GEA questions

Trying to figure out a couple of things:

1) Who use GEA currently? My guess is TalkTalk/Sky? I assume the rest of the ISPs use a BTw provisioned service.

2) Does an ISP have to pay the £2k+VAT cablelink fee per exchange? Does that get handed over right at the exchange itself? Is it possible to 'trunk' these connections to nearby exchanges using a different BT product?

The reason I ask is that I'm interested in the economics of GEA for providers with the coming BDUK rollout

For example, a very small exchange that was enabled with FTTC from OR under BDUK. Perhaps 1500 lines. No LLU coverage from Sky/TalkTalk. Suppose Sky were to want to provide access under GEA.

Could Sky instead have their GEA connections terminated at a nearby exchange for an economical price, or would they have to install equipment and lease backhaul at each exchange? With 21CN, it shouldn't be out of the question to allow much more affordable 'location-agnostic' termination as a specific circuit doesn't have to be provisioned. Just change some IP headers, at least in theory.

Excuse typos and waffle -- coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet .

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

1) Who use GEA currently? My guess is TalkTalk/Sky? I assume the rest of the ISPs use a BTw provisioned service.

I thought they all do. Isn't GEA just the Openreach termination point? If so then everyone including BTw will be using it.

1) GEA is just the name for the FTTC delivered product, so all ISP's currently offer this. I assume you are meaning who offers the FTTC service over their own backhaul from the cabinets? If so, no one yet, everyone is using the default Openreach fibre to the exchange.

You will find that small exchanges which have FTTC are not actually fed from the small exchange, but a bigger exchange already. For example, our exchange (Saddleworth) serves around 10,000 properties, and can get FTTC but the actual Fibre comes from the Oldham exchange, not Saddleworth. Openreach/BTw provide a list to ISPs that indicate which exchange areas are fed from which fibre head-end.

James

Edited by deleted (Tue 31-Jul-12 08:28:09)

Ethernet Backhaul Direct - would allow connection at another exchange or remote site.

Don't know if its necessary, but "Cablelink" sounds like a physical thing at the exchange.

2. Yes per exchange which they want to provide a LLU type of FTTC service from. They will already need a backhaul at the exchange so that will only happen at LLU enabled exchanges where they already provide LLU services. All other exchanges would be via BTw service (if offered).

The FTTC cabinets don't have to be connected back to the same exchange that provides the phone service. However the GEA connection will have to happen at the exchange they are connected to.

Sky/TalkTalk are/have enabled exchanges as small as 1500 lines so to stop them loosing customers to BT they will likely do something, either GEA or BTw.

Edited by deleted (Tue 31-Jul-12 08:33:00)

Fully expect with BDUK that many cabinets will have their fibre heading back to a bigger node. Openreach calls it a handover node, to emphasis the split between old exchange and new fibre points

We are looking at the start of the shutting of 2000+ exchanges

Right, I see. Slightly mixed up in my terminology then.

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-... is what I was referring to.

I'm surprised Sky is offering their unshaped/unlimited fibre service over BTw's bandwidth pricing. Am I right at looking at the BTw pricelist that it's £40mbit/month? 5 or so really heavy users could cost £1000+/month in bandwidth. Doesn't seem very sustainable at all...

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

Right, I see. Slightly mixed up in my terminology then.

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-... is what I was referring to.

I'm surprised Sky is offering their unshaped/unlimited fibre service over BTw's bandwidth pricing. Am I right at looking at the BTw pricelist that it's £40mbit/month? 5 or so really heavy users could cost £1000+/month in bandwidth. Doesn't seem very sustainable at all...

Sky don't use BTW at all which is why they can offer the service they do.

Edited by simon194 (Tue 31-Jul-12 09:33:36)

So where is the interconnect between the OR/Sky networks -- at the exchange, or at some sort of aggregation point?

At the headend/handover exchange using GEA Cablelink to connect between the Openreach handover point and the CP