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[Black Sheep]

Our G.fast trials have raised nearly 25,000 smiles…

Our commitment on Ultrafast broadband (that’s speeds of 100Mbs or more) is to make it available to 12m premises by 2020. 10m of those will be by using G.fast, and thanks to some fantastic work by teams across Infrastructure Delivery, Service Delivery, Customer, Commercial & Propositions and CIO, we’ve now taken our Ultrafast G.fast to almost 25,000 homes as part of our pilot in Cherry Hinton and Gillingham.
 
G.fast is a clever piece of technology that helps us take faster speeds to more people. It works by attaching a pod to the side of the existing copper cabinet which ultracharges our network to speeds of up to an incredible 330Mbps. But it’s not just our innovation that we’re proud of – it’s the pace at which we’re deploying it, too. In November we told you that we’d connected our first live customer, and in the next week or so, we’ll be starting the extension of our pilot rollout to an additional 17 locations and over 100,000 premises. But for now, it’s 25,000 down and 9,975,000 to go!

It might just be a drop in the ocean, but it’s a significant one.

Kim Mears
MD, Infrastructure Delivery

[Moderator edit to remove the errant zero.]

[Jaggies]

9,9750,000 to go!

Misplaced comma there, or a surplus zero?

[jaydub]

Misplaced comma there, or a surplus zero?

Extra 0!

10,000,000 - 25,000 = 9,975,000.

The PR people must have been dozing when they released that one.

[NewtronStar]

How could they reach that target of 12 million if the FTTC cab is 600-1000 meters from the end users premises, what I would like to know is how many broadband lines there are across the UK ?

[ejs]

According to the Ofcom Connected Nations Report 2016 page 25, total broadband uptake is 22.5 million premises (78% uptake), of which 9.1 million are superfast. But those are take up figures, the coverage figures would be much higher.

[niemand]

How could they reach that target of 12 million if the FTTC cab is 600-1000 meters from the end users premises

http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=2&theory=1

Along with some FTTP. Those further away and not covered by FTTP are SOOL until at least 2020.

[NewtronStar]

Interesting so that leaves 15 Million who won't benefit from G.FAST

[gt94sss2]

12 million super fast is Openreach's target for 2020 - the rollout is expected to continue to approx 2025 or so

[niemand]

The target is for 10 million at 100Mb or higher on G.fast by the way. That equates to very approximately 80/20 range, with crosstalk impact. The median line length from the cabinet, about 500m, is extremely unlikely to see 100Mb.

It should be made very clear this is not to compete with Virgin Media on speed, but to allow ISPs to deliver ultrafast to some punters who want it.

By the time G.fast leaves pilot it's quite likely that the 'incredible' 330Mb, sold as 300Mb most likely, will be facing a GigaWorld product - 1000Mb, sold at 940. Maybe more depending on the hub they use.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzBrAdafe58[/youtube]

In the UK it'll cost less per home passed to upgrade the cable network to gigabit than for BT to deploy G.fast from pods and a large proportion of the country can be done with no upgrades in the field.

[j0hn]

The 12 million "ultrafast" by 2020 is made up of 10 million G.Fast and 2 million FTTP. It's of no surprise that the only local area to me (East central Scotland) taking part in the extended G.Fast trial (Edinburgh, Donaldson) is well covered by Virgin. Why don't they start with areas with less choice? The rollout plans are pretty ridiculous, a good example below.

A new build in my area built just after the 1st FTTC commercial rollout has been left with 1mb ADSL. Every other cabinet in the area has FTTC except this 1 cabinet. As it made the local press the house builder Taylor Wimpey agreed to privately fund the FTTC cabinet. Due to scare mongering about cabinets filling up, for 500 homes they just installed 2 x 288 Huawei cabinets from launch.

Due to the press and the local Facebook campaign asking all residents to sign-up to the Virgin "come to my street" webpage, Virgin are now coming to that area in April, their first steps in my county. So OpenReach have went 1 further now that Virgin are coming and half the 600 homes are listed as "in scope" for FTTP. After all the DSLAMs didn't cost them a penny.

So from 1mb they now have 2 Huawei DSLAMs, Virgin coming, and OpenReach native FTTP coming. Given all that I'd be amazed if they even fill 1 of the 2 new cabinets. Meanwhile nowhere else served by my exchange is covered by Virgin, or has FTTP. Sledgehammer and nut come to mind.

[Black Sheep]

It's called business acumen, j0hn ............... nothing more, nothing less.

[niemand]

Interesting to see Openreach so interested in this, and overbuilding of FTTC with FTTP. I thought no-one cared about higher speeds and it was all about price? 

[Black Sheep]

Interesting to see Openreach so interested in this, and overbuilding of FTTC with FTTP. I thought no-one cared about higher speeds and it was all about price? 

It's all about competition, my friend. If there was no threat by VM, I'm guessing there's be no FTTP ?? 

PS ..... no-one does care about gigantybytes speed ..... only a couple of dozen people. 

[Ronski]

It's ridiculous thats what it is, plain and simple 

Just like installing G.Fast at the cabinet, let's try and sell faster speeds to people who already have the fastest fttc speeds available. Unless it's priced very similar to 80/20  I doubt the majority will pay more for what they don't actually need.

[Ronski]

It's all about competition, my friend. If there was no threat by VM, I'm guessing there's be no FTTP ?? 

So is that BTor admitting that fttc is simply not up to the job 

PS ..... no-one does care about gigantybytes speed ..... only a couple of dozen people. 

Probably not, but I'd be willing to bet that an awful lot of people would care about the improved reliability and getting the sync speeds quoted