What's Next..?

So many years ago I was flying along on my US Robotics 56K Serial Controller Faxmodem.

Ahh the sound of it dialling in connecting at 28k and hanging up to connect at 33k or better if you were lucky.

Since then we've had ISDN, ADSL etc etc and now Fibre FTTC/FTTP.

But what is the next likely mainstream upgrade we can expect. FTTC for me is brilliant but with all the digital services I'm already hungry for FTTP which I cant get, at least its not an option to order for me.

How do you expect Broadband/Internet connections to evolve, what will be the next big step or are we stuck with fibre for some time to come?

Edited by Scoot (Sat 19-Mar-16 21:51:17)

G fast is next......still on copper twisted pair....then full fibre

Stuck wth fibre? You do realise the potential speeds of fibre are pretty much unlimited? There's already 10Gbps fibre in the far East.

As above, G.fast is next, speeds of 300meg, 500meg after that and it's capable of 1Gbps.

Edited by deleted (Sat 19-Mar-16 21:43:37)

As I said "FTTC for me is brilliant" however I could utilise more and the purpose of the thread is to find out what people think the next big steps in internet connectivity will be for the mainstream.

Being on FTTC is not really true fibre with the copper in-between so "10Gbps fibre in the far East." isn't going to happen in the UK unless those gaps are filled?

G.Fast I don't know much about, have heard it mentioned would be nice to know if its coming to my area anytime soon.

With G.fast, typically, fibre will be deployed deeper into the network, closer to the customer. In years to come, to then do the final drop of fibre will be cheaper and won't take as long as it would to do now.

Think of it as a long terms phased deployment of full fibre while utilising the copper network to it's full potential.

I hope, FTTP on demand will see a return soon once Openreach find a cheaper/quicker way to install fibre.

In reply to a post by Scoot:

As I said "FTTC for me is brilliant" however I could utilise more and the purpose of the thread is to find out what people think the next big steps in internet connectivity will be for the mainstream.

G.Fast I don't know much about, have heard it mentioned would be nice to know if its coming to my area anytime soon.

BT have said that they'll aim to cover 10 million premises with G.Fast by 2020, and "most of the UK" by 2025. And that the speeds will be, initially, "up to 300Mbps", rising later to "up to 500Mbps". There has also been mention of gigabit fibre products for businesses.

BT are currently running an early trial phase for G.Fast, and one of those trials also runs FoD2 trials, with new "fibre on demand" installation methods.

More recently, they've confirmed the next pilot stage of the G.Fast rollout, for the summer, but we've had few details about the makeup of the deployment. There's also been mention that they'll deploy more fibre (in the sense of FTTP), but almost no detail at all.

Does this mean that FoD2 will become a standard option everywhere that G.Fast gets rolled out? Possibly, but it is unknown.

Who will be in the 10 million? Unknown. What counts as "most of the UK"? Unknown.

Currently on FTTC 80/20

The cab is around 50m from my home

not sure the actual wire length (lets assume 150-200)

So yeah i'll just be waiting on G.Fast to see what kind of packages BTO will offer

I'm hoping within 3 years to be on something like a 150/50 service.

Though ideally i would love something like a 100/100 connection the upload would really help me more than download.

I think in 10 years if i'm living in the same place i will be on full fibre connection 500mbps+

BT Says >> here << that 19m or less copper wire will achieve around 1 Gbps (combined up and down streams) where as about 66m of copper wire will achieve just under 900 Mbps (combined up and down stream) so if my FTTP fails to be completed by BT which I am told they are still working on it but the weather has put a delay to things LOL, anyhow we are on about 60m or less of copper wire including the internal wiring, so we would see about 900 Mbps (combined streams) which I think is rather nice.

As for FTTP max speeds, I read that Denmark had reached 43Tbps down a single fibre, I don't recall the length of fibre cable that they used neither did it say what transceivers they used.

Paul

In reply to a post by Scoot:

But what is the next likely mainstream upgrade we can expect. FTTC for me is brilliant but with all the digital services I'm already hungry for FTTP which I cant get, at least its not an option to order for me.

How do you expect Broadband/Internet connections to evolve, what will be the next big step or are we stuck with fibre for some time to come?

I'd be expecting to need a fair amount of patience or hope that Virgin Media have plans to deliver to your area.

If your FTTC is very good and you're close to the cabinet you might be fortunate and find that Openreach will deploy G.fast to your cabinet sooner, by that I mean by 2020, rather than later.

It's a waiting game. In the meantime you can look enviously at the 48.5%-ish of the UK that have Virgin Media cable, many of whom can buy 300Mb right now with 500Mb due hopefully by 2017.

Openreach do not care about delivering super-duper speeds and certainly not keeping up with Virgin. They will do what they must to deliver a viable product to their customers and keep regulators and politicians not too upset, nothing more.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

BT have said that they'll aim to cover 10 million premises with G.Fast by 2020, and "most of the UK" by 2025.

Who will be in the 10 million? Unknown. What counts as "most of the UK"? Unknown.

I believe the popular conjecture is that the 10 million premises will mostly, if not entirely, be served by a combination of new G.fast nodes colocated with existing cabinets alongside line cards in existing cabinets.

This would be the fastest and cheapest way to reach that mark.

Those too far from cabinet to benefit from G.fast are likely to have something more of a wait.