FTTP for some .... Why?

I've got an Ininity FTTC connection that syncs at 40/10 and has the potential to go to 54/17 since profile 17a was activated on the line. I'm happy enough with the speed and tend to find that I'm limited by the server I'm connected to or the exhange, rather than my connection speed.

Given that FTTC is no doubt fine for most people, why are Openreach installing FTTP to a minority (albeit still a large number)? If they aren't doing it for everyone, why do it for some? Surely they could use the money saved from just installing FTTC to roll out FTTC to those that aren't planned to have any fibre access? Or does the infrstructure of the current FTTC installations allow easy upgrade to FTTP in the future?

Exactly.

Eventually, everyone that wants it, will have FTTP.

If you live very close to the exchange, it doesn't make sense to go out to a DSLAM in the street, some people are already connected to an exchange.

For now, crucial word, now. 40 mb down, is fine. later on, in a few years time, it wont be so special. Whats the limit ? who knows, every time someone tries to predict the maximum bandwidth needed, something else comes along.

I can see a future where every single thing you watch, comes down the fibre. All of your software you use, is held on remote servers and all the associate space is on servers as well.

Economically, right now, it makes sense to do FTTC, later on, as time goes on, they can replace it with fibre, as the copper is replaced over its natural life cycle.

Remember, you say that at the moment, your limited by the servers sending you information.. but as technology improves that will change. Most of the servers you would address right now, are not high end systems.
If you use Usenet for example, i bet that would eat up all your bandwidth, its because they are custom servers, being paid for. high end. max throughput.

Your other point about why do FTTP for some, right now.. is that, knowing BT, its economic sense to drag fibre to those houses right now. but i'm sure its coming everyone's way eventually anyhow.

Doing some FTTP allows Openreach to have good headline speeds
Build up a knowledge base amongst staff for future expansion
FTTP should be around 10 to 15% of homes at the end

Why not more? Cost, some areas it is cheap enough Openreach believe to do it.

In reply to a post by rhino7:

I've got an Ininity FTTC connection that syncs at 40/10 and has the potential to go to 54/17 since profile 17a was activated on the line. I'm happy enough with the speed and tend to find that I'm limited by the server I'm connected to or the exhange, rather than my connection speed.

Given that FTTC is no doubt fine for most people, why are Openreach installing FTTP to a minority (albeit still a large number)? If they aren't doing it for everyone, why do it for some? Surely they could use the money saved from just installing FTTC to roll out FTTC to those that aren't planned to have any fibre access? Or does the infrstructure of the current FTTC installations allow easy upgrade to FTTP in the future?

I guess you could ask the same question - why are they only installing FTTC for some and not all? 3 cabinets serve my estate and only 1 is getting FTTC. Go figure.

I can certainly see and appreciate the argument that in the future ever faster connections will be required as ever more bandwidth intensive services become available. I've read the many posts and articles covering the various profile changes that can be applied to FTTC and the potential gains from the use of vectoring. All of these seem to offer bandwidth that will be sufficient for quite a number of years for the majority.

Of course the ultimate would be FTTP for all and that may be where we will eventually need to get to. It just seems hard to believe that no matter how straightforward it is to install FTTP in some areas, it must always be possible to get many more people connected to FTTC with the budgets available, people who are not included in the present roll out plans.

I guess that the argument for Openreach building up knowledge of FTTP installs is valid too, so long as they are actually going to go back and convert all the FTTC connections to FTTP in the future. The fact that they are doing ANY FTTP installs suggests that the need for the FTTP bandwidth is already envisaged.

In reply to a post by rhino7:

...so long as they are actually going to go back and convert all the FTTC connections to FTTP in the future. ...

To me it seems unlikely that the private sector will convert connections to FTTP. Unless there is the political will to do something like the NBN in Australia I suspect that for most FTTC is the best we can hope for.

In a five year time frame maybe, but in ten years things may change to make full fibre more attractive, with the extra work involved in pushing it out to all.

The scale is FTTC for 85,000 (whole of UK) versus some 25 million properties for FTTP

In reply to a post by Moradin:

Exactly.

