What is Painswick Broadband?

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

Who is/are Loop Scorpio Ltd?

We are an entreprenuerial company established in 2001 to explore and then progress "broadband" related opportunities in and around Gloucestershire.

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 seventeen years now, including seven years with Deloitte & Touche Consulting and four years as an independent consultant prior to establishing Loop Scorpio. 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. He haspublished 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 has certainly introduced millions 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 remote houses/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 finding it difficult 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. With ADSL, as the speed increases the available reach decreases.

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 (near) 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.

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 (near) 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).
• the distances we can cover are limited as the Government has imposed strict limits on the power levels that can be used

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. We have recently installed a much improved "backhaul" feed at our main Gloucester location - capable of 100Mbps in both directions! We are currently exploring how we might bring this level of connectivity down to Painswick.

We are also following developments in wireless lan technology. Over the last few years we have progressively deployed equipment that runs at 5.8GHz and is capable of higher throughput. Later this year we hope to trial some new (to us) equipment that claims point-to-point throughput of upto 300Mbps!

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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