From what I read there is not going to be much overbuild in residential areas even if the passive infrastructure is there.

New build, business parks and high streets. Brownfield sites get G.fast.

I'm sure there will be exceptions but this seems to be the way they are going, even though there are going to be millions of residential premises with the infrastructure in place.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by simon194:

Just about any infrastucture build in the late 1960's and 1970's will most likely be aluminium based because of the global copper shortage at that time.

Both my lines are partially aluminium...

The average age of houses on my road must be about 300 years, mine is about 500 years for the main house, extended in the Victorian era, so unless the lines were not installed until ~1960/70 for some reason, BT just decided they liked aluminium here.

There are a couple of complicating factors to both of these statements...

It isn't correct to consider "the 60's" and "the 70's" as a long period of copper shortage (or, more importantly, high copper prices).

Prices were indeed slightly higher from 1968 through to 1975, but there were two significant spikes in 1970 and 1974. I suspect use of aluminium peaked in those two years, rather than being prolonged over a decade+.
Copper price graph here

However, the years in question are also quite significant in the growth in telephone ownership.

In 1966, there were only 4.3 million homes with a phone line, out of (I think) around 17 million - so only 25% of households had a telephone. In 1970, it was 35% of households; in 1975, it had reached 52%, and in 1981, it had reached 75% (of around 20 million).

50% of homes connected over a 15 year period.

That means connecting roughly 3.5% of households per year, or perhaps 700,000 lines: far higher than the rate of building homes.

Even if aluminium was heavily used in only 2 years, it could affect 7% of properties, and amount to about 1.4 million lines.

Looking back, I agree. The 50% could be read in relation to uplift, rather than capacity.

I'm not sure it matters to BT though ... VM have, for a long time covered less than 50% of the country, and don't get laughed at for it. If BT are only aiming at 10-12 million, should it matter to BT *which* 10-12 million they target?

Absolutely right , does my cabinet have FTTC or not, how far am I from my cabinet, what is the quality of my lines etc etc, your internet speed is the proverbial postcode lottery. G.Fast etc etc is not solving the issue, if you already have an FTTC cabinet and you get a G.Fast upgrade, great, your speed will go up, if on the other hand you are like me, on an FTTC cabinet with approx. 2km of copper cable run, it will do diddly. It does not solve the current Swiss chees effect with speeds, it does not fill in the holes, it just creates and ever widening gap between the haves and have nots. It also does not take the lines out of the equation for limiting speeds which means as speed requirements continue to grow we will be back doing this again and again and again until it is finally done properly. We will end up in the same situation we had with trains where we were still trundling out every more sophisticated steam trains decades after the rest of europe had switched to electric trains. We never seem to be able to bite the bullet and move to the inevitable until we have tried every heath robinson contraption we can think of.

It is the 21st century and it is time for a 21st century system, FTTP. Broadband is now an essential utility like electricity, but we seem to accept rubbish from BT that we would never accept from our Electricity supplier. What would you say if your electricity supplier said you can only have a lower current because you are further from the substation, your lights will dim when your neighbours closer to the substation start hovering.

Of course Fibre on demand is massively expensive when each installation is done on a one off adhoc basis, instead of systematically dropping fibre off at all premises along the way.

