Openreach G.fast roll-out to start in 2016/2017

We went at looked at some pre-release G.fast hardware at the BT test labs in 2014 and now three months later Openreach is announcing an ultrafast future with deployment starting in 2016/2017 some eight years after FTTC started to be rolled out.

G.fast is being described as delivering up to 500 Mbps and the BT ambition is to have this rolled out to most of the UK within a decade, so we presume 2025, in the shorter term the talk is of availability to millions by 2020. Of course this is subject to nothing untoward turning up in some public trials, and 4,000 homes and businesses in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and Gosforth, Newcastle will be able to take part in two pilot roll-outs in Summer 2015. This will build on the core work at Ad Astral park and help to train staff and verify that the expected speeds can be delivered.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6810-openreach-g-...

Anybody else surprised by this? I expected BT to really drag their feet.

Could explain why they seem to be pulling back on FTTPoD - why would people bother if there is a realistic prospect of significantly faster speeds in the next few years.

Now that I've digested it more not so surprised as the roll-out looks like it'll take a while.

I am dreading all the complaints about the 'digital divide' that will inevitably result from a protracted roll-out period though.

People who were screaming blue murder over a few tens of Megabits will be incandescent over a differential of 400.

If anyone is honest even if Openreach had committed to a national FTTH roll-out back in 2009 we would be well below 22 million homes passed and with a much larger divide.

Given current staffing levels, my guess would be they might manage 2 million homes FTTH passed per year, and for little extra ROI for something that would probably cost more too.

Also am sure Openreach has looked at the information on proportions of people buying higher speed options at Virgin and other altnets and the signs are that while 5 to 10% may buy the fastest option, the bulk go for the lower speeds.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

I am dreading all the complaints about the 'digital divide' that will inevitably result from a protracted roll-out period though.

That is pretty much the same as the comment I posted on the TBB news article.

I don't understand how this technology works, as I understand it our copper lines from our homes go straight back to a street cabinet that has the fibre connection to the exchange.

So with G.fast if you put a local fibre node much closer to homes than the cabinet then won't all the homes have to have their copper lines moved to connect to this node instead?

especially if it excludes ECI

The node can even go in the cabinet, or closer to the homes, location will vary.

But the homes the node will potentially serve will have their copper going via the node, even if they are not buying G.Fast

http://blog.thinkbroadband.com/2014/10/g-fast-shows-... shows some of the hardware and how they can get VDSL2 to co-exist with G.Fast, and they even demo a VDSL2 user switching to G.Fast seamlessly, i.e. if you have a modem that understands G.Fast the switch over can be done remotely.

I assume that those of us with (or soon to have) FTTP will also benefit from increased speeds at a reasonable cost. Otherwise FTTP could become the slow option rather than the fast option.

How many lines could those nodes cover? The original kit was only able to support 4 lines. I would hope that there have been improvements since then.

1Gig trials will be for FTTP.

So does this mean that the line from the cabinet to the node would be fibre? and from the node to the home would be copper?

Yes

8 to 16 I believe again given that it is so early that one of the boxes I saw last October was one of a handful in the world means that Openreach is close to the leading edge and hardware will change and settle now.

Who knows might expand to cover 48 lines. Depends a lot on what Openreach and other Telco's around the world will pay and what is economic to manufacture.

For the "premium fibre service", they are referring to existing FTTP (i.e. those with the fibre from the exchange to their property) end users being able to get a 1Gig service.

It is a very straightforward change to be able to upgrade people with FTTP to a 1Gig service (it requires a new ONT and some config changes in the exchange). The bigger issue will be the backhaul (21CN) and ensuring there's enough capacity to cope with such speeds.

I think its a good move. It would certainly help my situation (and others on the cabinet), as one cabinet is serving a lot of homes that are quite away from the cabinet. I'm sure the signal degrades over length of copper lines. So having the node nearby will be good.

Also I guess if there are any noising lines then then locating it will be easier too as I'm sure fibre lines are more insulated. It's usually copper lines that have generated problems (in my amatuer opinion lol). But yea.. this sounds like good progress.

Fibre is immune to RF noise, simple. The electronics driving the laser might not be in extreme cases.

NOTE: Some G.Fast will be based at the existing cabinet, but as a tool to bring areas up to say 100% superfast coverage, with say 60% on ultrafast speeds it is a powerful tool.

And whether anyone cares, beyond a handful of noisy campaigners, harsh but in a world where you need to make a profit that is an important point.

Virgin Media may trumpet its 152 Mbps service but look how few pay the premium it commands, and in Hyperoptic areas how many choose the slower options.

OK, so all homes in the vicinity would need the copper disconnecting from the cabinet and then connecting to the node, where ever that is positioned - sounds like a lot of work but I guess in the road all the copper cables run together in a bundle anyway?

Remember they do this now for the cabinets which are many more lines and with no disruption.

For cases where the G.fast is on the DP (last pole/footway box) its a case of splice into the lines and put the new box between the two basically.

Yes it is work, but so is running the fibre splitters and manifolds to the DP even if doing FTTP, and that has the extra work of a fibre run to each property when they order service. With G.fast once pole work done potential for no more engineer visits.

I bet you didnt ask the important question tho.

Is this all planned for ECI areas? still silence on vectoring etc. for ECI.

Someone commented on another forum that labs place you visited is none of ECI kit.

I understand now, guess I didn't really think/consider about all the copper wires from nearby houses already running together at some point and they could be easily spliced into.

Cheers.

