"Just nip up there and patch 'er in"

Local town has 2 PIA providers (plus OR and Virgin in the street). Lots of choice, but it does makes the poles a little....fussy. This is repeated right across the town, so every pole looks like it's ready to snap in the middle!

I wonder if there is anything that would stop another provider coming in and adding more clutter, or whether there are rules to say "enough is enough" at some point?

Anyone else spotted any more "buckaroo" loaded poles in their area?

Edited by daern (Thu 12-Sep-24 09:24:36)

It’s being repeated all over. The push to deploy seems to override all else. That pole would be almost completely unable to be worked on without a hoist.

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network. But others seem more worried by choice than aesthetics.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network.

To be fair, had this been the case, I suspect we'd all be stuck on GPON and I'd probably still be waiting for Openreach to deign to fibre up my street. While it's certainly a bit of a mess, at least it's delivering multiple options and, in other cases, actually delivering what the primary provider has not.

Interestingly, I've only ever seen my own altnet working with hoists. I'm yet to see them use a ladder. I suspect over time this will become the norm, partly out of H&S and partly out of necessity.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network. But others seem more worried by choice than aesthetics.

Service providers renting dark fibre, right?

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network. But others seem more worried by choice than aesthetics.

Service providers renting dark fibre, right?

Bit like your water, gas and electricity suppliers, then?

However, the great god competition means that a country on its financial knees is spending millions if not billions of pounds which could be better invested elsewhere on unnecessarily duplicating infrastructure.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Service providers renting dark fibre, right?

If everyone had a direct point to point link back to the exchange then this would make sense, but the whole "passive optical network" design means that groups of residences would inevitably have to share some degree of technology, more sophisticated than just dark fibre. It does sound good on paper, but we can already see that technology moves quickly and there's a risk that a "national infrastructure" would end up being stuck on older, obsolete tech because there's no incentive for the service provider to deliver anything more. I'm rather attached to my 1G upload, which I'm certain wouldn't have been an option had PIA not been made available. Actually, being honest, I don't think I'd have FTTP at all...

It's not an easy situation though and the waste is pretty obvious to see. How do other countries deal with this? Are shared fibre infrastructures the norm, or have we fallen into the "ring main vs radial" hole once again?

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

However, the great god competition means that a country on its financial knees is spending millions if not billions of pounds which could be better invested elsewhere on unnecessarily duplicating infrastructure.

The good news is the country (commercially) isn't on its knees. The public sector might be. Our current Government unfortunately assumes the public finances are the economy. The Sky News data journalist has tried to correct this a couple of times

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network. But others seem more worried by choice than aesthetics.

It would be wonderful, but for competition reasons, perhaps two, national providers, run by vastly different teams, both open access, and regulated. Unlike the copper days, there is more configuration choice in FTTP, and not all wholesale networks are interested in offering the latest options.

Heck the 2019 election, one party offered to nationalise all broadband... unsurprisingly they didn't get in.

Edited by jchamier (Thu 12-Sep-24 21:17:31)

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network. But others seem more worried by choice than aesthetics.

Service providers renting dark fibre, right?

Bit like your water, gas and electricity suppliers, then?

However, the great god competition means that a country on its financial knees is spending millions if not billions of pounds which could be better invested elsewhere on unnecessarily duplicating infrastructure.

Completely agree.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The solution would have been a single fibre provider supplying the network, and service providers ‘renting’ network to use over that network. But others seem more worried by choice than aesthetics.

Service providers renting dark fibre, right?

Whether it is dark fibre or lit fibre doesn't make any difference to the commercial fundamentals:

1. Someone has to build this network
2. Someone has to own and manage this network
3. Service providers need a way to interconnect to this network so they can rent it

We already have such a national, shared fibre network: it's the Openreach PON network. Sure, it's lit rather than dark. It could have been built dark, but it doesn't really make any difference to commercials. With a dark fibre network, providers would likely have to install their own equipment in the head-end exchanges - and there would be 30 times as many backhaul cables into the exchanges, and huge fibre patching areas required. Those are just practical difficulties, which the lit network avoids. The dark fibre would allow sale of ultra-high-speed services (like 10G); hardly anyone wants to buy those today.

Commercially though, it would be the same. Openreach, who already own the copper infrastructure had no financial incentive to run fibre alongside it to the same set of captive users, *until* competition forced them to do so.

Could you have a government-financed fibre network running *alongside* Openreach? No - look at how the Australian NBN turned out.

Could you have a commercially-financed national fibre network running *alongside* Openreach? No - who's going to pay for it? It would just be like having one giant monopoly altnet instead of multiple altnets.

In any case, if Openreach were left with a copper-only network it would die from irrelevance, so it would be forced to roll out fibre just to stay alive. Which is what's happening today.

We also have something close to a national dark fibre network: we have a national open access duct and pole network. If someone wanted to install a shared "last mile" network and rent it out to service providers, they would be free to do so. The reality is, nobody wants to build it, and even if they did, the service providers don't want to rent it. It looks better to their investors to say they own the asset, rather than rent it. The rental case would expose more clearly how dubious their business plans are to make money in the cut-throat retail ISP sector (which, frankly, nobody makes money out of)