BT decide that we don't need speed

[Paul]

El Reg

Digital Britain Summit BT chief executive Ian Livingstone defended his firm's limited plans for faster broadband today, arguing there is not enough demand for fibre to the home to justify its cost.

He was appearing on a panel with his opposite numbers at Virgin Media and O2 at the Digital Britain summit this morning.

"Of course a Ferrari is faster than a Ford," Livingstone said. "But most people are happy with a Ford."

BT has so far committed £1.5bn to roll fibre out as far as streetside cabinets, connecting about 40 per cent of premises by 2012. The upgrade will offer speeds of up to 40Mbit/s per second downstream, short of the more than 100Mbit/s fibre optic lines into homes and businesses could deliver.

Livingstone said there weren't enough applications that needed such speeds. "Ultimately it's about what people will pay for," he said. "The economic case is not great."

True but short sighted as usual.

[punky]

Agreed.

At the time, most people were happy with dialup. In 10-15 years, they won't be happy with lower end broadband products, i'm sure. They will always be playing catch up. This really should be their once in a lifetime reconstruction product which should future-proof them for another few decades at least, with options to build on it.

Then again, maybe someone will come up with a super-fast wireless service that will render it all useless.

Originally Posted by Paul

El Reg

Quote:
Digital Britain Summit BT chief executive Ian Livingstone defended his firm's limited plans for faster broadband today, arguing there is not enough demand for fibre to the home to justify its cost.

He was appearing on a panel with his opposite numbers at Virgin Media and O2 at the Digital Britain summit this morning.

"Of course a Ferrari is faster than a Ford," Livingstone said. "But most people are happy with a Ford."

BT has so far committed £1.5bn to roll fibre out as far as streetside cabinets, connecting about 40 per cent of premises by 2012. The upgrade will offer speeds of up to 40Mbit/s per second downstream, short of the more than 100Mbit/s fibre optic lines into homes and businesses could deliver.

Livingstone said there weren't enough applications that needed such speeds. "Ultimately it's about what people will pay for," he said. "The economic case is not great."
True but short sighted as usual.

Ok I am confused now. I have read articles that say its fibre to the exchange and then VDSL2 from the exchange out now this says its to street cabs which obviously is better so which is it?

[Rob]

In the world of technology, the pace and nature of develpment is forever altering. Technology of today is obsolete tommorrow. It has to be difficult to forecast what we will expect in a few years time, compared to today's needs. One thing that is certain is we will demand more in the future and technology will have expanded to meet that demand.

Already we see the development and implementation of the next stage technologies. Media streaming is common place, IPTV is perhaps just round the corner. Whatever happens the average user will need increasing bandwidth. Gone will be the days where the average user simply switches on their single PC for a bit of web browsing.

It's difficult to see how one can justify the cost of installing new fibre links if the capability is already to be limited to that which barely meets current high end expectations. Equally if you are a technology provider, knowing how things can be superceeded by obsolescence, would you want to spend a shed load of funds developing something that has a high risk of becoming a white elephant?

[Paul]

The only good thing is once the fibre is to cab they can then look to patch from there to home. Apart from that yet again this country refuses to invest in infrastructure.

[Ignitionnet]

How do the UK expect to attract media companies and rely on broadband to recover the economy as per the sunshine Brown is blowing up our backsides when thanks to fibre deployment elsewhere a company can do business elsewhere and have business class symmetrical high bandwidth for a fraction the cost of the leased line needed here due to the BT / Virgin Media duopoly.

Also bloody rich VM's CEO talking about Digital Britain not Digital Cities given that VM's cable network is almost universally in urban areas. Why not rephrase it as 'Please don't give us any real competition, we like that BT suck it means we don't have to spend money'.

Both a pair of hypocrites who very much love the status quo and no doubt love the barriers to new entrants.

More blowing fibre, less blowing BS and PR up our backsides.

Meanwhile elsewhere in the world:

Verizon's FiOS FTTP Deplyment in the US:

http://policyblog.verizon.com/Policy...h-on-FiOS.aspx

Based on our four years of experience deploying and selling FiOS, I thought I'd offer our own observation about the bear's view:

It's near-sighted.

The facts are that our return on FiOS will exceed our cost of capital. When looking at the economics of the investment, we see significant financial benefits from maintenance expense savings

When we looked at FiOS, we looked not only at what was financially prudent today, but also where communications and entertainment technology was headed tomorrow -- and 10 years from now. We looked at how customer demands would change and grow.

Our fiber network will create new uses. We didn't build it to provide plain old cable TV service. Instead, it's our view that customers will increasingly demand the types of wireless and fiber broadband services that are just now beginning to emerge.

Netherlands:

http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2009_03_04_archive.html

In these bad economic times the Dutch government will stimulate a fast introduction of glass fibre. That said under secretary of state Frank Heemskerk at the first national glass fibre conference Light my Fibre at my hometown Almere.

Do also note the amount of areas in the Netherlands with fibre to the home deployment in progress and planning.

UK:

"Of course a Ferrari is faster than a Ford," Livingstone said. "But most people are happy with a Ford."

---------- Post added at 14:06 ---------- Previous post was at 14:04 ----------

Originally Posted by Paul

The only good thing is once the fibre is to cab they can then look to patch from there to home. Apart from that yet again this country refuses to invest in infrastructure.

It's not even that - we still tax fibre infrastructure so even if a company does get around all the barriers to building a new network they have to pay business rates for every kilometer of fibre they lay, which in the case of an FTTO deployment such as the ones in the Netherlands is incredibly expensive when every home is getting two fibres right back to the aggregation point.

BT of course have a special deal on business rates.

[Ignitionnet]

This might amuse:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/S...On-FiOS-101965

[Mick Fisher]

Seems that the ONLY thing NOT done on the cheap in the UK is the filling of Fat Cats wallets and the distribution of thick brown envelopes to the regulators and the rest of the gravy train hangers on.