Eventually, everyone that wants it, will have FTTP.

If you live very close to the exchange, it doesn't make sense to go out to a DSLAM in the street, some people are already connected to an exchange.

For now, crucial word, now. 40 mb down, is fine. later on, in a few years time, it wont be so special. Whats the limit ? who knows, every time someone tries to predict the maximum bandwidth needed, something else comes along.

I can see a future where every single thing you watch, comes down the fibre. All of your software you use, is held on remote servers and all the associate space is on servers as well.

and that is very scary, thankfully those times are a long way off, i will keep my software on my computer thank you very much.

Economically, right now, it makes sense to do FTTC, later on, as time goes on, they can replace it with fibre, as the copper is replaced over its natural life cycle.

Remember, you say that at the moment, your limited by the servers sending you information.. but as technology improves that will change. Most of the servers you would address right now, are not high end systems.
If you use Usenet for example, i bet that would eat up all your bandwidth, its because they are custom servers, being paid for. high end. max throughput.

Your other point about why do FTTP for some, right now.. is that, knowing BT, its economic sense to drag fibre to those houses right now. but i'm sure its coming everyone's way eventually anyhow.

do we really need all that speed? it is like someone going out and buying a sports car that can do 150MPh and yet only doing 40MPH. Many people that have fibre will find little difference as they don't use it to it's full.

i only 3.5-4 megabits and most of the time it does what i want, sure i would not mind a little bit more speed now and again, but I don't need or want 40 megabits.

I think "knowledge" is the key point here... we are at a point where fibre is becoming viable in the access network for more widespread deployment.

It is a thing that many of joe public forget, but is key for BT as a whole - what technology can be cost-effectively deployed for everyone *in bulk*, and remain in the ground for decades in a maintainable state.

As BT gets the equipment that can be deployed in bulk, and maintained long-term, then they also need the knowledge behind all those processes - installation, removal, repair etc - and I think that BT are aiming to get this in place during the current roll-out so they can plan to go further with FTTP in the following decade or two.

The original 20CN DSLAMs are now end-of-life and cannot be maintained easily - which might be considered a bit of a blow, investment-wise. I doubt that BT want this to happen within the access network.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

do we really need all that speed? it is like someone going out and buying a sports car that can do 150MPh and yet only doing 40MPH. Many people that have fibre will find little difference as they don't use it to it's full.

The analogy doesn't stand up to parallelism: Put 5 people in the house doing 40MPH, and you suddenly need a car capable of 200MPH???

The availability of such speeds helps make a market that just couldn't exist with slow speeds available. Internet-based backups, for example. Or the recent launch of Netflix.

Just wait until everyone in the family is streaming video, or watching a TV catch-up service - and you'll soon find a full FTTC connection.

Oh... and it isn't all about the speed - stability coms into it too. FTTC seems to be proving pretty stable (except for a few poor souls who aren't treated well enough IMHO) relative to ADSL2+; FTTP will be a huge leap forward on this front.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i only 3.5-4 megabits and most of the time it does what i want, sure i would not mind a little bit more speed now and again, but I don't need or want 40 megabits.

I get 14meg throughput, but I really want about 20megabit throughput _consistent_. This would allow me to stream Netflix at high quality. At the moment I get high quality randomly through a programme, often its youtube quality then it gets better again. Maybe its netflix overload or ISP routing, but its annoying.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I get 14meg throughput, but I really want about 20megabit throughput _consistent_. This would allow me to stream Netflix at high quality.

What? NetFlix offers a 20Mb/s video stream? That's nearly double broadcast quality HD. I'm very impressed if any internet based video delivery service can stream at that speed.

According to the article I saw Netflix doesn't stream any higher than 5Mb/s.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

do we really need all that speed? it is like someone going out and buying a sports car that can do 150MPh and yet only doing 40MPH. Many people that have fibre will find little difference as they don't use it to it's full.

The analogy doesn't stand up to parallelism: Put 5 people in the house doing 40MPH, and you suddenly need a car capable of 200MPH???

The availability of such speeds helps make a market that just couldn't exist with slow speeds available. Internet-based backups, for example. Or the recent launch of Netflix.