Would be very odd if NONE of the ECI kit had been through Adastral park since BT likes to test everything.

Whether there was any in the lab on the day I do not know, as both DSLAM had pre-production chipsets they were lot allowed to let press see inside the box.

There was an 18 month (possibly longer) period that ended last year where ALL the cabinets they installed were ECI. So there's a lot out there.

From what I can tell now every new cabinet is Huawei now, even in areas where the rest connected the headend are ECI.

you need to keep pressing your contacts on this, BT/openreach are been silent on the matter, and as the last reply states, as soon as they decided they were going vectoring the ECI rollout ceased, you dont find that odd?

BT cant test vectoring on kit that isnt capable of it, according to ECI M41's cannot do vectoring. (and probably not g.fast also).

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 30-Jan-15 15:57:46)

They are still installing ECI cabinets.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Now that I've digested it more not so surprised as the roll-out looks like it'll take a while.

I am dreading all the complaints about the 'digital divide' that will inevitably result from a protracted roll-out period though.

People who were screaming blue murder over a few tens of Megabits will be incandescent over a differential of 400.

And with good reason. Sod the rest of the country, let's just concentrate on the areas that are high density and return a healthy profit. The original USO was bought in for this very reason, to ensure everyone had access to an enabling technology that benefited all, at a reasonable cost. Yes, it means that those in the sticks are subsidised, but we that is a condition of living in a society which brigs equal benefits to all; we club together to pay for infrastructure that we could not otherwise afford as individuals. Mains electricity and water, for example.

BT/BDUK have allowed the original goal of superfast to fail; instead concentrating on the "best bang for buck" areas (many of which were due to be NGA'd under commercial rollouts, but instead we gave them public money to roll out what was planned to be a private network), and some people wonder why we are pessimistic that we will still be on super slow broadband when they have access to 500mbit.

Boot would be on other foot if it was food that was 'too difficult' to get from the country to the towns...

In reply to a post by alewis:

BT/BDUK have allowed the original goal of superfast to fail; instead concentrating on the "best bang for buck" areas (many of which were due to be NGA'd under commercial rollouts, but instead we gave them public money to roll out what was planned to be a private network),

That's quite a claim. I'm sure it comes with quite prodigious amounts of evidence?

In reply to a post by alewis:

and some people wonder why we are pessimistic that we will still be on super slow broadband when they have access to 500mbit.

Boot would be on other foot if it was food that was 'too difficult' to get from the country to the towns...

We'll see what happens. I actually suspect some of the earliest deployments will be in areas that don't have NGA right now, or have relatively slow VDSL.

I'm quite sure there will be hundreds of thousands of premises that still don't have FTTC when the G.fast commercial deployment begins, just as there are millions of premises that were passed in the commercial deployment that can only dream of the speeds delivered by taxpayer funded BDUK FTTP deployments.

Edited by deleted (Fri 30-Jan-15 18:07:40)

I'm not wholly convinced that there will be a mass outcry (rather than the few). There's an enormous difference to people between (say) 2mbps and 24mbps. it makes media stream tenable, even at HD for a couple of channels. The average web page loads at a decent speed. You don't wait hours to download the odd GB of update file. It means you can work from home and download (and upload) those 30MB powerpoint files in decent time. Video conferencing is viable.

I don't think there's the same qualitative difference to people's lives in going from the 10s to the 100s of mbps. Perhaps the most important thing is to fill in areas which BDUK is not serving so well. I see 2mbps as a stopgap. Of course if g.fast is viable for hamlets without a local cabinet or the like they might actually bypass the tens of mbps crowd. However, I can't see that it's viable without public subsidy unless the principle of differential pricing in rural areas was adopted (imagine the rows).

Well I just hope we actually get the fibre installed this time round, due to BTOR being called off in mid install of FTTP back in 2011 to possibly complete BDUK installs.
We got to the point of having all the hardware installed at the pole and in the pit, just no fibre blown.

We are from East London and are not covered by any BDUK due to being part of the commercial rollout (Greater London) , so we wait and wait and wait

Paul

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by alewis:

BT/BDUK have allowed the original goal of superfast to fail; instead concentrating on the "best bang for buck" areas (many of which were due to be NGA'd under commercial rollouts, but instead we gave them public money to roll out what was planned to be a private network),

That's quite a claim. I'm sure it comes with quite prodigious amounts of evidence?

yes, if you know where to look. Lets consider Cumbria. Several years ago the Council commissioned a report which identified the white-space areas where there was no commercial intention to deploy NGA networks, and five areas where NGAs would be deployed (Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven).

Roll forward to 2014. Which five major areas have been fibre-enabled with BDUK funding? Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven.... which areas haven't? The rural areas that were the original target for the public funding.

Its interesting to note that the rhetoric concerning the rollout nationwide has now changed, and we are told that the funding had to achieve the "best bang for buck"; ie rollout to denser urban population areas, not the sparser rural areas. What a contrast to the rhetoric of four years ago, where the funding was specifically for the rural areas that were in perilous danger of becoming the "have-nots" in the digital divide.

And BDUKs role in this? Look at ConnectingCumbria website. Since late last year, many of the exchange areas have had the installation date changed from "2nd 1/4 2015" to "original target date". With no clarification of that date. And we are now being told that we will fall under Phase 2, due by 2020.

