Universal FTTH costings. A recent example from France.

The county of Seine et Marne is now deploying a universal FTTH network, imagine it as a more densely populated Meath outside Paris and with no visionary Noel Dempsey type in charge of Communications policy.

A consultant presented some interesting metrics on FTTH costs.

http://www.eett.gr/conference2010/files/Caparroy.pdf

The initial backbone network is 1200km and cost €85m but they had no ducting in place. It serves 143 exchanges too.

To complete the task they must build 76 PON and Active access points in the whole county ( less than the 143 exchanges minimum they have now. This in an area around a 10th the size of the Irish State and around teh size of the Pale.

a) The entire project will serve 570,000 households and businesses.
b) It will cost €1300 per premises including very rural ones
c) It will cost €740m but the ducts will be rented to other users in certain cases on an IRU ( long lease) reducing this below €700m.

The population living in the residential portion of the 570,000 premises is 1.3m.

Instructively the population of around 130 urban areas in Ireland, most of which towns already have a MAN ( backbone) in census 2006 was

http://beyond2020.cso.ie/Census/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=111833

Towns Pop 5000-9999 125,000
Towns Pop 10k + but not cities 360,000
Cities Cities ( 6) 1.5m

Total = 2m ish people

These are spread across the following housing units

http://beyond2020.cso.ie/Census/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=76513

Towns Pop 5000-9999 100,000
Towns Pop 10k + but not cities 215,000
Cities ( 6) 530,000

Total 845,000 Premises + maybe 20,000 business premises , lets say 870,000 premises Total.

Interestingly the Seine et Marne cost outliers are.

€10m for the 27,000 (5%) least expensive access points
€100m for the 27,000 (5%) most expensive access points

FTTH connections are categorized based on the deployment costs showing percentiles grouped by average cost per connection which is 1.300 euros:

• €250 to 700 23%
• €701 to 1,000 20%
• €1,001 to 1,500 25%
• €1,501 € to 3,000 26%
• €3,000+ 5%

The costs in towns of 5000 or above, most of which have MANs would come in just below €1,000 per premises in Ireland averaged. Seine et Marne did rural areas and villages too meaning we can discount the higher cost installs shown there.

Such a scheme ( including completing a National (dark fibre) Ducting Network linking these MAN towns by building on NRA ducts) and serving 870,000 premises including most significant employers in the state would cost €1bn or a bit more at those rates. Certainly no more than €1.3bn

Now there is a scheme worth doing...but probably not on Eamon Ryans watch because Eamon does not give a flying damn does he