It is time for the government to take this in hand, and if they want to know what to do the best similar example out there is New Zealand.
No rushing to the next must have speed threshold when they realised if they gave the current monopoly money to upgrade to FTTC (think BDUK) they would be back doing it again and again in the near future. So they sat down and had a good think about it, with the current monopoly shouting about how it would be too expensive and take too long to do FTTP. Their answer was, too expensive? we are not so sure and the benefits to the economy seem to be large multiples of the investment. Take too long? How long is too long, we have plenty of time. They decided the only sensible thing was to do it properly and do it once which can only mean FTTP, and set about getting it done with the following features;
- All lines to deliver minimum 100mbps to each and every subscriber and be gigabit capable, ends any debate about smoke and mirrors over copper
- 10 Year rollout - reduces pressure on funding and engineering resources for such an infrastructure project
- Create a holding company (Crown Fibre Holdings) as the overseer, facilitator and funder of the project
- Create local fibre company in each geographical location and have an open tender process for the right to partner with crown fibre holdings to build and own the network in each area
- The objective of the tender is for Crown fibre holdings to have to contribute as little money as possible
- Crown fibre holdings is a secondary shareholder in the Local fibre companies meaning if the companies make excess profits in the future the Govt gets its money back, so not just a bung to BT like BDUK.
- A local fibre company partner is not allowed to be involved in retailing the services, ended the equivalent of the current debate about BT Openreach and BT retail.
- No more advertising up to speeds, has to be minimum speed only

The rollout is now about halfway through, with the following effects;
- The current monopoly took about five minutes to ditch it's retail operation
- The current monopoly suddenly found huge quantities of investment capital down the back of the sofa and has won approx. two thirds of the tenders as it scrambles to maintain it's market share
- It is far cheaper than the existing monopoly claimed it would be, especially for them as they have the massive advantage of existing conduits and local knowledge
- Without the current monopoly distorting the retail scene it has suddenly become much more competitive with around 90 retailers fighting tooth and nail for your business

It is a fascinating case study in how to do this properly, and it contrasts with here where we seem to do BT's bidding, and Australia where they decided to do FTTP and deliberately lock out the current monopoly and try and do it too quickly among other issues with the way it was structured and as a result have reverted to FTTC. You may have heard BT point to Australia's faltering FTTP rollout when justifying not doing FTTP, you will never hear them mention NZ.

Looking at the NZ experience the UK govt doesn't have to do much, all it needs to do is make it inevitable that a FTTP network is going to happen, and then stand back and watch as BT suddenly embraces FTTP and trips over itself to stop itself from becoming irrelevant.

Only read the first few lines as that is a very long post.

However, the idea of G.Fast when fully deployed would be to move smaller aggregation nodes closer to the premises and therefore shorten the distance of the copper without having to build thousands of new cabinets. G.Fast may in the first instance be deployed at existing cabs for "quick wins" but is not the expected end game. And if they do get to the end game then you could find you have a G.Fast node very close to your house and therefore you could then get much faster speeds.

G.Fast ultimately is not about how far you are from the cabinet but how far you are from the node.

Is there not a major problem with the New Zealand model?

Its looking at a target of 75% availability of ultrafast at the end of the 10 year roll-out i.e. 2019 and there is a plan to extend to 80%.

Can't see that going down very well in the UK, where we have over 50% ultrafast coverage already, and if commercial plans deliver could be in the 70% region in 2018-2019

NZ$2 billion (£1 billion) Government investment to cover around 1.28 million premises. Which if scaled to the size of the UK and same target of 80%, is £18bn. For 100% suggests £22bn which is very oddly in the ball park estimates BSG and others produced back in 2009-2010.

Lets ignore the guff about what G.Fast cannot do - which is all based on assumptions that cannot yet be made - and focus on this part ...

In reply to a post by ufb200:

Looking at the NZ experience the UK govt doesn't have to do much,

Your rose-tinted prose makes it look incredibly easy.

Unfortunately, it missed two incredibly difficult hurdles that the UK government will face: VM and the EU. And even Ofcom might throw itself into the problem.

The EU loves competition, but it has to be the right sort. Competing to tender on a single national infrastructure (even if done regionally) isn't enough - it loves infrastructure competition. Real, competing, separate physical networks. Try to do something that establishes one single network, and you might find a fight with the EU on your hands.

The EU doesn't like state aid either. Try to do something that establishes one single network, using any amount of state funds, and you might find an incredibly tough fight on your hands.

Leave the EU? Hmmm. We still want access to the EU market - and that will leave us tied to the same market-driven rules that apply now. Use of state aid in an unauthorised way will be the fastest way to disqualify an independent UK from trading.

