FTTH now planned for 2.5m homes by BT

My job is to design backbone networks for ISPs and the like. I've spent considerable time in the last 2 years on behalf of several companies looking into the viability of providing a high speed consumer internet service in the uk (actually generally not in the UK as a whole, mostly in high income London suburbs where it would be most likely to make money).

The costs of any kind of service like this are hugely prohibitive to a new entrant to the market and would take a minimum of five years to realise any kind of return on investment is the basic outcome usually. Which is a very big ask when nobody really knows what BT or the government will do in that time frame.

Anything BT put in the ground will end up a a next generation version of the BT central products - expensive and with limited capacity available - which will end up with capping and shaping connections again. (That's my opinion but ask around the industry and it's a fairly common one)

This isn't a cheap thing to do, if it was possible to install FTTP for any meaningful area and charge £30 a month while remaining solvent I'd be hassling venture capitalists for the startup cash as we speak.
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I'm suprised it has taken this long, especially when you consider countries like South Korea have had 100MBps for over a decade...
Click to expand...

As has been said in many places, many times, it's different for a whole number of reasons. Including but not limited to -

- Different content usage habits
- Different delivery technology for content and a greater design emphasis on it
- Different built environment (most people live in very crowed cities basically) *

*that's the big one, high population density, newer building, newer cities all make it much much easier. Same reason there's 100MB connections in paris and other european cities in the last 5 years or so.

And it's all headline speed - everybody knows that somebody in a village in rural south Korea doesn't have 100Mbps internet access for the equivalent of £25 a month.
 
All these places with fibre have been paid for by the government and even then most of the time it isn't rural.

I think this is quite good really, 40% of the UK with atleast 40mb. Fast enough for our needs for a while and the 2nd half also done when needed.

Remember once we have fibre. We are set for as long as wires are required. 1000mb speeds and probably more. there is no rush.

It is a late start but there has to be a network behind it or there is no point. They have been building 21CN for this.

3 years for this massive upgrade is quite impressive imo. It will be more interesting to see what happens to the next 40% -60% when there is less profit incentive, at the current rate it would be 6 or 7 years away. Any longer than that and people will start to get angry.

The first half of exchanges have been announced, http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4065-bt-openreach-update-fibre-cabinet-fttc-rollout.html I am not on the list and probably won be on the 2nd lot either.


Luckily for us the copper is getting old and expensive to buy, it costs almost as much to maintain the crappy stuff as it might to lay fibre so hopefully they will see the light.

I assume these are going to be Wholesale products and available to ISPs that are on 21CN. I can't see them being allowed to lock it down, considering it has been paid for by tax money. ISPs are charged by the centrals (now 21cn) and the line rental, so suerly they can make their mone back by increasing this.
 
Last edited:
/cast lvl 10 resurrection

anyone know where and when you can sign up to these FTTH things? I live in bradwell abbey's exchange catchment :D

100mbps baby!!
 
I'm seeing new VDSL DSLAM BT cabinets cropping up all over town and OpenReach vans everywhere - apparently Basingstoke has a cabinet-ready date of January :) Hopefully that means VDSL will be available for ordering a few months after. I'm a little concerned about the FTTC being up to 40mbps, but I'm hoping that's just BT being conservative as VDSL2 can do 50mbit at 1km line length and 100mbit at 0.5km line length.

Glad to see more investment is going into FTTP though. That's what we will need as VDSL2's realistically going to top out at around 100mbit for most people. That'll be plenty for a few years yet, but there will still be a point in time where faster will be needed.
 
yeah its looking good but i've no idea how to sign up to these services, and my postcode doesnt come up with FTTP enabled soon on postcode checker like the basingstoke guy's website but i SO SO want it. had rubbish internet for so long
 
Last edited:
I'm am really gutted I am on the Turgis Green exchange which has absolutely nothing (apart from ADSL Max), I am just on the outskirts of Basingstoke which pretty much has everything! grrr
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom