Present:

SuperJANET4 only:

Licensing only:

1. Notes of previous meeting

There were no corrections to the notes of the previous meeting. Matters arising were covered elsewhere in the agenda.

2. SuperJANET4

Two papers from UKERNA tabled at the meeting will be available on the SuperJANET4 web site under http://www.superjanet4.net/regionalisation/ukman08-02-00/index.html .

Tim Kidd reported on progress with the SuperJANET4 procurement.

Tim Kidd reported that UKERNA was planning to produce a "heads of agreement" document for circulation to senior management of MANs. The timetable for agreeing contracts was discussed. It was noted that it would be necessary to take into account timing of MAN management meetings over the Summer.

It was agreed that it would be useful to have a single lawyer to represent the interests of all MANs during collective negotiations with UKERNA. This would save time later in the process. (Action) Dave Vinograd will organise this. It would also be useful to have a standard contract for use between MANs and the HEIs providing operational support. Tim Kidd agreed to investigate this.

It was noted that the lead site and MAP site were different for four MANs and this needed to be taken into account.

Tim reported that the connection points in the OR were indicative and that these would be finalised with MANs before the request for best & final offers was issued.

(Action) Mick Kahn and Tim Kidd would ensure that UKERNA had an up to date list of chairs of management committees to receive heads of agreement (and co-ordinators to receive copies).

Tim Kidd described UKERNA’s thinking on staffing issues. In terms of hours covered it might also be necessary to consider variations in the working day, levels of cover on Sundays compared to Saturday, cover outside term time and public holidays (including variation in term times and public holidays).

Tim Kidd reported that UKERNA were considering the concept of a Central Support Desk that could provide services to the MANs. (Action) Tim Kidd will ask what ticketing software MANs used in order to consider the best way to transfer information between management entities.

Tim Kidd provided the outline of a funding model (see http://www.superjanet4.net/regionalisation/ukman08-02-00/update_02-00.html). Whilst many of the details required considerable further refinement, it was agreed that the major issues has been identified.

(a) There were no comments on this item.

(b) Payment in arrears did not match with payments to telcos which were usually in advance and these were major elements of cash flows for MAN companies.

(c) The banding idea needed more thought. As MANs did not employ separate staff, it was not necessary to have large quanta of funding. MANs are likely to have a number of PoPs, in which case operational costs are not simply related to total number of sites. Also, there is an interaction between telecommunications costs and operational costs.

(d) Earlier discussions on depreciation had also included a "mid term upgrade".

(e) In discussion it became apparent that further thought was needed on this aspect of the funding model. It may be that the cheapest price that UKERNA can get is as a result of the MAN supply arrangements, which could mean that the MAN does not get the advantage of more bandwidth.

(f) The fixed figure of 90% of costs was questioned as different MANs would carry different levels of other non JANET traffic. There will also be a need to identify who makes decisions on backbone enhancements.

The other information that MANs would need would be what levels of funding they would receive and what the entitlement for SuperJANET4 bandwidth would be for HEIs. It was unlikely that this would be fixed until the Summer, but some MANs needed to know this earlier to feed into procurements.

Kevin Hoadley gave an update on the Keyhole model. It was broadly the same, but there was more flexibility for both the RPAN and RDN. In particular, RPANs would be able to use the Central Support Desk and would have responsibility for provisioning connections. With the RDN, UKERNA would not insist on holding telco contracts.

The other idea being considered was providing connectivity to external ISPs at all CPoPs and providing transit to ISPs for non-JANET customers of MANs.

3. Licensing

Dave Vinograd welcomed the representatives from the DTI and Oftel.

Peter Walker gave some background. He had joined the ACN (now JCN) in 1994 to provide input on regulatory issues. He said that the Government’s intention was to support and encourage education and research which were at the leading edge of networking.

Phil Brady reported that the JISC was happy for the UK MANs Group to deal with the MANs licensing issue.

A number of individual HEIs were unable to operate within the existing class licences, orginally due to the "200m rule", but more recently due to the 20 site limit of the TSL. About 12 special licences had been issued to cover these situations.

There had been changes in licensing. The "200 metre" rule had changed to the restriction to commercial provision to no more than 20 sites under the TSL. Also the treatment of land and buildings had changed so that campuses could be treated as one "set of premises". An EC directive meant that there could be no one off licences without objective justification. The special licences had to be replaced by a general solution.

The HEI case (also referred to as the collegiate university case) had been considered by Oftel and a recommendation had been made to the DTI, which had been agreed. A special licence would be drawn up and it was expected that this would be done by mid 2000. This was likely to be an extension of the TSL that allowed for an unlimited number of sites with a clear common purpose of education and research, but maintained the 20 site limit for commercial connections. It was likely that FE Colleges would need to be covered by this licence as well as HEIs.

