How would you increase FTTP availability?

Just for fun, what methods are other countries using to increase fibre deployment? List any you can think of and feel free to suggest whether they should be implemented here.


First option that comes to mind is a "National Broadband Network" like Australia were going to have before the government changed and they switched to FTTC. Say a nationwide rollout over 10-15 years with a total cost of £25-30 billion, maybe the government could partner with the private sector and reduce the cost a bit. £2-3 billion a year isn't that much, the overseas aid budget alone is around £8 billion/year ...

Second rather different approach from the Netherlands. In 1998 they passed a law requiring all landowners to provide right of way for private networks to lay fibre. Also any company wishing to dig had to announce its intention and allow others to lay their own fibre and share the cost of construction.

I'd have to say, as it stands at the present, that lack of availability is due to lack of orders. Those involved in it's supply are not going to invest in anything until they can see that they will get a fairly quick return of investment.

For starters, let's see the other two main ISP's, Sky and TT, offer a product and push for it's sale. That should speed up it's implementation.

I'd have thought the best way to install and increase FTTP coverage is at the development/construction phase, so give developers incentives or mandate its installation on developments over a certain size/ number of dwellings. They can the partner with CPs to install FTTP at the outset.

as regards putting in fibre on land the UK already has similar powers - Communication Act 2003

Known as the code powers it basically gives the statutory utilities (and others granted so) rights to do whatever they want including rights over private land with due notice being given and being required to apply to the county court if the landowner kicks up a fuss.
(That said most utilities do approach private landowners instead seeking "a mutual agreement")

edit
I know of a FTTC cabinet proposed to be on private land (the PCP is on public land) where BT have simply issued a code power statutory notice of their intention.
So that is no consultation, no compensation, no wayleave discussion - just a notice that this is what is going to happen.....and that x square meters of the private land is going to be removed from the owners use plus the manhole joint box in front of the unit.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-May-14 11:31:01)

I think the Dutch law was about giving private companies the same power as utilities(in their case typically KPN the national telephone company), to undermine the status quo.

Is there not a lump sum that openreach offer for each property connected up to copper that they offer? Something in the region of £150 per property.

I would have been under the impression that something would have existed the same for fibre, that openreach would have paid the developer to have installed all the ducting for them.

I live on a new build estate that has still got 2 years to go until completion and they are only installing copper here. Even though the local exchange has been fibre enabled for a few years, our cabinet is not.

There definitely needs to be greater incentives for developers.

*edit* I know that you could say to the developer that they can use fibre as a selling point so why should there be a cash incentive from openreach as well? The area we live in gets 5mbit, so the internet speed is fine for streaming HD on Netflix and everything else, but for a lot of new build areas, sometimes these are miles away from the exchange and suffer from far worse speeds.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-May-14 11:54:45)

seems a weird reply.

FTTP is priced at a point that makes it clear openreach do not want orders. So to then blame lack of orders as a reason for lack of rollout is bizarre.

The best judge would seem to be the demand for FTTC, which I think is higher than BT ever expected, evident by the fact they are undersupplying cabinets, and extending the rollout.

Given BT are very tentative on spending money on the local loop, the only real answer to this is either wait, vectoring and g.fast to come first then maybe FTTP after that (as long as another copper enhancing tech doesnt come along first). Or state intervention such as a state funded/subsidised FTTP Rollout program, which as said is very affordable, but clearly no political willpower for it.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 13-May-14 12:03:08)

FTTP is priced at a point that makes it clear openreach do not want orders.

FTTPoD maybe, native FTTP is what I was talking about.

FTTP is priced the same as FTTC.

People complain about uptake, but I think you'll find that FTTP uptake is actually pretty good.

Andy

Zarjaz actually does the instals so should have a good idea of take up.

Is 10% good enough to drive FTTp rollout, I doubt it, is 20% i still doubt it, 305 would be more like it.

Developers do get paid for providing Fibre or copper ducting.

If more providers offer a full Voice and BB service over FTTP then more builders may provide it, however it appears at present that only BT Retail do both so there is no choice if you are an FTTP only site..