I'm still not convinced. Such services are not going to be free and anyone willing to pay just to watch TV will already have a subscription to Sky or Virgin. Also based on my limited research and other much larger sample sizes there just isn't much demand for VoD. Even if there was VoD with a decent streaming bandwidth (10Mb/s minimum for HD) would be a hugely expensive service. It would be cheaper with multicasting but even assuming someone eventually figures out how to get multicasting to work on the Internet you're then left with the question of why anyone would build a broadcast network using the internet when there's already two (three in some places) that have been around for decades.

I think FTTC speeds (20Mb/s or greater) will be fine for most families for at least the next decade. I think BT have (perhaps more by luck than good judgement) pretty much kept pace with mainstream demand and may even be ahead for the game by the end of the year if their new FTTC profiles live up to their promise.

Edited by Andrue (Wed 11-Jan-12 08:07:50)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

In a five year time frame maybe, but in ten years things may change to make full fibre more attractive, with the extra work involved in pushing it out to all.

The scale is FTTC for 85,000 (whole of UK) versus some 25 million properties for FTTP

Yeah. I'd imagine an FTTP roll-out kicking off in the 2020s. Well under way by the 2030s at the latest. I base that on the progression in speed for my home connection:

1999 - 38kb/s modem.
2000 - 49kb/s modem.
2001 - 64kb/s/128kb/s Home Highway
2002 - 512kb/s ADSL
2006 - 8Mb/s ADSL Max
2008 - 13Mb/s ADSL2+, Be
2012 - 33Mb/s FTTC. BT checker estimate for March.

That implies another step change around 2014/2016 but FTTP would presumably be a big leap. If we're talking a leap to 100Mb/s then 2020 seems to fit in

Edited by Andrue (Wed 11-Jan-12 08:16:00)

Cough, Netflix streams fine at high quality on a 6 Meg line, and thats a TalkTalk one, even decent buffering so it does not glitch when using another computer

They don't, its 5Meg, even their quality options alude to a maximum of 1GB per hour for highest quality

Puts hand up, cancelled Sky Movies to use NetFlix. Yes not latest catalogue but at £5.99 versus the £16 + £10 of Sky and I don't have to put up with their scheduling, boxsets of series are available etc it is pretty good.

The original DSLAMs will have worked now beyond their planned lifespan, a ROI of around 3 years was the key to old ADSL roll-out.

The MSAN's for 21CN should once the voice 21CN gets going again, have a reasonable life span.

The FTTC network is expandable to become full FTTP.

If Fujitsu win a contract for a county, this will show what is possible on a wider FTTP scale, and may tip BT's hand to invest in more FTTP. Am sure BT at high level know FTTP is the current end-game, but investment situation is such that committing now would be dangerous. The £2.5bn was a fairly large commitment, and regulatory uncertainty is an issue.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

In a five year time frame maybe, but in ten years things may change to make full fibre more attractive, with the extra work involved in pushing it out to all.

The scale is FTTC for 85,000 (whole of UK) versus some 25 million properties for FTTP

This is the problem.

FTTC is a huge upgrade from adsl, no doubt about it. However BT are doing it 5-8 years too late. They rolling out something that will be close to been obselete when its finished. Its current gen not next gen.

Will BT ever shake off the distance from exchange issue? as it would seem unless you in cornwall FTTP will be primarily for those near an exchange.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

In a five year time frame maybe, but in ten years things may change to make full fibre more attractive, with the extra work involved in pushing it out to all.

The scale is FTTC for 85,000 (whole of UK) versus some 25 million properties for FTTP

This is the problem.

FTTC is a huge upgrade from adsl, no doubt about it. However BT are doing it 5-8 years too late. They rolling out something that will be close to been obselete when its finished. Its current gen not next gen.

Will BT ever shake off the distance from exchange issue? as it would seem unless you in cornwall FTTP will be primarily for those near an exchange.

Don't forget that the current 40meg offered on FTTC is not the be all and end all of FTTC. Up to 80 will be rolled out soon and VDSL 2 has the potential of 200meg on the 30a profile.

