Australia's probable new government wants to stop our nationwide FTTH rollout and copy the UK's FTTC. Awesome 
G'day back. You've heard some good opinions, but I thought I'd add mine. I tend to be wordy though...
I suspect any listener's opinion on how awesome that change would be depends on whether they're looking at the long-term broadband speed vs the short-medium-term financial picture - and whether they have a real need for anything above 30-40 Mbps.
On the financial front...
The comparative costs are $37bn vs $30bn.
Really? That surprises me. The UK's programme is essentially split into 4 parts:
- BT are spending £2.5 billion of their own money to fund provision of "superfast" to 67% of properties (ie 18 million - 19 million properties). This is usually referred to as the commercially-viable part. Virgin's cable (up to 100Mbps) reaches 48%, overlaps this part, and isn't growing at all. "Superfast" is ambiguously defined as greater than either 25Mbps or 30Mbps, and the context can vary. Target currently early 2014 - BT are running 18 months ahead of their original 2015 plan, and have currently reached 15 million homes.
This deployment was originally going to be about 20% done by FTTP, but BT have been slow to get the FTTP parts rolling - it has proved trickier to install - and it looks to me like FTTC will take a larger share now.
- Two regions of the UK (Northern Ireland and Cornwall) have extensive projects to install fibre (mostly FTTC with some FTTP). These projects have been jointly funded by BT and the EU development funds.
NI has been done to 90%, and
Cornwall is running through to 2015 to target 95% - often showcasing new solutions that will be used in the other areas of the UK.
- The government are providing gap funding to get "superfast" (outside those 2 regions) from the 67% level up to 90%. The funding is going to total around £2 billion, with 1/3 coming from central government, 1/3 coming from local government or from EU funds for rural areas, and 1/3 from the commercial bidder (though BT has been the bidder who has won all the contracts so far). Target officially 2015, but some plans are drifting into 2016, and the plans announced so far suggest that most councils are plumping for FTTC provision as widespread as they can get. This is very much a "just getting started" project, with only a few cabinets having been deployed through these plans.
- The remaining 10% should get a minimum of 2Mbps, but many will get more, up to 24Mbps. Target is again 2015-2016, from the same budget as part 3 above. No particular progress (although BT is still rolling out ADSL2+ capability to more of their rural exchanges).
- The EU has targets that say this final 10% should get to "superfast" by 2020. There has been nothing concrete from government about these targets - they're too busy concentrating on the budget & plans for the 2015/2016 rollout. There *are* some statements from some local councils but almost nothing beyond vague targets - except for one county that has set a 99% target within the 2015 rollout.
So that is around £4.5 billion for a "superfast" rollout of 24 million lines, predominantly FTTC. Estimates for a full FTTP rollout have been anywhere from £15-30 billion instead - so both totals and relative proportion are markedly different from your Aus numbers.
This white paper from Alcatel (mostly on vectoring) also reckons that FTTC is around one-third the cost of FTTP.
I'd like to know how they get an FTTC programme to be as high as $30bn!
trying to establish if there's anything good about doing this.
It is all in the numbers. Does an FTTC rollout fit well with the wiring architecture in Aus? Are the properties going to be close enough to the FTTC cabinets? Will the rollout aid a future rollout of FTTP - and do so in a way that reduces state intervention and is inclusive of the most remote places. Will it promote competition for subscribers?
Most importantly: Will the 80-100Mbps from FTTC be enough speed, to enough people, for the next 2 decades? If so, then you don't *need* FTTP, even if you want it.
1) We have big problems with corroded copper and Outside Plant Records, whereby third-party engineers don't document what fixes they make to existing cabinets (called turrets) and some 30% of lines don't go to the places they are supposed to go to. This makes upgrading to FTTC very tricky. How much have these been issues for the UK?
We've seen a few people get problems putting FTTC on their lines (well, their D-side lines), but the figures "feel" much lower than those that have suffered from problems in upgrading to ADSL2+.
We don't seem to suffer much from record problems, but we do seem to get problems within the BT ordering system layers - often requiring weeks before it will allow a fibre product to even be ordered.
We do see problems (on any DSL system) where BT engineers are required to "lift and shift", changing the copper path to a different one. This suggests that we do suffer from some amount of copper problem. Again, I don't get the impression that it is extensive, but I guess some routes are running low on free copper pairs.
