"Fast broadband for all by 2020 pledged by David Cameron"

I agree that the answer for rural areas is wireless solutions. If a small village really wanted to solve their connectivity issues then they could work together to sort something out instead of waiting for the large operators to realise they exist. If the residents of these areas didn't want to do anything themselves then I'm sure it wouldn't cost more than £10k to have an existing WISP do a feasibility study, and if the claims of the economic benefits of improved connectivity are true then it's in the local council's interest to facilitate those improvements.

I'm afraid that I think people calling for FTTP to every building in the country are living in a different world.

Having a USO with only a (presumably downstream) figure of 10Mbps quoted is no good to anyone. Presumably the intention is to enable teleworking and video conferencing, both highly latency and packet-loss sensitive applications which quoting a headline figure doesn't cover.
 
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Rozzy85 said:
I wouldn't be surprised if most go for a wireless package over a physical line. It's already happening with many ditching the phone line for a mobile package. How many actually need the high bandwidth of fibre? Mobile already provides enough for Bookface browsing and even for a bit of video streaming. Data caps are more of an issue than anything.
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It's so hopelessly unreliable a lot of the time though. The mobile networks are terrible internet providers.
 
bigredshark said:
I've never explicitly run the numbers but fibre requires significantly more expensive equipment and tools to install (a fusion splicer will run to £10k easily whereas crimp tools are £10) and more skilled engineers (who tend to be more expensive) to use it.

Copper cabling is very tolerant of poor install work - just look at some of the rubbish people DIY on their phone lines and it still works - whereas fibre is extremely intolerant of poor installation.

Whether that makes the physical install cheaper or more expensive given fibre cable is cheaper than copper cable is up for debate but it's likely irrelevant as what probably decides it is that copper termination is extremely cheap on the equipment side and fibre isn't.

Go price up a 24 port 1Gig copper switch, then go find a 24 port 1Gig SFP switch, it'll already be 30%+ more expensive before you add £50 in optical module per port. That's an example and not the exact technology used in real world FTTx broadband but the price premiums for optical termination are consistent. That's the big issue...

Also - CPE for people's homes needs an optical port - compare, say, the price of a Ubiquiti Edgerouter X with and without an optical port - again, it's 30%+ more as well as the cost of the optic...
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Fusion splicers aren't that much. I learned how to use one in 30 minutes so it isn't a much more skilled engineer at all and although yes it takes a small amount more prep, I find it generally easier to get a good end on fibre compared to RJ45. I won't argue that end user kit is more expensive but it only takes a company like BT to drop a huge order to make it mainstream and the price tumbles down.

BT need to see the light (terrible pun) and realise their ageing copper infrastructure just doesn't cut it in today's world. I mean I'm not complaining as BT being utter rubbish with rural areas keeps me in a job but there is so much wrong with them and I hear it from people day in day out.
 
bigredshark said:
The answer is likely some form of 4G or other wireless technology, this entire conversation still revolves around fixed line broadband a lot of the time but the fact is that's likely dead technology in not too long (another reason not to spend billions digging in fibre).

Radio technology is improving faster than fixed line tech, a huge chunk of internet usage is already mobile - in our lifetimes it's likely mobile wireless access will be the norm and fixed line will be niche...there's a reason BT and like are keen to get back into the mobile business these days...
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I don't see us getting even 3G any time soon. I get G signal with vodafone indoors, an occasional bit of G with EE and O2 outdoors only and nothing from Three.

The lakes should be a priority for phone signal - what with all the dangerous outdoor stuff that happens. People have probably died due to lack of signal.
 
lude1962 said:
also in my opinion fttc is BT/openreach back end infrastructure and shouldn't be sold as fibre 'connected'. After all the IP back bones are fibre, smoke and mirrors, toothless Ofcom.
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Totally agree here, it should only be called fiber when it's fiber optic to the building.
 
Caged said:
I agree that the answer for rural areas is wireless solutions. If a small village really wanted to solve their connectivity issues then they could work together to sort something out instead of waiting for the large operators to realise they exist.
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I do agree, however until recently BT did not announce where they were planning internet role-out. What this meant is a village could invest in their own infrastructural, then say 18 months later BT could introduce fast broadband. This would make the large cost of the private investment redundant.

Also sometimes it's not BT's fault however, a few miles past Nantwich BT wanted to install FTTC but highways prevented them from laying cable under a busy A road.

Disco_P said:
The lakes should be a priority for phone signal - what with all the dangerous outdoor stuff that happens. People have probably died due to lack of signal.
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How is 2G signal, surely this works everywhere in lake district?
 
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Steveocee said:
I won't argue that end user kit is more expensive but it only takes a company like BT to drop a huge order to make it mainstream and the price tumbles down.
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Not the case, it's just more expensive to make, if it was scale then the roll out of Verizon FIOS would have hit price points but it's done basically nothing. Without something unexpected happening technology wise, copper is always cheaper to terminate than fibre...
 
Don't forget what bigredshark said earlier about copper being a lot less 'fussy' as well. If someone damages your copper pairs then you might see a drop in sync speed as noise levels increase. A lot of people might not notice that there's a problem, so there's no support call and no Openreach visit to fix it. Even if you do notice, it's a lower speed for a few days until it gets fixed.