But the reference to Phase 2 is disingenuous; Phase 2 is not guaranteed funding. IF the funding is available, it is anticipated to only enable another 3% of premises, and as such there is a 'viability' test, whereby only areas that meet a criteria will stand a chance of being enabled. The criteria is not given, but the references to "bang for buck" imply it will once again be a commercial decision, and not needs-based.

We'll see what happens. I actually suspect some of the earliest deployments will be in areas that don't have NGA right now, or have relatively slow VDSL.

I'm quite sure there will be hundreds of thousands of premises that still don't have FTTC when the G.fast commercial deployment begins, just as there are millions of premises that were passed in the commercial deployment that can only dream of the speeds delivered by taxpayer funded BDUK FTTP deployments.

I'm quite sure that the areas that don't have FTTC now - or by the end of BDUK - will not get G.Fast, either, regardless of who funds the rollout. The contract will go to BT, and BT will concentrate on the areas that will generate them the highest anticipated revenue. I can't fault BT for that. I can fault the public body responsible for overseeing the public funding element who didn't insist on spending public money on the rural areas that are being left behind, as per the original intent.

The M41 can do vectoring but it needs to use 2 ports per line and the vectored pairs in a single cable have to be connected to the same line card. It doesn't work across cards.

There's a 4 part blog on ECI'S website comparing vectoring on the M41 and V41.

Roll forward to 2014. Which five major areas have been fibre-enabled with BDUK funding? Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven....

Are you sure about that?

Carlisle: 102 cabinets commercially, 37 BDUK
Kendal: 39 cabinets commercially, 7 BDUK
Barrow: 45 cabinets commercially, 23 BDUK
Workington: 29 cabinets commercially, 16 BDUK

The BDUKcabinets are notably the ones supporting fewer lines.

ok thanks, couldnt find the blog page for this, you have the url?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The node can even go in the cabinet, or closer to the homes, location will vary.

What would be the advantage of that (being in the cabinet)? Or do you mean the PCP?

Edited by deleted (Sat 31-Jan-15 14:23:30)

http://blog.ecitele.com/Pages/Post.aspx?PostID=60&Au...
http://blog.ecitele.com/Pages/Post.aspx?PostID=61&Au...
http://blog.ecitele.com/Pages/Post.aspx?PostID=62&Au...
http://blog.ecitele.com/Pages/Post.aspx?PostID=67&Au...

No mention on here that it's comparing M41 and V41 though. The V41 is the chassis they are pimping as it has the vector engine card and fat backplane.

Edited by deleted (Sat 31-Jan-15 16:58:09)

Also some infill cabs in Penrith which was originally enabled as part of the commercial program.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Roll forward to 2014. Which five major areas have been fibre-enabled with BDUK funding? Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven....

Are you sure about that?

Carlisle: 102 cabinets commercially, 37 BDUK
Kendal: 39 cabinets commercially, 7 BDUK
Barrow: 45 cabinets commercially, 23 BDUK
Workington: 29 cabinets commercially, 16 BDUK

The BDUKcabinets are notably the ones supporting fewer lines.

Whitehaven was commercial too it seems.

http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?A...

yeah so the question remains, where does it say if the M41 is capable, or is this an assumption?

You have been told repeatedly that the ECI platform will support vectoring. Whether this is with hardware change or not is irrelevant, the costs are low enough that Openreach won't be too bothered by them - even if they were to vector universally a matter of a few tens of millions to retrofit every ECI DSLAM is nothing in the grand scheme.

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1142...

Comes to mind immediately.

Or you could try

https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connec...

Both posts made directly to you, one passing on information from Openreach the other pointing out that ECI kit was involved in the FPGA engine trials. It would take no more than 30 minutes to swap out an M for a V chassis. The chassis aren't expensive.

Please stop derailing threads across multiple forums that are about G.fast with talk about vectoring. G.fast is being trialed in an ECI area so it's irrelevant to that.

We have no idea how widely Openreach will deploy vectoring on either hardware platform because they don't, hence the trials. We have no idea how they'll deploy G.fast in either Huawei or ECI areas in part because they don't - hence the pilot.

I can tell you now if improvements get rolled out to Huawei areas with no price increase over ECI I will refuse to pay a matching price for my service.

This may be beneficial. A break from the Internet when cut off for refusing to pay your contracted rate in return for your contracted service may be of some benefit, not least because it'll stop your obsessing over the hardware manufacturer of your cabinet, ignoring the information people relay to you and acting like some street corner prophet of doom.

I mean fibre cabinet, advantage is cheap access to power

says the guy who obsesses to the point of getting a tv documentary involved when things are not ok for him.

Also I wasnt involved in that thread on the 2nd url so your 'guess' is wrong. I havent posted on the BT retail forums for a long time.

Why dont you complain to your best friend andyH for derailing threads?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

says the guy who obsesses to the point of getting a tv documentary involved when things are not ok for him.

Depending on what you're referring to there I either didn't live in that area at the time and didn't have any plans to move there, or in the case of the news story was approached by said TV people, I didn't approach them.

When said TV people did approach me the cabinet was already installed, I had an installation appointment, and I did that skit to highlight the other ~500 people on the estate who needed help and were on one of 4 other cabinets that were not enabled.

In addition this highlighted issues within the Openreach decision-making processes which were amended and brought other cabinets previously considered unviable into the commercial rollout.

At the time the original TV story was done I believe I had smoothly performing 100Mb Virgin Media cable in London.

Regardless neither was of any benefit to me. By the time the decision had been made to move to the affected area the cabinet in question had already been placed onto the commercial rollout.