Two of my local splitters (each with a 4 tray SASA, so 128 homes on each splitter) are completely full. Uptake in parts of my village must exceed 75%.

The 100,000 homes passed figure from Openreach is complete nonsense. Most of these cannot order FTTP due to a wide range of factors (including the commercial rollout not being complete!). You've also got MDUs included when Openreach does not seem to provide a FTTP solution for MDUs.

Developers don't decide whether to put in fibre or copper, unless they are paying for it. Openreach plans the network for them. Some new local developments in Milton Keynes are not coming pre-wired for FTTP and Openreach is only putting in a copper network. This is despite the new developments being built in pre-existing FTTP areas.

Only one main ISP is offering FTTP, BT Retail. This is the biggest hurdle. A lot of people have bundled TV, phone, broadband packages with the likes of Sky and TT who will not provide FTTP. There is nothing anyone can do to force the likes of Sky and TT to take it up and offer it to their customers. Similarly, Plusnet have said they have no short or medium term plans to launch FTTP as a commercial product.

As for FVA, I don't see the point in it. The wholesale cost is higher than copper and there are issues with it.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I'd have to say, as it stands at the present, that lack of availability is due to lack of orders. Those involved in it's supply are not going to invest in anything until they can see that they will get a fairly quick return of investment.

For starters, let's see the other two main ISP's, Sky and TT, offer a product and push for it's sale. That should speed up it's implementation.

Perhaps deploying it in areas where the ADSL is poor and there's no cable would help with the uptake somewhat. The uptake in MK has, from what I've been told, been pretty good.

Sticking it where it's cheap to deploy, areas with decent ADSL close to the exchange, inevitably brings lower take up.

Unsure that Sky/TT offering a product would speed implementation. If anything surely BT would rather like to keep as much of the FTTP as possible Openreach<>BT Wholesale<>BT Retail? Vertical integration seems to bring more interest in the products from incumbents.

In any case, speaking with a BSkyB bod FTTP is on their near-term roadmap. Thanks largely to the taxpayer in Cornwall and BDUK deployments alongside vouchers for FTTPoD it's about at that stage where it's worthwhile for them.

Some are incentivising fibre deployment by allowing telecomms companies to retire copper once they've deployed fibre to a premises.

In the case of Japan they split the infrastructure side of the telecomms company completely out of the group, and eventually took away the ability from the telco to sell retail products at all. This would actually have a lot of potential, as companies can no longer do 'interesting' accounting to subsidise retail operations through other sections of the company. It puts an instant end to accusations of margin squeeze.

Another option is requiring operators to unbundle the dark fibre they own between exchanges, again as done in Japan. This offers potential when competitors can build out from these fibre trunk routes.

More use of poles rather than ducts can be good, though I think the government have taken care of this.

Requiring all new build housing to be FTTP works well. I think this is probably best done by local councils as part of planning applications.

We have a couple of new large estate's either being built or planned, but no FTTP. New builds over a certain size should be FTTP.

which is available almost nowhere and in weird areas.

Gigaclear want 30% before they start work.

FTTP is more attractive to those in rural areas, even there there is probably only about 10% who would take it up immediately and a further 20% who are persuadable.

Our local Gigaclear project was reported in the local paper as being a £2m project to provide a service to almost 2,000 premises. The Gigaclear cable comes as far as a pot on a properties boundary.

yeah bit gigaclear its different maths.

They have no existing infrastructure and as such no existing income/assets.

BT on the other hand factor in things like reduced repairs/maintenance, existing ducts/poles can be used and existing customers already on the books easier to market the service to. Plus an eventuial possible sell off, of the copper if they can get round the regulatory issues involving that.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Zarjaz actually does the instals so should have a good idea of take up.

If more providers offer a full Voice and BB service over FTTP then more builders may provide it, however it appears at present that only BT Retail do both so there is no choice if you are an FTTP only site..

