What if BT had done things differently since 2000?

I have been having the same recurring thought for quite a while now.

In the early 2000s, BT spent a lot of time upgrading exchanges to support ADSL. They then upgraded them to support ADSL2+ over a number of years, and recently built many thousands of new cabinets to support FTTC. What would the UK be like today if BT had instead gone straight for installing FTTP to everyone right from the early 2000s? They could have completely upgraded the whole infrastructure in one go. They could have taken an exchange, removed all existing copper/aluminium cabling and installed fresh new fibre down the empty ducts to everyone. Landline phones could run over the same fibre. Sure, it would have been inconvenient to a local area cutting everyone off while they upgraded everyone, but totally worth it. The initial cost would have been huge of course, but 14 years later, surely the benefits would be being felt.

1. BT would have had almost zero maintenance costs on the areas upgraded, instead of the high costs of copper maintenance. Fibre is not affected by electrical interference, water ingress, crosstalk or anything like that. Once installed, the network would need virtually no maintenance. Surely the money saved from maintenance costs dealing with thousands of faults with aged cables would have been beneficial, and then could be used for upgrading other areas? This effect would accelerate the more areas were upgraded - IE, engineers from that area could begin upgrading the next.

2. The costs of taking an old exchange, upgrading it to ADSL, then upgrading it ADSL2+, then installing cabinets for FTTC, then maybe FTTDP and ultimately FTTP would be much higher than stripping everything out and installing FTTP from the beginning.

Once the country was upgraded, we could have had symmetric gigabit everywhere by now and the country would be all the better for it. I have no idea how long it would take to upgrade the whole country to FTTP, but if we had started in 2000, I bet we would be 85% of the way there after 14 years. Unfortunately, we are in a sad state of affairs where BT seems to do what is best for themselves rather than what's best for the future of the country's infrastructure.

What I'm suggesting is probably only possible in a perfect world, I know. BT doesn't have limitless money and may have gone bankrupt doing this. But if BT hadn't been privatized, maybe the UK's broadband infrastructure could have been so much better?

I am one of the lucky ones with my current connection, but I know plenty of people who get very slow and extremely unreliable service on their lines.

Breaking the voice network and not allowing 999 calls for a period of some weeks or months in an area would be politically impossible. Temporary phone boxes on the corner of every street?

Remember back in 2000 people were not so tied to their mobiles.

27 million homes plus around 5 million business premises, achievable if done over say a 10 or 15 year period, imagine being in the that final third of the UK with NO broadband waiting for the teams to descend on an area.

While fibre has lower maintenance costs, the issues of broken lines due to trees/wind/accidents will still occur, and the maintenance of backup batteries to meet the USO for phone to work during a power cut would be fun and good Lithium cells for this were more expensive back then.

Opposition to the change from those who did not see the utility of broadband in 2000 may have caused a big delay.

The real question is why did no-one else for almost ten years not steal a march and start a fair sized roll-out of their own.

Provster

Back then I was involved in looking at FTTP deployment, my recommedation would have been to install it in new sites where the cost of putting fibre in would have been not much higher than copper ( At the time). Large scale deployment / replacement was impractical.

For BT there were several problems,
The back-up battery issue was one as they were much larger than now, people talked about 8 hour back-up. ( With Mobiles everywhere OFCOM now say 1 hour is sufficient).
The Technology was at a state that mandated single supplier ( No virtualisation) as it was designed for the American market.
The Voice service would not meet the PSTN service specification that OFCOM were insisting on and there were not a lot of potential suppliers out there.
The USO was written in such a way the BT would have had to provide copper if someone requested it. I was told OFCOM (OFTEL at the time) indicated it would not consider giving BT a monopoly in each fibred area by default
The equipment densities per box were also low and would have required a significant space / cooling for large deployments.

To reach the existing customers with the growing demand for a greater than 64Kb access to the internet BT had to invest in ADSL and therefore a niche technology was not used.

The technology has improved dramatically in all ways since then ( Think of your mobile phone or computer development).

I still think it was a shame there was not the will within BT and the vision in the regulator to build new sites with fibre and take the pain on the monopoly. As technology moved on the 2nd/3rd generation would have enabled VULA if the suppliers had been driven that way.

You have to remember that BT had fibred large new developments to the Kerb back in the 1990s for voice only, called TPON, but had to copper these as they too couldn't be unbundled. These would have been perfect to FTTP as only the last feed was required. (TPON street equip handled up to 32 lines per 'pillar' enough for a suburban close).