My mistake regarding the BT forum - apoloigies.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I mean fibre cabinet, advantage is cheap access to power

I'm clearly being dim. Surely the nodes best advantage is going outside the cabinet closer to homes to shorten the copper runs. If the node is in the cabinet are you not removing its main advantage? I thought we were expecting in the medium term at least to reverse power the nodes so freeing BT from the cost of mains powering

Perhaps because placing a node at the current FTTC cabinet, it would be already close to *some* homes. Not all of them, so additional nodes would be required for complete coverage. But for first trials, with hardware that won't yet be optimised for power, let alone optimised for reverse power, it makes for a cheap way to start.

I'm not sure why I've been brought into this?!

This topic is about G.Fast - it's not about ECI cabinets and whether they support vectoring. So can we keep it on topic?

That sounds reasonable for trials at least. Would seem self defeating after that. Do we have any firmer details on lines supported per node and relative cost per node . I've seen a wide variety of numbers claimed - I suppose hw is in the early days.

Why can't they do something like the following?
Please note I don't know what the fibre tubing looks like up close nor do I know what's in the Fibre Cabinets so bare with me.

Idea 1:
Create a new Fibre Tubing that allows for two thick enough power wires to be blown down the middle along with the fibres around the middle like this example image, I wasn't too sure how the current fibre tubing looks like when I created this rather crude drawing, but as you can see it has 12 fibre cores as well as a power core.

Install or upgrade a Fibre Cabinet with a new inner fibre rack that supplies power to new fibre tube (lets call this a G.Fast Fibre Cabinet) for all installs and run the standard Fibre from the exchange to that, then connect the G.Fast Fibre cabinet to each of the nodes ( I assume their is a node per pole or pit supporting X buildings/homes) at the Pit or Pole using the new fibre tubing.

Or if BTOR doesn't want to create a new Fibre Tubing the just pair up a current fibre tube with a power cable.

This way the cabinet supplies the power to the Nodes and no need to have the users equipment to supply the power to the nodes.

Idea 2:
Now if they went with the users equipment powering the nodes, we could isolate each of the channels in the nodes so that each of the user equipment powers only their channel on the node.
This way the only channels that would be powered up would be the ones that are being used and would reduce the power usage coming from the users equipment.

Now idea 1 requires possible planning permissions for the cabinet install where as idea 2 may not due to no cabinet is required.

Comments?

Paul

I've seen a presentation on the history of G.fast, explaining the rationale behind its development - considered as a "Hybrid FTTH" that didn't require the last few metres of copper to be replaced, as they can often be the hardest/costliest metres of the whole run.

That rationale stems from the Dutch wanting to position "Hybrid FTTH" as a final step (the "end game") rather than an interim solution before "Full FTTH". I guess BT's trials are to help them decide on the same issue; if they put G.fast nodes at 100-250m lengths it is probably an interim measure; if they put them 20-60m away, it is a final step.

http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/Docs/Pre...

From that, you could see that different companies have different use-cases for the product, which makes for differing demand for different size nodes. The "meter closet" case, for example, demands a node to support a single line, with no need for vectoring.

The same guy also presented a case study of central Amsterdam, with a number of different models of G.fast nodes of different sizes, and different deployment locations.

http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/Docs/Pre...

That presentation models with a 500 euro fixed-cost per node plus 25 euro cost per port.

Some models showed locations with <3 lines per node, and some locations with >100. Other models were done with minimum nodes sized at 8 lines and 32 lines.

He has a whole load of other presentations on G.fast here:

http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/_Index.html

Very interesting!

Idea 1:
This would be the idea of forward powering the G.fast node; I'm not sure you need to "blow" the power cable mixed with the fibre, as you already have a lot of copper out there.

Idea 2:
That's what is intended behind reverse powering of the FTTdp node that would run the G.fast application: that it would have to work from one single user supplying power, with the hardware powered on/off per port. There would also have to be operational consideration for cases where there is no power whatsoever.

There are also considerations to make sure that a fair share of power is drawn from each home, even if the wires are of different lengths.

Take a look at http://www.microsemi.com/document-portal/doc_view/13...

Another one at http://uppersideconferences.net/g-fast-summit2014/pr...

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

They are still installing ECI cabinets.

Interesting, haven't seen any installed in my region in a long time. They've all been Huawei with the vectoring firmware update on them as well. As I say, even in areas where the headend equipment is manufactured by ECI. I'll take your word for it though. Even so, I think it's safe to say the majority of cabinets now being installed are Huawei? If they've already purchased ECI ones they aren't exacrly going to send them back for a refund I suppose!

At a wild guess, I'd say 5-10% of cabs are ECI.

With vectoring, they were installing hardware for the trial in all cabs.

Well Idea 1 was so that you didn't have to use the existing copper phone lines, like ours is rather old and has issues.
And just in case they do move over to FVA and decide on removing old copper phone lines to free up space underground, using current copper lines would cause issues, which was why I suggested having a power core in the middle.

And Idea 2 was for the users equipment to only power their channel, but after reading those two documents it also needs to power up other sections of the DPU, so it now makes sense.
By the way it was a very nice read

I saw with FTTcurb (2nd document) it mentions manhole and pole-mount, we have both a BT Manhole right by our pole, and at the moment the manhole contains (some water ) our phone line enclosure as well as a fibre enclosure of our halted FTTP install from 2011, if they was to install G.FAST later on would they replace that fibre manifold with a DPU, or would they just finish off the FTTP install?

Thanks
Paul

DC pair power from exchange is another option.

