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You've fallen foul of the Americans outdated love for Imperial measurements.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.

We aren't talking vat-inclusive when discussing Openreach costs.

You've rather missed the point which was simply about comparing costs with VAT vs US costs without any sales tax. It was nothing to do with OR paying VAT, but just to make sure the comparison isn't distorted.

I know the copper cable I linked to was VAT inclusive but I did say that I pay around £8 - which is actually VAT exclusive as was the fibre. I just pulled off a couple of examples to illustrate that copper is cheaper than fibre - in y experience, You picking up on feet/metres shows that copper is even better value.

No, this is not hypothetical, there really is 1km of OpenReach duct with no cable in it yet that will serve 2 houses. Current service is provided by a cable that is tied for 1km to a fence and is falling apart.

US sales tax?.

New build, only in geological terms. Both houses have been there for at least 200 years.
Hence the developers have no interest in providing fiber as they have been dead a long time !!!!!

Most modern alarm systems are IP based now or work off a mobile signal.

In reply to a post by MHC:

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

It makes it £140 for 1km of fibre, £24 for 1km of twisted pair.

The big difference I can think of is that 1km of fibre can carry far more data than 1km of twisted pair.

1km of twisted pair is good for perhaps..um..20Mb/s? 1km of fibre is good for..ah..pretty much anything:

http://www.fiberopticcableshop.com/smdup.html

"The cables below are 9/125 glass and are classified as OS2 fiber. The bandwidth in singlemode fiber is actually almost infinity"

By the time you've bought enough twisted pair to match the bandwidth of the fibre I'm pretty sure the costs will look far more favourable

Edited by Andrue (Tue 09-Feb-16 15:23:42)

In reply to a post by MHC:

I know the copper cable I linked to was VAT inclusive but I did say that I pay around £8 - which is actually VAT exclusive as was the fibre. I just pulled off a couple of examples to illustrate that copper is cheaper than fibre - in y experience, You picking up on feet/metres shows that copper is even better value.

Yes, and a Vauxhall Corsa is cheaper than an Airbus A380

Don't disagree with that .... however my original comments were in answer to the question about running copper or fibre to just two properties and the relative costs. It was not - what are te relative costs to deliver 100Mbps or 1Gbps to a pair of house.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Don't disagree with that .... however my original comments were in answer to the question about running copper or fibre to just two properties and the relative costs. It was not - what are te relative costs to deliver 100Mbps or 1Gbps to a pair of house.

No but it's related. You need to specify what your bandwidth requirements are in order to answer the question. After all I could probably run some string (genuine string) for even less money.

It seems likely that it would be significantly cheaper to run some copper in the duct so that's probably what openreach would do.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 09-Feb-16 15:39:18)

if its about providing service you'd probably need to take into account all the equipment at either in in the costs. rather than just the connection medium on its own.

Go back to te original question:

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?

No specification of bandwidth just a question about installing either copper or fibre.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Go back to te original question:

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.

And my response is that I can't tell you which is cheapest until you tell me what the bandwidth requirements are. However if you're saying that bandwidth is unimportant then copper will be cheapest.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 09-Feb-16 16:44:25)

Agree, the bandwidth requirement defines what equipment you need at each end and that equipment can be very expensive in a fibre world. Do we know what is at the other end of the 1Km? Does it have backhaul capabilities for the fibre connection? If not then further equipment/services would be needed to onward connect the fibre to the network whereas the copper equipment is already there (because there is an existing copper line being replaced).

In reply to a post by MHC:

Don't disagree with that .... however my original comments were in answer to the question about running copper or fibre to just two properties and the relative costs. It was not - what are te relative costs to deliver 100Mbps or 1Gbps to a pair of house.

Surely it would be sensible to consider the maintenance costs over a 20-50 year period in addition to the installation/raw hardware costs?

Fiber's maintenance costs are extremely low - whereas aluminium/copper will always have problems in the long term, joints going bad etc etc.

Also the Fiber and associated equipment will still be in use in 50 years time - whereas copper will be absolutely useless in 10-20 years, given the rate that our bandwidth needs are increasing year on year.

It will also be extremely expensive to remove all the aluminium/copper from the local loop, once it's completely redundant.

Edited by dave2150 (Tue 09-Feb-16 17:00:24)

In reply to a post by ruraldebugging:

Most modern alarm systems are IP based now or work off a mobile signal.

you would be suprised!
The biggest problem I saw in my area when Gigaclear came in was all those house with constantly monitored alarm systems and most of them could not be changed to work over IP. So people are having to keep the BT line - just for the alarm system.

