Could FTTC prove to be a mistake ?

[MrIca]

Originally Posted by rhyds

I know this is an ancient thread resurrection, but there's been some developments up at my folks' village.

Background: This village is pole fed from the next village that's two miles down the valley (which houses the telephone exchange). There are no cabinets or ducting at present.

In the last week or so, a subcontractor has installed a number of BT branded concrete manhole covers in the village. One at the foot of a "main" pole near an electricity supply pole and the others alongside a road verge heading up towards the outlying houses.

The contractor (Eastern European) mentioned to my (non technical) Mother that it was apparently fibre preparation works.

My question is, considering the current copper lines are all overhead, will the ducting installed be suitable to run all these lines underground plus fibre, or will they simply run microbore ducting for the fibre only?

Interesting one. I initially thought well maybe they are installing additional cabinets in your village and they will fit fibre cabinets alongside the new ones. But you'd really need to get those copper lines underground before passing them through a cabinet. I can't think where that has ever been done.

Are you absolutely sure that all of the current copper lines to your village run overhead? Are there less than 50 homes in the village?

[rhyds]

Definitely sure. There's no BT/Openreach manhole covers on the only road up the valley and every time an accident took out a pole everyone lost their phone service. It is a small village (probably 50-60 homes) but stretched up a narrow valley. There are no cabinets as far as I can see either in my folks' village or in the next one down where the exchange is located.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by rhyds

Its fibre to the cab, not premises.

Okay. If you're sure on that the only option is something called FTTRN, where they intercept the lines coming into the village and install a pole-mounted mini-DSLAM to serve you.

They won't do anything with existing copper lines apart from intercept them to deliver to the mini-DSLAM - fibre to the cabinet means just that.

Essentially rather than a street cabinet you get the equivalent on a pole.

[MrIca]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Okay. If you're sure on that the only option is something called FTTRN, where they intercept the lines coming into the village and install a pole-mounted mini-DSLAM to serve you.

They won't do anything with existing copper lines apart from intercept them to deliver to the mini-DSLAM - fibre to the cabinet means just that.

Essentially rather than a street cabinet you get the equivalent on a pole.

FTTRN sounds like the only possibility for a village fed entirely by overhead lines. I'd agree with that.

It's never been done yet as far as I know. Keep us up to date with developments in your village it sounds interesting.

[qasdfdsaq]

It's being trialled in a few places.

[MrIca]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

It's being trialled in a few places.

Indeed it is, mostly Yorkshire as far as I knew though.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by MrIca

Indeed it is, mostly Yorkshire as far as I knew though.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...t-q4-2014.html

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Reading this article and this article do you think Openreach have been a little shortsighted with its FTTC decision ?

No. They know exactly what they are doing. They'll be milking us taxpayers senseless for money to upgrade from FTTC to FTTS or FTTH/P by the end of the decade.

In the interim they'll tell us FTTC is good enough, and for the majority of the country we'll have no choice but to accept it as we've no alternative.

[Ignitionnet]

If you want FTTP the solution seems to be to either be in a flat or live out in the sticks and get it on the taxpayer's tab.

I think we must be the only country in the developed world where the majority of the incument telco's FTTP is in rural/semi-rural areas.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I think we must be the only country in the developed world where the majority of the incument telco's FTTP is in rural/semi-rural areas.

Well same could be said for Germany's LTE coverage.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Well same could be said for Germany's LTE coverage.

Really?



Seems fairly extensive to me. Built up areas obviously present different challenges but that's surely about the laws of physics, not which towns and cities have been upgraded? If they're running LTE at one of the higher frequency bands it'll be impeded more by walls, etc, for sure. Doesn't change that the cell density is still probably higher in the towns and cities or that they have LTE there.

[qasdfdsaq]

That map illustrates the point completely - masses of rural coverage yet fairly little around some of the biggest built up areas.

In case you forgot that's the way it was intended to be, the government forced them to provide extensive rural coverage before they could begin covering cities. The same sort of regulatory incentive we have here with public funding for rural build-out and not urban hotspots which the providers are already clamoring to cover among themselves.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

That map illustrates the point completely - masses of rural coverage yet fairly little around some of the biggest built up areas.

In case you forgot that's the way it was intended to be, the government forced them to provide extensive rural coverage before they could begin covering cities. The same sort of regulatory incentive we have here with public funding for rural build-out and not urban hotspots which the providers are already clamoring to cover among themselves.

