But on the flip side anon, I hope you don't believe that if the telephone network (as was) remained in the arms of the Government that it would be in better shape than it is now?

It was certainly a shambles back then and all they had to contend with was voice. I do agree on your earlier points though that people still expect things from BT as if they were the government, its just a private company and operates like any other in terms of wanting to make a profit and staying out of areas it can't make profit

Yep.. ^

I'd also like to know what they are connecting the backhaul too? So.... they (the consortium) gain access to ducts/poles via PIA and connect in a rural area, but to what?

Backhaul to the VM network? Or to a totally new core/backbone that Fuji is standing up?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

VM/ntl/tw have consistently in the past decade been ahead of BT and BT will release new services as a reaction to what cable are doing.

Really? The full decade? NTL/Virgin didn't have anything equivalent to DSL when I first got connected in 2000.

Of course, I might have missed some spectacular launch by NTL. Their network is less than 100 yards from my house, but they've resolutely refused to both extending their network onto our estate (~100 houses) in the 15 years we've been here, so they haven't had my fullest attention. But in 2000, I was most certainly the first of all the people I know that switched onto any kind of "always-on" technology.

The feeling I always had from NTL had been reticence & feet-dragging, and lack of funds. Certainly not innovation. It has changed with Virgin a little, but there is too much feel of going after the low end still - so still no high-end innovation. And that doesn't begin to get into the "quality" of their core network.

I don't see BT as innovating either, but I *do* see serious commitment to rolling out far and wide - and the volume involved in doing that shouldn't be ignored either.

To me, the cable companies had the chance to really innovate, and take the game outside BT's level from the off. They just didn't want to.

I'm sure they had reasons - but they're commercial reasons, just like BT's.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

BT have been particurly agressive on the local loop resisting in many ways to spend money on it to fix problems, mostly tightening up the rules on engineer visits and now adding a large detterent to stop isp's booking callouts. FTTC is a new direction for them and that in itself is dissapointing in that (a) its not really future proof evident by the fact it will be obselete by this new network before BT even finish the rollout,

LOL. Everything is "out of date" when you compare it with tech in the lab, or with tech that no-one can afford. Right now there isn't a technology that can get deployed out in the field *in a way the public are willing to pay for*, so you can only really class it as "theoretically" out of date, but not practically.

In this last decade, BT have rolled out 3 different broadband/DSL access technologies nationwide(-ish) (with the 3rd still going on), and are well into their 4th (FTTC) and trialling their 5th (FTTP). They've also rolled out an entirely new core network, because the old one wasn't capable of handling the data volumes that the 3rd or 4th access technologies bring), and are gradually connecting the access network to it.

What's going to happen in the next decade? Another 3 different technologies?

So naturally you are right - FTTC will be out of date, because other things *will* come along to make it obsolete - even technology that we can afford. But the newer stuff will start to be deployed in parallel, and they won't make the old kit obsolete to everyone overnight - the newer technologies will still either only work within small distances, and/or will take time to deploy.

And don't forget that fibre has been available for many years now - so DSL was "out of date" before it was born, right? - but only so long as you had the £££ to pay for it. Fibre, in a form that the public will pay for, is something different.

That seems to be a key thing that people are missing here. Does no-one understand that a full national roll-out takes time & money?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

(b) it has one of the strangest rollout plans I have seen from a major telco. My MP is even going to mention to parliament she has had many complaints about why BT have targeted affluent areas in the county, as it seems I am not the only one who complained.

LOL. In my marketing seminars, I'm told that you should pick a market where there is demand, and customers who have money available!

Anyway, while the plan isn't very comprehensible to us, I'm sure it is internally - we just don't know the requirements & priorities they are using to plan. Ofcom has already given BT free rein to price it how they want. That also implicitly gives them free rein to roll it out as they want.

Don't forget that BT have access to some statistics that we don't - they know *exactly* what the demand is at each exchange, and they know exactly what GB usage is at each exchange. They know how close to overload an exchange is; they know where the core network fibre lines are routed, and they know the topology of the fibre connects from the exchanges back to the core network. They know how competitive the Virgin boys are in each area, and how competitive the LLU lines are in each area (including whether those LLU lines are at capacity or not).

They've had a decade to plot the take-up of ADSL against each exchange and local factors - and they will know best exactly where "affluence" fits into the picture.

If they've monitored their stats over time, they even have a profile of how keen their customers are in certain areas. They will always have some loud and vociferous complainers everywhere, and some stick-in-the-muds. But it is the 80% in the middle that actually matter - and BT know who they are, and what they're likely to do.

