for money and so we are in discussion with the DTI and other parties to see how the proposed aggregation project may support us to deliver the best service to our schools both now and in the future.'