The man hours, not just economics, for FTTC roll-out vs FTTP roll-out dictate things too.

BT can "pass" more homes with fewer man hours than it would take for FTTP. So FTTC is the ideal catch-up method, given that the market was only opened in mid-2009.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The analogy doesn't stand up to parallelism: Put 5 people in the house doing 40MPH, and you suddenly need a car capable of 200MPH???

The availability of such speeds helps make a market that just couldn't exist with slow speeds available. Internet-based backups, for example. Or the recent launch of Netflix.

Just wait until everyone in the family is streaming video, or watching a TV catch-up service - and you'll soon find a full FTTC connection.

i do understand what you are saying and yes in a family home then the extra speed could be useful, it was only a couple of days ago that a friend of mine decided to try netflix, was watching something and her daughter went on to the mac and started to download something, that was it Netflix lost it, but then most of the time she is lucky to get 2 megabits and she is one of the people that wants Fibre, that is if she don't move first.

It is ok people saying about all these services that is going to rely on fibre, like netflix and online back up, not that I would really use online back up. Back it up on a external hard drive, then even if a internet goes belly up, you still got it to hand. Anyway it is ok to say these services need fast speed, but who is going to pay for this fast speed and how long will it be before ISPs start charging the earth to access these high speeds?

Look at the service i get, proper unlimited use, no traffic management, so no worry about going over any limit. I watched a few things on netflix over the last couple of days and not have to worry about going over some limit or other.

Now If i went to fibre using the same company, I still pay more or less the same, but I get a limit of 15Gb data usage, ok I can use it unlimited off peak, but no point in that to be honest. If there was a way to download Netflix or other videos to the device that is being use then maybe that would work. It will also cost me £100 to be installed and stuck in a 12 month contract, then if I had to move within those 12 months I would still be liable for the contract and not able to take the service with me.

Not the ISps fault, because they are a small Isp they can't afford to do the deals that larger ISps do or will do with their free connections and so called unlimited which is not unlimited anyway.

also do we get the same problem as we do with ADSL when people do move house and find that their fibre is with a certain company and it takes ages to find out who the company is and weeks to sort it out?

Oh... and it isn't all about the speed - stability coms into it too. FTTC seems to be proving pretty stable (except for a few poor souls who aren't treated well enough IMHO) relative to ADSL2+; FTTP will be a huge leap forward on this front.

Maybe, not enough people have fibre at the moment to compare. FTTP is a pipe dream for most people, saying that FTTC is a pipe dream for many people as well.

The one thing I thought that fibre may have sorted is the need for line rental for a phone, so we are still being made to pay the full line rental even if we don't really need a phone and then you got ISPs like Talk Talk and Bt who force you to use their own phone service, just like fully unbundled LLU. No doubt Sky will do the same thing when they eventually get a fibre package.


i am in no rush, no doubt once fibre come here we will be bombarded with Talk Talk sales people and have loads of rubbish come through the door from Bt and Talk Talk. both companies I want to stay as far away from as possible.

So I will be staying as I am.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I get 14meg throughput, but I really want about 20megabit throughput _consistent_. This would allow me to stream Netflix at high quality. At the moment I get high quality randomly through a programme, often its youtube quality then it gets better again. Maybe its netflix overload or ISP routing, but its annoying.

I used Netflix and even on my speed I get a pretty decent quality, a mate of mine who lives a lot closer to the exchange and is on the same cable and wireless network as me also tried it out and found the quality was good, he have around 15 megabits. He is pretty impressed with netflix, but then he is impressed about eveything

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Puts hand up, cancelled Sky Movies to use NetFlix. Yes not latest catalogue but at £5.99 versus the £16 + £10 of Sky and I don't have to put up with their scheduling, boxsets of series are available etc it is pretty good.

i don't have Sky or any other form of pay T.V, VOd is of interest and yes i have got a trial of netflix, and cancelled it on the same day, just in case I forget when the time comes.

