UK Fibre broadband for 4m by 2013

bealtine

Fibre broadband for 4m by 2013
3 December 2008

There could be over four million British homes and businesses on high-speed fibre broadband within five years. New forecasts by Point Topic, the broadband analysts, suggest that optical fibre will be in use for about 20% of the 22 million broadband lines expected in the UK by late 2013.

The cable TV network is expected to stand up well against this challenge, holding onto 23% of the broadband market, because it is already going some way towards providing much higher speeds. But the proportion using basic DSL, the telephone line technology which is the mainstay of today’s broadband, will have dropped from over 78% today to only 57%.

forecasts


Most of the fibre connections will actually involve fibre only as far as the local telephone concentrator, so called FTTC for fibre-to-the-cabinet. The last few hundred yards will still be on high-speed types of DSL over copper telephone lines. This will provide the majority of users with downstream data at 20 megabits per second or more. Combined with new technologies in the core network, users will be able to get much more reliable, high bandwidth, high quality services than they can enjoy today.

With the increasing political and business pressure to make a national commitment to fibre, the prospects for a major step towards high-speed next-generation access look much more realistic than they did even a few months ago.

“This is probably the first moment when it has been possible to make a plausible forecast for fibre in the UK, based on some real plans and activity,” says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic. BT has announced a plan – still provisional – to roll-out fibre to 10 million homes by 2012. “It’ll probably take a bit longer than that but there are lot of other players coming into the market too,” Johnson points out. “So we estimate there will be over 4.4 million fibre lines by the end of 2013.”

As BT starts its fibre trials, and operators in Bournemouth, South Yorkshire, East London and other locations are either rolling out or trialling variations on fibre services, 2009 will see the UK take its first steps into commercial fibre. Point Topic’s projections suggest that over 1 million homes will be within reach of fibre by the end of 2010, increasing to well over 11 million 3 years later.

“There’s a lot of controversy about whether and why people are actually going to want such high speeds,” Tim Johnson admits. “I think they will, because they will be attracted by the offer of one single converged service, not lots of separate ones.

“People will be able to mix video telephony, TV, audio, online games and virtual worlds, all high quality and high resolution, into the total experience they want at that moment,” he says. “In fact it’s what today’s teenagers are trying to do right now and in a few more years the technology will catch up with them.”

Sponge Bob

bealtine wrote: »

Most of the fibre connections will actually involve fibre only as far as the local telephone concentrator, so called FTTC for fibre-to-the-cabinet.

This is what eircom proposed for the 5 big cities ( and most recently for Tullamore too )

In version 1 Danon announced it in 2006 but nothing happened much at all bar a few fibre cab installations here and there as is routine anyway .

In version 2 they added Tullamore but wanted €500m to do any of it and the latest timescale is to maybe do the 5 big towns by 2016 or something

Remember this post last month ??

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055429011

They would get to over 50% of the population if they did complete it . Shame about the daft line rental though .

"Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, Letterkenny and the midland towns of Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar."

bealtine

Sponge Bob wrote: »

This is what eircom proposed for the 5 big cities ( and most recently for Tullamore too )

Sometimes they look like they threw all their toys out of the playpen.