FTTB, who owns the line?

Hi all, just moved into a building with mixed offices and companies etc. I'm currently on FTTC connection but are experiencing REIN issues. Anyway, whilst checking this out, i discovered an existing company in the building had a fibre line installed to the building !
Now, the main entry point is in the electric room/basement, directly underneath my office, so technically easy for me connect to.

But, i have no idea how this works.. does the fibre installation belong to the company who requested it? Does it belong to BT? Can i use it for my own fibre connection?

Thanks.

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Aug-13 17:09:31)

Its probably a leased line, rented by the company and owned and installed by someone else, probably BT but maybe another company.
No doubt the company that rent it are paying a hefty amount for it (and an even heftier amount to have it installed) so probably wouldnt take too kindly to you using it, though you probably wouldnt have access to the kit anyway.

It belongs to BT or whomever else provided it and if the other company aren't using it it's probably shut down at the exchange side. If they are using it you'd be stealing service if you hooked yourself up to it.

It's no different from any other line, copper or fibre, which belongs to BT / whomever else up to NTE / demarcation point.

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Aug-13 17:17:57)

At work we have a 100Mbit fibre Ethernet circuit. The fibre comes into the basement then up into the 1st floor comms room and all for a mere £700 a month.

In reply to a post by simon194:

At work we have a 100Mbit fibre Ethernet circuit. The fibre comes into the basement then up into the 1st floor comms room and all for a mere £700 a month.

Given the employee you would get for the same money it sounds like good value to the business

well, i wasnt thinking of hooking up to it.. just wondered if its basically a case of the line being installed, and now anyone can use it for their broadband (via an ISP of course), but it seems that isn't the case.
So, if someone else wanted a new fibre line, the engineers would have to come out and run ANOTHER fibre cable? That seems a bit nuts !

Another fibre into the same building would be simpler as the tubing already exists.
Business's that need the bandwidth are willing to pay for it

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

So, if someone else wanted a new fibre line, the engineers would have to come out and run ANOTHER fibre cable? That seems a bit nuts !

Not really, if you're the business paying for the kit and exclusive use of the line why would you want someone piggybacking on the expense you had incurred ?

even as a web consultancy and marketing company, I rely on the web and constantly upload or download, but I can't understand why anyone would need 100mb simultaneous connection to an office, unless they are doing something severely wrong OR have over perhaps 100 employees. The company next to me who has had the fibre cable installed only has about 10 people working there. A 25mb FTTB connection would be fine in that instance.

its not the exclusivity i'm questioning, its actually the tech and the logistics. If fibre has already been enabled to the building, and the facility is there to carry multiple connections easily (as it clearly is), then why can this cable not be utilised by others?

The costs included in having FTTB is ludicrous. Its ismply not warranted. Quite frankly its a joke considering that we are constantly hearing how BT etc are trying to make traditional copper cable communications obselete, and installing fibre everywhere blah blah.. this simply isnt the case. Once a building is fibre enabled, that should be that. It shouldnt be that each and every room, office, or company in that building should each have to pay £700 (per month !!!! ) for the privilidge of using it. Quite frankly, its absurd... there should be a one off installation charge, and thats it.

Edited by deleted (Tue 20-Aug-13 13:27:29)

Because, the company that had it installed is leasing it and all the capacity, irrespective of whether it is being used or not.
The company supplying the lease cannot let you piggy back onto that fibre, because the contract they have with the leaseholder will stipulate they will not.
It may be the case that this is to connect with another office in the UK and this provides a private connection, in which case it's not really a connection to the internet.

Maybe they host website and other services there as well, using the office as a bit of a datacentre.

In the case of lease line Ethernet services, it's not FTTB but point to point , i.e. it goes directly to a specific end user, with 5 hour repair SLA's 24/7. It's not bargain basement FTTP/C.
Of course , some enterprising service provider could just rent one , link it to their POP and share it within the building, e.g. Hyperoptic.
It's not something BT does but service providers can, and do.
I suspect the reason it's not more popular is the problem of getting it organised on the ground with guarantees of users taking the service.
I don't see BT trying to make copper obsolete for a long while yet

Edited by deleted (Tue 20-Aug-13 14:05:55)

Who knows, remote backup/storage, remote CCTV , VOIP.
Openreach Ethernet services start at 10Mbits upto 10Gbits.