We come back to this illusion that somehow rural areas have much worse local loop infrastructure than cities, this has been pushed again and again in the media including this site, people like prince charles even joining in, now the result is a tory party who tend to be pro affluent anyway are dishing out subsidies for rural rollout and BT/VM seem to be targeting outer city areas for investment. At least in VM's case tho their current infrastructure is substantially better than BT's. I keep saying it and will say it again, the new final 3rd as far as BT goes is poor city areas. Luckily a lot of them may have VM cable access.

Who knows all the reasons? Certainly the rural areas have a different set of problems, and will require more money to solve - or a longer wait for the technology that provides the solution. I doubt they are "worse" or "harder", but certainly more costly. Cynically, you'd say that BT also know the government will come up with extra funding so there's no point in planning them in until the offer of funding is there.

For inner cities - it could be that BT is saving the densest city areas for FTTP - or at least those cities where it knows it has decent ducting already in place. But we don't have an inkling about what BT plans to do there, and I guess the results in MK will cause changes to the plans.

Is there a correlation between "poor city areas" and "dense city areas"? I'm not sure.

Certainly BT seem to have said that the FTTC and FTTP areas will not overlap; it's one or the other (although FTTC might infill the tricky parts of an FTTP exchange). So if you are hoping for the fastest fibre, you probably don't want to appear on the FTTC list too soon. In a year's time, people might be moaning that they're on the "poor-relations" list!

^ What he said.

I expect Cisco's involvement will be kit. Who else's kit would it be, Juniper maybe but I doubt it.

Branding around Cisco's name ( I think ) is just to give some weight to this, are Cisco involved in terms of investment? Doubt it, they sell they don't donate

Are they involved in a design and delivery aspect? Doubt it, Fuji will do that.

Pretty much all of BT's network is made up of Cisco kit, I suppose BT could have slung Cisco's name into their 2.5Bill broadband rollout to give it more uumph

Until I hear otherwise I would assume that Cisco are literally just that, supplying the kit.

Agree with this totally.

Sky are also the masters of bundling, and have always tried to tie you into the phone packages alongside the TV, even if they're supplied by very different technology.

When they start putting prices up, people are really making the decision about accepting the rise against their main component - the TV. The broadband is just seen as goign alongside as an extra.

Wrong. Cisco have a critical part to play in the consortium. You dont have partners in a consortium that are not needed. If the roll of Cisco was just to supply kit they would not be in the consortium. You would just buy the hardware from them.
Cisco will be providing support in the Network Design

With both VM and TT in the list, and mention of an Open network, I'd assume that there would be an architecture something similar to BT's - so the Fuji network would have a national core, and some connection point that ISPs can tap into (probably in docklands).

But one very BIG reason to have partners in a consortium is to add PR clout and nothing else.

When your biggest obstacle to success is getting into BT's ducts, and getting BT to drop their charges by 85%, then you need to do a HUGE job of persuading Ofcom. The biggest boot comes from the government, and that means that everything going on now is about politics, posturing, and PR.

This phase is the only one going on right now. Nothing to do with technology or network design. The partners are only there for PR clout at the moment.

Oh - and you're wrong on Cisco's motives for being in the consortium. They may still be "just" a supplier, but by lending their name in this way can be enough to give them exclusivity. Well worth letting your name be added to a letterhead...

Care to inform of this, or are you privy some secret knowledge?

They may simply be mentioned in return for giving a better than average discount of a few thousand 10GigE routers.

Fujitsu is most likely involved because of its FTEL arm that does streetworks, hence the money they are owed due to FibreCity at present.

At a guess its Cisco providing the fibre hardware.

TalkTalk and VM just appear to be two ISP's that have equal billing, remember TalkTalk actually owns an IPTV arm (they bought HomeChoice remember), so would enjoy having decent access into the home.

Lets hope that things like static IP options, and reverse DNS that can be useful for home working/geek users are available without recourse to expensive business plans.

To Fujitsu... who design networks themselves?

I'd like to see a bit more meat on the bones really

Nothing here about Cisco, just Fuji:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13060548

All the articles I have seen just state:- "Underpinned by Cisco�s next-generation technology" but that's no surprise, I'd expect it to be Cisco. There's no talk of them running the network, designing it, owning it etc just sharing a common goal and it being Cisco kit at the heart of it, nothing really to see hear for me, just hype really.