ftth (Fibre To The Home)

[sink12]

This is probably ridiculous - but will enquire anyway....Seems like Fibre To Te Home (FTTH) s way to go but costs are hgh. How about if tech adept members of streets volunteered - maybe after a short training course - to DIY cable to the home for themselves and neighbours ? THere are probably insurmountable hurdles that I don't know about but I'm sure you get the picture - we organise and do it ourselves .....

[RubberyDuck]

I'd gladly install Fibre to my house, but I think the hurdles you mean are the council.

[Graham M]

Who will provide the infrastructure? It's all very well running a bundle of glass fibres into your house but what's it going to be connected to?

[sink12]

Sorry should have been clearer - work with what has already been done by virgin and replace last bit of copper with fibre.

[Graham M]

But that would mean replacing every single piece of equipment on the network as it's all geared for Cable

[Stuart]

This is probably ridiculous - but will enquire anyway....Seems like Fibre To Te Home (FTTH) s way to go but costs are hgh. How about if tech adept members of streets volunteered - maybe after a short training course - to DIY cable to the home for themselves and neighbours ? THere are probably insurmountable hurdles that I don't know about but I'm sure you get the picture - we organise and do it ourselves .....

Nice idea, but there are a few hurdles.

One is that local councils are unlikely to want the disruption of having loads of roads and/or pavements dug up.

Another is that Virgin have a *lot* of equipment dedicated to running the cable network (probably thousands of cabinets). This will all need to be replaced. As I understand it, this is a *very* specialised job.

Another is support. Virgin have enough trouble keeping the network running as it is. It's going to multiply their support costs if they have to support miles of fibre networks installed by volunteers who may or may not be qualified.

Finally, installing fibre networks is a very intricate business. If you splice two fibres together and they are even a micrometre (1/1000th of a millimetre) out of alignment, they may not work together. It's also dangerous as the lasers sent down the fibres can blind people.

[altis]

What's the point?

After lots of effort and expense you'll just end up with an optical version of what already comes down your cable. Your signal levels might be better but there would be absolutely no increase in bandwidth.

As Graham says, the only way this could provide you with a better service is to simultaneously replace all the equipment in all the green cabinets on the same loop, and all the connected subscribers' equipment, and change the distribution equipment at the local head-end. Nice - but not likely to happen any time soon.

[RubberyDuck]

Though this is not that feasable (I Guess), how about ordering a 100MBit line from Exponential-E, cost around £800 Per Month + VAT. We currently have this at work.

Now get around 25 neighbours to split the cost:

800 / 25 = £36 Per Month for each neighbour, roughly 4MBit up and down each

or

800 / 15 = £60 Per Month for each neighbour, roughly 6.5MBit up and down each

You wouldn't need Fibre cable, CAT6 would do just as well.

At certain times of the day you could burst the 100MBit depending on who is using it.

[RealDiamond]

Full FTTH has only been of value in areas were they completely replace the ISP with a brand new one using the FTTH network. This has been done for Apartment blocks and council buildings were the cost can be made back from the TAX payers :mad: or the cost of installing the FTTH service could be instantly wiped out by closing down the sub contracted installation company, there for the FTTH install is a writen off by the Banks and the ISP can use it for mostly nothing ;) .
H2O is planning on breaking this currently used system and actualy make a profit from laying FTTH completely in 2 cities then selling the network to some service providers. BUT if you read the topic in the other section on this forum they are taking ages.. to do any thing.. even updating there web site takes them half a year...

[SMHarman]

I have ftmh over here near NYC. :) I don't use it though, I still use cable.