The co-operation between council and Openreach appeared to be higher may have helped, and while the roll-out is not delivering at the pace it used to in Cornwall, still finding pockets of live FTTP in places I did not know about.

That said am also finding native FTTP on new builds more than I used to, partially down to a change in how I find it, brought about having reached the 90% target have more time to concentrate on the oddities that crop up.

Well I can't see why you would be too bothered yourself about whether or not this is going to happen seeing that on the 4th April you told us all that you are moving to a place with FTTP next month........

SOR ( & Ian72)

FTTP was viable back in 2004 for new estates except that the regulator wouldn't let BT use fibre only as this would bar LLU and doing both was very expensive. LLU was more important to the regulator so FTTP was put on the back burner for 8 years. A different decision by the regulator would have led to most post 2005 developments having FTTP.

When Ebbsfleet was being planned as a 'new town' around 2009 ( for build from 2011 onwards) it was allowed by the regulator as a defined exception to be FTTP only. The development was very slow to build due to the recession but I believe is all fibre. Google shows it as very small and there are no speed tests on here, could be that speed is that good no-one tests it! Or it could be a post code problem due to the newness of the estate. ( This site shows no FTTP but other info for the postcodes are also inconsistent)

In reply to a post by sor:

If there's anything special about the Cornwall programme, then it is likely to be contractual - not technical - and something BT could easily extend or duplicate elsewhere if they so wished

From my perspective, the special thing about Cornwall was the timing, alongside being contractual.

At the time of the contract, BT were intending to use FTTP commercially for a similar proportion of the UK as for Cornwall. It wasn't ever intended to be different. I bet the contract states it, in some form.

The commercial rollout started with FTTC, so there was little FTTP put in place. I bet that most of Openreach's FTTP-trained staff were working in Cornwall, following the contract, but BT were free to run the commercial project in whatever order they felt like.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously, and likely not coincidentally. BT publicly backed off from their 20%+ target for FTTP. And the G.Fast research seemed to be progressing beyond almost all expectations.

5 years earlier, South Korea had targets of 100Mbps, so used fibre as the only plausible choice. BT was probably aiming at similar targets, but suddenly a viable alternative to fibre-all-the-way was turning up.

With a viable alternative, BT could re-think how they were intending to run the commercial rollout, and that thinking will have gone into planning the BDUK tenders and plans. Even South Korea is replanning its approach towards technology similar to G.Fast.

The result is that Cornwall is an anachronism of timing. Too early for G.Fast to have struck.

Believe the change was more down to getting 80Mb/s out of FTTC rather than G.fast per se.

"We don�t tend to talk about that particular target for FTTP any more as our fibre programme has evolved, so it is far less relevant today," said a spokesperson. "That�s because since that figure was provided we�ve doubled the headline speeds available on FTTC from up to 40Mbits/sec to up to 80Mbits/sec, and we�re constantly exploring new technologies that could further enhance the performance of FTTC."

In reply to a post by zom22:

Well I can't see why you would be too bothered yourself about whether or not this is going to happen seeing that on the 4th April you told us all that you are moving to a place with FTTP next month........

Not moving to Yorkshire afterall. Staying in Telford for a little while.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

From my perspective, the special thing about Cornwall was the timing, alongside being contractual.

At the time of the contract, BT were intending to use FTTP commercially for a similar proportion of the UK as for Cornwall. It wasn't ever intended to be different. I bet the contract states it, in some form.

The commercial rollout started with FTTC, so there was little FTTP put in place. I bet that most of Openreach's FTTP-trained staff were working in Cornwall, following the contract, but BT were free to run the commercial project in whatever order they felt like.

In my opinion (based on seeing what's happened, but nothing scientific) it was the other way around - the places that got it first were exclusively FTTC areas. The exchange bordering mine was one of the first three to see action, and AFAIK it is exclusively FTTC. The houses around the exchange building, which were EO, were the subject of one of BT's "trials" - trialling the installation of a copper PCP to permit FTTC.

I have relatives on this exchange at the end of a fairly long EO line. It will be interesting to see what BT intends to do for them as part of the 99% contract extension. FTTC would be an extremely bad idea, it's a small hamlet about a mile away from a larger village.

In my own village, again FTTC was first (they did my cabinet and then stopped doing anything for 18-24 months). When they came back, they put in a good chunk of FTTP with some FTTC. I know of someone who lives across the road from my exchange - he's on FTTC, but his neighbour behind him is on FTTP. Such a lottery...