The copper itself doesn't corrode, but the joints become a problem, especially if subject to water or to physical movement (such as from the wind). The insulation *can* corrode - again from physical movement and paper insulation (on older cable) can suffer devastation from water - and this allows shorts to happen more.
In the UK, our copper cable architecture is largely:
- From exchange to "Primary Connection Point" (PCPs are our green cabinets), using large cables that tend to be older. Can be 1000 pairs, and usually pressurised to help keep water out, and leaks monitored. Older cables may be insulated with paper. These are the E-side cables.
We have 80,000 PCPs, supporting an average of 400 lines each (larger ones can be up to 1,000 lines, I think). The FTTC cabinets are co-located with these cabinets, and it seems like there needs to be around 300 lines or more for the site to be considered viable for commercial coverage of FTTC.
- From PCP to a distribution point (DP) close to the home. A DP may support a few tens of properties, and be located underground or at the top of a pole.
- There are some "Secondary Connection Point" (SCP) cabinets between PCP and DP, but not many. They never get an FTTC cabinet.
- From DP to home is a "drop line" which can be on overhead poles or underground. This line is probably the one that is most likely to be exposed to wear & tear, and the most likely to require changing; likewise the joints here are the most fragile.
BT say that the average distance between PCP cabinet and home is less than 500 metres, which equates to speeds of around 40-50Mbps (using a 17a profile).
BT Openreach have a video that gives you a feel for how FTTC fits:
Video aimed at retail ISPs.
Around 10% of our lines go through no cabinet at all. BT are running trials for these lines, where they add a cabinet. However, such consumers are largely left out of the projects at the moment.
2) FTTC cabinets are getting smaller but are they upgradable to FTTH? There was talk that blades could be inserted to make upgrading easier but this would be a problem in a small cabinet, wouldn't it?
BT's deployment of FTTC is partly being used as the backbone for the future deployment of FTTP, but neither cabinets (the PCP wiring cabinets nor the active FTTC cabinets) will form part of the future FTTP architecture.
It is the initial routing of the fibre itself that is common to both architectures - where many fibres are routed through "aggregation nodes" on routes out from an exchange. These nodes is a large group of splice trays, protected in a black plastic lozenge destined to live underground (visible in
this video). Openreach have a similar video to the earlier one, but
focussed on FTTP (although it starts the same).
Fibre to an FTTC cabinet currently goes through one or more aggregation nodes (as a point-to-point connection). In the future, fibre for FTTP will also connect through these, on their way to a splitter (as part of a GPON network) an distribution point - both of which are further groups of splice trays, and both expected to go underground or up telegraph poles.
So... there is no role for the cabinets to play in future.
3) After an initial FTTC rollout, the plan is to add Vectoring around three years later (after 2016). How viable would this be?
The tests for Vectoring suggest it is a very viable technology,
capable of getting 100Mbps out to distances of 400 metres. It seems like more people are going to be able to get close to the headline speed too - making the higher speeds more marketable.
BT are talking about it, with no date mentioned.
When FTTC first went live, BT offered 40/10 packages, using 8MHz of spectrum from the cabinets. They later swapped to 17MHz and went for 80/20 packages - I *just* get 80/20 on my line of 400 metres. However, the limitation will be the effect of crosstalk as more subscribers join, and I can see the effect on my line as the SNR values decrease over time. Vectoring should remove this, and allow them to increase the headline packages to 100/20.
The downside is that Vectoring requires a cabinet to know about *all* lines through the cables - implying that only 1 cabinet is possible for a particular area. This means that ISP competition needs to be done by sharing the cabinet infrastructure rather than building multiple cabinets.
4) We are told that the whole country will be guaranteed 25Mb/s downloads by 2016, even though we'd have to switch from a fully planned FTTH rollout which is flying along. Does such a rollout sound viable?
Possible, but it'd have to start *soon*, and get running fast. It'd depend on the same core infrastructure to interconnect cities, so that part should be fine. The problem would be establishing the working practices of a few groups of contractors... and here, one of the bigger headaches is connecting power.
BT's commercial rollout will have taken from 2010 to 2014, covering 18-19 million lines. It is running somewhere between 1 and 2 million lines per quarter at present.
5) To what extent has vandalism and theft from cabinets actually been a problem?
