As the UK enters the next stage of its battle against Covid-19, the new measures restricting movement will see large swathes of the population spend more time at home. The past few weeks have provided a prelude as companies transitioned towards remote working and many universities and schools closed their doors. How we interact with our critical infrastructure is changing, moving the focal points of demand for services like the internet and electricity from commercial to domestic settings. But this was not how these systems were designed to function in ‘normal’ times. As more of us hunker down over the coming weeks, it’s worth asking: are our telecoms and energy networks up to the task?
Will the lockdown lead to a slowdown?
The grand work and learn from home experiment, combined with our growing penchant for streaming and gaming, is likely to test the resilience of the UK’s internet networks. “The networks are designed for more or less flat demand,” says Professor Izzat Darwazeh, director of the Institute of Communications and Connected Systems at University College London. “When you all work from home, there's going to be changes to the demand by creating more peaks in it.”
Vodafone (VOD) says it is seeing a 30 per cent increase in internet usage across both its fixed-line and mobile networks in the UK. It has also observed a shift in traffic timing – its ‘busy hours’ are now starting from lunchtime onwards rather than the typical 6-9pm peak.
While network operators disagree, it seems likely that some of us will, if we haven’t already, see slower speeds, particularly in areas with existing sluggish connections. “What we consider normal connectivity experiences will change,” says William Newton, president and managing director of WiredScore. “Speed and reliability will drop as everyone competes for the same bandwidth at the same time.”
BT (BT.) argues that because its network is built to withstand a daily evening peak, it can accommodate high levels of sustained demand. The group’s chief technology officer, Howard Watson, says “traffic from work is about a quarter of what we see in the evening from households”. Across BT’s fixed broadband network, typical daytime usage is 5 terabits per second (Tb/s) and its highest evening peak was 17.5Tb/s. Since people have started working from home, daytime weekday traffic has increased by 35-60 per cent, but still only reached a maximum of 7.5Tb/s.
What if more capacity is needed?
Professor Darwazeh says network operators have options. He describes it like a road network: “There could be some lanes in the highways that carry the data that are deliberately unopened now, and they can open more of them…they can give more bandwidth.” At the risk of violating net neutrality, they could also become more discriminatory over who receives capacity, prioritising critical services.
Sweeping improvements are limited by the underlying infrastructure and the UK is lagging behind in terms of faster full fibre to the premise (FTTP) connections (see map). Of the 21.2m fixed-line connections over Openreach’s network, 7.3m are still old copper wires. This problem cannot be solved overnight, and we will explore the longer-term implications further below.
Could we see ‘internet rationing’?
In a sense, we already are. European Union (EU) commissioner Thierry Breton had called for streaming companies to curb their data usage and strain on the telecoms infrastructure. Streaming giant Netflix has agreed to lower speeds across Europe for 30 days, which it estimates will reduce its internet traffic by around a quarter. Amazon Prime Video is also reducing streaming speeds, while YouTube is temporarily defaulting to standard definition across the EU and UK. Netflix already employs ‘adaptive streaming’ technology, adjusting download speeds to the accessible bandwidth. Some might therefore view this move more cynically – it’s good to be seen as having the power to make or break the internet.
Future-proofing the system
The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the weak spots in the UK’s existing telecommunications infrastructure. The quality of broadband and mobile internet infrastructure is not even across the country (see chart). Many telecoms networks have historically focused on coverage in cities, shopping centres, airports and along rail lines – in other words, much of the new ‘no-man’s land’ with the restrictions on people’s movement. Network operators need to upgrade their strategy to deprioritise London, strengthen capacity in residential areas and finally deliver long-touted promises to underserved rural areas.
While 5G has been making the headlines, not all of us have proper access to 4G yet. A 2019 report from Ofcom revealed that almost a tenth of the UK lacks good outdoor 4G coverage from any operator, with the problem being particularly acute in rural areas.
In his recent Budget Chancellor Rishi Sunak committed £510m towards the shared rural mobile phone network, which is targeting that 95 per cent of the country will have 4G coverage by 2025. He also pledged £5bn to get “gigabit broadband” – which is 40 times faster than standard superfast broadband – into the “hardest-to-reach” areas of the UK. This much-needed investment will help close the gap with more connected countries. According to data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), over 75 per cent of South Korea and Japan’s fixed broadband network was fibre in 2019 versus a measly 2.3 per cent in the UK, leaving us ranked 33rd out of the 36 member states.
The chancellor didn’t apply his ‘get it done’ fervour to the rollout of 5G – perhaps a sign it has been put on a backburner, or a bid to sidestep the Huawei controversy. Introducing the next generation of internet access may be viewed in some quarters as less crucial than rehabilitating the existing framework and bringing everyone up to speed.
The crisis “will accelerate the rollout of fibre deployment”, says Dean Bubley, founder of consulting business Disruptive Analysis. But he is sceptical that consumers will be leaving their homes to purchase 5G-capable phones in the near term. “On a 12-month view, there will be more focus on adding capacity to 4G instead of investing in 5G.”
Professor Darwazeh sees more promise in 5G’s future prospects. “If I were in a position of power, I'm going to look at how you can speed up the deployment of 5G and make it more affordable,” he says. “I think the network operators and manufacturers of equipment are going to affect long-term changes.”
