By Jo Best, 12 April 2007 16:27
NEWS
BT's investment in its all-IP next-generation network - known as the 21CN - has hit its move towards fibre to the home (FTTH), a type of technology for delivering broadband that could supercharge the UK's internet connections.
Speaking in London today Neil Rogers, 21CN managing director, said that inspite of trialling fibre connectivity since 2004, BT is unlikely to take FTTH any further at the present time.
"It's something always under discussion," he said. "The more investment there is in 21CN, the likelihood of the debate resurfacing diminishes." Rogers added that while the industry continued to debate the merits of a switch to fibre, the telco has no plans to change its stance in the next couple of years.
Deployments of fibre have been slowly growing in the UK and Europe due to the faster, uniform connection speed it provides. However, adoption has been slow due to the costs associated with the technology.
Recent analyst reports put FTTH connections in western Europe at one million and overall penetration of the broadband market at 10 per cent.
Matt Beal, CTO of BT Wholesale, said that any decision to deploy fibre has been put on ice by market rather than regulatory conditions.
"You have to be ready to pay for that investment. My shareholders are not a charity. It isn't a regulation issue, it's a market issue - if no one wants to pay for [high definition video] streams they're not going to magic themselves into people's homes."
In the meantime, despite adopting ADSL2+ broadband technology that promises a theoretical maximum of 24Mbps, Beale said that in trials most consumers have experienced speeds of between 12 and 8Mbps.
And a slight speed bump won't be the only change BT's customers will notice - there will also be a move to self-service, with the telco hoping to emulate the online banking model where customers rather than bank staff take over the management of their accounts.
The resulting self-service model could result in redundancies, according to BT. However, the telco has no figures on how many people could be affected. "It depends on the level of take-up [of self service]... the first time we discuss people issues will be when we talk to the unions," Rogers said.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Roger Huffadine
I hope you don't mind but I've put a pointer to this article on my www.21CN.tv page. Now we know why BT didn't bother to register the 21cn.tv URL - they never had any intention of providing a decent network to cutomers.
2. Alan Lewis
I've been banging this drum for years, at Global Crossing, to BT, to councils.
Change planning consent laws:- class communications as an essential service, in the same way power, water, and sewerage is, and mandate that fibre must be laid in all new builds and redevelopments. The cost of laying cable/fibre in a new build is less than 1/10the the cost of laying post build.
3. anonymous
FTTH in my view is pointless, 8Mb broadband is more than adequate for home use (at work we only have a 1Mb sdsl connection which is adequate).
Yes Fibre to Businesses is essential, but is overkill for home use.
4. anonymous
couple of points, stating FTTH is pointless, fails to see the future possibilities of how different applications and services could be delivered via the web, TV, Video conferencing etc. etc. and is totally short sighted.
The fact BT aren't going to install FTTH, is no big deal, what about the FTTH facilities already implemented in many areas by NTL, Tele-west and others, it may be a reason for people to move away from BT.
5. Andy
So FTTH is pointless..?FTTH will be an essential factor in sorting out which economies will thrive in the knowledge economy and those that will not. Take a look at FTTH in pacific rim, Verizon's roll out of FIOS in USA, municipal FTTH projects such as UTOPIA in Utah and watch how they will gain competitive advantage with high speed, high quality services to TV, PC and beyond. Meanwhile us poor souls in UK should be happy with broadband without QoS over long length copper from the exchange.....we should be be very wary of our future position in the global economy. No doubt someone once thought that the canals were great and that railways were unnecessary...
6. anonymous
Yup, FTTH is pointless, just like a PC never needed more than 640K of RAM...
7. James Vickers
FTTH sounds good, but it seems unlikely to work that well with companies having restrictive policies like 30GB/month caps on accounts. In some cases the amount of traffic leaving the UK is a limiting factor in broadband - someone needs to pay for the bits to be moved around the world.
There is no point in having a super-fast last mile if the rest of the national / international infrastructure cannot handle it. If it can be done, then that is good news, but it would need other improvements to make the system viable.
8. anonymous
Until BT can consistently deliver 8mb to any home, it is fruitless to speculate on 21c or any other dream. Who is going to replace copper with fibre? BTG has other challenges with the imminent CxO changes within the forthcoming 11 months. Why invest- better build one's 'out take'.