These issues of competition and state aid take on an interesting turn when VM is already competitive with ultrafast speeds in over 50% of the market, and are currently investing significantly (for the first time in yonks) to extend that into the 60-65% area.

VM, in competition, won't like the prospect of a nationally-organised (and possibly state-funded) competitor, and will appeal through every court in the land and onwards into the EU. Hands will be tied. Progress will not be made.

And that, incidentally, is one key difference between the NZ and Aus models: NZ didn't have much of a functioning cable industry, while Australia did. NZ could convert from one monopoly infrastructure to another; Australia couldn't, and would need to replace all of them.

Ofcom regulates in the middle of this. It has recently swapped from the faux-competition offered by LLU, towards seeking a serious competitor to deliver fibre - without disturbing the commercial choices being made by both BT and VM. It didn't come close to suggesting either a NZ or Australian model ... and there's probably a reason for that.

The government, in the meantime, is skint. It doesn't want to pay for anything, and would far rather leave it to commercial entities to take the responsibility.

This particular government, running to 2020, can see 3 main strands to growing the infrastructure that are all also going to carry on running to 2020ish. Even if they had the will and the money, they likely couldn't achieve any more coverage growth than is already going to happen.

all it needs to do is make it inevitable that a FTTP network is going to happen, and then stand back and watch as BT suddenly embraces FTTP and trips over itself to stop itself from becoming irrelevant.

Isn't that what Ofcom is trying to do? Make an FTTP network inevitable through PIA?

Of course, Ofcom would be happiest if they brought in a third (quasi-nationwide) operator of fibre using PIA, but that BT stayed loyal to G.Fast. There might be room for three operators that way, each with separate USPs ... but BT tripping over itself to selectively deploy FTTP would quash that stone dead.

In reply to a post by ufb200:

if on the other hand you are like me, on an FTTC cabinet with approx. 2km of copper cable run

Apologies to your sensitivities, but telecoms is a game of statistics (even in NZ), and you fall on the wrong side of them.

With a statement of "If you are like me ... with approx 2km of copper" you are talking to approximately 2% of the country. You are in the middle of the "hardest to reach".

In the NBN, that would leave you covered by satellite.

In New Zealand, you wouldn't be covered by their current UFB rollout (75% by 2019), or even the extended rollout (80% by 2023). In fact, you're right on the cusp of not even fitting into the "rural broadband initiative" for 5Mbps speed - which targets 90% of those not getting UFB. NZ's overall aim is 97.8% of the country ... and you'd be just outside that.

Do you think a UK state-sanctioned model would serve you better than these role models? Better than the model they've already chosen (90% target, then 95%, then not really any further)?

If your plans paid off, and the UK converted to a state-organised monopoly FTTP network, and chose to go beyond a 95% target, you could likely expect to be upgraded in 15-20 years - after the 95% have been reached.

I've never understood why rural fibre champions always seem to demand an FTTP-only solution for the entire country. It would solve their problem, sure, but not for a long, long time.

I wouldn't describe the network as a "terrible state" personally. Bits are, overall though it's not. What they do have in their favour also is the most advanced copper test system in the world too.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Care to expand on what a significant percentage of aluminium means in terms of number of premises affected?

I don't think anyone could give you exact figures. I wonder if even OR could. In this area I would estimate roughly half of all lines have a degree of aluminium in their length somewhere. So as for a significant percentage, yes I agree with that.

Edited by deleted (Thu 19-May-16 13:28:05)

I found this on Kitz, GPO Press Notice (dated 1969), which indicates that aluminium was used as an overall cost saving exercise and not just a response to high copper prices. This would imply that aluminium was used for a significant amount of time, possibly 10+ years.

Also bearing in mind it wasn't just new infrastructure that would be aluminium based but most likely all repairs to damaged cables requiring replacement as well, which would also bump up the number of affected lines.

Yes that sounds correct to me. I would estimate aluminium was used for 10-15 years. There's a heck of a lot of it about.