Could an exchange selloff part fund FTTP?

BT have a few thousand exchanges across the UK. Many of these are rather large (but these days mostly empty) buildings that often have a decent amount of parking space and are in central locations. They could be converted to either flats, or large 6 bed type houses.

If we had universal FTTP, we wouldn't need telephone exchanges anymore.

If we assume FTTP rollout will cost £12bn, and there are ~5600 telephone exchanges, then a selloff of the exchanges could perhaps fund 1/4 to 1/3rd of the rollout.

Would this not make sense?

Been there and done that, 16 years ago http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/4477080/BT-hoists...

Exchanges are leased back on long term leases from the people that bought them.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

BT have a few thousand exchanges across the UK. Many of these are rather large (but these days mostly empty) buildings that often have a decent amount of parking space and are in central locations. They could be converted to either flats, or large 6 bed type houses.

If we had universal FTTP, we wouldn't need telephone exchanges anymore.

If we assume FTTP rollout will cost £12bn, and there are ~5600 telephone exchanges, then a selloff of the exchanges could perhaps fund 1/4 to 1/3rd of the rollout.

Would this not make sense?

Probably, but it would make more sense, I think, to milk the living daylights out of existing infrastructure incrementally.

The buildings may not house very much equipment however there are large numbers of bundles of copper and fibre running in/out of the buildings. That needs to be located somewhere. Even with the sale and leaseback there are conditions that will prohibit some developments as construction work could seriously damage the cables.

And universal FTTP - NO CHANCE. Costs would be astronomical.

And exchanges aren't just used for consumer equipment, a lot of companies house their own equipment in unbundled exchanges in order to host private networks.

Hehe!!

My wife spent half her working life buying space for new exchanges and exchange expansion, and the other half selling them or the add-on bits off and setting up leaseback.

Would universal FTTP need some form of (physical) concentration node/s, amounting to exchanges?

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

Would universal FTTP need some form of (physical) concentration node/s, amounting to exchanges?

Exactly, as I said, large numbers of cables and FIBRES in/out of buildings.

BT don't tend to leave space empty. They may use it as office space or an engineering base of lease it out. Security though has to be considered. You will also find the roof space has often been leased out for radio masts

Universal FTTP is not that expensive when you look at the big picture. FTTC is limited and increasingly BT are have to spend more and more money to keep it working or push speeds up very marginally

FTTP does not mean you automatically put Fibre in to every home it would follow the VM approach and the Fibre would just pass your door and would only be connected to the home if you subscribed. There are advantages though to every home having fibre as it means you can do away with the legacy voice system and FTTC system which would save a lot of costs and allow the redundant copper to be recovered and sold off