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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/04/building-uk-summary-fttp-broadband-rollouts-investment.html

The past 24 months have been awash with announcements about “full fibre” (FTTP/H) broadband network builds across the United Kingdom, which can sometimes make it a little bit difficult to keep track of all the developments (nice problem to have). So here’s a quick summary of the key plans.

Most of the major ISPs and network operators, including Openreach (BT), now appear to agree that pure fibre optic (“full fibre“) broadband cables are the way forward for fixed line connectivity. These Fibre-to-the-Premises / Home (FTTP/H) networks transmit their data using laser light, which mercifully doesn’t suffer from the same reliability or performance problems as older copper lines.

On top of that FTTP/H networks can carry a ridiculous amount of data down even a single optical fibre (multi-Gigabit and possibly even Terabits in the distant future), which should mean that there’s plenty of capacity available for when we need it. But a combination of issues with market regulation, competition, high deployment costs and the slow pace of rollout can still make it very difficult to do.

In fact until very recently there had been precious little FTTP/H progress in the UK, but it was almost a very different story. Back in 2009 BT had initially pledged to deliver FTTP services to 2.5 million UK premises, although a combination of problems (e.g. it took far too long to install) meant that their aspiration was put on ice and by the end of 2012 the UK only had around 100,000 premises passed.

At around the same time as BT seemed to be scaling back, others were diving head long towards a full fibre future. Smaller players like Hyperoptic, IFNL (GTC / BU-UK) and B4RN sprang up, while others like Gigaclear and Cityfibre would soon follow. Many of these new alternative networks (altnets) had very different deployment models but they all shared a desire to capitalise on BT’s hesitation

Since then the market has continued to change, with many rules being relaxed and new investment flooding in. At the same time new deployment methods (narrow trenching, overhead fibre etc.) have also helped to bring the cost down further and we’ve seen both Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media set healthy rollout plans. The Government has also stepped in with new investment and a business rates holiday.

An interesting and indepth article of the state of building fibre / high speed networks in the UK.

I will be happy when customers can actually order this stuff. I'm sorry to say that OR seems to be either dragging their feet or over-promising when it comes to actual new fibre connections in comparison to the new alt-nets building their presense. I don't like being negative about one particular company (I prefer to point a problem out in the hope they fix it). But we've had many promises about expanding FTTP in to the millions and then, as pointed out in the above paragraphs it turns out to be 100,000 passed.

Increasingly I keep looking more to the alt-nets as they have always done what they have promised. Hopefully we can get to a point were all companies can be expanding at the same time. 

[Chrysalis]

Well the difference with openreach is they have existing assets in place, so the business case for them is clearly much less favourable than it is for the likes of gigaclear and co.

I expect if the ASA decided tomorrow that only full fibre services could have fibre in their product wording, then openreach would possibly change their stance over night.  The marketing departments have huge influence over expenditure.

In addition its fairly predictable that if openreach rollout FTTP to any meaningful footprint, it "will" get regulated at some point.  Further diminishing the business case.

[waltergmw]

Well said both IMHO.

We have to accept that HMG chose not to interfere, and maybe even encourage, in BT's commercial and financial FTTC decision to deploy "One of the biggest mistakes humanity has made".  (Dr Peter Cochrane to the HoL select committee in 2012)
That decision did and still does provide adequate VDSL services to those within its reach but, as speed (and symmetric) requirements inevitably rise, the "radius of satisfaction" is bound to diminish.

For the outliers that are prepared to pay significant sums for it, small clusters of FoD asymmetric fibre is available, sometimes after an extended deployment date.
This must surely reduce the return on FTTC investment and increase the complexity of future maintenance now with two quite different technologies in and on the same basic infrastructure.
In an ideal world I have little doubt that BT would like to be in the same "green field" position of the altnets.

Time will tell the UK how this self-inflicted muddle will evolve but raw logic, without further HMG intervention, must surely favour the altnets ?

[niemand]

Picking up on this and a commend made elsewhere symmetric requirements are not inevitably rising. Downstream usage is increasing ~50% per year on average, upstream usage ~30% per year.

Appreciate PON is bad, B4RN don't use it so it must be, however the biggest altnet FTTP network uses it, and with the plans as they stand now the 3 largest will all use PON.