It wasn't the privatisation that prevented it, it was the requirement to have competition using the BT copper infrastructure so that competitors could make a profit without investing the massive amounts of capital that caused the Cable companies to go bankrupt serveral times. This competion has led to extremely low consumer prices but an extremely low investment profile due to the risk of also going bankrupt ( for all industry players).

This still prevents large scale FTTP rollout due to the lack of a sensible return on investment and the need to keep the copper for LLU. A 11-15 year return on FTTC leads to NO net asset value (see BT accounts) so an investor would have to be mad to agree anything longer/more expensive. Only the cash flow to pay dividends keeps the Banks from the door. ( Any return is better than 0.5%)

A good answer, breaking the voice network in the early 2000s would have been disruptive. I had a mobile phone back then, but very few other people did. The final third would be without broadband at all as you say and that would be [censored]. 56k dialup couldn't load anything these days.

I didn't even think of the battery backups.

I suppose if Gigaclear had started in 2000, it might have been different!

Also, I believe Fibre is more expensive to repair when it gets cut. I think you need specialist splicing tools and it becomes difficult to identify the correct fibres. Any idea how many times more expensive it might be if a Gas company cut through a fairly major fibre link?

Or thieves cut fibre

They don't just splice it back together if it gets broken, a new fibre will be blown in node to node, and splices made either end.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Or thieves cut fibre

What's the scrap market price for fibre these days?

What's a thief going to do? Set up business selling Christmas ornaments?

Edited by deleted (Fri 24-Oct-14 14:53:58)

The sad truth is that the average pikeys* who cut cables to steal don't know the difference until they have cut them.









*Sorry, 'honest law abiding travelling folk'.

Our bills would be much higher I bet - The equipment back then for battery backup would have been much more expensive than now. The costs for rolling out the infrastructure would be astronomical which could only be footed by bills.

Also there would be some quite considerable maintenance costs still - Fibre wouldn't need to be maintained nearly as much but where there are problems it isn't just a job of recrimping a cable, sometimes you have to re-splice it completely which requires a special kit. Then again they would probably have quite a few of those from the roll-out.

One things for sure - There would be a much larger variation in products from ISPs until the roll-out was complete!

I think a more interesting question would be what if fibre optic was rolled out across the country in the 80s .

Hindsight is a wonderful thing! Wasn't there a TV advert, (O2?), which continuously asked "What if"?

I agree entirely.

Two things have held, and continue to hold back UK broadband.

Obsession with copper because of 999 calls. Given that so many have no phone plugged into the landline or only a cordless phone with no battery backup, I think we should just get over this. I've had to call 999 twice in my life. I've probably experienced less than 20 power cuts in my life. The chances of both occurring at the same time as me having no mobile phone reception/battery are extremely remote.

Obsession with artificial competition to lower prices to the bottom. Artificial because it all comes from Openreach in the end, and the race to the bottom in pricing precludes decent investment.

Governments like to invest in infrastructure during recession. It helps keep jobs and keep the economy moving, and helps the economy grow during the recovery. So we have road building and things like HS2.

Except that for the cost of HS2 the government could have just rolled out FTTP nationwide which would have had far more benefit.

Edited by nemeth782 (Fri 24-Oct-14 18:01:05)

And in some cases don't care if it is carrying mains or higher voltages

A rope around a cable bundle is likely to pull the fibre ducting out with any copper and a stretched duct can snag blown fibre, so might even need a new duct tube put into the main ducting.

if it was from the 80's the optics and signalling kit would have been upgraded various times.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

if it was from the 80's the optics and signalling kit would have been upgraded various times.

Yeah. I was thinking more of the coverage - Whether it would be 100% and also how BT would have done it as it hadn't been privatized for that long.

Either way its a good question as to how it would be if they started in the early 2000s.

I'm still very surprised that BT are giving new property estates copper infrastructure - Anyone with common sense would surely roll out FTTP to new large housing estates so they are not helping themselves for the future re: FTTP rollout.

you are completely mad if you think full FTTP (there is n0 demand or commercial Business case for FTTP) will be better that HS2 -- HS2 will relases massive capacity on West coast main line and hel reduce massive lorry movement in motorways -- they cant move to rail as there are no patths -- WCML is Fuill

you cant get any more commuter trains from northampton shire and cant open any new stations in northamptonshire as no capacity

You take liile and Arras in 1990 both small mining town in norhtern france lille won the ballte to LGV (franch High speel Rail) arras lost - lille is now the 3rd most importance city in france after paris and Marsielle -- have you ever heard of Arras

Edited by deleted (Sat 25-Oct-14 15:02:48)

There are many reasons why this was never an option. Roughly speaking, those boil down to finance,cost, timing/logistics and regulatory issues.

