BT cuts cost of �ultra-fast� broadband

BT has cut the monthly wholesale costs of its �ultra-fast� broadband service aimed at small to medium-sized businesses by more than a third, although the initial one-off costs to install the fibre network will be higher than expected for broadband providers.

BT will today say that Openreach, its functionally separated business that builds wholesale fibre networks across the UK, will next summer charge broadband providers £38 a month for its 330Mbps fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) service, down from £60 a month currently.

This year, BT unveiled plans to make so-called �ultra-fast� broadband using direct fibre-optic connections available to most British homes and businesses next year. This will allow customers in the UK access to some of the highest available broadband speeds in Europe.

However, the majority of the BT Openreach�s fibre network only goes as far as the �cabinets� in the street, with a copper wire connecting the final stretch to the home or business.

Broadband providers will be charged a distance-based construction charge owing to the extra work involved in providing a direct fibre connection for the final stretch, and they can choose whether to pass this charge to their customers.

BT said that the charges were still being finalised, but that premises that were about 500 metres away from BT�s fibre network would incur a one-off charge of about £1,000 on top of the installation fee of £500.

BT�s own retail service can use these services at the same price as rivals such as Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk.

Given the costs, BT is aiming the service at small and medium-sized businesses, which are more likely to be willing to pay for the ability to have fast internet access to transmit large amounts of data. BT has been carrying out tests this summer before the service becomes commercially available next year.

The service is not expected to be widely taken up at first, although will provide a level of �future proofing� given expectations that the amount of data used by both businesses and consumers will grow rapidly in the next few years.

Mike Galvin, managing director for next generation access at Openreach, said: �Our deployment is one of the fastest in the world and our services are proving very popular with the public. It is now time for us to focus further on FTTP. I am sure that small businesses will welcome this major price cut.�

Can I suggest you link to the article, that is the usual thing to do

Linky.

Thanks Roberto. Installation cost of £1500 is a bit steep.

Well I had been talking of £500 to £1500 for some time so why the surprise

And when you consider what is needed those charges are not excessive.

Gigaclear if you want them to do it, and dont DIY the last 50m drop, charge £500 and at what I estimate TalkTalk might charge their 30 Mbps symmetric with burst to 1000 Gbps is about same price.

The competition is on, and the time for people calling for FTTP for all, to put money up and show there is a latent demand, and not just wishful dreaming.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Gigaclear if you want them to do it, and dont DIY the last 50m drop, charge £500 and at what I estimate TalkTalk might charge their 30 Mbps symmetric with burst to 1000 Gbps is about same price.

The competition is on, and the time for people calling for FTTP for all, to put money up and show there is a latent demand, and not just wishful dreaming.

How can Gigaclear install fibre between BTs poles?

They don't just an example of prices for where they deploy their own network.

I can see people on slow adsl paying for this out of desperation.

I struggle to see people on good FTTC lines paying for this tho, because the upload is only 50% higher than FTTC and the download whilst 4x higher has debatable benefit over 80mbit.

Google meanwhile in the states are rolling out 1000/1000 services for less money.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

the download whilst 4x higher has debatable benefit over 80mbit.

Ah, but not everyone gets 80Mb/20Mb over current FTTC services:-


Speedtest

So presumably, anyone who *is* going to take the FTTP-on-demand (rather than the FTTC they could be getting) will be the ones furthest from the cabinet, and likely to be the furthest from the aggregation node too, and likely to have to pay the most!

Mind you, BT are aiming FTTP-on-demand at small- and medium-businesses.

Yet their FTTC rollout has tended to ignore cabinets that support predominantly business areas.

Does anyone know whether, when BT says that FTTPod is restricted to FTTC areas, they limit this to cabinets that have already been converted, or will consider other lines on unconverted cabinets? Especially those town- and city-centre boxes that have been left out...

They will not consider lines on unconverted cabinets.

There is a small matter of the BDUK seeing FTTC coverage hit around 90% of the UK by 2015, if BT get all the contracts. Just because has not been done now, does not mean it never will be.

If you don't want to pay for the on demand you can happily wait the 10 to 15 years for Openreach to start its own shift to a full fibre local loop.

FTTP is not just about speed, you lose all the problems of noise affecting service, cross talk etc

Rolling out a 1Gbps service to those who registered enough demand in one city, and no need for Google to ever worry about making a profit. Its a big experiment, hence all the free toys bundled with it, and a city doing things like giving them access to the power infrastructure polls and office space for free etc etc

BT is not sitting on a cash mountain like Google is.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

They will not consider lines on unconverted cabinets.

Yep - it would break the segmentation of the network to do otherwise.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

They will not consider lines on unconverted cabinets.