Okay, although looking at a map of Germany that shows Dusseldorf, Munich, Dresden, Hanover, Stuttgart, Berlin etc covered by the purple on that map while the south-west of the country with no large cities is somewhat empty confuses.

How about https://www.telefonica.de/fixed/news...re-on-air.html ?

Those well-known rural areas Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Nuremberg, Leipzig, and Düsseldorf being the first covered by Telefonica.

I can't say I know the regulatory background to Deutsche Telekom's LTE deployment beyond that because they didn't **** all their money away at the start of the century they didn't end up having to sell their mobile arm to not go bankrupt and have spent a fair chunk of change on LTE. Their VDSL rollout covered less of Germany than BT covered and I believe LTE was in part a replacement for fixed services.

A completely different scenario to the UK and FTTP where we just have a telco that would rather spend money on football rights than infrastructure and is probably best having the retail unit spun off from the rest so that they can set about trying to be Sky without handing Wayne Rooney et al the network repair and upgrade cash.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Okay, although looking at a map of Germany that shows Dusseldorf, Munich, Dresden, Hanover, Stuttgart, Berlin etc covered by the purple on that map while the south-west of the country with no large cities is somewhat empty confuses.

OK, lets take a look at that map again, here highlighting the 7 biggest cities and metropolitan areas, basically the same as your list substituting Dresden which was 11th with Stuttgart which is 6th, of those large urban areas every one except Hamburg actually has fairly patchy coverage, noting in particular the Dusseldorf-Köln-Duisburg region, one of the largest urban conurbations in Europe, is also fairly patchy overall:


That aside comparing the rural coverage above with the rural LTE coverage of D-T's (joint) operations in the UK:


Note the almost complete lack of any coverage outside of the major urban areas. Compare with the map of Germany's coverage above - and then consider that Telekom Germany and EE UK have almost the same coverage, population wise: both in the mid 70%'s.

How about https://www.telefonica.de/fixed/news...re-on-air.html ?

Those well-known rural areas Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Nuremberg, Leipzig, and Düsseldorf being the first covered by Telefonica.

Ermm, I wouldn't have expected you to make such a huge mistake but Telefonica launched LTE three years ago, starting with rural areas first:

https://www.telegeography.com/produc...lte-on-1-july/

Your article is dated mid-2013, two full years later...

I can't say I know the regulatory background to Deutsche Telekom's LTE deployment beyond that because they didn't **** all their money away at the start of the century they didn't end up having to sell their mobile arm to not go bankrupt and have spent a fair chunk of change on LTE. Their VDSL rollout covered less of Germany than BT covered and I believe LTE was in part a replacement for fixed services.

Presuming you're referring to BT Cellnet/O2 vs. D-T yes, that's correct, however note since the launch of VDSL and LTE there are no operators in the UK with nationwide mobile and wireline operations, so comparing operations of two separate companies in different sectors vs. one that does both isn't exactly indicative.

A completely different scenario to the UK and FTTP where we just have a telco that would rather spend money on football rights than infrastructure and is probably best having the retail unit spun off from the rest so that they can set about trying to be Sky without handing Wayne Rooney et al the network repair and upgrade cash.

Well no, it's the same principles at stake (particularly if you look at the UK vs. Germany LTE coverage above). The UK LTE market has proceeded much the opposite way of that in Germany, with practically zero regulation and coverage/rollout defined purely by commercial/capitalist influences. We've ended up with practically complete urban LTE coverage with barely any rural rollout to speak of while they've had government headed incentive to provide rural coverage thus ending up with almost the entire country covered with urban areas coming last. That same government incentive is what's given us more rural FTTP than urban like you mention. Both have solely occurred as a result of the government saying 'we want rural' and would not have occurred without it.

[Ignitionnet]

Looking at the effort you went to there I sadly do not have as much time on my hands to prove people wrong on the Internet, so thank you for the correction.

The rural LTE there seems to be a completely different story from the LTE deployed here. It was a condition of the spectrum licenses to use it initially for rural areas where there was no fixed line broadband service.

If you could find me the regulatory equivalent that required BT to downgrade their FTTP plans from ~25% of their initial 2/3rds purely commercial deployment to virtually zero outside of trial areas that'd be great.