I haven't heard of any, actually.
6) What do people get if they are told that its uneconomic to have a cabinet put in their area?
Right now, they get referred to the BDUK process (ie the local council that controls the publicly-funded portion of the build). But the plans are only just getting defined there, so few people know if they are in the middle 23%, or the final 10%.
Some councils expect to run further community-led projects for the final 10%.
My local county is one that expects to do this.
If there is no community project, then "they" point to wireless, satellite, and bonded copper solutions - but in practice there has been little sign of this yet.
Note - A lot of pundits seem to think that 4G mobile will play a part here too, but I doubt it. Mobile bandwidth is scarce, and will continue to be needed by mobile people. Fixed broadband demands will always outpace the space available to mobile networks.
Another group of consumers labelled as uneconomic - those without cabinets - are currently in limbo. Apart from a few trials of adding a cabinet, there is little known about what BT plans for those people. We don't even know how many could become viable by the addition of a cabinet.
7) Does anyone in the UK still think FTTH is a waste of money?
FTTP evangelists bemoan the use of FTTC, while the more practical believe FTTC is a good economic stepping stone.
Over here, the same kind of money for national FTTP would also be required for a national high-speed rail network. The two arenas can get into a good fight - and there are plenty of people who will say either is a waste of money.
I'm on the practical side. I was one of the first people onto ADSL here (2Mbps in 2000), and I could readily justify the jump from my old speed of 8/0.5 to 40/10. However, we don't need the 80/20 yet. In truth, the upstream jump to 20 is more useful than the downstream jump from 40. I guess my family just doesn't watch enough TV yet!
The introduction of the "FTTP on demand" product will be interesting. This will allow anyone who is in the footprint of an FTTC cabinet to order the FTTP-on-demand product, and BT will install your line as though it is part of a widespread deployment in the area - ie they prepare the fibre, splitter, DP and manifolds for other customers as they install your line. Prices look to be around £1000 - £1500 for someone an average distance from the cabinet, broadly in line with previous estimates for the average cost of FTTP for the nation.
That product allows BT to start their FTTH network, and indeed make it widely available, without having to put the up-front money in place that a full deployment would require. It then probably gives them a 20 year window in which to build out the network, funded by people who are willing to pay.
It is hard to say that FTTP is a waste of money that way, funded by precisely the people that demand it.
8) Is there really a big backlash against having ugly cabinets on streets?
No. There seems to be more of a backlash against those people who complain and hold up deployment.
It *does* happen on occasion though. Particularly for those councils who have large conservation areas, whose residents are already wealthy enough to not be persuaded by the economic benefits of superfast broadband.
Any help you give would be seen by the highest levels of Australian government. The more hard evidence the better.
I personally think that our plans between 2013 and 2016 are good enough for the 90% that get superfast connections. Half of these people will have access to 50Mbps or more, the rest getting 25Mbps or more (and those speeds increasing with Vectoring). Anyone wanting 300Mbps can order it if they part with enough money.
It is the final 10% that will still be left out that should tax our minds.
If the following decade or two is the beginning of the push to 100% fibre, then I think a good place to start is in that final 10%. The eradication of copper can be done alongside the removal of those small exchanges and their buildings - and a trial of a "fibre-only exchange" (FOX) is exactly what BT are running.
I believe that FTTC with speeds of 50-100Mbps is "good enough" for high-demanding consumers for the next decade. As those consumers move on to a (fee required) FTTP-on-demand product, less demanding consumers will progress from 10-20Mbps ADSL into the same FTTC sphere.
That gives BT 20 years (after 2016) to migrate from copper to fibre, while surrounded by (mostly) satisfied customers. And having the lead (savvy) customers pay for the FTTP privilege, while building on the backbone installed during FTTC deployment.
Experience from our 5 year FTTC rollout is that it is full of dissatisfied customers demanding "Why can't I get it yet?" "Why have you left us out?"
Meanwhile those who have been upgraded are broadly satisfied (though there are some with line problems that deserve better treatment in sorting them out).
NBN, with a 10 year plan to get to FTTP in one step, faces 10 years of such angst.
Far better, then, to get the angst out of the way faster (and cheaper). But don't leave the next step until too late, and face another 5 year problem. Use the first rollout to allow the second to be built on top - and have the plan there from the beginning.
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