Cost of copper vs fiber

If Openreach have 1km of transmission medium to lay (lets say to 2 houses). Assume the underground duct is in place, is clear, so all that is needed is to put the cable in and joint it up.

What is the price differential (to Openreach, what it actually costs) between copper and fiber?

I believe that the cost of fibre is probably twice that of copper (roughly). However, there are costs for termination equipment - a lot higher for fibre. The time for the technician to actually do the termination - seconds for copper, tens of minutes for fibre.

In terms of per metre for the raw fiber its cheaper than copper, its the additional labour involved, e.g. fusion splicing involved that often swing the equation back to copper

Would OR lay Fibre only, in such a situation, thinking of the other systems that use the Copper circuit such as Alarms?

Fibre only - very rare because of issues like alarms etc Fibre Only premises do exist and more new build will be going that way, i.e. get the battery back solution for during power cuts

Having ducting right up to two properties but no existing copper cabling would be very rare, so maybe a more hypothetical question than actual issue.

If these are new build as just two premises would depend a lot on developer.

Depends how big the copper cable is.

In reply to a post by ruraldebugging:

If Openreach have 1km of transmission medium to lay (lets say to 2 houses). Assume the underground duct is in place, is clear, so all that is needed is to put the cable in and joint it up.

What is the price differential (to Openreach, what it actually costs) between copper and fiber?

As others have said, in terms of the actual cables, Fiber is cheaper, though the time needed to install it is higher.

Though fiber is significantly cheaper to maintain compared to copper/aluminium over say a 50 year period.

Look at the cost of 1000m of fibre on Amazon - $200. (about £140) http://www.amazon.com/1000ft-Fiber-Optic-Singlemode-... May not be the type BT uses however it demonstrates the cost.

I can get external CW1308 for about £8 per 100m drum equating to £80 / 1000m


BT's costs for both will be significantly lower but I would guess in similar proportions.

edit to add:

CW1308 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/100m-TELEPHONE-PHONE-WIRE-...

Edited by MHC (Tue 09-Feb-16 09:45:15)

You've fallen foul of the Americans outdated love for Imperial measurements. That's about £140 for 1,000 feet, not 1,000 metres, so multiply that by about 3.3, or a bit less than £500 in total. Also, bear in mind that US online costs don't include any sales tax whilst UK online costs are typically quoted including 20% VAT.

*** edit ****

This site is a decent UK source for fibre & copper cable. It quotes (exc VAT) 54p per metre for 4 core optical fibre (or £540 per 1,000 metres). Whilst five pair external telephone cabling is 63p per metre (£630 per 1,000 metres). Wildly different to your £80 per 1,000 metres (I don[t know if that's partly down to the number of pairs of just that this site is very expensive). At least at this site, the costs are not dissimilar. I suspect that, in reality, OR costs are much lower in absolute terms and are dwarfed by the labour involved (which, for the same number of cores/pairs, will be higher for fibre.

[url]http://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/loose-tube-fibre-cable/93-loose-tube-internalexternal-fibre-cable.html

http://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/telephone-cable/288-cw1...

Edited by deleted (Tue 09-Feb-16 10:33:19)

Oops ...

And that makes it even worse! Fibre way more than copper ... and certainly not te other way round.