I was happy with ADSL prior to the pandemic then video calls were required for schooling, etc so FTTC for the higher upload was required.

Not everyone needs FTTC or FTTP. If you use FaceAche, email, general browsing and even SD streaming is okay on ADSL.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

general browsing and even SD streaming is okay on ADSL.

If you have 10 Mbps or faster, with 800kbps or faster uplink, then I can understand. However any slower and it is not worth the money in 2021, given the amount of advertising/javascript and other crud that web pages come with.

Exchange hosted ADSL will eventually disappear. Once the PSTN shutdown completes after 2025, then I suspect Openreach will look at their ADSL offerings, and perhaps look at moving these to the FTTC/VDSL cabinet. The interesting part will be the LLU providers whom are renting rack space in the exchanges.

It may be easier for Openreach to offer a very slow FTTC/VDSL service at the same price as ADSL, to enable them to remove/close physical exchanges.

Technically speaking Openreach don’t actually offer ADSL, that’s all a BTw or LLU product.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Technically speaking Openreach don’t actually offer ADSL, that’s all a BTw or LLU product.

Thanks, I was mixing up OR as they run the PSTN! I still wonder the future of exchange based ADSL.

Exchange-based ADSLx will have to go at some time once PSTN is gone. It will be as useful as stabling for horses at hotels.

ADSL can't even achieve the broadband USO. ADSL2 and ADSL2+ if strong enough and still in use could perhaps be handled by software mods in FTTC cabinets or by a small converters in PCPs attached to them converting to VDSL2 which would then be handled by the FTTC cabinet DSLAMs. But even that would need some infill FTTC cabinets and be relatively short-term. I doubt if it would be worthwhile. AIUI Openreach have stopped rollout of FTTC anyway.

The ideas or similar in that paragraph are in my opinion just not going to happen.

Surely it is more likely the LLU providers and therefore their customer ISPs will be scrapping ADSL2+ in the way BTW is heading? Leaving most exchanges pure LLU. Openreach won't wear that plus the radiating copper maintenance, especially given that even FTTC must die before long!

I think the non-headend exchange buildings are mainly leased these days. (My wife spent half her working life buying space and extension space for them, and the second half selling them off and putting them on lease-back. I doubt if many if any have been bought back).

That leasing is a huge overhead once fibre is almost 100% available with the rest covered by the USO solutions.

Is the true copper retirement drop dead date actually the Trillium deal 30-year lease drop dead date? Probably.

Thanks, will watch and see what happens after PSTN shutdown.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

I think the non-headend exchange buildings are mainly leased these days. (My wife spent half her working life buying space and extension space for them, and the second half selling them off and putting them on lease-back. I doubt if many if any have been bought back).

That leasing is a huge overhead once fibre is almost 100% available with the rest covered by the USO solutions.

Pretty sure they were all sold and leased back as part of the original 6,700 site deal in 2001. There were no exchange carveouts based on handover/head-end vs non-headend (indeed that concept didn't really exist in 2001).

https://www.telerealtrillium.com/about-us/case-studi...

Telereal Trillium have sold many of the former BT office buildings, often for residential redevelopment since then, as they became increasingly under-occupied.

The BT exchange estate I think now stands at around ~5600. That will no doubt reduce to around ~960 sites by the time copper is fully retired. They announced plans back in December to close some 4600 odd sites, (and initially 100 by Dec 2030, including some 36 handover exchanges actually) hence my quip around the 30-year lease-back anniversary date.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/openre...

There is really one comment in that original ISPReview article which says it all...

Openreach predicts that, come 2025, the number of copper broadband customers being served by the 4,600 exchanges will fall to just 1 million (i.e. economically unviable).

Indeed why would BT Group want to be paying rent on 4600 sites for a lowly million or so broadband customers.

I don't know about that deal, my wife's part would have preceded that I think. She was dealing with selling and leasing back individual properties. She was in the property department in the North West HQ dealing with such sales and purchases, and except for huge deals signed the contracts.

It was really amusing one day when she came home and said what had happened that day.

She was acting for the person above her (that was, maybe still is, how things worked in BT ex GPO and you got the higher salary for the period), when the final date came up for signing the one to buy this whole building as the first occupant when they moved out of Bridgewater House on Whitworth Street. The contract should have been signed that day by the next one up again, who for some reason was not around. Heart in mouth, she signed it! (She had done most of the work on it).

As you can see, it is now the McDonalds Hotel Manchester, but that happened years after she had left.

Edited by pluralist (Wed 06-Oct-21 14:13:58)