Google probably save a large amount of tax by sinking spare cash that is already inside US Borders into the Google Fiber project and the massive amounts of feel good PR it generates.

If you look at the man power involved in my installation:

1) One fibre engineer - 2-3 hours to 'survey' the installation
2) One normal engineer to put in a pull rope. Had to remove some concrete and then found a blockage - half a day
3) External contractors to dig up the driveway with a digger, remove blockage and put back to normal - half a day
4) Two fibre engineers to do the external work - half a day
5) One fibre engineer to do the internal work - half a day (he said people want the extensions and this can take a full day)

That's a huge cost considering the fibre network was already installed in my street.

Edited by deleted (Thu 08-May-14 13:46:47)

In reply to a post by ian72:

A proper regulatory environment to encourage Openreach towards a copper replacement programme would be good

Interested in what thoughts you have as to how this could be done? They could I suppose get taxes on fibre lowered or removed but people would complain that is just helping to extend BTs monopoly.

Allow BT to remove copper when they provision fibre to an address.

The Fibre Only eXchange, Dedington isn't fibre only, it just has ubiquitous FTTP coverage. The copper is still there and as far as I know the vast majority of those with access to FTTP are still using copper. Those with FTTP still have a copper line running next to it for telephony due to BT's 'transitional' pricing on FTTP.

EDIT: BT's monopoly isn't going anywhere. Either we accept that and move to a model like that in Japan where it's NTT-everything with some altnet here and there or carry on with our current half-backside LLU-obsessed model which has left a series of competitive lowest common denominator services.

For most of the UK, ignoring Virgin Media, it's going to be Openreach for the foreseeable. If we could just get with that programme and have a regulator that will work with Openreach on VULA over GEA rather than obsessing over physical LLU of obsolete copper loops that'd be awesome.

Edited by deleted (Thu 08-May-14 14:17:24)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Should be lower, and am sure in the UK as we are seeing for FTTC that calls for lower wholesale prices would be along very soon.

Perhaps if BT's retail / wholesale pricing weren't so close to the Openreach pricing those calls couldn't have happened. It's not about the wholesale pricing being too high but margin squeeze, again.

Edited by deleted (Thu 08-May-14 14:13:55)

which is a bad thing when crunching the numbers for FTTP viability. Talktalk would want to sell it for a fiver.