Fibre to the Premise gaining ground
Fibre to the premises (FTTP) will play a much bigger and earlier role in next-generation broadband in the UK than was assumed even a few months ago. That means that Britain could be getting the full benefits of superfast broadband years earlier than expected.
In fact, FTTP is already ahead of its slower but less expensive little brother, Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC), at least for the moment. Point Topic estimates that at June 2009 there were around 600 fibre connections in place in the UK and at least 580 of them were FTTP.
Now BT has announced that it will cut back its FTTC plans and increase its planned FTTP rollout by 150%. This marks a shift of at least £200m of investment away from FTTC.
“When a major player under tight financial constraints decides to shift that much investment towards FTTP you have to take it seriously,” says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic. “It’s got to be a pointer towards the way things are going.”
BT’s FTTP announcement on 9 October broke new ground by proposing FTTP coverage for areas where copper-based services are already available, rather than catering just for new developments. It has already announced FTTP trials for to “brownfield” sites in Milton Keynes and North London.
Further details are lacking, for the moment, on which other areas will be favoured with the superior service, or quite why Openreach has decided it is economic to make such a big shift in its investment plans.
“Partly, it’s a shift in their cost-benefit analysis,” says Johnson. “It’s turning out to be cheaper than BT feared to install FTTP, and the case for users wanting superfast bandwidth is getting stronger all the time.”
“But the desire to head off cherry-picking competition by alternative service providers such as H2O may have had a strong influence too,” he adds.
FTTP (also known as Fibre-To-The-Home, FTTH) is usually more expensive to install than Fibre-To-The-Cabinet but it is generally recognised as more future proof, offering much higher speeds, more capability for multiple applications and lower maintenance costs. If operators can finance the initial investment they should be able to make a better return in the long run.
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