Lots of options, varying costs and different por's and con's

Lots of options, Openreach prefer the one where they don't have to pay the electricity bill though.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Lots of options, Openreach prefer the one where they don't have to pay the electricity bill though.

Doesn't everyone prefer the option where they don't have to pay the bill?

For anyone who did order FTTPoD and is paying the exorbitant monthly price during the 3yr term, I would hope an upgrade to the maximum available (e.g. 1Gbps) would be free...

I found a load more reading material about G.fast, including some history...

http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/Docs/Pre...

Interesting also to see that Dutch Telecom wanted G.fast to be a proper long-term solution for the final drop into homes, rather than being an interim measure prior to full FTTH.

http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/Docs/Pub...

Lots more to be read, including the study on how G.fast could be applied to the centre of Amsterdam...

http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/_Index.html

Don't we already pay it?

Just another component of the line rental

interesting links thanks....

I wonder if an eventual exchange list will come out, or that the current ones are updated, to include the projected time that this will be added. so FTTC, FTTP and G.Fast available etc.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

I wonder if an eventual exchange list will come out, or that the current ones are updated, to include the projected time that this will be added. so FTTC, FTTP and G.Fast available etc.

I'd like to hope so - BT/OR don't have the best record when it comes to passing on such information or being entirely reliable. Heck one cabinet in my village has gone from coming soon to under review yet having checked with the local BDUK and they with OR nothing has changed and the cab is coming on the exact same time it was no one seems to know why the website has changed.....doesn't inspire confidence!

In reply to a post by bdo21:

For anyone who did order FTTPoD and is paying the exorbitant monthly price during the 3yr term, I would hope an upgrade to the maximum available (e.g. 1Gbps) would be free...

I would imagine they'd pay the same monthly rate for it as everyone else who can receive it.

They received what they paid for via FTTPoD and after that the property becomes served by the standard FTTP pricing.

As I used to say in my professional job as a Chartered Engineer when asked to give endless updates as to when the job would be finished

"Do you want me to spend time to give you regular updates - or would you prefer that I spend my time actually doing the job instead?"

It seemed to get the message across!

Same phrase often used in IT. However, an occasionally update to let the customer know progress is necessary and if you make sure your customers are aware of when they will receive those updates then they don't need to chase any more.

Exactly.

Infact over the years the ISP's with the best reputation have had the best communications with its customers.

BT seems to still have some throwbacks to nationalisation days were the governments attitute of the day was "you'll know when we tell you" i.e. not voluntary offering any information.

Hopefully this is changing, as we've seen with openreach giving gradually more information out about cabinets etc, though I'm sure there are some who say they need to go further, and I'd agree.

Communication is a BIG thing on the Internet, and life really. People like to find out information. It's just how society is these days. Though on the flip side I'd rather wait for accurate information than someone just saying something to please the public.

What is interesting is the degree of variation on information exchange from county to county when the BT side is in theory a constant?

Some counties are just ticking the boxes and others have embraced the project and got people involved who 'get' social media and interaction with the public, others are doing the 'plans are in the basement' approach.

One aspect to remember is while some understand the 'plans change' concept others get almost aggressive when this happens and this can lead to people actually saying less in public about possible plans.

I suspect part is down to resource as well. Some Councils probably have 10's of people managing the BDUK processes and others probably have 1 person doing it part time. The internal staff managing the process are a hidden cost to the project and not covered by government funding and with pressures as they are it is likely that many Councils are not employing lots of people in these roles.

In reply to a post by zom22:

"Do you want me to spend time to give you regular updates - or would you prefer that I spend my time actually doing the job instead?"

I sympathise for the same professional reasons...there is of course a balance to be struck.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Some Councils probably have 10's of people managing the BDUK processes and others probably have 1 person doing it part time.

My local area BDUK guy has replied to my e-mails at truly ungodly hours and indicated that this was 'normal' for him as his workload is pretty much everything!

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Feb-15 11:16:00)

Sckipio Claims to Double the Distance of Ultrafast G.fast Broadband Tech


...Sckipio claims to have �successfully demonstrated�, albeit only as part of a laboratory trial, a tweaked version of G.fast that �doubles the official ITU targets� for the technology by delivering speeds of greater than 500Mbps over 200 metres of copper cable and more than 200Mbps at 400 metres (the 400m figure is particularly impressive for G.fast). However it�s unclear if this is just on the download or aggregated with upload. ...

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/02/sckipio...

Holding back for a response on power requirements that they envisage.

Interesting as a number of the chipset makes are actively courting PR, keen to sell to BT I guess.

Probably just trying to run this at some low SNR margin and hope FEC fixes the errors.

I too wondered whether this was in-spec, or with some unapproved modifications.

I like all the talk of "ultrafast" lately. We're going to need a new term whatever comes next, aren't we? Just naming the speeds won't do, there HAS to be a new term. So to recap:

[Dialup]
ISDN
DSL/Cable = Broadband
ADSL2+ at its fastest (maybe), or FTTC/rN = Superfast
FTTP at 330Mb/sec or G.fast = Ultrafast

We could have Hyperfast, Gigafast, Etherfast (that'll confuse things slightly and annoy people), Uberfast, Stratospherifast, or... I'm out for the moment.

