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[sevenlayermuddle]

According to the Beeb, Mr Cameron is gunning for a fast broadband Universal Service Obligation...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34753331

Fast is defined, it seems, as 10Mbps.   Details to follow next week, will be interesting to see.

[UncleUB]

According to the Beeb, Mr Cameron is gunning for a fast broadband Universal Service Obligation...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34753331

Fast is defined, it seems, as 10Mbps.   Details to follow next week, will be interesting to see.

In my world 10Mbps Is fast  ...But there is light (or should I say fibre)at the end of the tunnel. BT are finally (with government and council money) enabling my exchange for FTTC.It should be completed sometime between Jan and March 2016.
I did briefly get FTTC via South Yorkshire Digital Region but when the plug was pulled on that in August 2014 I had to go back to ADSL and around 2Mbps download speeds.

[sevenlayermuddle]

...But there is light (or should I say fibre)at the end of the tunnel. BT are finally (with government and council money) enabling my exchange for FTTC.It should be completed sometime between Jan and March 2016.

@Uncle, given these dates, just thought I'd mention...my FTTC was also funded by local authority.   But it was available many months before the predicted date.  Even weeks after my own line was up and running, they were still spreading the news that our village could have it in a few months time.

Well worth keeping an eye out for the new cabs  becoming ready.   But then I bet you already are.   

[sorc]

In my own village, the cabinet I was on was the first and only to be upgraded for a year or two, before they came back and did some more. Then they came back again and installed 21CN equipment for ADSL2+, for whatever reason, despite almost everyone being able to get FTTC or FTTP.

As Guinness said, "good things come to those who wait", because some of the village won the "BT technology lottery" and got FTTP, whereas my line and some others are FTTC. Until the Openreach coverage checker started talking about cabinets rather than exchanges, it proudly said that the area has fibre

[Weaver]

How did they win the FTTP lottery? (Answer sheer good luck?) prob a stupid question. :-)

[sorc]

How did they win the FTTP lottery? (Answer sheer good luck?) prob a stupid question. :-)

You'd have to ask BT to see how they make these decisions, but I mean a "lottery" in the sense that some places got FTTP and others got FTTC. One street in particular has no real barrier for FTTC - there is an existing copper cabinet, there is power, no particularly long lines but BT decided to push the boat out and run FTTP to every pole. Other streets got FTTC, and many people on those cabinets won't be getting particularly spectacular speeds due to line length - unless BT thinks about pair bonding, or doing the job properly and extending the fibre

For a telco that seems to enjoy telling people about how expensive and impractical FTTP is, they've done a fair bit of it in places where it would be zero-profit (they can't make money when no one has the service installed) and the most difficult.

[Black Sheep]

Just to reiterate, BT are a shareholding company that has to show profits year-on-year. They are not in the habit of throwing money down the drain, and although everyone is entitled to an opinion, your comments are pure speculation and without possession of the full facts.

Believe me when I say if they deemed a certain area to be FTTP, there will be a good reason behind it. Just guessing at the reasons why is just that ....... a guess.

G. fast is currently being trial led and is expected to have 80% UK coverage by 2022.

[sorc]

Just to reiterate, BT are a shareholding company that has to show profits year-on-year. They are not in the habit of throwing money down the drain, and although everyone is entitled to an opinion, your comments are pure speculation and without possession of the full facts.

That's certainly true given how glacial they've been in terms of progress. Aren't there still a lot of exchanges that still don't have WBC ADSL2+, often relying on the likes of TalkTalk to give them that?

A supposedly totally profit-driven company would not use a much more expensive and labour intensive technology, when the cheap shortsighted bodge that they use routinely in every other area of the country, would work.

Nor would they string miles of fibre in the middle of nowhere, in pursuit of customers that don't want the service, or in pursuit of no one at all (there are poles with FTTP equipment that have no copper customers on them, no apparent fibre coming out of them, or even houses nearby - just empty fields - with some other FTTP'd poles having precisely one potential customer). What's the ROI in those circumstances?

Whatever the reasons are, they aren't financial.

Believe me when I say if they deemed a certain area to be FTTP, there will be a good reason behind it. Just guessing at the reasons why is just that ....... a guess.

I think if you lived here and seen where FTTP exists, you'd wonder what those reasons are, given that there appears to be no pattern to it. Go into the neighbouring county and see no FTTP at all in similar scenarios - either you get FTTC or are told to "get satellite". Not even the areas that have Virgin and thus a competitive pressure to deploy something better.

