Minutes of the Hull Telecoms Meeting Friday, 25th Feb 11

[Tumbleweed]

From People of Hull Against Karoo Facebook Page

People of Hull Against Karoo

Minutes of the Hull Telecoms Meeting Friday, 25th Feb 11

Venue: The Goodwin Building, Icehouse Road, Hull.

Attendees:
...
Steve Fleming – Chair

Introduction: As the meeting was an open meeting with a brief agenda,
the minutes have been compiled based on topic and relevance as opposed to the linear thread of the discussion.
Moving forward, it is the intention that an agenda will be produced by all members of the group as this will give greater
structure to the discussions. It is clear that a lot of what came out of the inaugural meeting was valuable and could lead to some
clear ways forward for the group through initially creating a framework document.

The Chair opened the meeting with two questions:

What are the issues in Hull?

What needs to be done?

• Clearly a need to improve connectivity in the City and further supplement the existing interconnects.
• Questions were also asked about the possibility of getting LLU within the KCom exchanges facilitating offerings from other providers.
• From a geographical perspective, Hull is ideally situated to provide another connection point for a Telecity equivalent for the UK,



but the interconnects in and out of the City are not sufficiently robust.
• Interconnects need to be improved and be diverse.
• There is sufficient demand, knowledge, experience and determination to do something for Hull.
• There is a perception that lowering the cost of bandwidth in Hull will increase take up and be of benefit to the City.
• Hull is not just poorly provisioned from a UK perspective, but from a global perspective. Some underdeveloped countries in Africa



have better, more stable, and cheaper provisioning than Hull and region.

Infrastructure There was a warning that any introduction of another network into Hull as an open access network would simply swap one
monopoly for another and the competition would be at the Services level. Counter discussion on this would be that the customer would still
benefit.

City Council
The Council has policy saying that NGN is essential to improving the opportunities for the community but it is clear that they do
not have the investment available to do something about it, and is therefore looking to local or national industry to act.

There was some discussion about ensuring the Council (Politicians and Officers) understand the ramifications of improving the
telecommunications in the Region. Some said that there is an awareness of the implications others said that it is not a matured knowledge,
but more of an intuitive perception. Then there was discussion on educating the Council, or just informing them of the output of the forum.

Some suggestion that BDUK funding could be used, but it is clear that this is reserved specifically for rural last third and not for urban

communities. Does this therefore suggest that there has been market failure in Hull?

KCom
KCom has its financial situation in hand, and subject to a robust business case has the facility to invest in the improvement of
existing services and/or the development of new services for the populace.

Kcom is listening to its customers, is interested in doing something and would be happy to work with the local telecoms market to improve.
However, KCom needs to see a proposition that meets the needs of the wider community and not just for the benefit of the Proposing body.
A joint proposition from the forum could be the way forward on the basis that it is a collaborative proposal, agreed, sponsored and submitted.

What is the end game?
Discussion around the value of the forum was unanimous in that it was the collective thought pool behind what needs to be done in Hull.
Through the collective knowledge, experience and aspirations, we as an organisation could collaborate to define the requirements, determine the
processes and support in the implementation of change in Hull and Region. Consensus was that the Forum does have value and that through the creation
of a legal entity and each interested party buying a stakeholder share in that entity, a collaborative, comprehensive, conjoined proposal could be put together and put before the KCom representative for consideration.

Vision
Questions were raised here for consideration at the next gathering.

What is the vision?

Who should own it?

How should it be paid for?

Next Steps Next Meeting 18th March 2011. Provisionally agreed subject to finding a suitable venue.

Minutes and some questions for consideration to be distributed.
Questions to be considered for the next meeting: What format should the organisation take?

What should be the nominal fee to join and become a stakeholder?

What is the format of the management team to represent, and who should it be?

What are you bringing to the table as a member of the organisation?

What are you wanting, individually and for your organisation?

What should be included in the proposal/framework document?

What is your interpretation of conjoined working and is it something that you want to be involved in?

[dylan]

Thanks, that's very interesting although I must admit that it seems very much 'more of the same'. I've heard exactly the same arguments and suggestions fly around for years.

In reality the government and the local authority are not going to fund this. Just look at the news. Any 'legal' mutual organisation set up to put this in place needs to be fully independent, fully owned by its members and managed by a totally independent and democratically elected board of directors...

With no disrespect, it's all very well these suggestions coming from telecoms providers but this needs to be lead by the users and not the businesses making money from them.

Also, I'm somewhat confused about why the names have been removed from the list of attendees?

[Hobbisbang]

I was there

and most of the talking was done by me. the ideas good but as allways the desire and drive is not.

keep plugging