Openreach shares list of 551 FTTP rollout locations

[watercooled]

so we might get bare minimum FTTP by 2026, it's going to be old technology by then.

Hardly. Once the fibre run is installed, it's done. The fibre itself is fairly service-agnostic, and has an upgrade roadmap stretching out a long way into the future. Swapping or adding active equipment at either end of the fibre run is quite straightforward when it becomes available, with equipment already available for access speeds into the tens of Gb/s and standards agreed beyond that.

The fibre installed for residential access networks isn't too dissimilar from that used for backbone links (apart from the splitters), so it's an awfully long way off being outdated!

[JGJones]

That's not the developer's problem - getting modern internet run through the place would shave a hundred quid or so off the 10s of thousands of pounds profit they make on each house

I have sat in meetings with developers and some of them I literally quote "I don't care about the people living here, I care about making profit. Now what can we do to make this cheaper but still comply with the ERs?" That was to do with comm-entry systems and security doors etc in a block of flats. Not something trivial in that part of town. I'm not saying all developers are like that, but there are enough who are. Only £100 per house on a 100 unit development? Yup they'll slash that given half a chance. I've seen them swap bolts to a lesser quality of durability just to save x% per bolt. Net saving not much, but "it all adds up".

I've also seen a different developer refuse to get BT, Sky and Virgin pre installed to all flats in a new resi scheme despite it being evidently quicker and easier all round to let them do so in the M&E cores and laying cables to each apartment as part of the first fix while the finishes aren't in. Again, "we don't have to do it, so we're not spending the money. If the tenant wants to get it later they can work that out with the freeholder." SFAIK they put in BT only, and I'm not sure if that wasn't just RJ11. People wonder why new build gets such a bad rep but I have seen enough to feel it's not entirely undeserved.

It can be the developer's problem if the council or such wherever they're getting the planning permissions from make it a part of the prerequisites of building a new site.

I live in a new build site and one of the prerequisites for the site to go ahead is to provide FTTH - so every house on estate can get BT Fibre up to 1Gbs. There's a few other additional peaks but that's not relevant to this topic.

[ik9000]

It can be the developer's problem if the council or such wherever they're getting the planning permissions from make it a part of the prerequisites of building a new site.

I live in a new build site and one of the prerequisites for the site to go ahead is to provide FTTH - so every house on estate can get BT Fibre up to 1Gbs. There's a few other additional peaks but that's not relevant to this topic.

It's slowly getting traction, but it depends on the wiggle room in the wording. E.g. a council might mandate the property to be connected, but in a multi-block, multi-storey scheme that just means running the FTTP to the comms room in the communal areas on ground floor. A wiley contractor then doesn't have to connect the individual apartments. Try persuading Virgin/whoever to serve your 20th floor flat in that scenario. Not happening. Somehow the developers get away with it!

[dannyboy75]

Well I see Bournemouth & Poole are on there to be done sometime in the next 4 years, but whether that includes my little area is anyone's guess. Fortunately I have Virgin fibre anyway, but it would nice if they had some competition as they're not cheap!

[Jonatron]

So there's a possibility I might get FTTP in the ridiculously long time period of 22/23 ‐ 24/25. Meanwhile 5G is more than 3x faster than my FTTC. When 5G SA with new frequency bands is enabled, I'll probably switch to 5G.

[Ttaskmaster]

But the folk who want to live the rural life deserve faster internet more than those who it's more financially economical to provide it to.
This is people demanding that they have their cake and eat it.

Financially economical - Nope.
If you want to lay fibre in a rural area, you just have to dig up some grass. In many areas your cable will also serve businesses, which are far more profitable than domestics.

If you want to do it in an urban area, you're looking at roads and concrete and tarmac and paving and all sorts of things that will take much longer and need to be restored afterward. Plus you'll have to pay for council permission, along with all the parking suspensions and traffic management for every day that you're working there. You'll also be required to submit RAMS for the approval of every other utility with local assets, lest you damage something.
Then, at the end of the day, 9,000 properties all going off that one line you lay means most of them may not see full fibre speeds, so won't be a claimable output.

