Fibre Optic Broadband won’t meet the demand there is for it according to a fibre optics network map produced by Point-Topic.
BT has planned to connection 10 million homes to it’s Next-Generation Access (NGA) broadband network but this is falling way short of the demand that there is for the service.
BT is installing FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) for most which will provide broadband speeds up to 40Mb, there will also be some who will have FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) installed which could offer broadband speeds up to 100Mb. The problem comes in that an estimated 60% of the UK won’t have the fibre broadband network available to them by 2012 when BT hits it’s 10 million target.
The current plans are thought to mean only 35% of the population would be able to access the next generation network by 2012 with the remaining parts of the population not getting it before 2012 or even for possibly much longer.
Point Topic said:
“BT’s planned NGA rollout, as so far announced, falls a long way short of covering even those areas where NGA should be economically attractive even without subsidy. The contribution from altnets looks quite limited at the moment as well. Thus about 60% of the UK population have no prospect of getting NGA before 2012, and maybe for much longer”
and
“this new digital divide will cause heated controversy as many customers discover they cannot get the new high-speed services which their neighbours enjoy.“
We could also find that house prices in areas that are in the fibre broadband enabled areas increase or the houses are more sought after, which also ties in with the story we published the other day about how “Broadband speeds could make or break a house sale“.
The difference between fibre broadband users and standard ADSL users broadband will create huge digital divide and it is something that needs to be looked at to make sure there is broadband equality across the UK and to keep us in line with the rest of the world.