The cost of laying fibre to the home is vast, in terms of manpower. It's very labour intensive, and it's not a nice job. It's heavy ground-working, and it's costly re-instating metalled roads and pavements after the fibre has been laid.
Many a cable company has gone bust because of those costs, long before building a network with revenues that turned a profit. (Similar to the early railway pioneers).
When we lived in Liverpool, mid 90s, the local cable co went belly up. Forget its name, but it left half the streets dug up, including a huge hole right outside our gate! Piles of tarmac everywhere, holes temporarily refilled with dirt. It was a horrible mess and it was like that for years. No doubt the taxpayer (i.e. Liverpool City Council) eventually had to repair all the damage.
Britain was a pioneer in telecommunications. Hopefully it still is. But it's not always best to be first. Sometimes it's better to be last, so that you can learn by the mistakes made by others! Service ducting is a huge mess in Britain. In the low countries, most roads have channeled service ducting running alongside. These make maintenance and upgrading so much easier. It's horrific to see telco cabling still being laid bare in the dirt under a major road surface. Sheesh! How primitive is that?! All the services, not just telcos, need their practices dragging into the 21st century.
EDIT:
Just to add. FTTH is all very nice, but who's going to fund the rollout? Since BT is a publicly-quoted company with shareholders, the costs (with interest) have to be recouped within a reasonable time-frame.
I know it annoys people (which is why I say it!) but just maybe BT would be better off in public ownership again? Where we can nurture it. BlackSheep and other front-line engineers would become civil servants. Quite right too. Pin-striped suit for them all, bowler hats, etc! Jokes aside, public ownership would also open up state funding for massive infrastructure projects like FTTH. In the past (i.e. long before I was born - in the good old days before Maggie Thatcher seized power), public works programmes - the building of new hospitals, schools, electric works, water projects, were funded through public subscription - the issuance of government or municipal bonds. The public was happy to invest its savings in these projects in the knowledge that the money would benefit the whole community. If the City can't or won't stump up the cash for FTTH rollout, then the public should get the chance to fund it.
Cheers, a