As for those living the rural life - Not everyone chooses it.
We're rural only because the urban options were too expensive. We have a nice little country cottage surrounded by fields... but we have no gas, no sewage, no cavity insulation, no central heating, no public transport and nothing within walking distance... also, most roads don't have pavements or street lighting and the speed limit is supposed to be 40, but no-one ever goes that slow, so you still have to own a car.
Top that off with the regular invasions by mice, thripps, bees and bats, the 150 year old rubbish pits out the back because refuse collection didn't exist in 1865, and the old foundations shifting to the point where your kitchen floor has moved several inches.

The rent on this place is far cheaper than in town, and there are many reasons for it. BT are the only supplier of internet round here and you'll pay almost £50 a month for the privilege of just 0.7Mbps.
So after suffering this for almost a decade while everyone else was on at least 15 times what I had, when GigaClear came along offering 900Mbps for the same money I rather felt I'd earned the right to have their cake and eat it.

[watercooled]

Financially economical - Nope.
If you want to lay fibre in a rural area, you just have to dig up some grass. In many areas your cable will also serve businesses, which are far more profitable than domestics.

If you want to do it in an urban area, you're looking at roads and concrete and tarmac and paving and all sorts of things that will take much longer and need to be restored afterward. Plus you'll have to pay for council permission, along with all the parking suspensions and traffic management for every day that you're working there. You'll also be required to submit RAMS for the approval of every other utility with local assets, lest you damage something.

It's not always quite that simple. Laying or repairing ducting along a major urban route may carry fibres supplying thousands or tens of thousands of premises. In many cases, much of this work may not be necessary where adequate ducting already exists, and much of the repair work (at least between headend and aggregation node) has already been done from the FTTC rollout. And then there is a lot of mid-ground before you get sparse rural where there is a significant distance between premises. In some cases this may require many kilometres of poles or ducting to be laid for a handful or even a single premises.

The fibres laid for PON are not shared with leased lines - each PON or leased line terminates back at the headend. The ducting can be shared, naturally, but this applies regardless of rural or urban.

Even in rural areas, you can't just go and 'dig up some grass' as that grass could well belong to someone and/or be on a narrow road where blocking it would cause problems. Agreed about the planning permission generally being more straightforward though, particularly in some areas.

Then, at the end of the day, 9,000 properties all going off that one line you lay means most of them may not see full fibre speeds, so won't be a claimable output.

That's not how it works. Contention ratio does not depend on rural or urban. And unlike FTTC, things like crosstalk do not matter. Openreach generally plan for a split ratio of 1:32. However, that applies regardless of dense urban or sparse rural, and distance between premises isn't really that important with PON having a range of tens of km with no degradation of service. Plus that split ratio is for 32 properties passed, not necessarily 32 customers.

Not to mention that small rural exchanges are totally bypassed for fibre services - FTTP and the fibre feed for FTTC are served by headends, located in major exchanges. This is also what will allow BT/Openreach to close many of their smaller exchanges when the copper services are withdrawn over the coming years.

[Kimbie]

BT FTTP... nope still not on the list, comically though I've had lightspeed (small regional fttp isp) installing their fttp stuff outside my house a few weeks ago with it planned to go live by the end of the year in 10 towns, knowing my luck it won't be in my village even though it's on route between two of the towns it mentions and I can literally touch the branded sign on the telegraph post lol.

I live in a town earmarked by Lightspeed since it was announced, regularly we now have at least 10-15 Openreach vans around the town all pulling fibre. Now from what I have been told Lightspeed are using independent contractors to pull their fibre its a purple jacket rather than the yellow BT use.

So would seem BT are flooding my town with FTTP to launch the service first before Lightspeed can.

Just want them to hurry up so can get more than 20Mb

[OwP]

I live in a town earmarked by Lightspeed since it was announced, regularly we now have at least 10-15 Openreach vans around the town all pulling fibre. Now from what I have been told Lightspeed are using independent contractors to pull their fibre its a purple jacket rather than the yellow BT use.

So would seem BT are flooding my town with FTTP to launch the service first before Lightspeed can.

Just want them to hurry up so can get more than 20Mb

They are using Kelly Communications nationwide
https://www.kelly.co.uk/case-studies...elivery/s2486/