That was my original thought. After reading that they are installing lots of aggregation nodes in the fibre spline (rather than one at the start), I wasn't quite so sure that a "missed cabinet" necessarily implied that there was no AN nearby - especially as they're less visible than a cabinet.

I'd love to know how far apart the ANs are in this newly-discovered aspect to the architecture!

There is a small matter of the BDUK seeing FTTC coverage hit around 90% of the UK by 2015, if BT get all the contracts. Just because has not been done now, does not mean it never will be.

That's a good point. They're likely to need all those "easy" cabinets to meet the quotas - especially so for the counties that take money from the ERDF (which seems to be focussed at businesses, rather than residential).

If you don't want to pay for the on demand you can happily wait the 10 to 15 years for Openreach to start its own shift to a full fibre local loop.

I was thinking about that earlier today. Especially while reading an Australian NBN evangelist rant about how the UK was locking itself into a dead-end, while (with great timing) getting a peek into the architecture that proves we're not.

I was reckoning on more like 15-20 years for mass market shifts from FTTC to FTTP.

FTTP is not just about speed, you lose all the problems of noise affecting service, cross talk etc

At the moment, I don't get the impression that noise/interference is too big a problem with FTTC. It obviously *is* for some people, and there is a problem in getting this rectified efficiently - too much going around the houses.

Crosstalk does seem to be an issue, and in quite random ways sometimes. The question is whether vectoring can work its miracle in real life, as well as it appears in the labs.

But I'm not quibbling. Fibre does indeed remove all these issues at a stroke. Nice, very nice, but any parent trying to educate their children financially would note this as a "want", not a "need".

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

They will not consider lines on unconverted cabinets.

Yep - it would break the segmentation of the network to do otherwise.

If there were an AN nearby, invisibly sitting in the joint box, then it wouldn't be breaking the segmentation.

That could happen if the fibre spine passed-by anyway, and the cabinet was still left out for some other reason. If I were BT, and my intention (in laying the spine) was to future-proof the network ready for FTTP, then I'd have installed the AN anyway.

The first "if" is the unlikely part. Everything else is fairly sound logic. Even more so if the spines (or a significant portion) are laid to connect 2 exchanges, rather than spokes out from one exchange only.

My "back-of-the-fag-packet" calculations:

If 90% of the UK get access to SFBB, of which 25% gets FTTP, that leaves 67.5% with FTTC. With 28 million pairs, that would be 19 million lines for FTTC (while 6 million already have FTTP at no extra cost)

If they all took up FTTPod, and had an average of 500 metres, BT would rake in £28 billion. Yet there'd still be 3 million lines left behind at 2Mbps USC.

But the top estimate for FTTP for the *entire* country is £28 billion, and some estimates are considerably less.

It looks like there's a big element of first-mover (aka "desperate") premium here.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I can see people on slow adsl paying for this out of desperation.

I struggle to see people on good FTTC lines paying for this tho, because the upload is only 50% higher than FTTC and the download whilst 4x higher has debatable benefit over 80mbit.

Google meanwhile in the states are rolling out 1000/1000 services for less money.

It will be interesting to see what the final retail cost will be to the customer, and in what way the isp will get what they invested back, as most wouldn't want to be paying for it upfront , Also i don't see many ISP's selling it, BT retail most probably will, no doubt they would spread the cost over a few years (for a fee)
It would guarantee me a trouble free connection, which would be the primary reason for having it, even if the speed was less than 330mbps i would be very happy with a 100/100 or 150/50 product, i could then even get rid of the old copper line altogether ,

Edited by tommy45 (Thu 06-Dec-12 04:53:01)

I have a new FTTC cabinet near my home just over 100m I would be content if I get the full 80mb and my business is 150 yards from the the telephone exchange and I get 21mb great for a standard ADSL connection.

The max I would pay to get connected to FTTP would be £200, at the end of the day if you move home you may lose the benefit of investing in FTTP especially if it's not available at your new address.

If takeup were to ever get beyond 10% for FTTP on Demand on a national basis I am willing to bet that Openreach will lower prices.

If you own your home, you add the full fibre option to its marketing advantages and add cost to price - just like you would with a conservatory.

Also once you have had FTTC or P, I doubt you would move to an area without.

Remember BT is started fibre only exchange trials now - so mass as in 50% of UK might be 25 years away, but the process will be underway well before then.

the cost per premise of connecting every home comes out about £1,000 (the £28bn figure) but if the takeup were to be 20% that becomes £5,000 per home connected which makes this look a better deal. Even a seldom seen 40% takeup would come out at £2,500.