The first one is that the finance would not have been available. The lowest credible estimate is that it would cost £25bn (and even that would probably only get to 95% coverage, as the final 5% are very expensive to reach). That sort of money was simply not available. BT were in a dire financial position in 2001, largely as a result of the ruinous costs of mobile licence auctions in the UK and other countries (borrowing hit £30bn briefly). There was a rights issue in 2001, and as part of the price, the company was forced to float O2 separately (without any debts), so the remaining company was left with the debts. Note, it wasn't BT alone. There was a global telecoms crash, and several US operators went bankrupt and. In all, there simply neither the banks, nor shareholders would stump up the £25bn required.

Also, BT had to spend a large amount of money on replacing the core network and, in particular, replace a lot of aging and expensive voice switching equipment (like AXE10s and System X), as the costs of these were crippling, Also voice and data cores had to be consolidated into a new network. In all, what investment money was available had to be spent on essentials.

In contrast, the costs of ADSL are very modest. The move to ADSL2+ is also low. That much is obvious as we now have the position that many exchanges have multiple LLU operators. Also, (see later), BT could hardly wait until fibre was ready to offer broadband. They'd have to invest in ADSL anyway.

Then there's the regulatory position. When Ofcom came into existence in 2003, it had a mandate to reduce the dominance of BT and impose a very interventionist regime, backed by EU legislation. The requirements to off MPF and WLR (LLU) products were strengthened. In effect, Ofcom dictated what products OpenReach had to offer (and the pricing). Once LLU is started, it's even more difficult to decommission copper, as it has huge financial impacts on operators. In fact, it looks like it would require primary legislation to allow forced decommissioning of copper networks.

There's also timing. You simply can't swap out an entire country's network infrastructure overnight. In all likel-hood, it would take a decade or more (it's taking several years in the small island of Jersey). There is only so much engineering resource available. The 1980s cable network suffered from competition for contractors. For a long time, there will be two overlapping fibre and copper networks. Simply switching off an area for a few months is not an option. It would have to be done like it is being done in Jersey. In stages.

The parallel running of networks would place (for a period) a much increased cost as there's the maintenance costs of one and the cost recovery for the new. It's difficult to see where the extra revenue would come from. I doubt Ofcom would allow an increase in wholesale line rental costs to allow for it, and if it did, there would be market loss to Virgin Media.

The claim that maintenance costs would be virtually zero is clearly wrong. It's not just the copper that needs that. There will still be ducts, telephone poles, cabinets, buildings, MSANs, and much else. Indeed, with parallel networks for a period, those costs go up.

nb. in the 1980s, BT were prevented from installing a fibre network as they were banned from offering broadcast video services by the Thatcher Government. This was to protect the nascent cable TV networks as the principle at the time was that there would be full infrastructure competition via those operators (who were allowed to offer telephony services). The current LLU competition landscape was not envisaged at the time.

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

You take liile and Arras in 1990 both small mining town in norhtern france lille won the ballte to LGV (franch High speel Rail) arras lost - lille is now the 3rd most importance city in france after paris and Marsielle -- have you ever heard of Arras

The claim that high speed rail redistributes wealth has been debunked at least once -

John Tomaney is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at University College London (UCL) and was commissioned by the Commons Public Accounts Committee to write a report on HS2.

"If we look at the evidence from economic analysis and experience from elsewhere round the world" he says, "It's very difficult to prove a link between building high speed rail lines and closing regional inequalities."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22441169

However nice it would have been to start widespread replacement of existing infrastructure with FTTP, the economics cannot be ignored. Despite many advances in technology, FTTP is not cost-effective for commercial deployment today in the majority of areas.

FTTP has only reached its current cost effectiveness position because of the existence of high speed passive optical networks, blown fibre techniques and relatively inexpensive field fusion splicing equipment. These technologies had not reached anything like the current state of development in the early 2000s. Even with the current state of technology, the limited FTTP roll out that Openreach has started in recent years has been subject to heavy delays, with the size of the project being reduced by replanning some areas for FTTC instead of the originally proposed FTTP.

Existing ducts can be used for fibre deployment, but experience shows that these ducts can need expensive remedial work whenever an attempt is made to install fibre through them.


It isn't cost effective to deploy FTTP today if the existing metallic D side pairs are conducive to FTTC deployment. FTTP is chosen as a solution when D side line length and/or the poor condition of the existing D side network means FTTC is not an acceptable solution. The cost of installing FTTP into the end user premises, with the need to establish a new fibre into the premises, is usually much higher than installing FTTC, even if an FTTC installation needs a new or replacement metallic pair into the premises.