We have about 30 employes and also have a 100mbps connection.

Just because we only have 30 employees doesn't mean we don't need the bandwidth. If we were using the connection just for internet browing, a adsl/cable modem would be fine. However, we run ftp and other bandwidth intensive services because we transmit a large amount of images (document management company) to customers.

When a line like that is installed, it is usually a dedicate line, or "managed internet". In our business we pay for the rental of a 2u cisco router, and all the other equipment involved. It is dedicated to our company, so there would be no reason for the isp to install additional fibre for other users to use. It would also be completly unfair for them to let others use any of the fibre they installed for us, as we paid for the site survey, the install visits and the upkeep.

Our connection costs use £9200 a year, its 100mbps in both directions, and thats pretty cheap. Last year we were paying the same amount for 10mbps, and 100mbps would have cost us £23,000 a year

Edited by deleted (Tue 20-Aug-13 15:19:16)

How do you know the other co.'s line is FTTB? It may just be a privately leased line, which is more likely. In which case it is nowt to do with other occupants of the building who have no rights on it.

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

even as a web consultancy and marketing company, I rely on the web and constantly upload or download, but I can't understand why anyone would need 100mb simultaneous connection to an office

Me neither, but it's their money and choice. Sometimes these circuits are on 100M hardware but the contracted data rate is a lot less.

People do stupid things, like trying to install wordpress on a server by uploading on an ADSL line, rather than having the host install it or pulling it onto the server direct. It may be cheaper to buy the capacity than train or employ suitable staff

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

How do you know the other co.'s line is FTTB? It may just be a privately leased line, which is more likely. In which case it is nowt to do with other occupants of the building who have no rights on it.

lease or no lease, its still fibre to the building..

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

even as a web consultancy and marketing company, I rely on the web and constantly upload or download, but I can't understand why anyone would need 100mb simultaneous connection to an office, unless they are doing something severely wrong OR have over perhaps 100 employees. The company next to me who has had the fibre cable installed only has about 10 people working there. A 25mb FTTB connection would be fine in that instance.

That obviously shows how much you know and understand.

With my last company we had several fibres into most building as we could be running several hundred megabits per second ... One building with around 20 employees needed about 400Mbps peak rate.

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

How do you know the other co.'s line is FTTB? It may just be a privately leased line, which is more likely. In which case it is nowt to do with other occupants of the building who have no rights on it.

lease or no lease, its still fibre to the building..

So what's your point? You rent a service which happens to be delivered by a telco over fibre. As said above you connect to the modem/router and it does not matter how it connects to the other end.

Bit of a silly argument.

It's like me saying you got ADSL installed. Why should next door get adsl, they should piggyback on yours as its already there.

You wouldn't like it.

Businesses pay fortunes for these lines. It's their line, their fibre, their connection, their hardware etc.

If you want that service you should pay for that service like everybody else.

In reply to a post by somerset:

So what's your point?

You asked what made me think its FTTB and that it instead could be a leased line.. but a leased line is still fibre to the building, ie FTTB.. that was my point.

Leased lines can be provided over a bundle of copper pairs.

The point to point and custom nature of leased lines generally makes them unsuitable for simply connecting to, and I doubt many people would want to pay the per Mbps cost that comes with those sorts of lines.

The key to your solution is talking to the company with this 'fibre' and finding out if their supplier is able to do a discounted deal to install a second fibre to you, or provide an IP tunnel across the existing fibre.

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

lease or no lease, its still fibre to the building..

So what? It's nowt to do with you.

So, if someone else has copper to the building to provide their landline, you think you can also share it? Get real!

FTTB, as a term, means a specific deployment of BB, not just any old fibre to any old building.

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTTB:

Fiber to the x (FTTX) is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications.

The fibre you see is almost certainly not the "last mile local loop" but someone else's private point-to-point connection.

In reply to a post by simon194:

At work we have a 100Mbit fibre Ethernet circuit. The fibre comes into the basement then up into the 1st floor comms room and all for a mere £700 a month.

We have a 100Mb/s bearer to our office park then a switch feeds it to all the offices. At the moment three of us are getting 10Mb/s for £230 pcm. Sounds like you got a slightly better deal. Mind you our install costs were quite low. Came to about £3,500 per office I think.

