FTTP Fibre First Towns Build Maps.

If you go to: https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/fibre-fi...
It now shows FTTP Fibre First Towns Build Maps.

Exchange list:

https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/docs/def...

They did say more detail would be coming, had been meaning to go digging and build an exchange list as the ones to keep an eye on.

I'm on the Headingley exchange (or I would be if I wasn't with Virgin) and Openreach are all over the area / my street at the moment, presumably working on this. Maybe a stupid question but what sort of speeds are they looking at offering when the work's done in an area?

330/50 seems to be the highest residential ISP's are selling.

There are 1000/220 products that OpenReach sell over FTTP but they are only available in certain areas and sold by specific ISP's as expensive business products.

There's nothing stopping other ISP's selling 1000/220 as a residential product at a later date though. That's provided they have the backhaul to cope with it. Comes with a hefty install cost of £500 + vat.

OpenReach FTTP products and prices:

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/prici...

That's the prices OpenReach charge ISP's. The final price for customers is whatever the ISP decide.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 13-Feb-19 14:12:36)

Cheers, will keep an eye on checkers and have a look at what's available when they change.

Looking at the map and list on those links shows how much OR have to go.

I live in the Greater Manchester area and unless its my colourblindness, on the map it just shows build in progress, on the western part and the southern parts.

I know there are some full fibre products in the next town to me so maybe the map only shows the fibre first projects. I'd have included the other full fibres if I was them as the map looks bare.

https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#...

What I know is live in the Greater Manchester area

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Looking at the map and list on those links shows how much OR have to go.

I live in the Greater Manchester area and unless its my colourblindness, on the map it just shows build in progress, on the western part and the southern parts.

I know there are some full fibre products in the next town to me so maybe the map only shows the fibre first projects. I'd have included the other full fibres if I was them as the map looks bare.

I'd recommend a look at the list and a note of the caveats Openreach mentioned. They were very clear that this was a specific subset covering that one programme

Hi

There's nothing stopping other ISP's selling 1000/220 as a residential product at a later date though. That's provided they have the backhaul to cope with it. Comes with a hefty install cost of £500 + vat.

They can't support too many customers at this sort of speed because the fibre is a shared resource and runs at 2500Mbps down then is shared between several properties. You don't get your own fibre back to the exchange or network switch with GPON that BT are installing, but share a single fibre between several other properties. I'm not sure how many BT will split that signal fibre up between, anyone know?

Basically the light from the single fibre is split by prisms and sent to all the connected properties. Data is broadcast to every property connected to that single fibre at the same time, so we all see everyone else's data on the end of our individual fibres, with the ONT (aka fibre modem) ignoring everyone else's but our own. Expensive kit in the exchange is responsible for multiplexing everyone's data into that broadcast. Sending data back up is more tricky, so each property gets a time slot where they can send data back in a round robin type fashion, which is why this technology again favours download speeds rather than upload speeds.

I suspect the extra install cost of £500 is to cover someone coming out and switching the fibre to a spare one that will then only ever serve a couple of properties, rather than half a dozen or so, in order to offer those speeds. A typical domestic street may not have enough spare fibres to offer everyone a 1Gig connection speed. The other reason 1Gbps is available but not the norm and hard to get, is so BT can take part in the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme.

The positives of this type of install is cost and speed, as you only need powered equipment at the exchange, with all the splitting to properties being passive (just light being split by prisms) and requires no power or kit. The negatives is contention down that single fibre cable and offering fast symmetrical speeds, plus fibre breaks can be more difficult to find.

The sharing of that single fibre isn't a problem as such as the whole internet is shared and contended, and not too different from everyone connecting back point-to-point to a VDSL cabinet and then being sliced and diced up together and sent over the single fibre cable back to the exchange. But it does limit speeds that can be offered as it is always a bottleneck.

Regards

Phil

OpenReach do a 32 way split.
They can sell as many 1000/220 services as they like.

The £500 install fee is banked by OpenReach and will be used to upgrade to XG-PON where necessary.

edit: typo

2nd edit: The PON split isn't the limiting factor. It's the backhaul.
Many networks do a 32 way split on G-PON with 1 gig services.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 13-Feb-19 16:51:36)