Edited by deleted (Fri 06-Feb-15 12:20:30)

In reply to a post by gazzyk1ns:

I like all the talk of "ultrafast" lately. We're going to need a new term whatever comes next, aren't we? Just naming the speeds won't do, there HAS to be a new term. So to recap:

[Dialup]
ISDN
DSL/Cable = Broadband
ADSL2+ at its fastest (maybe), or FTTC/rN = Superfast
FTTP at 330Mb/sec or G.fast = Ultrafast

We could have Hyperfast, Gigafast, Etherfast (that'll confuse things slightly and annoy people), Uberfast, Stratospherifast, or... I'm out for the moment.

It could be called HSI.Fast = Holy S*** Its Fast LOL.

Paul

We do.

Let's follow the USA and remove ADSL2+ from being considered 'broadband', save that for everything from 25Mb up to <100Mb and from 100Mb onwards superfast broadband.

That would work for me, anyway. ADSL has had its time as 'broadband'.

hehe, whilst I agree that would help push things forward I am not a fan of reinventing the wheel as such.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Roll forward to 2014. Which five major areas have been fibre-enabled with BDUK funding? Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven....

Are you sure about that?

Carlisle: 102 cabinets commercially, 37 BDUK
Kendal: 39 cabinets commercially, 7 BDUK
Barrow: 45 cabinets commercially, 23 BDUK
Workington: 29 cabinets commercially, 16 BDUK

The BDUK cabinets are notably the ones supporting fewer lines.

Which is 28% of the cabinets enabled to Dec 2014. ie, almost a third of the public funding was used to build out a fibre network in areas that were already identified as being targeted by commercial NGA deployment.

From Cumbria Councils own Local Broadband Plan from Connecting Cumbria

"A study carried out by Analysis Mason identifies the whole of Cumbria, with
the exception of Carlisle, Kendal, Workington, Whitehaven and Barrow as a
�White area� where there is no planned supply by operators of Next
Generation Access (NGA)"

and

"In rural areas public funding will be used to gap fund the model from the
private sector recognizing that the commercial case cannot be made on its
own for a lot of rural Cumbria. Value for money will be tested through a
competitive dialogue procurement process.

In urban areas the County Council will use its influence with the private
sector providers and working with local business groups will lobby for
inclusion of the urban areas in the national plans of broadband providers "

The funding was NOT meant to be spent where it would achieve the "best-bang-for-buck" (ie, greatest adoption by residents, that is plainly in an urban area with it's greater population density), it was specifically for the rural areas, areas where population density made it uneconomic for a commercial deployment...

I'll wager that BDUK will wind down, Phase 2 might do a few more cabinets were the commercial viability is 'greatest', relatively speaking. Then this new technology will be rolled out, and many areas of the UK will be left further behind.

In 5-10 years BDUK2 will be mooted, to deliver 'superfast broadband' to those left behind, but what will happen is BT will use the funding to deploy G.Fast to its existing urban network.

'Angry' doesn't begin to describe the way some of us feel that tax payer money - OUR money - has been used to build BT's network for its own gain. Angry doesn't begin to cover how many of us feel at being left out. 'Betrayed' is too mild a phrase to describe how local councils and BDUK have left us.

In reply to a post by alewis:

Which is 28% of the cabinets enabled to Dec 2014. ie, almost a third of the public funding

Try not to mistake the number of cabs for the amount of funding. These will very much be the cheapest cabs to subsidise.

was used to build out a fibre network in areas that were already identified as being targeted by commercial NGA deployment.

But identified by whom? If it wasn't BT themselves, it doesn't matter what was identified ... it is nothing more than a glorified guess. In this case it looks like a claim made by consultants to the council.

If it was BT that identified the *whole* exchange as covered, they'd have qualified it up the wazoo, just like they do with every plan. Plans change, and BT has always had the qualifier.

The simple fact is that no exchange has been upgraded 100% as part of the commercial programme - I've not heard of one, nor found one when checking details of individual exchanges. A couple of years ago, it looked like the best commercial coverage of each upgraded exchange was in the region of 80-90%.

If anyone took the consultants' claim at face value, and assumed 100% coverage of each of the 5 exchanges, then they were sadly ill-informed.

"In rural areas
...
In urban areas the

Unfortunately, the definition of urban vs rural differs greatly - from 5% to more than 20%. It is hard to use either word without more context.

With this in mind, the statements made by CCC (and indeed the government) all suffered the same problem at first: they knew BT had announced 67% coverage (and Virgin had 50%), but didn't know exactly where would be left out. Everyone just assumed it was 'rural', because they were the ones always left out, and never tried to distinguish the real boundary - using the word without context.

The plan therefore took on the 'rural' name within all levels of government; an easy choice when the other project had 'city' in the name, but it was always a bad choice.

When everyone realised that the people left out, the noncommercial ones, weren't exclusively rural, it was too late - the project was already badly named. And a lot of people badly informed.

(No longer, though. Apparently, the government have stopped calling it the rural programme)

Let's add some context here. The 5 main urban areas you listed... Just how urban are they?

Using the ONS statistics for built-up areas in England & Wales, we can see that those 5 towns all classify as 'small' and sit within the urban areas at these percentiles:

- Carlisle - 63rd percentile
- Barrow - 69th percentile
- Kendal - 72nd percentile
- Workington - 73rd percentile
- Whitehaven - 74th percentile

What this means is that, for example, 72% of the population live in bigger built-up areas than Kendal. In places that you could rightly consider 'more urban'.

BT announced they'd cover 67% of the country; if they followed your presumption and proceeded to cover 100% of every exchange of the larger urban areas, then they would have stopped after Carlisle, and would never have reached Barrow, Kendal, Workington or Whitehaven.