Didn't seem all that bad for a converted barn yard in a village nearly 5km from the nearest exchange.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 20-Aug-13 20:00:19)

OK, what we have:

80 employees and we all work remotely on servers in the State because the big bosses decided to centralise everything in 2 datacentres in Pa and NC instead of 12 regional datacentres.
There's VoIP and VPN access for up to 500 regional workers and clients throughout the UK and Europe.
Then there VC facilities and a few other minor odd and end.

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

even as a web consultancy and marketing company, I rely on the web and constantly upload or download, but I can't understand why anyone would need 100mb simultaneous connection to an office, unless they are doing something severely wrong OR have over perhaps 100 employees. The company next to me who has had the fibre cable installed only has about 10 people working there. A 25mb FTTB connection would be fine in that instance.

I agree. We work with US and Polish colleagues to develop software. We use the internet for our phones, we control or access each other's computers and we download/upload source code and documents. 10Mb/s seems fine for five people. Our work involves developing client software for MS Exchange and Sharepoint so we're often connecting to remote servers.

Heck - we did fine for the first seven years on a 4 down, 1.5 up bonded ADSL solution. The only problem we had with it was stability. The only accommodation we've had to make is that our office has local mirrors of things. But I doubt any connection would be good enough to allow you to have source code and libraries over 6,000 miles away.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 20-Aug-13 20:06:23)

We did quite well install-wise because this is a new office and our provider had a free install deal at the time although I don't think it included laying the fibre.

Edited by simon194 (Tue 20-Aug-13 20:11:39)

In reply to a post by MHC:

With my last company we had several fibres into most building as we could be running several hundred megabits per second ... One building with around 20 employees needed about 400Mbps peak rate.

At the other end of the spectrum a guy from VM Business said they still have 64k leased lines and get support calls about speed

Peak traffic at LINX is 1600 Gbits/s which is about 320kbits/s for each of (say) 5m people for a benchmark.

Today was the first time I found my internet connection to be a problem - a fool with 10s of thousands of emails in Outlook IMAP with Gmail proved that such a combination won't work on a 6M connection, and his is 1/10 that :-0

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

In reply to a post by somerset:

So what's your point?

You asked what made me think its FTTB and that it instead could be a leased line.. but a leased line is still fibre to the building, ie FTTB.. that was my point.

But that is not definition of FTTB, it is your interpretation of FTTB.

FTTB is a fibre connection for the express purpose of providing broadband access to building for all occupants, with distribution normally by ethernet to all the units within the building.

With your definition even a building where a company had provided a satellite office in a business park a fibre link to their main building would be FTTB'ed.

In reply to a post by freeflyer:

its not the exclusivity i'm questioning, its actually the tech and the logistics. If fibre has already been enabled to the building, and the facility is there to carry multiple connections easily (as it clearly is), then why can this cable not be utilised by others?

A fibre is a point to point optical medium - so the wavelength coming down the fibre to the kit is doing a dedicated job. You could ask the recipient of that wavelength to sell you some of their capacity as ethernet perhaps.

To utilise the fibre in the way you suggest would required multiple wavelengths to be added with the associated splitters and terminal equipment. Technically it can be done, and if you were to order a fibre based line the provider might elect to do that although in practice they could also blow another fibre down the existing tube or possibly utilise a spare on that's there already.

The exclusivity is a key issue, because if the anchor tenant paying the bill moved out or turned the thing off all you freeloaders piggybacking off it would be in the brown stuff.

Once a building is fibre enabled, that should be that. It shouldnt be that each and every room, office, or company in that building should each have to pay £700 (per month !!!! ) for the privilidge of using it. Quite frankly, its absurd... there should be a one off installation charge, and thats it.

The Soviet model has not proved generally successful. The £700 per month is £5 per working hour and not even the minimum wage, so it's hardly extortion as a business cost. You also need some internet connectivity at the other end, and that isn't free either - let's say £10 per month per Mbit/s - so addong load to a connection adds to the cost of providing it.

If a building in multiple occupancy took a high capacity service and distributed it on a LAN that would be a good solution and very cost effective. The landlord, a tenants association or whatever could arrange that. But they haven't.

You don't "enable a building" you're running a service into one box within that building.

I could feed both my neighbours with broadband via Cat 5 at little expense, as a country we don't seem to go in for that sort of thing.