It is ok, content needs to be sorted, documentaries are a bit naff to be honest, I don't think I will be throwing away my lovefilm subscription for a while.
i was thinking of maybe taking a payment holiday from lovefilm for a month and seeing what netflix is really like.


but I don't need 40 megabits to use netflix, if we could choose the speed we want and pay by speed it would be better, so having 20megabits instead of 40 would be cheaper.


I will be keeping lovefilm as I like my blue-ray, netflix will not even come close even on a decent connection.

An example is a single household with four members. One is playing OnLive which sucks a huge amount of bandwidth - at least 5Mbps (has been known to scale to around 15). Another is streaming YouTube HD. Another is downloading stuff on Bitorrent. Another person is watching iPlayer HD.

There you go - all 40Mbps soaked up.

My friend went from a 500Kbps connection to 40Mbps - when the latter speed was so slow he had no choice - his life literally changed with the increase.

Edited by deleted (Wed 11-Jan-12 12:16:31)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

It is ok people saying about all these services that is going to rely on fibre, like netflix and online back up, not that I would really use online back up. Back it up on a external hard drive, then even if a internet goes belly up, you still got it to hand.

I feel a lot more comfortable using an online backup service as well as my NAS drive to backup my photos.

Lightning, fire, burglary are three things that spring to mind.

Well considering the government have just gone and passed to spend 32bn on some high speed railway surly the government could lend a hand to BT considering on the Conservatives web page says they support high speed internets.
mind you. the government always lies.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

According to the article I saw Netflix doesn't stream any higher than 5Mb/s.

Well then I need *stability* From my home, through my ISP, all the way to the source. To my PS3, which reported "High/HD" for only about 20% whilst watching a 45minute programme. On a 40" TV the lower quality streaming looks pretty awful to be honest.

Perhaps its netflix overload, and it will calm down after the first free month!

I think they are doing FTTH mainly for properties that connect directly to the exchange aren't they? i.e. no cabinet

I have already said I understand where people have a family it might be useful and of cause if you got a really low speed then it would be better. what I don't understand is people where only one person uses it like a mate of mine who gets 16Megabits and says he may go for Fibre if he gets it, I don't think he will for a while due to being so close to the exchange, mind you I still have my doubts that BT will deliver fibre here by the end of the year never mind in June.

If i could get 16megabits that would suit me fine, in fact 8 megabits would be nice, but i don't believe myself that i, noticed I said I will really need 40 Megabits.

A friend of mine have 2megabits, and wants to come more into the city so she can get a faster speed, she needs at least 4, but as she said what she needs more is reliability, something she don't have where she lives, we even got a pretty exensive router hoping that would help, but done nothing in fact it was worse.

so if she stayed where she is fibre would be useful, but even she don't see the need for 40 megabits and she have a daughter who uses the net a lot, she would also prefer to pay less for half that speed. the other problem is that he phone line is not with Bt and with a different company, so to get fibre and still keep her phone service she would have to go with one of the smaller ISps which sadly cost a bit more than the larger ISPs and when you are watching the pennies it all adds up

Yeah. I'd imagine an FTTP roll-out kicking off in the 2020s. Well under way by the 2030s at the latest. I base that on the progression in speed for my home connection:

1999 - 38kb/s modem.
2000 - 49kb/s modem.
2001 - 64kb/s/128kb/s Home Highway
2002 - 512kb/s ADSL
2006 - 8Mb/s ADSL Max
2008 - 13Mb/s ADSL2+, Be
2012 - 33Mb/s FTTC. BT checker estimate for March.

That implies another step change around 2014/2016 but FTTP would presumably be a big leap.

A BT estimate of 33Mb/s means you're likely to get 40Mb/s.

Later in 2012, the maximum speed on FTTC will increase to 80MB/s - with further increases possible including the planned introduction of vectoring in future.

So BT can still do quite a lot with their current infrastructure without FTTP.

Regards
Sunil

Have you checked the PS3 can play HD material over the local LAN? e.g. wireless is often an issue

Have watched a number of films on Netflix with no issues, other than a crash of the Xbox client once. Thats on an ISP running at 6Meg, and one people say to avoid.

As yet nope, the areas with FTTP are not distinctly DEL properties, some may covered, but it is a good mixture.

