Bonded FTTC lines are far more cost effective - if you do not want or need a leased line.

The new FTTPoD pricing takes effect now because of the length of time it will take an order to progress.

And how much do you think it actually costs to

a) Install FTTP
b) Provide a 330 Mbps service that is not contented to death

Perceived wisdom is $1000 per property connected in urban areas, when you are connecting them all in one go. Doing it bit by bit costs a lot more.

But that's interesting if you do the maths.

If you round up the number of homes in the UK to 30 million you would be looking at around £30 billion to roll out fibre to the home.

That doesn't even amount to the rumoured £50 billion value of scrap copper in the BT network. Then you offset the cost of the billions that have been spent on ADSL & FTTC, plus the massive maintenance costs on the old copper network.

If it was a politician making up figures to justify this you could factor in billions of £'s to be saved by the country being better connected, reduced traffic on the roads and no need for a $42 billion train track.

Edited by Ripley (Thu 20-Feb-14 21:12:36)

In reply to a post by Ripley:

no need for a $42 billion train track.

I think ThinkBroadband did a blog on the benefits of FTTC to all versus the HS2 train. The politicians want their toy trainset

even people I know that are not net fluent, have heard of video conferencing they think hs2 is bonkers and a out of date idea.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 20-Feb-14 23:45:42)

Is there £1500 of scrap copper for every telephone line?
Current scrap prices are £1300 per tonne.

Telephone wire, i.e. one pair is around 7kg per km, with approx 30 million phone lines in the UK and an average length of say 4km that is 4x7x30,000,0000 = 840,000,000 kg of copper or 840,000 tonnes thus around £1092,000,000 of value, i.e. £1 billion

How did someone get a £50 billion figure?

Its from a old article from the register which the guardian covered but they got the figures wrong, as the scrap value at the time was only £2.5-5 Billion.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/sep/23/bt-c...

My quick maths then is more in the ball park, I had used insulated cable, but estimate of length of cable was out, probably due to all the spare pairs that goto properties

The value of the copper is also offset by the cost of removal, and the scrap prices quoted may be for clean copper, IE not covered in insulation etc. To get the full value it has to be pure copper, no insulation or steel from armoured cables etc otherwise the scrap prices are much less.

FTTP is a serious loss maker for Openreach. Areas of Milton Keynes (which is a relatively new city with newer underground conduit/pipes) have cost an absolutely fortune to feed fibre cabling to due to countless blockages and other problems.