The need for a wayleave to install FTTP into certain types of buildings such as blocks of flats often makes such deployments impractical.


I think the incremental approach taken by BT Group of deploying cost-effective technology to generate revenue and act as enabling technology for subsequent upgrades has proved sensible.

The first wholesale high speed product from what is now BT Wholesale was 20CN ADSL, with an ATM based backbone network running to the exchanges and a DSLAM installed between the backbone link(s) and the MDF in the exchange.

21CN uses an Ethernet based backbone coupled with MSANs offering speeds up to ADSL2+. This second generation system allowed for higher speeds to end users as well as increasingly switching traffic from the 20CN backbone network, which is expensive and sometimes difficult to upgrade, to the cheaper and more modern 21CN Ethernet based backbone network.

In 2014, the 20CN equipment is increasingly being rendered obsolete, with equipment recovered from locations where 20CN service has been discontinued being used to support the remaining parts of the 20CN system. The life expired 20CN installations should have paid back the capital and operating expenditure spent on them, assuming the decisions to deploy the 20CN network were sound.

The 21CN network originally provided for ADSL2+ now provides the backhaul used for BT Wholesale FTTx. This network allows ISPs to provide FTTx services without having to arrange their own backhaul.


Whether Openreach chooses to build FTTC or FTTP, the fibre backbone is built from a handover node (at the local exchange or another exchange nearby) to nodes in the served area.

In many cases, the cost effective approach at present is to install FTTC. Buying and installing the cabinet, arranging a power supply, installing a tie cable to the PCP (with a reshell of the PCP if needed) and blowing and terminating the fibre(s) into the cabinet collectively costs a lot of money, but in areas suitable for FTTC this investment allow for relatively inexpensive deployment of FTTx to most if not all of the end users served by that PCP.

In many ways, it is a shrewd business decision by BT Group to use FTTC as an economic driver for deeper deployment of fibre into the local loop, ready for future generations of deeper fibre technologies (such as FTTRN and FTTDP) and for full FTTP where that becomes cost effective. Hopefully advances in technology and changing economics will permit cheaper FTTP on Demand in the future.


So far as removing the metallic local loop goes, this is laden with regulatory burden at present. LLU and SLU operators could be offered virtual unbundling to replace MPF and SMPF - instead of renting MPF or SMPF to connect to their own equipment, the LLU/SLU operator would be offered voice and/or data service over the FTTP network at a comparable price to the MPF or SMPF option.

The regulatory requirement to provide voice service in the absence of local power makes fibre voice access relatively expensive to provide. The ongoing cost of replacing ONT battery backup packs at end of life means FVA may well turn out to be more expensive to provide than the ongoing costs of supporting metallic local loop facilities when these are already in the existence.

So far, fibre only areas remain an experiment. I believe I'm right in saying there is only one small exchange that is fibre only, and the existing cables in that area have not been removed.


As part of an incremental approach to fibre deployment, ongoing progress with virtual unbundling and voice service in the absence of local power will hopefully make deployment of FTTP rather than metallic pairs a viable option in the near future for new build when there is fibre backbone sufficiently close. As demand for faster broadband grows, it is far from optimal that the standard new build solution remains metallic pairs.

Excellent posting, which has got a grounding in real economics rather than the fantasy that some people indulge in. It's also a good point that costs will come down, but it can only be so far. The real expense is not so much the equipment, but ground works and the like (when it comes to the "final mile"). That last is always going to be expensive. It was ruinously so when the cable companies installed their networks.

It's also worth noting that BT's experience is very similar to comparable telcos in the developed world. It's very easy to look at the position in other regimes, like Singapore or South Korea, but the regulatory, economic and political environment is very different.

Also, the US approach has been very different in that they have decided to go for "regulatory forbearance" on NGAs for the immediate future. That meant there was a lot of fibre roll-out from the local telcos, but far from universal coverage and it means competition is limited. That approach is inconceivable give current EU rules.

I agree, but also wanted to add that there are lots of legacy copper services that cannot/should not be migrated onto fibre - whilst most of us don't use them for those that do it would have caused problems at that time such as SPM feeds using 50Hz pulses to name a really querky example

Maybe if Fujitsu, who were offering a more complete coverage than BT's ~95% FTTC solution, had been awarded some of the County Council BDUK contracts, more people would be able to get speed test results like this:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14142...