If Openreach didn't charge basically as much for a voice VLAN on a pre-existing fibre line as they do for WLR 3 rental perhaps more providers would take an interest. The Openreach pricing model for FTTP is based around people keeping existing copper lines rather than replacing them. As it is providers are waiting for more FTTP-only sites to appear though trials have been done and products ready to go, more the support and CRM sides that are the rub. Sky and TalkTalk were relatively late to the FTTC game, they were hardly going to rush to deliver to <100,000 premises via FTTP. Had Openreach delivered the alluded to 20-25% of their NGA rollout as FTTP no question there would be far more products available.

Quite amusing to note that Swisscom actually give a reduction on pricing of FTTP if taken without a fixed line; Openreach charge extra, describing FTTP taken with a copper line as a 'transition' product ensuring no ISP can drop the voice aspect and deliver just data to a customer to decide themselves which VoIP provider to use.

Zarjaz can only speak for the installs in his area. In many areas where the ADSL sucks people have torn BT's arm off for NGA, whatever the flavour. Indeed if anything they lost a trick, had they deployed to more of those areas they may well have won BTWholesale and Retail business back from unbundled providers.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yeah bit gigaclear its different maths.

They have no existing infrastructure and as such no existing income/assets.

BT on the other hand factor in things like reduced repairs/maintenance, existing ducts/poles can be used and existing customers already on the books easier to market the service to. Plus an eventuial possible sell off, of the copper if they can get round the regulatory issues involving that.

But sometimes existing "stuff" works against you.
It's far easy to start with a clean sheet (Gigaclear) than have to work round existing assets (BT) which have to be kept in operation meanwhile.

This is why houses are often knocked down and re-built - far cheaper than trying to refurbish them and you get a modern design rather than an old one shoe-horned into being modern.
This is sometimes why firms seek to move to greenfield/new sites - far easier than trying to convert existing buildings into what is now required.

The wayleave and community negotiation of these can be a big factor too, that and someone local keen to push the demand schemes and pester people to fill in paper work.

It is indeed however as far as FTTP goes the costs of deployment are considerably lower if BT's assets can be reused.

The BSG report on FTTP deals with this. It should be remembered that to BT FTTP is an overbulid; it may require elements of new building but it is an overbuild. When most of the cost of a deployment is civil engineering rather than materials or, as in the case of housing, the land it's built on, being able to use existing ducting is a huge bonus.

The only manner in which existing 'stuff' works against BT is Ofcom's obsession with copper and LLU making the business case less clear. If you can happily charge the prices Openreach do for copper that paid for itself years ago why spend money overbuilding?

You've also got MDUs included when Openreach does not seem to provide a FTTP solution for MDUs.

They do. I'm soon to move in to a new build development in south London that has native Openreach FTTP built in. Two friends are also in the process of moving into new builds (one in Southwark, one in Greenwich) both of which have Openreach FTTP from the off. The addresses are all in the system and lit up for WBC FTTP before the blocks are even being occupied.

Sadly I expect many people moving in will check their lines/addresses with Sky/TT/everyone except BT Retail, be told they are "not in a fibre area" as there's no FTTC, and accept an exchange-only ADSL based service estimated at <6 megabits. So lack of ISP options is a major problem.

(Incidentally, the communications manager at the site told me there's no copper to the flats so I've no idea how that will work, even though the Openreach checker claims it's available)

But anyway, on topic, making sure that all large new build developments have FTTP as these ones do would be a good start, that and sorting out the ISPs. FTTP in brownfield flats still seems like a bit of a nightmare.

But those will be large developments and the cost of the FTTP rollout might be funded by the developer.

I'm talking about small MDUs (brownfield sites) - say 3-10 apartments in areas where the houses next door can get FTTP. You'll find that the MDU occupants cannot order FTTP, much to their frustration.

I would imagine on large new greenfield sites, the cost of putting in fibre vs copper will be quite comparable. The issue though, is going to be getting the fibre from the exchange to the new development. If it's a long distance and the ducting is in a poor state, then it could be extremely costly for Openreach.