Merry Christmas to the forgotten urbanites

I loiter on these forums, but rarely post. This is my annual grumble...

I live in a small town (Tewkesbury) that has been "fibre-enabled" since 2012 or so. I am very close to my street cabinet and reasonably close to the exchange, so I get 15Mbs or so. I'm sure many will be saying that this is not bad and I shouldn't grumble. And of course I know that many people are much worse off than me. However, for most of them there is significant investement through BDUK or an alternative such as VirginMedia.

I work from home and would gladly pay for FTTH because it would significantly improve my daily working experience. Sadly, my cabinet isn't enabled. Openreach appear uninterested (I suspect the cabinet is too small). Our BDUK (Fastershire) has changed their objective so they will only help those with less than 10Mbs. And of course, I have no alternative to fall back on (eg Virgin).

My biggest gripe is all the noise being made about investment in FTTH isn't going to help those like me one bit. We are significantly improving the situation for rural dwellers and massively improving it for a lucky few in the biggest cities. But for those like me, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel at all.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Nothing in the Autumn Statement on FTTH spending/investment indicated it would go to rural areas, in fact where that investment goes is down to the commercial operators who access that investment fund.

I loathe the term fibre enabled town, almost as much as some providers who talk about Gigabit cities, since there are still gaps, and I really wonder how much of that is also used abroad to convey a better picture than is really the case.

Actually, I wasn't assuming that the FTTH investment would go to rural areas. But I was assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that it will go to premises that can currently get FTTC.

It will. Or some even better technology will - there is talk of 5G (probably with mods I expct) replacing landline broadband altogether.

But for those with FTTC, then I suggest at least a decade before any gets replaced. There are millions without even FTTC to be sorted out first. Often with well under 10Mbps on ADSLx.

Where BT intend to deploy G.Fast, at least in initial deployments, I think you're right.

But BT also intend to deploy FTTH to new-builds and to businesses - in high streets and business parks. Businesses in high streets and business parks have been markedly under-prioritised in the FTTC rollout.

On my exchange, the cabinets that haven't yet been upgraded to FTTC are mainly ones that look to be both small and business-oriented areas, so might get targeted with FTTP over the next few years.

And all depends on who access's that money, if its not BT Group or Openreach, then why follow the footprint of a 100 year old copper system...

That I think is the key point.

BT/Openreach is the only operator interested in improving copper (or in some cases, aluminium) network. If and when they get extra funding, they can choose between two paths: use that money to go fibre, which will set them on the same level or even behind other fibre operators, or use the money to improve copper throughput where they can (G.Fast), which would allow them to compete with Virgin in these areas.

If and when they choose the copper strategy, it will suck their investment capital. Speed will improve in those areas already served by the fastest FTTC lines. Very little will happen to those without FTTC access now or with long copper lines and slow FTTC speeds, unless "community funding" appears.

I sincerely hope someone will step up and start building FTTP with some of that money. There are already providers for high rise buildings, but the vast majority of the country is something else. Cabling suburban and low rise areas seems to be profitable everywhere else in Europe, so I wonder what have we done wrong to make it a commercial blunder to invest more universally into FTTP, not just cherry picking large blocks of flats.

Hannu

if you are close to the stret cab and you have a fibre product you should be getting more that 15 mbps -- that 15 mbps sounds lik a copper only to the exchange so something you have indicated does not tie up

On much of Europe more people live in apartments, so the cherry picking may be going on still, but does not look as bad they have a higher proportion of flats.

Not so sure about that.

Those countries I happen to know something about started in urban areas, but blocks of flats there tend to be smaller than what Hyperoptic would be willing to do here. Telcos have been expanding without any public funding to suburban detached house streets already 5+ years ago. Internet connections are comparable to UK prices in other Western European countries, though they may appear more expensive as a separate line rental is not required.

One big difference seems to be the commercial model. In those countries, it seems to be a telco builds their economic model around "infrastructure". Here Openreach refuses to upgrade cabinets if they don't see a business case, and exchange only line problem awaits solution for the very same reason. It seems to me that they have taken the market model to a much lower level. Instead of making sure their infrastructure creates profit, they expect every cabinet to be profitable. Hyperoptic etc expect profit from every building they cable.

The continental model seems to be based on some kind of cross subvention at least in urban and semi urban areas, where profits from existing part of network are used to fuel expansion. As they are still making profit, it can't be a completely bad model, and at some point they will have huge FTTP networks generating steady cash flow.