A more distant example would be BT's decision to roll out FTTP in the areas served by B4RN. Amazing what a little competition does (when it's not Virgin). Whether that's crushing wireless networks with an ADSL rollout a decade ago, or trying to crush homegrown FTTP because they dared to prove BT wrong - BT will spare no expense when they want to. Wouldn't surprise me if Gigaclear (who also seem to be able to do FTTP where BT "can't") sees the same pressure eventually.

You don't have to work in BT's network planning departments to know that something is not quite right.

G. fast is currently being trial led and is expected to have 80% UK coverage by 2022.

A technology that only BT seems to publicly support, will probably cost about as much as FTTP (all things considered), is equally, if not more labour intensive to get near the home, and with none of the futureproofing or inherent simplicity of PON.

[Weaver]

> Aren't there still a lot of exchanges that still don't have WBC ADSL2+, often relying on the likes of TalkTalk to give them that?

Like the Broadford exchange, that, for the moment, still has only 20CN ADSL1 and no LLU.

No BT-bashing for its own sake please, it isn't worth it. If you don't like what BT are doing talk to your MP and get the government to step in and start doing the right thing.

[WWWombat]

G. fast ... is expected to have 80% UK coverage by 2022.

Ooh - that's new to me.

I'd heard the previous targets of 10 million by 2020 and "most" by 2025. I personally believe "most" means a lot more than 50.1%, but it certainly leaves room for the cynics to have their say.

80%, on the other hand, isn't a bad target - and far higher than the commercial target of 67% for FTTx in 2014.

We know that BT are looking at making G.Fast viable (through standards changes, and through re-focussing chipset vendors' efforts) at 300-350m. If Sagentia's figures on D-side lengths are correct (see pic):

• Getting 10 million covered, 35%, means having G.Fast DPU's at existing cabinets, covering 300m or so
• Getting 80% of the UK covered means having G.Fast DPU's both at the existing cabinets, and then a layer further out - supporting a "doughnut" of coverage, with an inner radius of 350m and an outer radius of 700m. With, quite possibly, a third layer at the 700m mark (for 700m-1km coverage) in some places.

Those figures would pretty much require treatment of all FTTC cabinets - including the original commercial ones, and the BDUK ones, and the ones fitted for EO lines.

[WWWombat]

I assume you are talking about Cornwall, so this reply is written on that basis...

Whatever the reasons are, they aren't financial.

They kinda *are* financial reasons, but they're all predicated in different worlds.

The Cornish commitments made by BT came at the time they were expecting to use FTTP for something like 20% of the country, and will have been made to fit the thinking of the time.

At the time, G.fast was no more than a glimmer in the eye of best copper researchers - and I don't think BT expected it to lead to much; most certainly not the kind of results they now believe they can get out of G.fast++

So, whatever FTTP deployments we see in Cornwall, we have to understand they were made with a very different nationwide mindset, and a very different financial model. And we don't know how that model intended to grow beyond 20% over the years.

The subsequent counties (including the neighbouring one) have been using later business models where, with the existence of G.fast as a viable upgrade, FTTC is even more financially preferable.

A technology that only BT seems to publicly support,

Except that, as other telcos are getting to see G.fast with the same level of intimacy that BT has (as a co-developer), they're considering it too. NBN are trialling it, and DT are considering it too.

http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/dsl-vectoring-gfast/nbn-looks-to-gfast-to-reduce-fiber-hassle/d/d-id/718859?
http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/dsl-vectoring-gfast/dt-eyes-gigabit-gfast-in-germany/d/d-id/719337?

will probably cost about as much as FTTP (all things considered),

Some modelling for Amsterdam suggested that FTTdp cost less than half that of FTTP - with DPU placement much closer (hence more expensive) than BT seem to be considering.

is equally, if not more labour intensive to get near the home

That'd be interesting to see. I'm sure the addition of 28 million extra lengths of fibre (each between 35m and 300m) might just take a teeny bit of extra labour. Plus making, and keeping, 28 million appointments with householders & business owners.

and with none of the futureproofing or inherent simplicity of PON.

I'm not sure why the idea of getting fibre even deeper into the network isn't considered "future-proofing".

What BT seems to be doing is a breadth-first, stepwise deployment. There are speed improvement benefits at each step, across the breadth - though the deployment model looks poor if you believe there won't be steps in the future.

Full FTTP is a stepless, depth-first deployment. There is no intermediate benefit to a subscriber until his line is deployed; some sub-2Mbps lines would be left untouched for perhaps 20 years.

I'm not entirely convinced it is a better deployment model.