Damage a fibre and you likely will have no service at all, and if fibre voice is being used, no landline either. FTTP is still quite an experimental technology, and even Hyperoptic don't run fibre to each individual unit, instead choosing fibre to the basement and then copper from there.

I understand how fibre works and would be able to look after such a connection. However, what if people didn't understand it and broke things when decorating etc.? If people started getting bills for a guy to turn up with a fusion splicer and fix it again then I can imagine it will be shoved in front of Watchdog pretty quickly so they can share with the rest of the country their ill-informed ideas about how easy it is to run a huge network.
 
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KIA said:
I bet they'll pick satellite.
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Not a hope in hell, bandwidth is constrained and latency is terrible. The government (well bits of it) actually understands the limitations of satellite connectivity fairly well because it's a fairly big user of them.

One of the big issues with satellites is you actively trade bandwidth against latency - geostationary satellites have horrible latency (250ms or so) but reasonable bandwidth (50Mbps products exist), LEO satellites have more acceptable latency (iridium is 40ms or so) but at the cost of bandwidth (iridium for example is 64kbps)

On top of that, even with the advent of SpaceX and the like, launching the things has not got cheap enough to make it a sane option, building better ground based radio networks in remote areas is far more sane (you could optimise this with the right radio setup - a fixed wireless connection doesn't necessarily need to work indoors for instance which could allow you to increase range significantly in some frequency bands...)
 
They've been promising super fast broadband to rural areas for years. Until an actual schedule is drawn up outlining which rural areas are to get it at what date - then i don't believe it for a second. Frankly i don't believe the network companies even know which rural areas don't get 10Mbps+.

I live about 2.5 Km from the nearest exchange, and i'm pretty certain the exchange is already FTTC enabled. But it just requires them running fiber to a closer exchange which will obviously cost a lot of money.
 
Semple said:
They've been promising super fast broadband to rural areas for years. Until an actual schedule is drawn up outlining which rural areas are to get it at what date - then i don't believe it for a second. Frankly i don't believe the network companies even know which rural areas don't get 10Mbps+.

I live about 2.5 Km from the nearest exchange, and i'm pretty certain the exchange is already FTTC enabled. But it just requires them running fiber to a closer exchange which will obviously cost a lot of money.
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Yes, that is the unknown of this, we've been here before and not much has actually happened as a result...

I'm just taking it as a positive that in the current spending cuts this is officially still on the agenda at least, whether it actually results in tangible improvements is much less clear...

Personally, I think that paying the mobile networks in return for measurable improvements in 3G/4G coverage and speed in rural areas would be a better bet...BT have got enough free money already...
 
lude1962 said:
New build areas can already be FTTP-only if the developer requests it.
- but they dont give a monkeys so dont request it.
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Lots of info since I last posted so won't quote it all, but this is pretty much the point I was raising when I took the issue to my MP.

Councils/Gov need to make the developers give a monkeys for this to work :)

Have it as part of their planning conditions that they must be able to provision households with a required minimum so that they gov will be able to meet their own goals.

Even if it was just FTTC which to be honest is perfectly fine, coming from an 8 Meg connection in the previous house that was perfectly adequate and to have that now would be plenty.

Although it was nice dropping by my parents office the other day (in a tiny country town 5 miles down the road) who have 40 meg fibre, got my 12gig download for work done in no time at all.

I had heard that the developer in the field next to ours had told BT to sod off and are using Virgin to cable up their properties. Funny thing is the old existing housing that backs onto our house at the end of the garden gets 150meg cable as well, so we'll be sat in the middle with bugger all :p
 
Thought this might be handy if your a resident of Hertfordshire or Buckinghamshire will give you a date of when your due to get fibre.

http://www.connectedcounties.org/home

You probably are already aware but never know I been emailing the people for years on when we are getting it but finally it looks like from next June.

Annoyingly in the original newsletter on there site it said we was looking likely to be upgraded first but that has not happened 2 years later still have not got fibre. :(
 
As a bump to my above and previous comments, popped over to see my parents who live a 5 minute walk away on a newer part of the developments here and they were saying they had some 'boxes' under the stairs and on the outside of the house and didn't know what they were but knew they were something to do with how they could get 'broadband'.

Yeah they have BT fibre to the property as well as Virgin cable available, so frustrating when I'm sat around the corner with my 2Mbps :(
 
Ev0 said:
As a bump to my above and previous comments, popped over to see my parents who live a 5 minute walk away on a newer part of the developments here and they were saying they had some 'boxes' under the stairs and on the outside of the house and didn't know what they were but knew they were something to do with how they could get 'broadband'.

Yeah they have BT fibre to the property as well as Virgin cable available, so frustrating when I'm sat around the corner with my 2Mbps :(
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Wireless link an option?
 
Not really, they don't have anything connected as they don't even need/want it!

Just a bit annoying really, if the newer stuff here is being built with all this included just worry that they won't bother upgrading the cab or doing anything for the existing people, even when there's a fair few houses here.
 
I was getting at the option of having your parents subscribe to a service and then you use it in your house. Tricky if you can't get line of sight though.
 
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