FTTPod gives the people that want it a service for less than univerally providing it ?

There might be 28 million pairs but there are only 22 million "homes".

BT also mention construction costs for each install and that will mean it will be based on te actual work undertaken so if they run fibre in a new duct then they will, based on their historic performance, put several fibres in which can then be provided to additional customers at lower cost.

You cannot expect BT to provide a connection at a cost well below their actual costs and not receive any return on that investment. If four co-located houses all decide they want FTTP at the same time I would expect BT to charge once for the construction costs to their local pole/cabinet and then individually to the houses.

Should BT look at each request for installation and check to see how many more fed from the same pole might want fibre and then divide the construction costs by that number? Some they might get greater take up, and some less ... It would be a nightmare keeping a database for that ...

you noted I said "good FTTC lines"

obviously i agree if someone has say a 20mbit FTTC line then the benefits of FTTP obviously are higher.

My view is FTTC is a huge improvement over adsl, and it should pay for itself in customer gains, increased revenue per customer and less fault's. BT's problem is they took far too long to start using it. Me as an example I had dozens of engineers here to look at a very poor noisy adsl line, and wouldnt even consider a BT retail product. Now BT infinity probably BT's first proper xDSL product I signed up to the top package as soon as was available, the noise issues I had on adsl seem 'gone'.

I would normally say as well FTTC was the wrong path to take as it itself is already old tech but the way BT have done the deployment in that FTTC is a platform to FTTP and as such FTTP will be available very soon in all FTTC areas is good so there is future proofing in this rollout. So my only real complaint is BT were far too slow to start deploying, they should have started in the mid 2000s.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

So my only real complaint is BT were far too slow to start deploying, they should have started in the mid 2000s.

Before the technology was available.

ok when it was available. I think you thinking of vdsl2 tho, vdsl was available earlier.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 06-Dec-12 10:27:59)

Other than the odd cluster of self build fibre, where in the world is take-up of FTTP as high as 40% ?

If there is a place, and off top of head I cannot think of it, willing to bet it is the only broadband option in the area.

If I was a property developer doing a small close of 10 new homes, I would see FTTPoD pre-installed as a great way to market properties, in the same way as some fit solar panels etc

There's more to it though, like the availability of the 21CN. There's lots of things weren't in place then that are now, which I think means that it couldn't have been done any earlier than now. I note Virgin weren't delivering high speed internet back then either.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If I was a property developer doing a small close of 10 new homes, I would see FTTPoD pre-installed as a great way to market properties, in the same way as some fit solar panels etc

Especially seeing as the developer could lay all the ducting and underground boxes during the build, at much lower cost than OR later.

Check the dates the standard was ratified, BT is unlikely to deploy something live where the international standards are not set.

Think about this, if VDSL2 is so old in the UK, why are there so few decent CPE units on the open market, even when you look abroad

2009 was the earliest Openreach could start, when Ofcom said yes to active cabinets, now you could say Openreach could have lobbied harder, but as they only formed in 2006 and was a bit snowed under by the explosion of LLU growth hard to see focus being on stuff like VDSL2

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The competition is on, and the time for people calling for FTTP for all, to put money up and show there is a latent demand, and not just wishful dreaming.

You say that as if the online community is in the habit of demanding fast speeds and unlimited allowances for downloading free music and films at low costs.

/sarcy

Spookily, that's an echo of how BT usually advertises their high-speed internet. These days, gaming is mentioned too.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

FTTP is not just about speed, you lose all the problems of noise affecting service, cross talk etc

I didn't know that a fully fibre optic connection doesn't suffer from crosstalk.

Unless fibre optics uses a different range of frequencies not affected by crosstalk like conventional ADSL is ?

In reply to a post by CurlyWhirly:

Unless fibre optics uses a different range of frequencies not affected by crosstalk like conventional ADSL is ?

Sort of... it's completely different to sending electrical signals down multiple lengths of wire, it uses a beam of light down a single fibre of glass, which is constructed so the light won't leak out.

The frequency of that beam of light is up in the hundreds of TeraHertz, so available bandwidth for modulating it isn't a problem.

A very brief outline here, you should be able to Google for articles going into as much depth as you like.


edit- typo

Edited by billford (Thu 06-Dec-12 23:20:21)

Thanks bill.

I forgot that FTTP uses light !

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

you noted I said "good FTTC lines"

obviously i agree if someone has say a 20mbit FTTC line then the benefits of FTTP obviously are higher.

Quite. I had to go to FTTC to get the sort of speed that others expect from ADSL2, i.e. 16Mbps. If ever I want the sort of performance that others expect from FTTC I will probably be forced to go FTTP.