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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/10/openreach-find-broad-support-large-scale-uk-fttp-broadband-rollout.html

After conducting an industry consultation Openreach (BT) has today claimed that ISPs offered “broad support” for their proposal to conduct a “large scale” rollout of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ultrafast broadband across the UK, which could in theory reach 10 million premises by 2025. But no deal.. yet.

At present most of Openreach’s network across the United Kingdom remains dominated by slower hybrid fibre (FTTC) technologies, such as their ‘up to’ 80Mbps VDSL2 and the newer ‘up to’ 330Mbps G.fast service (only just starting to rollout), which mix fibre optic cable with less reliable copper lines that suffer signal degradation over distance (i.e. slower speeds on longer lines). FTTC solutions are quick to deploy and comparatively cheap.

On top of that the operator is also in the process of deploying their 1Gbps capable “full fibre” network, which uses significantly more expensive Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) technology, to reach 2 million premises by 2020 (mostly new build homes and businesses). However the Government and Ofcom have been calling for more FTTP and so in July 2017 Openreach launched an industry consultation.

    Openreach’s List of Enablers for Larger Scale FTTP

    · Greater collaboration, including new investment, risk and cost sharing models.

    · Agreement on how mass migration of customers onto the new platform can be achieved (Openreach proposes that all customers should be migrated over to the new network as quickly as possible after it has been built in a given area).

    · Reducing logistical barriers, like improved planning and traffic management processes.

    · Agreement on the right way to spread the costs of a FTTP investment.

    · A legal and regulatory environment which encourages investment.

I think we're heading in the right direction in all this. Now its just how soon the other companies can get on-board. It's encouraging that they are signalling that they want to head in that direction.

In the future speed of the network should no longer be a consideration because its well in advance of what we need. But at the moment we're already touching the maximum speeds. Also switching to fibre is about quality of service too. I wonder how many people these ISP's hire just to correct copper line faults? I don't think half the problems would occur on a new fibre network, especially one being planned very well so hopefully it'll also be built for easy maintenance.

[WWWombat]

Hehe - last item on the list is an Ofcom that doesn't get in the way. What chance?

[burakkucat]

Ofcom (and its predecessor Oftel) were created by the Government of the day for two purposes --

• to be a regulatory quango so that the Government does not soil its hands imposing disliked rules and regulations
• to comply with diktats, directives and mindless rules/regulations emanating from Europe

My suggestion is to just abolish Ofcom and be done with it.

[Chunkers]

I got all excited again and went to Zen's website :

"Did you know, that only 3% of the UK can get Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP)?"

I think remains is a big gap in the market of people (like me) who would pay a considerable premium, within reason, for installation and having fibre service but can't have it because nobody seems to do it .....

To be honest,  I don't really understand how it works practically.....  if you already have FTTC, as most people do, do they just need to run fibre from your local cabinet to your house?  I say "just", in my case that would be a fairly big task.

Deflated,

Chunks

[Ronski]

Chunkers, I would think that 3% is well out of date, if FTTC is available then I believe FTTPod is available now.

What's the wholesale checker say for you?

[Chunkers]

Hurrah!



As per other thread though, I have NO IDEA how to work out how much it will cost

C

[WWWombat]

I say "just", in my case that would be a fairly big task.

What makes the national job hard isn't that a few properties have a big task, but instead the sheer number of properties to deal with individually.

To be honest,  I don't really understand how it works practically.....  if you already have FTTC, as most people do, do they just need to run fibre from your local cabinet to your house?

It is slightly more complex than running fibre from the cabinet, but that's near enough for this discussion...

What has happened to the median line, so far, is that the first 3km of copper has been replaced with fibre, leaving the last 350m still as copper. Stated like that, it appears that BT have done 90% of the work, right?

However, the fibre in place is shared by 300 customers. To get fibre to the premises, you only have one tenth of the total distance left to go, but you have to repeat that 300x. Combine the two, and (at its most simplistic), you have 30x as much work still to be done.

An analogy: picture an oak tree. You need to run fibre from the base to each and every leaf. As you trace the path to any one leaf, the trunk covers half the distance. The 10biggest boughs cover the next 40%. The remainder is a short distance along piddlingly-insignificant and thin branches. Short distances, but there are thousands of them.

In reality, the distance left to go with fibre is like the tree - there are still shared branches to go, so it isn't really 300x the effort, more like 5x. However, you only get that gain if you convert whole branches at a time: every house on an estate, for example. FTTPoD is closer to a "one leaf at a time" strategy that would be maddeningly expensive.

Aside: Why isn't it a case of running fibre to the cabinet?
The cross-connection point in the copper world is the PCP. In the fibre world, the equivalent structure that holds fibre splices is the aggregation node. This site underground, and is the point that new FTTPoD or FTTP fibre has to run back to.

So the fibre would run back to the cabinet only if the cabinet had an aggregation node. However, there are probably 2-5 cabinets per agg node.

[Ronski]

Hurrah!

As per other thread though, I have NO IDEA how to work out how much it will cost

C

Only way really is to ask Fluid One or Cerberus, but currently 3yr contract until new pricing structure kicks.