The next issue considered was the type of connection. Connections with leased lines posed no problems as these were operated under the licence of the telecommunications provider. The situation with dark fibre was both complex and unclear. There were two cases: self-provided fibre and leased dark fibre. Self- provided radio was treated the same as self-provided fibre. The distinction between the two cases was not always clear. At the first approximation, it depended on who lit the fibre. Where electronic amplifiers were provided by the telecommunications provider then it was leased fibre. With laser amplifiers, it was less clear, but it was probably also leased fibre. There was not agreement on whether a passive copper link (e.g. EPS9) was or should be treated the same as dark fibre. It was reported that both ends of a fibre did not have to be lit by the same organisation and that there was a concept of a mid-span meet, whereby each party has a licence for their end of the link to some virtual connection point in the middle.

At the moment both types of fibre required the HEI/MAN to have a licence. In the longer term, this issue was likely to be addressed by a new Telecommunications Act after the next election, which will sort out the issue of dark fibre and also change from the concept of operating systems to providing services.

DTI and Oftel were of the opinion that a separate class licence would be required for the MANs as they did not have the same level of common purpose. This would stretch the HEI class licence beyond practical limits, unless the MAN was for strictly academic organisations only. With greater scope there would have to be stronger responsibilities. All were agreed that a PTO licence would be inappropriate for a MAN and therefore a new type of licence would be needed. The aim was to create a class licence so that there was no need to apply for it and that there should be no arbitrary restrictions.

This licence would take some time to prepare. In the meantime, the DTI had written to JISC to state that they had no intention of pursuing HEIs or academic MANs for not having an licence.

It was noted that the EC Telecommunications Directive meant that a MAN could not make an unbounded offer of telecommunications services to the general public. After some discussion this was not seen as a problem as MANs would not want to do this. There was no problem with making specific offers to organisations. Providing a telecommunication link as part of some more general service (e.g. a course or an information service) was no problem.

As an aside to regulatory issues, Peter Walker said that he had recommended to the JISC that MANs be established as separate legal entities for clarity in the case of legal action.

The main issue would be the scope of the licence, in terms of what types of organisation could be connected without further restriction. It was expected that the 20 site limit would apply to any other commercial connections beyond this definition.

The wider the scope of the licence, the more obligations would be placed on the MAN. This was to ensure that there was not unfair competition with PTOs. The three main questions relating to the organisations to be connected were

a) how far do they share a common purpose of education and research

b) to what extent are they within the public sector

c) how far are the services being provided commercially (i.e. for more than cost recovery).

It was noted that (a) was not a subset of (b) as there were private educational and research organisations.

It was agreed that a subgroup of the UK MANs Group, that would be representative of all the varieties of MANs should meet with Oftel and DTI over the next few months to clarify the issue of scope so that a proposal for the licence can be made. The members will be Pete Mills, Phil Brady, Bruce Mitchell (or another representative of a Scottish MAN), John Marshall, Chris Cheney and either Dave Vinograd or Mick Kahn.

It may be useful to consult with a representative of the FE community. Phil Brady would report back to JISC. The group would also be used as a sounding board for the HEI class licence and further consultation could be arranged with UCNG through joint membership as required. (Action) Mick Kahn will convene a meeting.

4. Future meetings

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 3 May 2000 in Edinburgh and the following meeting on Tuesday 4 July in London.

5. News from MANs

The London MAN had now established a separate legal entity and is now known as the London Metropolitan Network.

The Kentish MAN had placed orders and expected service in 3 to 4 months.

BWEMAN had connected Cheltenham & Gloucester College and was thinking about setting up a company.

The second JANET connection for MidMAN had slipped.

LeNSE was in the middle of its procurement.

FaTMAN was loosing a member due to the split/merger of Northern College.

The South Wales MAN had received tenders for the connection of Aberystwyth and was looking at its legal status.

The North Wales MAN was writing a tender, but there were limited suppliers in the area.

FE Colleges connected to EMMAN had merged, but wanted to keep separate MAN connections to sites, which raised funding issues. There were a number options for establishing a legal entity for EMMAN, but it was difficult to identify the right solution.

SWAN will be connecting Somerset FE colleges via a VPN based on Taunton. The company status in relation to BWEMAN and the whole South West Region was being discussed.

NetNorthWest is connecting FE Colleges. The North West Learning Group has had funding approved for connection of LEAs, but implementation was proving difficult partly due to the requirements for matched funding. SW and SE projects under the same initiative appeared to be have similar problems.

NorMAN is procuring new links and will require additional bandwidth to SuperJANET as the current 34Mbps kink is getting overloaded.

EastNet is talking to UKERNA about UKERNA running their procurement for operation by January 2001.

EastMAN, ClydeNet and AbMAN had nothing specific to report. The Scottish MANs would be providing a demonstration for the Scottish Executive.

6. Any other business

(Action) Mick Kahn reported that he would soon be holding the subgroup meeting with Chris Batt at the LIC, regarding public libraries and MANs.

There was a brief discussion about the FE Regional Support Centres that the JISC is procuring. A number of MANs were actively involved in bids.