My impression seems to be that they went very slowly on FTTP until they'd got the processes and procedures sorted out, before going at it at a (relatively) big way. Other than contractual requirements that forced FTTP in Cornwall (which I'm not sure on as I haven't seen the contracts), BT could have replicated this elsewhere - but chose not to

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Then two things happened almost simultaneously, and likely not coincidentally. BT publicly backed off from their 20%+ target for FTTP. And the G.Fast research seemed to be progressing beyond almost all expectations.

5 years earlier, South Korea had targets of 100Mbps, so used fibre as the only plausible choice. BT was probably aiming at similar targets, but suddenly a viable alternative to fibre-all-the-way was turning up.

With a viable alternative, BT could re-think how they were intending to run the commercial rollout, and that thinking will have gone into planning the BDUK tenders and plans. Even South Korea is replanning its approach towards technology similar to G.Fast.

The result is that Cornwall is an anachronism of timing. Too early for G.Fast to have struck.

I think that if BT had used FTTP until G.fast was ready, no one would have complaints about that. Even what BT terms "FTTRN" using VDSL would have been good, as the fibre would be in place for cheaper FoD or G.Fast or whatever the future was to bring - with excellent VDSL performance in the meantime. Instead, BT went for the one-size-fits-all FTTC which has no upgrade path short of extending the existing fibre for FTTP/G.fast and slowly obsoleting the FTTC cabs - and a stupid lottery between the FTTP haves and the FTTC have nots

In reply to a post by kitcat:

SOR ( & Ian72)

FTTP was viable back in 2004 for new estates except that the regulator wouldn't let BT use fibre only as this would bar LLU and doing both was very expensive. LLU was more important to the regulator so FTTP was put on the back burner for 8 years. A different decision by the regulator would have led to most post 2005 developments having FTTP.

When Ebbsfleet was being planned as a 'new town' around 2009 ( for build from 2011 onwards) it was allowed by the regulator as a defined exception to be FTTP only. The development was very slow to build due to the recession but I believe is all fibre. Google shows it as very small and there are no speed tests on here, could be that speed is that good no-one tests it! Or it could be a post code problem due to the newness of the estate. ( This site shows no FTTP but other info for the postcodes are also inconsistent)

It'd be interesting to know how much effort BT put into overcoming this - did they roll over and accept it, or did they make a serious stab at persuading Ofcom/Oftel to look at the bigger picture?

BT still doesn't do FTTP in all new estates as a matter of course though (even if it is alongside copper), which makes even less sense to me.

Edited by deleted (Sat 16-Apr-16 20:24:56)

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Believe the change was more down to getting 80Mb/s out of FTTC rather than G.fast per se.

"We don�t tend to talk about that particular target for FTTP any more as our fibre programme has evolved, so it is far less relevant today," said a spokesperson. "That�s because since that figure was provided we�ve doubled the headline speeds available on FTTC from up to 40Mbits/sec to up to 80Mbits/sec, and we�re constantly exploring new technologies that could further enhance the performance of FTTC."

That could certainly be the case, though I'd tend to believe that BT would be well aware of, and contemplating, profile 17a at the time of embarking on FTTC.

The final part of your quote is interesting. At the time, I'd have interpreted the "constantly exploring new technologies [to enhance] FTTC" to mean vectoring, but in hindsight it could equally have applied to G.Fast.

In reply to a post by sor:

In my opinion (based on seeing what's happened, but nothing scientific) it was the other way around - the places that got it first were exclusively FTTC areas.

I presume your "it was the other way around" is a description of the rollout within Cornwall.

I wasn't trying to say anything about the order within Cornwall particularly. I'm sure FTTC-first was as valid a choice there as the rest of the country - and, at first, BT probably had few staff *anywhere* trained for the FTTP deployment.

The only thing that matters is that the idea of FTTP remained extant at the time of the contract, and irreversibly got written in. If that is what happened...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The final part of your quote is interesting. At the time, I'd have interpreted the "constantly exploring new technologies [to enhance] FTTC" to mean vectoring, but in hindsight it could equally have applied to G.Fast.

Or VDSL 2 profile 30a. G.fast was a long way from coming off the drawing board when that quote came from BT, 2012 if I remember rightly.