I'm told there is meant to be some problems with fibre if water gets into the fibre splices/enclosures and then freezes. I gather that this is because the freeing water crushes the fibre where it is not fully mechanically protected at the splice.
No idea if this is true or not but if so it certainly squashes the "there is no maintenance or joint problems with fibre" statements.
I'm sure those who know will comment....

To make this clear, I am making absolutely no claims whatsoever about the houses in question, what price OpenReach actually pay, whether tax is due or not. I'm just making a warning that when comparing US and UK prices be careful about one usually being quoted with VAT and the other without tax.

At no point did I even suggest these two houses where imaginary. I made absolutely no reference to this whatsoever. Is that clear?

The hypothetical bit came from me, because based on the coursework type posts that have appeared in the past, this sounded a little like someone just trying to get an assignment question answered.

No slight by me was meant, and the extra detail that there is an existing copper link (albeit a bad one) adds to the overall picture.

On the fibre kit, actually likely that the kit pushing the light down the fibre will need replacing inside the 20-50 year time span.

On the fibre maintenance, not sure we've seen enough deployment to get the real UK costs, e.g. storms and overhead fibre and trees breaking fibre runs? Is it cheaper to repair fibre when a digger blindly goes through a trench?

A silt filled pavement chamber that had a fibre splitter in it, that was in theory water proof, but leaked into the one small hole and thus needs replacing, which is a similar scenario to a copper waterproof joint failing. The fibre probably would run perfectly in this scenario but gets interesting when adding a new fibre in the GPON split for a new home etc.

The general issue with doing fibre today is the extra labour costs, and limited number of teams and fibre splicers. Even in the contractor world that Gigaclear operate it things are not perfect and if roll-outs of FTTP increase costs are likely to go up due to demand for these contractors, ie. name their price

ruraldebugging

If the houses already have service by copper OR will replace with new copper UNLESS someone talks to the correct people which is nigh on impossible to do.

You need to talk to the new sites team BEFORE they start putting anything in the duct and BOTH houses need to agree to take a fibre based service only! ( And anyone else served by the duct route).

OR have a USO on the copper based service and if one wanted to continue with the copper only service ( rather than take a fibre service) they would have potential problems with the regulator due to the existing copper service.

ie OR have the leeway to provide fibre only on an unserved site but no (regulatory) agreement to enable them to remove copper service from an existing served site.

If you can both agree to treat it as a new site you may (!!) be able to get the OR new sites team to agree to serve you as a new site. This will be easier if you have FTTP already existing in the area. ( Head-end site geography).

With the change of management at the top of OR there may be an increased chance of success ( Especially if you can get Clive Selley, the new CEO, involved, he is an engineer and likes neat solutions with future proof technology) as he may want to make his mark in his early days in control!

For only two houses it is a remote chance of success but someone wins the lottery and you may be lucky just don't bet your life on it!

I have no problem with you, I'm just wondering why @kitcat chose to respond to my post. I can only think that it was a mistake, but it would be nice to know.

Edited by deleted (Tue 09-Feb-16 18:27:41)

Surely it would be sensible to consider the maintenance costs over a 20-50 year period in addition to the installation/raw hardware costs?

Shareholders aren't interested in the next 20-50 years, they are interested in the next 2-5.

Also the Fiber and associated equipment will still be in use in 50 years time

Not necessarily. Technologies change. Milton Keynes had fibre installed and when broadband came out BT had to do a copper overlay for ADSL as they didn't have the means at the time to utilise the fibre in the ground (and it may have been the wrong type of fibre for modern comms).

It will also be extremely expensive to remove all the aluminium/copper from the local loop, once it's completely redundant.

Coppers value, I think, is continuing to increase. It is possible that the copper will be worth a lot of money in 10 years time making it a worthwhile resource to "mine" from the streets.

whereas copper will be absolutely useless in 10-20 years, given the rate that our bandwidth needs are increasing year on year.

People keep on saying that and yet new technologies keep allowing copper to get faster and faster. In the days of analogue it was thought that 56Kbps was amazing and more than could ever be done. With G.FAST we are looking at speeds of 100's of Mb/s. Virgin are using copper and driving speeds ever faster.

The part of the copper network that is really hard to replace is the final few meters. In some households there isn't an issue but if people have landscaped gardens and posh drives it can be very expensive to dig and replace what was there. The difficulty for BT (or VM) is that they want a one size fits all solution but some properties will be much simpler to do than others.