Ah misinterpreted the line thought you meant FTTP had become available to some people, my bad. Something else to think about is the speeds that everyone will get at least with FTTP you would get consistent speeds over everyone but with FTTC you have the distance to cabinet, so not everyone may be happy anyway.

You seem to be a bit confused, FTTP is available to large numbers of people now (AndyHCZ mentions over 500,000 premises earlier in this thread) but only in certain areas where BT openreach or other suppliers have built the necessary infrastructure.

Edited by Realalemadrid (Fri 02-Feb-18 10:13:15)

Not confused, just missed a couple of words off the end of my sentence, in their area I meant.

I was referring to G.fast, which is a little bit different. This is a really an upgrade over FTTC, so BT Wholesale and ISPs with their own networks (like Sky and Talk Talk) will need to ensure they have adequate capacity from the handover exchange to support the potential bandwidth requirements of new customers that might order ultrafast products. I'm not sure of the technical details, but I would assume BT Wholesale is buying new 10G cablelinks and backhaul connections to ensure users don't see a degraded service.

With FTTP, once a circuit is built in an area and released for sale, then any ISP can sell it (there are over 500,000 premises that can order it). There are no technical limitations preventing Sky or TalkTalk selling FTTP, as it's essentially backhauled in an identical way to FTTC. Again though, ISPs need to ensure they enough bandwidth to meet the demand.

The reason seems not to be technical but financial. TT and Sky haven't agreed on a pricing structure with BT/Openreach. This article explains. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/02/01/bt-op...

I always thought the handover was identical to FTTC. But I never knew for sure and you can�t really tell from looking around in the handover exchanges. You can see the various fibre cabinets terminating on the equipment but FTTP infrastructure is harder to spot in there.

However someone said a couple of months ago that the likes of Sky would need to order a different Cablelink at the handover exchange. I wonder if Andrew or anyone knows the answer for sure as I�ve heard both opinions over the years.

The Openreach FTTP pricing is the same as FTTC (for the same speed variants).

I think the article is referring to the future expansion. Openreach will need some assurances on uptake or they will have to charge a higher line rental for FTTP to justify the expansion cost.

Everything is identical. The only additional thing an ISP usually needs to do is buy additional cable links and ensure they have enough backhaul capacity.

The reason Talk Talk and Sky didn't sell FTTP in the past is that supporting a new product would require a lot of changes to their back end systems and staff training. I assume they felt that the number of premises passed did not justify the development and training cost.

Edit: Another thing is they don't support FVA or VoIP. So this creates a further issue for new, FTTP only builds.

Edited by deleted (Fri 02-Feb-18 10:58:06)

For some years you needed two cablelinks if you wanted to support FTTC and FTTP but no longer the case, and prices for 10 Gbps cable links have come down substantially.

Remember when installs for FTTC were all engineer based and some providers did not really get on board and not the time they did was once they could supply their own CPE. Branding issues over the Openreach ONT and need to have one of those engineers attend to fit ONT may factor in.

Don't under estimate the public confusion around a box that has an Openreach logo so really this is a BT service, so why don't I buy direct from BT because I think I will get a better service i.e. the decades of work around splitting BT has not trickled down to public perception yet.

You may have hit the nail on the head there about FVA! That didn�t even occur to me.