In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Universal FTTP is not that expensive when you look at the big picture. FTTC is limited and increasingly BT are have to spend more and more money to keep it working or push speeds up very marginally

FTTP does not mean you automatically put Fibre in to every home it would follow the VM approach and the Fibre would just pass your door and would only be connected to the home if you subscribed. There are advantages though to every home having fibre as it means you can do away with the legacy voice system and FTTC system which would save a lot of costs and allow the redundant copper to be recovered and sold off

What do you not understand about the phrase UNIVERSAL FTTP - that means every property. And will you be picking up te bill for an friend of a friends install? One property, needing something like 15km of ducting and tens of thousands?

Been involved in a few building closures, it can cost many millions to get out of a building for BT this would include paying the LLU and mobile operators for moving their kit.

Until you can provide everybody on the exchange with FTTP you have to have another building close enough to serve the copper from and pay LLU operators to move their kit and take the flak for the reduced speeds their customers get due to the longer copper distance.

Remember that it could be construde as anti competitive as it tends to move anyone wanting a decent BB speed to Fibre products and could leave LLU operators with 'stranded assets' in the form of ADSL2+ equipment. ( Mind you they may be happy with being compensated but it all reduces your pot for FTTP rollout).

As Andrew pointed out the buildings are no longer BTs so the value to BT is less than expected and the long leases may actually cost BT to pay off the lessor. ( Howdens are still paying for some ex-MFI leases years after vacating them)

Nice idea to float and I'm sure BT look regularly for possible buildings but not feasible until BT is allowed to remove the copper and migrate all customers to fibre in an area. North York where Sky Talktalk are using City fibre could be the first place this is possible on a regulatory basis but still very expensive as it would lead to BT, City fibre and Virgin all having 'fibre' networks in the same area.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

My wife spent half her working life buying space for new exchanges and exchange expansion, and the other half selling them or the add-on bits off and setting up leaseback.

Puts me in mind (a little) of this Dilbert gem:

http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-07-20

In reply to a post by MHC:

What do you not understand about the phrase UNIVERSAL FTTP - that means every property. And will you be picking up te bill for an friend of a friends install? One property, needing something like 15km of ducting and tens of thousands?

I wonder, if we were in the early 1900s, would we have a "thinkelectricity" with people like you saying "rural electrification? are you mad?!?!?! who will pay to have the wires strung to all those country piles".

Or the spread of water/sewerage and (to a lesser extent) gas pipes to every moderately dense area going.

Of course, it happened because the government decided it would happen, it resulted in huge economic benefits, it was paid off long ago, and no one talks about it now. Decent internet is quickly becoming as important as those utilities - and depending on where you live, BT and co may already have strung fibre to those far flung premises

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Apr-16 15:03:18)

Did the government decide that sewerage and gas would happen? Or was it the market?

I know I grew up in a house that had no mains drainage (and doesn't now unless the new owner decides to pay to get it) and only received gas in the around 2000 (and I believe the landowner paid a fair bit towards it).

And I'm pretty sure if you build a new house and there is no electricity nearby then you pay the going rate to get the lines installed to the house.

As far as I am aware you pay for getting all of these services provisioned and it can be pretty expensive (a colleague bought a house and was going to get gas but was quoted I think about £30K).

If people are willing to pay the full cost of fibre then they can have it - but generally people aren't whereas they will pay for electric and water because they are truly essentials.

In reply to a post by sor:

Or the spread of water/sewerage and (to a lesser extent) gas pipes to every moderately dense area going.

A few miles from Aberdeen - the Hydrocarbon capital of te UK. Do we have gas? NO!

Friends 3 miles from Maidenhead - still no gas, still no mains drainage!

In reply to a post by ian72:

And I'm pretty sure if you build a new house and there is no electricity nearby then you pay the going rate to get the lines installed to the house.

As far as I am aware you pay for getting all of these services provisioned and it can be pretty expensive (a colleague bought a house and was going to get gas but was quoted I think about £30K).

Correct and water supply too. Yes you can do the trenching and maybe some ducting/pipework, which has to be to the right standard and inspected, however there are charges and they can be very high.


£30k for gas - they would not be the first to be quoted those sort of prices!

In reply to a post by ian72:

Did the government decide that sewerage and gas would happen? Or was it the market?

I know I grew up in a house that had no mains drainage (and doesn't now unless the new owner decides to pay to get it) and only received gas in the around 2000 (and I believe the landowner paid a fair bit towards it).

And I'm pretty sure if you build a new house and there is no electricity nearby then you pay the going rate to get the lines installed to the house.

As far as I am aware you pay for getting all of these services provisioned and it can be pretty expensive (a colleague bought a house and was going to get gas but was quoted I think about £30K).

If people are willing to pay the full cost of fibre then they can have it - but generally people aren't whereas they will pay for electric and water because they are truly essentials.

The government subsidises utility companies in many ways. I get a £50 reduction on my water bill each year because of where I live, for example

But in all of these cases the infrastructure is usually nearby, like at the road - you simply have to pay for the extension into your home.

With fibre, there is no such option short of getting a leased line from an exchange (let's not talk about the abortion that is (or was) FTTP on demand). It'd be like the electricity company deciding that if you pay for a supply for your new home, it has to either be a supply that could barely power a fan because you live far away from a substation, or it must be 3 phase and have enough capacity to power a small factory - with installation and rental costs to match

If you choose to build your house in the middle of nowhere, then connection costs will be high. But we're not really talking about that - but already fairly populated areas where BT or the other utilities would still easily be able to connect lots of homes (as they aren't a city centre, it's still "rural"). Or, in the case of FTTP, it would include urban areas too - where it should be easily profitable

The problem with this idea that everyone should pay for the "full cost of fibre" themselves is that you lose all the economies of scale involved with doing so. It's much cheaper for BT to wire up an entire street (even only as far as the DP) in one go than to have to design and engineer separate connections for each house that opts for it (which will be the case even if you manage to order FTTPoD)

In reply to a post by MHC:

A few miles from Aberdeen - the Hydrocarbon capital of te UK. Do we have gas? NO!

Friends 3 miles from Maidenhead - still no gas, still no mains drainage!

Hence "to a lesser extent"... I don't have mains gas either (though a major pipeline runs outside the village, there is nothing inside), and I'd gladly pay to be connected up if the pipes were to be run outside my house. Every other utility has been available for decades

These replies miss the point of my post entirely, unfortunately. The fact is that when those projects were proposed all the way back then, there would be people like yourselves claiming that it's too expensive or impractical, basically impossible - but fortunately such views were not listened to. We see this today whenever FTTP is mentioned. As I've said in another thread, in Britain we enjoy aiming for mediocrity and spending more time and effort finding ways not to do something properly, and it is unfortunate.

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Apr-16 16:59:42)

I clicked along a few. I like this one as well.

In reply to a post by sor:

These replies miss the point of my post entirely, unfortunately. The fact is that when those projects were proposed all the way back then, there would be people like yourselves claiming that it's too expensive or impractical, basically impossible - but fortunately such views were not listened to. We see this today whenever FTTP is mentioned. As I've said in another thread, in Britain we enjoy aiming for mediocrity and spending more time and effort finding ways not to do something properly, and it is unfortunate.

The biggest difference is that (at the time), utilities were Government owned, so national expansion was funded by the population via taxes. It also didn't need to be concerned with any competing providers being put out of business - as there were none.

The family silver was sold a long time ago, so the utilities are now 'market driven' and answer to their shareholders. Indeed they have a legal obligation to do so.