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.

The OP's original post says his cabinet is not enabled nor likely to be so he is on copper.

That's correct and is the whole reason for my grumble

Which country you referring too?

and you get 15 mbps on Copper ?

s

so I assume you not value for money for BDUK as you already get 15 m/bps and so bove the proposed 10 USO
have you spoken you any one in your community about cofounding at as a community

Yes, that all correct. I get 15Mbs on copper and so the BDUK is not interested.

I haven't tried speaking to my neighbours about a community partnership (or whatever its called). My initial problem is actually finding who is connected to my cabinet. I live near the centre of my town with dense housing, so trying to find the limits of the cabinet is not easy. In addition, given we get a very decent 15Mbs I suspect I will find it hard to get much enthusiasm from others.

In reply to a post by MrFied:

Yes, that all correct. I get 15Mbs on copper and so the BDUK is not interested.

Not necessarily. I used to get ~ 18mbps on ADSL2+ and yet my area was FTTC'd by my local BDUK authority (HIE) in 2014.

In reply to a post by MrFied:

My initial problem is actually finding who is connected to my cabinet.

Go here, type in your postcode and then click on your cabinet number (Pxx) to get a list of locations served by that PCP cab.

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Dec-16 08:46:55)

Thanks frogmella. That link certainly gives me a way to narrow it down. I suppose I could leaflet all the houses and see if I get much/any interest.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

Not necessarily. I used to get ~ 18mbps on ADSL2+ and yet my area was FTTC'd by my local BDUK authority (HIE) in 2014.

My local BDUK is Fastershire and their strategy document includes the following two paragraphs:

Fastershire will strive to achieve a Minimum Service Ambition of 10Mbps across the intervention area by the end of 2018

Public subsidy will not be targeted at residential premises which are capable of achieving greater than 15Mbps, funds instead will be focused on areas with the lowest levels of capability

I've also emailed them and had confirmation that I'm out of luck.

Looks like your BDUK authority is quite strict on the qualifying criteria which is understandable. I guess I should be thankful that Highlands & Islands Enterprise did not employ such criteria, at least for IV1/IV2/IV3 postcodes.

Have a look here which gives you examples of past community funded projects wrt costs & timescales involved.

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Dec-16 11:29:42)

In reply to a post by hvis42:

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

The problem in this country is that Ofcom has had, as its main regulatory intervention, the reduction of prices paid by consumers. To achieve this, it has created competition through the use of LLU.

A few outcomes from this drive-down of charges:
a) Broadband bundles, especially via LLU, make broadband look like a "free" product to many people.
b) British consumers now expect extremely cheap broadband.
c) British consumers aren't willing to pay much extra for a "fibre" broadband service.
d) LLU requires an ongoing commitment to copper. BT cannot remove it, even if it wants to.
e) BT has one of the lowest market shares of any incumbent in Europe
f) BT no longer gets enough profit from the competitive part of the market; there is no "spare profit" to cross-subsidise "expansion".

Try not to think of Openreach as having "taken a market model" anywhere. While "fibre broadband" isn't yet regulated, the copper/ADSL regulation is what drives the market here ... plus points (b) and (c) - the Brits won't pay much for broadband, and won't pay much extra for "fibre broadband". The market forced on BT means there isn't a lot of money splashing around the industry.

Telcos might have been expanding FTTP five years ago ... but there wasn't much option back then to achieving anything at or above 100Mbps. Now there *is* an alternative way to achieve hundreds of Mbps. Note that we are seeing Japan and Korea make use of the newest copper technologies (G.Fast and G.now). Even Swisscom have said "�Don�t start [FTTP] if you haven�t done it yet. Put all your efforts on to FTTS [Fibre To The Street] or FTTD [Fibre To The Distribution point]�

This document has a good section on those international comparisons:
http://www.commcham.com/pubs/2016/11/3/fttps-role-in...

_{Edit: Here's a snapshot of one of the figures in that report. It is a scatter graph of the %age of MDUs vs %age of FTTP rollout:
https://s17.postimg.org/jtatbzean/Rob_Kenny_MDUvs_FT...}

Edited by deleted (Wed 07-Dec-16 03:16:09)

Mostly Finland and Sweden, where no one I know seems to be suffering from 2mb/s ADSLs in capital suburban areas and most of them seem to have either FTTP or in case of flats, fibre to the building. I have no idea how the market model works there. I just remember there was no separate line rental cost but the "internet" was about the same as what line rental + internet connection here costs. But this was before fibre, no idea how their fibre products are priced.

UK now has no separate line rental cost too now.

The UK is changing, but it takes time, and that was where Finland etc stole the march, by skipping the DOCSIS/VDSL2 layer and going straight for FTTP.

I believe the models in Finland and Sweden were the same - the governments built dark fibre networks in urban areas where the connection to the premises was the responsibility of the home owner (with tax incentives for paying the connection fee).

When it comes to rural areas in Scandinavian countries, I am fairly sure you have a similar situation to the UK.

Perhaps a similar model should have been implemented in the UK.

