New Fibre Overlay System from BT, much wider availability

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/5015.html

Some good, some bad points. Will update as and when more information appears.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/5016.html

I would be interesting to know a little more about the technical details of the deployment, my initial assumption is that they will simply add a splitter node in the footway outside the PCP at the same time as they commission an FTTC cab?

Assuming a 32-way split as per the existing FTTP deployment this would only require a couple of fibres back to the Exchange.

Might even be room in the cabinet. I suspect they will want to avoid civils, just adding tubing and blow fibre to the property in question. Rather than through individual questions I can save them up, and ask them all at once. Currently waiting on them to check if this solution will be used for Direct Exchange Lines (DEL).

So since my cab is outside my door it would be cheap to deploy? lol

Excellent. Just the kind of thing I was hoping to see in a recent post here.

With cab outside your door then 80 Meg and more with vectoring should be feasible on FTTC.

But if they do a custom pricing option I would expect you to be cheaper to install. No pricing from BT, so my news stuff is speculation, based on historical costs of this sort of thing.

Not really a question as such, but thinking aloud (and far into the future), I wonder what the economics would be when you get to a situation where for example a 128 line FTTC cab hits it's maximum capacity. Would it be cheaper to bolt another 128 line cab to the existing one or just use FTTP for all future fibre-based product installs for that PCP?

The standard chunky cab is 288 line capacity, so a smaller one could be replaced. Generally sized to allow for 50% takeup if memory is working.

When it comes to expansion, then someone will crunch the numbers, it might even be worth stopping VDSL2 totally in the area, and do everyone with FTTP. Always was an option, but is now an option that seems more likely

I always assumed they would add another 128 line cab rather than replace the existing due to the disruption that would cause to existing users, plus the expense of having leftover 128 line cabs (what do they fetch on eBay?!)

The main reason for asking is in our area (Orpington / Farnborough, Kent) they seem to be using the 128 line cabs for the FTTC deployment, which given the population density in the area is a surprise although a mitigating factor is the fact that the Virgin Media service is widely available.