More faster fibre broadband from Openreach
With just months until the completion date of Spring 2014 for the Openreach commercial roll-out of FTTC and FTTP products, Openreach has announced the last 19 new exchange areas that will see its FTTC products delivered.
ANFIELD, ASHFIELD, BEACON, BRADFORD, CANARY WHARF, FARNWORTH, GOSCOTE, HALESOWEN, HOLMEWOOD, LEEDS, NETHERLEY, NEWCASTLE EAST, NORTH SHIELDS, OLD WHITTINGTON, ORRELL, RIPPONDEN, RUBERY, STONE CROSS, WAKEFIELD
Last 19 exchanges under £2.5 billion commercial roll-out by Openreach
There is no precise information on which cabinets will be enabled on these exchanges, but the 19 areas represent some 195,000 premises. There is also an extra 250,000 premises that will benefit from infill work in 293 exchange areas, which means cabinets missed out on the initial roll-out will be enabled via the commercial roll-out.
In terms of the overall numbers once Openreach finishes the commercial roll-out it will have some 19 million premises within its fibre (FTTC/P) footprint spread over some 1725 exchanges. So for the number followers the UK has some 26.4 million households and around 4.8 million businesses, though some businesses will be home based, so lets say 30 million premises.
- 19 million premises equates to 63.3% of UK premises
- 1725 exchanges is 30.8% of all UK exchanges
- Rate of roll-out since June 2009 will be 300,000 premises passed per month
- Exchanges enabled works out at 27 per month
- Cost works out at £131 per premise passed (£2.5 billion/19million)
So the key now is whether this rate of roll-out will translate to the joint projects with the councils, or will the complications of heading into the more rural areas and slow the process down.
The biggest area now will be for Openreach to drive take-up of the services, and with Sky and TalkTalk more heavily promoting the availability of fibre this is likely to start happening. Also increased take-up will also help to show if FTTC was a bad technology choice, or whether for the vast majority it will provide a speed of service sufficient for the next five to ten years.
Comments
I'm pretty sure take-up would have been better if areas that barely get basic broadband were upgraded instead of areas with high cable coverage
Probably, but then Openreach are getting line rental from areas that barely get basic broadband, they get nothing from a cable customer. Far more money in line rental for them than FTTC.
That last paragraph, I'm way more concerned about the lack of interest Openreach are showing in increasing maximum speeds or how they are planning to do it.
80Mb is fine now but given the rate at which data consumption is increasing it won't be fine for all that long. There are a few ways to extend the life of FTTC without huge amounts of investment and it'll be interesting to see what Openreach's longer term vision is.
I love the idea of FTTC but its just a patch on a wound, There is no future in copper "strands" anymore, Not made for digital, Uploads configured faster than other domestic Broadband but poor performance compared to other technologies around, Cable broadband is still young and is about to mature.
NOT A Virgin Media fan BTW, But do believe there network has potential.
generallee94 - Seriously virgin media is basicaly FTTC just like bt im not a fan of virigin media if you happens to be stuck on a congested UBR ypu have had it
Virgin media is not an option. Pay for 120Mb service and get 10 Mb. Super high buffering on YouTube and other streaming services. Before the merger, Telewest was providing a decent and reliable service.
@Dixinormous
With FTTC there is still copper line rental for Openreach.
The Dudley (NEDUDL) exchange has just been added to the rollout too, is there any way to tell if this part of the commercial rollout or if its subsidised by BDUK?
@IVIik
Exchange Name: DUDLEY
Status: Not currently in rollout plans
@ http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/
@IVIik
Please ignore. There is DUDLEY exchange in west midlands too.
lol @max360, yeah its a common mistake. :)
Plus 'In addition, around 500 premises in Canary Wharf will be able to benefit from a new deployment of ultra-fast Fibre to the Premises technology. '
The references in the Infill work link
eg SSSWN SWINDON 422
does 422 'premises' means missed cabinets / streets or literally FTTP requests ?
and what proportion of unconnected streets/ cabinets does this represent ?
as mentioned by several before, there seems to a unexplained policy of not picking up/missing out what should be low hanging fruit of non-cabled streets.
Is there any appeal process? Every attempt to talk to the ISP just results in a 'we have no control' response, and consumers seem to have no input to the Openreach decision process.
Re: if FTTC was a bad technology choice
surely it should be possible to extend (via a Fibre repeater / distributer ) the FTTC be FTTP, so having got the power and primary fibre to the cabinet, 90% of the work is done. FTTP could be provided readily as a upgrade later, especially where copper to the premises was in channels already.
The Melrosegate infill mentioned on the link is to provide FTTC after cancelling FTTP rollout here - over a year delay to get a slower service, although better than being stuck on ADSL when they finally complete it
@andy88
This service is already offered.
£38 p/m (BT Retail).
£500 install cost.
£200-1000 distance charge (may go up to £3500 for those far from the cabinet).
36 month contract.
Nice..