Another difference that comes to mind is the local vs country wide aspect. Not sure if it makes any difference, though.

Areas within city boundaries, including suburbia, were traditionally managed by local telcos. Then there were one or two country-wide players (privatised public sector companies). Local telcos started the work in their areas and nationwide players emerged later to provide competition. Here it is the nationwide player who started the work, with its focus split all around the country, and local operators have appeared only recently to compete in the market.

Not sure if this explains anything, though. KCOM area seems to be the worst of the worst, and that is what mostly resembles the market model there.

Another difference that comes to mind is mobile data. Unlimited data bundles have always been there and reasonably priced. Fixed line business had to invest heavily to make its product competitive as mobile data speed predictions have more or less come true. I would swap my 2-3 mb/s adsl to my EE 4G anytime, if I could get unlimited data and not need to worry netflix creating a massive bill.

I guess it isn't all doom and gloom here. There seems to be new funding now, and it is not limited to rural areas anymore. Fibre providers have appeared but they haven't found a business model yet that would allow them to expand elsewhere from the high rise business.

Does anyone know how much truth is there in Openreach complaints that a significant part of their money goes to red tape and fees attached to digging up streets and installing cables to premises? This would be a matter for politicians to sort out if we are lagging behind just because if it is too complicated and expensive to do anything.

In reply to a post by hvis42:

Another difference that comes to mind is the local vs country wide aspect. Not sure if it makes any difference, though.

Areas within city boundaries, including suburbia, were traditionally managed by local telcos. Then there were one or two country-wide players (privatised public sector companies). Local telcos started the work in their areas and nationwide players emerged later to provide competition. Here it is the nationwide player who started the work, with its focus split all around the country, and local operators have appeared only recently to compete in the market.

Over the timescales of 1980's-1990's, the opposite was happening in the UK. Putting Hull to one side, BT was privatised from the GPO, but covered the country as pretty much a monopoly.

The government (at the time of Margaret Thatcher) decided that BT needed competition. BT was barred from putting in fibre or competing in the TV market.
On the phone side, Mercury was allowed to compete (for long distance calls), and licences were created for local cable TV markets. American cable TV companies were much sought after.

Sky and BSB (and others) competed over satellite TV while the cable TVs companies were building out their networks, spending too much, and going bust. The localised cable TV franchises gradually merged (through all the fire sales) and ultimately became a moneyless VM. On satellite, the ultimate outcome was a dominant Sky, with some competition from VM. But VM couldn't afford to grow their network at all.

The TV market was where the money was, though Sky had most of it. Everyone ignored BT, except to keep the prices going down in a network that was perceived to be declining.

What we see today, with internet access, is really a sudden expansion on technology that was designed for something else: either the declining phone market, or the static TV market.

From what I saw of living in Sweden in the 90's-00's, I think the same is true ... in individual blocks and flats. The outlets into each flat stems from the TV infrastructure built into each building. When you take the local kommun's (the municipality, or local council) willingness to put dark fibre in the streets, and add this to the building's original capability, you get a reasonable outcome.

In reply to a post by hvis42:

KCOM area seems to be the worst of the worst, and that is what mostly resembles the market model there.

Ironically perceived to have been in a good state in the 80's, and might be perceived to have become the best by the 20's.

The intervening period - when the government concentrated on TV and cable, but Hull's economy collapsed - wasn't the best.

I know someone in Skelleftea, Sweden that had 10Mb FTTP 10-15 years ago, he was upgraded to 100Mb 10 years ago and could be on higher now. But throughout he complained that his mum was on very slow (sub 5Mb) ADSL in her rural house.

His ISP is http://www.bredbandsbolaget.se/bredband/index.html
You can see the various services on offer there. Looks like they offer service over fibre, DSL (ADSL2+ and VDSL2) and DOCSIS 3.1.

Edited by deleted (Wed 07-Dec-16 19:41:16)

Extrema krav for £43.50 sounds good, but I wouldn't object to Bra fiber.

Mycket bra

I just checked, and it looks like both flats I used to live in (one in Solna, one in Link�ping) could get a service via fibre from Bredbandsbolaget. It was definitely dial-up only when I was there!

But those are, like a lot of places, very well appointed blocks, even if the individual flats can be spartan. They have things like shared laundry rooms in the basement, stocked with good equipment, etc - so they are very used to the idea of spending on communal facilities.

More appropriate to the UK could be their "Fibre on demand to individual homes" page:

In reference to www.bredbandsbolaget.se/villafiber/:

The connection fee is usually between 15 000 to 25 000, depending on conditions in the area where you live. The price includes planning, trenching, cable laying, jointing, installation, connection, equipment in the access point and fiberkonverter in your house. The monthly fee varies depending on the services you order.

If you already have ducts that can be used, we use it. But if that is not possible, we need to dig to pull the fiber cable into the house. We are investigating how this can be done in the best way and let you know in good time if we decided to excavation is necessary or not.
_{(Translation provided by Google)}

With the current SEK-GBP exchange rate, that's a connection fee of £1,400 - £2,300.