In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Might even be room in the cabinet. I suspect they will want to avoid civils, just adding tubing and blow fibre to the property in question.

There was the recent quote from planning permission, that BT intended a lifetime of 20 years for the FTTC cabinets.

I would have thought that they'd want the fibre overlay to be in the ground longer than this - 40 years+ is my guess.

Those two 'facts' would combine to suggest that the fibre overlay would be best kept out of the cabinet. It could equally suggest that the lifetime of the cabinets just got a tiny bit longer

Am I right in thinking that the fibre used to the cabinet is the same PON that BT are currently deploying FTTP on?

Hmmm Bonded FTTP i think

I don't think that the cabinets themselves will be used at all for this.

By the way, we all have DELs, you are thinking about E0 lines.

I'm not sure I'd infer actual plant lifespans from the estimates in the planning application.
AFAICT BT weren't asking for planning permission for the cabs to last 20 years, merely indicating the sort of timeframe they expect them to be around.

I suspect that 20 years is a nice number to give to the planning boards - too long to grant as temporary / time limited permission but not "permanent" as e.g. a new house would be, so unlikely to need as much scrutiny / consideration.

Am I right in thinking that the fibre used to the cabinet is the same PON that BT are currently deploying FTTP on

No, FTTC uses point to point fibre from exchange (head end) to cabinet

Likely to be same fibre cable, just take a fibre pair and connect to an FTTP splitter and you have capacity for 32 Premises.

I suspect that mostly to start with this would be available for business type uses. So web developers etc may want this, and would be useful in mixed residential / business areas.

How many people will want to pay the extra £20-£30 per month that it will cost for 110Mb over the upto 80Mb product for home residential use? Those running a business from home are the likely users.

They used 128-line ECI cabs in my area, which doesn't have Virgin Media. I estimate that would allow 40-50% take-up on my cab and that's not an issue yet, as there was only 1 line connected as of midday today

However there are other cabs in the area which serve large blocks of flats, where ADSL doesn't exceed 4meg. I expect those ones will fill up pretty quickly.

I believe there is a fibre connection on the front interface cards in the FTTC cabinets, so maybe connect a splitter to that and fibre to the end user

I suspect a lot of consumers would be happy to pay an extra fee to be connected directly via fibre.

personally if BT offered, say :-

80/20 FTTC - £35 a month unlimited.

300 (or more) /200 FTTP - £40 a month, plus install fee of £300-500.

I think i would take the latter.

Particularly since if you own your own home it potentially adds to the value if you sell in the future...
Add the reliability i.e. not subject to RF noise and scope for 1 Gbps in a few years

BT has not confirmed pricing, but I suspect that you will be able to pay for the 110 Mbps product so long as you cover the install fee.