BT, of course, didn't fully cover each exchange area; nor did they distinguish their coverage between urban or rural. BT merely labeled the two as either commercially viable or not viable.

The funding was NOT meant to be spent where it would achieve the "best-bang-for-buck" (ie, greatest adoption by residents, that is plainly in an urban area with it's greater population density), it was specifically for the rural areas, areas where population density made it uneconomic for a commercial deployment...

The structure of the 3 phases, and the targets given to them vs the funding allocated, all tell a different story.

They tell us that phase 1 was indeed meant to be the easiest part. Phase 2 gets 50% more funds per property, so definitely targets something harder. Phase 3 picks out radio strategies, so is definitely targeted at the most sparse areas. The three phases are meant to cover everyone left out of commercial coverage. The only conclusion is that phase 1 was for the cheapest premises - thus giving the best bang per buck.

So phase 1 was meant to cover the easiest part of the noncommercial premises. And it turns out that calling them rural was a step too far.

, but what will happen is BT will use the funding to deploy G.Fast to its existing urban network.

If we get to that point, then I imagine BT will fund the places it evaluates to be commercially viable. If the government chooses to subsidise the ones left on the wrong side of the divide, it will. But you can bet they won't make the mistake of calling them rural again.

'Angry' doesn't begin to describe the way some of us feel that tax payer money - OUR money - has been used to build BT's network for its own gain. Angry doesn't begin to cover how many of us feel at being left out. 'Betrayed' is too mild a phrase to describe how local councils and BDUK have left us.

Mmm - I can understand. But aim your anger at the right people... which are the ones who misused the rural label in the first place.

It is especially pointless to be angry at the supplier; whoever won the bids would be building their network for their own gain at the partial expense of the taxpayer. And, of course, three quarters of taxpayers will see no gain for their tax.

Mind you, it isn't tax either. Merely excess TV licence cash.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Roll forward to 2014. Which five major areas have been fibre-enabled with BDUK funding? Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven....

Are you sure about that?

Carlisle: 102 cabinets commercially, 37 BDUK
Kendal: 39 cabinets commercially, 7 BDUK
Barrow: 45 cabinets commercially, 23 BDUK
Workington: 29 cabinets commercially, 16 BDUK

The BDUKcabinets are notably the ones supporting fewer lines.

Can you supply a source for those figures? Not that I doubt you, simply because locally we have now been told that we were never due to receive fibre under BDUK - despite a press release on the County Council website that we would, and are now gathering information to query how the money has been spent. Being able to source information other than that provided by ConCum would be of considerable assistance.

Many thanks!

PM sent

In reply to a post by alewis:

'Angry' doesn't begin to describe the way some of us feel that tax payer money - OUR money - has been used to build BT's network for its own gain. Angry doesn't begin to cover how many of us feel at being left out. 'Betrayed' is too mild a phrase to describe how local councils and BDUK have left us.

Then no taxpayer money should be used and only those areas deemed commercially viable should be enabled. We should remove BT's universal service obligation as their network is for their own gain.

Then the "rural" people will complain about their forever sub-2mbit broadband.

You are actually advocating that the limited pot of money be spent as inefficiently as possible, to help the most expensive, sparsest, lowest RoI areas first. Why should MY tax money subsidise rural areas?

If you choose to live somewhere with nice views, big gardens, less pollution, lower house prices per sqft, then you choose to live somewhere with reduced access to amenities and broadband.

I'll subsidise your unprofitable broadband when you subsidise my garden and smog removal.

Meanwhile, some areas (Cornwall, Northern Ireland) get massive projects deploying fibre (and, in the case of Cornwall, most of the FTTP BT has deployed ANYWHERE) funded by the taxpayer.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

Then no taxpayer money should be used and only those areas deemed commercially viable should be enabled. We should remove BT's universal service obligation as their network is for their own gain.

Then the "rural" people will complain about their forever sub-2mbit broadband.

You are actually advocating that the limited pot of money be spent as inefficiently as possible, to help the most expensive, sparsest, lowest RoI areas first. Why should MY tax money subsidise rural areas?

If you choose to live somewhere with nice views, big gardens, less pollution, lower house prices per sqft, then you choose to live somewhere with reduced access to amenities and broadband.

I'll subsidise your unprofitable broadband when you subsidise my garden and smog removal.

Meanwhile, some areas (Cornwall, Northern Ireland) get massive projects deploying fibre (and, in the case of Cornwall, most of the FTTP BT has deployed ANYWHERE) funded by the taxpayer.

I cant quite follow the logic as the ultimate conclusion to that is no tax money should be spent at all, period, on any infrastructure project...

The point is that BDUK funding was designed to target those rural areas that are commercially non-viable. Essentially no different from tax-funded urban regeneration projects, or indeed HS2 which is only of benefit to those working in London, the M25 orbital designed to benefit London, and countless other projects in numerous other urban areas. I don't have a problem with such projects, its called investment. I have an issue however when the project doesn't deliver to specification. It may well be that the term 'rural' was mis-applied, but in the context of my local area, where the definition of rural and urban was explicitly defined, it was not the wrong term to use. As it is, somehow, a considerable chunk of the funding has been spent in urban areas, at the expense of rural areas. "Best bang for buck in terms of the tax payers money"? well, did tax payers get the "best bang for back" in relation to MP's expenses...

