Keep digging ..

I can�t stop you.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Keep digging ..

I can�t stop you.

Okay.

@mods, this string of comments should be pruned as clearly serve no purpose. Rather, they are intended to provoke a response which would be off-topic, counter-productive and a waste of time.

I noticed the Perth city centre pods for the first time last week. I tried a number connected to cab 14 through the checker but no gfast products were offered yet. I'd love to see FTTP reaching out into Perthshire.

In reply to a post by j0el:

Openreach do intend to cover up to around 6 million premises with G.fast by 2020. This has recently been scaled back from 10 million as they have decided to focus more on rolling out FTTP (going from a target of 2 million to 3 million).

So overall, a nett reduction of 3 million premises with access to Ultrafast broadband

No-one seems to particularly care, the extra 1 million full fibre premises was what got people excited.

I wonder what the cost of a single G.Fast cabinet is compared to rolling out FTTP availability/infrastructure to the same area that the G.Fast has a useful effect on. If the final installation from the DP to the inside of the premises were done on a fixed cost basis like a simple phone line is, plus an affordable price for the on-premises ONT. Does anyone know the cost of the ONT please?

Then we extend that calculation to wider areas.

In effect I'm questioning whether the current economic model used by Openreach and BT Group is the right one. Is time and money being wasted on FTTC infill cabinets and other non-FTTC areas being provided with FTTC? Including the planning aspects where those resources could be made available for FTTP instead.

In many places in Cornwall FTTP delivered over telegraph poles is rife. Such poles being prevalent in other rural areas. Aggregation nodes could be fed that way as well of course.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

If the final installation from the DP to the inside of the premises were done on a fixed cost basis like a simple phone line is

It already is - the wholesale price is £92. There's no extra charge for the ONT.

The cost of ONT (roughly £50) is quickly recovered through rental. A port on the OLT is more expensive - maybe £1,000 - but is shared by all users on the same splitter and amortised over several years.

The *real* cost of making FTTP available in the backbone is in pulling fibres, unblocking ducts (or laying new ones where they are full), terminations etc.

The trouble with rolling out FTTP to G.fast capable areas (i.e. those within 300m of the cabinet) is that these people already get the max 80/20. They may pick up some customers who want faster speeds than that, but it increases the digital divide for everyone else.

Is time and money being wasted on FTTC infill cabinets and other non-FTTC areas being provided with FTTC?

With access to a mountain of paperwork impossible to say.

What we can say is this...

Not all infill with BDUK projects is with VDSL2 anymore, and seeing some sub 24 areas with existing VDSL2 get FTTP from the projects.

The pattern from Fibre First (commercial) is at present in Northern Ireland, lots of VDSl2 overlay, but in England so far the bulk of what has been found is EO to FTTP. VDSL2 cabinet overlay in the cities does appear on the way though.

When doing FTTP and cable, the ones most often missing out are flats in the roll-outs that are on-going

Thanks candlerb and Andrew .

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 08-Oct-18 16:15:05)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The cost of ONT (roughly £50) is quickly recovered through rental. A port on the OLT is more expensive - maybe £1,000 - but is shared by all users on the same splitter and amortised over several years.

The *real* cost of making FTTP available in the backbone is in pulling fibres, unblocking ducts (or laying new ones where they are full), terminations etc.

The trouble with rolling out FTTP to G.fast capable areas (i.e. those within 300m of the cabinet) is that these people already get the max 80/20. They may pick up some customers who want faster speeds than that, but it increases the digital divide for everyone else.

The cost of a OLT per subscriber is quite low, exactly how low depends on the split rate, but at 16 subscribers per OLT port you are looking at under £20 per subscriber and that is retail prices and I would expect Openreach as a volume customer to be paying significantly less.

Note that SFP based ONT's are $20 on Aliexpress/eBay. For example here is one on eBay shipped to you for just $25 and it's a Huawei so basically the SFP version of the ONT that Openreach are currently using Huawei HPSP2120. Frankly a much better idea than what they are using in my view as there are a whole range of routers with SFP ports allowing the end user to save a box and use whatever router they want. If needs be a media converter is only ~£25 retail so less than many dedicated ONT's.

I guess the issue with g.Fast pods in less dense areas than say some of the trial areas (for example Glasgow Bridgeton) is that percentage of properties on the cabinet able to get a useful speedup is going to be significantly lower. I would estimate that better than 90% of properties of cabinets in Bridgeton will get a gFast service with a much lower figure for Tayport, especially for cabinet two, which means doing a mix of gFast and FTTP, which can't be great.