In Cornwall FTTP and FTTC were discussed with a different solution for DEL, but technology not announced.

Handing directly to BT would break EU laws, hence the lengthy BDUK process, that some say will still mean the money will mainly end up with BT

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Handing directly to BT would break EU laws, hence the lengthy BDUK process, that some say will still mean the money will mainly end up with BT

sounds about right, we are stuck with that awful company no matter what we do.

I do have a choice now , we got a company that is doing wireless broadband and it is not a bad price and gives pretty good speed.

That means I could get rid of my phone line.

In reply to a post by gmoorc:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

It is ok people saying about all these services that is going to rely on fibre, like netflix and online back up, not that I would really use online back up. Back it up on a external hard drive, then even if a internet goes belly up, you still got it to hand.

I feel a lot more comfortable using an online backup service as well as my NAS drive to backup my photos.

Lightning, fire, burglary are three things that spring to mind.

All my important photos are stored on a hard drive at my mates place, I also got them stored on a memory card that is also stored away from here.

i would not trust Google with my pictures or any other cloud company to be honest.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Have you checked the PS3 can play HD material over the local LAN? e.g. wireless is often an issue

Oh agreed, mine is hard wired to the router, as luckily they're in the same room

Have watched a number of films on Netflix with no issues, other than a crash of the Xbox client once. Thats on an ISP running at 6Meg, and one people say to avoid.

I had no problems last night watching in "high quality / HD" so I'm chalking up the previous issues to "new day trials".

To call Openreach awful is a little too far. All big companies have inertia and BT Group has a real mixture of push forward fast versus steady slow progress people.

If BT were awful we would have a much more expensive product with a lot fewer options on it.

The advantage to BT is that generally you can get a basic level of service anywhere in the UK.

Arr right, in that case I don't know then. I wondered why York up the road got FTTP as I couldn't imagine they were all DEL's maybe its just more suitable for some areas than others in terms of exchange placement etc

Around here it seems like BT is targeting new-builds for FTTP.

My road has FTTC (only one so far in the village), but the nearby newish housing estate (which presumably has entirely underground utilities, whereas in my road electricity/phone are overground?) is getting FTTP. Nothing yet for the exchange-only lines.

I live in Cornwal (where it seems to be that more FTTP is planned than anywhere else) l in a reasonably small village.

More FTTP is being deployed in Cornwall as it has the largest amount of funding for any UK county.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Don't forget that the current 40meg offered on FTTC is not the be all and end all of FTTC. Up to 80 will be rolled out soon and VDSL 2 has the potential of 200meg on the 30a profile.

But at what distance from the cabinet? My line is the best part of 1000m back to the cabinet, all running in underground ducting. All the charts I've seen suggest I'll never see anything like 200Mbps until they replace more of the copper with fibre. The current estimate for my line is 23Mbps - assuming one day BT get round to running some actual fibre into the FTTC cabinet they installed last August. With vectoring they might push that to around 40Mbps.

In reply to a post by CJ8:

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Don't forget that the current 40meg offered on FTTC is not the be all and end all of FTTC. Up to 80 will be rolled out soon and VDSL 2 has the potential of 200meg on the 30a profile.

But at what distance from the cabinet? My line is the best part of 1000m back to the cabinet, all running in underground ducting. All the charts I've seen suggest I'll never see anything like 200Mbps until they replace more of the copper with fibre. The current estimate for my line is 23Mbps - assuming one day BT get round to running some actual fibre into the FTTC cabinet they installed last August. With vectoring they might push that to around 40Mbps.

Which is better than a kick in the dick!

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Which is better than a kick in the dick!

It will certainly do just fine for watching iPlayer over the next few years. Although I sometimes work from home over the company VPN and anything to get a more LAN-like performance would be welcome.

Indeed - plus there's always the possibility of improving things with pole-top DSLAMs if there are particular black spots. it'll take a little while, but I can certainly see that eventually most of the network will be FTTP.

It makes sense for long term network stability for a start - no more degrading copper and aluminium, no more radio interference, flooded ducts won't scupper the connection, and network upgrades will consist of just replacing the equipment at each end.

Interesting times ahead