You should have a proper project place in the first place so there is no real extra work. That plan has to be maintained by a project manager. I think there is an issue with the culture within BT of realising or rather not realising information

There has to b e a project plan though with a Project manager and that plan has to be maintained. It is not rocket science to release the basic data from that plan on say a monthly basis it does not need all the detail and some of that detail would be commercial sensitive all it needs is the basic roll out schedule and half decent Project management software can do this

In reply to a post by alewis:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

Then no taxpayer money should be used and only those areas deemed commercially viable should be enabled. We should remove BT's universal service obligation as their network is for their own gain.

Then the "rural" people will complain about their forever sub-2mbit broadband.

You are actually advocating that the limited pot of money be spent as inefficiently as possible, to help the most expensive, sparsest, lowest RoI areas first. Why should MY tax money subsidise rural areas?

If you choose to live somewhere with nice views, big gardens, less pollution, lower house prices per sqft, then you choose to live somewhere with reduced access to amenities and broadband.

I'll subsidise your unprofitable broadband when you subsidise my garden and smog removal.

Meanwhile, some areas (Cornwall, Northern Ireland) get massive projects deploying fibre (and, in the case of Cornwall, most of the FTTP BT has deployed ANYWHERE) funded by the taxpayer.

I cant quite follow the logic as the ultimate conclusion to that is no tax money should be spent at all, period, on any infrastructure project...

The point is that BDUK funding was designed to target those rural areas that are commercially non-viable. Essentially no different from tax-funded urban regeneration projects, or indeed HS2 which is only of benefit to those working in London, the M25 orbital designed to benefit London, and countless other projects in numerous other urban areas. I don't have a problem with such projects, its called investment. I have an issue however when the project doesn't deliver to specification. It may well be that the term 'rural' was mis-applied, but in the context of my local area, where the definition of rural and urban was explicitly defined, it was not the wrong term to use. As it is, somehow, a considerable chunk of the funding has been spent in urban areas, at the expense of rural areas. "Best bang for buck in terms of the tax payers money"? well, did tax payers get the "best bang for back" in relation to MP's expenses...

No, they didn't, MPs are all aboard the gravy train and I don't really support any political party. Having said that, I think the expenses came about because MPs artificially repressed their own salaries vs equivalent private sector jobs and "made up the difference" with expenses, because at the time all the public looked at was the salary.

If spending £1,000,000 can benefit 10,000 people in small rural market towns, or 1,000 people in true rural villages, I'd say they made the right choice in benefiting the 10,000.

The rest of what you are saying I agree with! Scrap HS2, it would pay for FTTP nation wide many times over. The economic benefit of which would be far greater.

Scrap this stupid scheme that seems to be going on over the last couple of years to replace motorway barriers with massive concrete walls, not only does this cause congestion and damage the economy now, it's a waste of money that could be better spent.

Edited by nemeth782 (Fri 06-Mar-15 10:43:44)

In reply to a post by alewis:

'Angry' doesn't begin to describe the way some of us feel that tax payer money - OUR money - has been used to build BT's network for its own gain. Angry doesn't begin to cover how many of us feel at being left out. 'Betrayed' is too mild a phrase to describe how local councils and BDUK have left us.

As WWWombat says, I think your ire should be addressed primarily to those who misused the 'rural' label - which, if I'm not mistaken, are the politicians and local councils.


The ideal would be universal FTTP, but the human and financial resources needed for such a roll out mean this is impossible.


Once you accept that human and financial resources are limited, also you recognise the constraints imposed by the current Openreach network and by physics, it is inescapable that there is a balance to be struck between helping those who have the slowest service at present and helping the maximum number of people.

This means facing up to hard decisions. Do you spend £50k running FTTP to 4 remote farms or on providing FTTC at a cabinet in a small town with 150 lines? Do you rearrange short exchange only lines in a village onto a cabinet near the exchange and provide FTTC, or do you say those people already have fast ADSL2+ and the priorities lie elsewhere. There comes a point where the potential gain for an intervention doesn't justify the expenditure of resources.

A good example of this balancing in action was a recent thread about a small town in Northern Ireland (which I realise is the Northern Ireland DETI project that is partly funded by BDUK, though it works in a similar way to BDUK in England, Wales and Scotland). There was an exchange in the town in question and most, if not all, of the lines were exchange only. The network on the edges of the town was rearranged onto cabinets and FTTC provided. Those nearest the exchange did not get FTTx, presumably because they already had good ADSL2+ speeds and it was felt to be a poor use of money to rearrange their lines onto a cabinet with a fibre twin near the exchange.


If you feel your local BDUK project has made the wrong prioritisation decisions and/or lied to you about the plans for your location, you need to take that up with the BDUK project and the politicians responsible for it.


The more fibre spine Openreach rolls out using commercial and BDUK money, the easier it is to upgrade new areas in the future. It's much cheaper to run fibre from existing fibre spine 1 mile away than from 8 miles away. This means your statement that almost a third of the funding was used to provide FTTC in urban areas of Cumbria close to the commercial FTTC deployment (~28% of deployed FTTC cabinets using BDUK money) may well be in error. It may well have been significantly cheaper per cabinet to provide FTTC in these areas than to provide FTTC at a more rural location owing to the proximity of the fibre spine following the commercial roll-out.

The availability of new technologies like G.fast will make previously uneconomic projects cost-effective, especially if reverse power feeding is used. It's likely to be cheaper to use G.fast to offer high speed service to a handful of properties on a rural DP than to site a traditional FTTC cabinet (with the need for mains power) or to use FTTP with the associated installation costs for each property connected to the service.