95% of UK to get Ultra fast Broadband by 2020

Not sure I believe this. My understanding is the OFCOM definition of Ultrafast is 300Mbs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38062730

'BT boss: We will invest in remote locations'

That's nice, what about urban areas of Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester etc?

Post deleted by WelshWArrior

My feeling is someone has said wrong thing, or quoted wrong figures.

95% ultrafast for 2020 would be a BIG job, adding G.fast to every VDSL2 cabinet currently live would not achieve this figure, and roll-out to 2020 was previously only raised as 12 million premises. UK has around 29 million.

They will probably be left behind, if we analyse BT's FTTC rollout, urban areas were in the latter part of the rollout, I think political intervention always means now that rural is priority. BT have also realised its more profitable to wait for subsidies to arrive.

Politically since most urban areas have or will have VM available, then they dont care about BT rolling out in those areas.

With that said tho BT can achieve this with g.fast so it probably wont be FTTP anyway.

remember to include VM

Only if the Openreach 12 million does not overlap Virgin Media will 95% be possible and chances of that happening seem low and would have signalled by people like Clive Selley when doing the presentations before.

I've no idea how he thinks that's going to be achieved in four years. VM could no doubt manage to do their 60% of the country once project Lightning is complete and they've upgraded parts of their network. Possible OR's existing cabinet-based g.fast will also get to about 60%, and can be done in the timescale. There's a lot of overlap between the two, and I can't imagine that the total would be more than about 70%.

So that would need 25% needing either FTTP or some form of hybrid FTTrN. In either case, that 25% represents around 7m properties, which is a hell of a roll-out rate not to mention a goodly amount of capex. Certainly way over £10bn of capex given these will be mostly in the upper quartile of cost.

Ofcom could help a lot if the regulatory regime was changed for these areas and they didn't insist on national pricing and allowed a forced retirement of copper where it makes sense.

Alternatively the chairman of BT has got his "super" and "ultra" fast labels mixed up (or it's misreported, not having heard the exchange).

if they removed the national pricing then costs in rural areas would rise, that national pricing actually subsidises those areas.

So you saying the combined coverage of VM and FTTC right now is below 95%?

To enable cabinet based g.fast is a doddle compared to what they had to do for FTTC, its just adding a new cabinet and some g.fast equipment inside it.

For a cabinet to do ultrafast via g.fast you are limiting the range, so the gap between cabinet with pod and actual ultrafast speeds will be greater than the gap you have superfast. That could be filled with FTTP of course, but announced plans only talk of 40,000 to 50,000 G.fast pods, not the ~80,000 or more needed to do a 1:1 for all VDSL2 cabinets live now, let alone in another year.

the Gap required would be less now than what it was -- depends if you want to do anything abgut -

your developer chose to provide only copper lines

the 2020 is 30 mbps - or what that a deliberate mistyope from you !!!!

what utter and compete rubbish 3.5bn spend and business gets lambasted

none else is going to spend any money !!!!

Play the audio and you will find the chairman did not say 95% ultrafast.

The interruptions appear to have lead to write up leading to a miss quote.

I listened earlier and he does say the word "ultrafast" but it is whilst the interviewer is talking over him. However, the quote they have given was not directly stated and therefore should not have been in quotation marks.

EDIT : At 30 seconds he seems to say "that more than 95% will have ultrafast" but I don't think it is directly linked to a date.

EDIT 2 : OK another listening from 27 seconds and he does say "by 2020 we'll have more than 95% will have ultrafast"

Edited by ian72 (Tue 22-Nov-16 16:22:35)

All hinges on whether you hear

"by 2020 we'll have more than 95% will have ultrafast"
or
"by 2020 and we'll have ultrafast" and the interview shifts so he seems to not give an ultrafast coverage figure.

It is messy at that point in the interview when trying to decipher via a low bit rate news feed

Did chase BT press office, and the 95% was about existing targets and with interruption between sentences things are now all confused.

If the interviewer hadn't been talking over him and actually let him answer it may have been clearer.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Play the audio and you will find the chairman did not say 95% ultrafast.

He said "by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95% will have ultra-fast ..." at 0:29 then John Simpson started talking over him.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Play the audio and you will find the chairman did not say 95% ultrafast.

He said "by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95% will have ultra-fast ..." at 0:29 then John Simpson started talking over him.

I'm with this interpretation.

To be clear, the use of the word "ultrafast" is at a much lower volume, in mid-stutter, and was said (by Michael Rake) while John Humphrys was talking over him - insistent on getting an answer to the question of "when?", but missing the potentially ground-breaking announcement happening in front of him!

The reduction in volume and the stutter, part way through the sentence, suggests to me that Michael Rake's attention had moved onto John Humphrys' interruption/question but his mouth was just filling in the gap.

If he had been left to continue his direction of thought, I think he's likely to have recognized he misspoke. But we'll never know, because John Humphrys didn't have the patience to listen and explore the subject.

The listener can be left to decide whether aggressive questioning ever actually gets the answer you wanted to hear.

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

the 2020 is 30 mbps - or what that a deliberate mistyope from you !!!!

That is a mistype from you ... 30 millibits per second is rather slow

There is a possibility that he said:

"by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95%, we'll have ultra-fast .." as per MrS's suggestion.

Very difficult when in that sort of situation to tell where commas might be. Personally I think he just made a mistake but it is definitely not clear cut.

In reply to a post by ian72:

There is a possibility that he said:

"by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95%, we'll have ultra-fast .." as per MrS's suggestion.

Yes, listening again it probably is "we'll have ultra-fast" rather than "will have ultra-fast" which completely changes the meaning.

Someone in a studio with access to mike recording and a slow down playback for audio should be able to decipher it.

(HINT: Used to have to do some of this for figuring out if artists used a swear word or something that sounded similar)

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by ian72:

There is a possibility that he said:

"by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95%, we'll have ultra-fast .." as per MrS's suggestion.

Yes, listening again it probably is "we'll have ultra-fast" rather than "will have ultra-fast" which completely changes the meaning.

Agree - he could indeed be saying that.

In any case, BT aren't likely to be making any more commitments until Ofcom have decided what to do with Openreach.

Had he had the opportunity to finish the sentence it may have even been something like:

"by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95%, we'll have ultra-fast available to 4 households where our senior management live"

I suspect it was an incomplete sentence and the rest could have been almost anything.

As it happens combined VM & OR FTTC coverage is below 95% (at least at superfast speeds), but that's not the point. Not all those on FTTC cabinets are close enough to benefit from g.fast speeds, even if OR intend to upgrade all cabinets, which is doubtful as some will only yield a relatively small number of customers. OR are surely likely to concentrate on VM areas as that's where the competition will be.

Factor that in, an I doubt there are more than (optimistically) 75% likely to have ultrafast speed available to them unless there was a massive amount of investment on either FttRN or FTTP along with the worksforce to roll it out.

Andrew

Even on the iplayer recording which is a better quality, John talks over the sentence so that it is not clear BUT there is a gap between the 95% and the Ultra fast which sounds like he was saying

"by 2020 we will have more than 95%", talked over by John "when" "(we will) have Ultrafast"

The item is at 01.17.50 on the Today programme on 22/11/16.

In reply to a post by kasg:

He said "by 2020, we'll have, you know, more than 95% will have ultra-fast ..." at 0:29 then John Simpson started talking over him.

Apologies to John Simpson, of course I meant John Humphrys.