March 4, 2011
BT are aiming to connect over a quarter of a million UK homes to it’s full fibre network.
 BT’s FTTH/P (Fibre To The Home/Premises) not only uses fibre optic cable to the street side cabinet but also more fibre from the street side cabinet to the home which means that it can offer even faster broadband. Those on full FTTP/H will be able to sign up to BT’s 110Mb fibre broadband package.
For the most part though BT’s fibre broadband rollout is on a FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet0 basis that will offer broadband up to 40Mb, this is what will be offered to the most homes where BT rolls out it’s Infinity network.
Around 270,000 homes will be connected to the FTTP network by around September this year.
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June 9, 2010
The UK needs to increase it’s roll out of true Fibre To The Home (FTTH) broadband as we are lagging behind the rest of the world.
The call for the UK and the rest of the EU to roll out 100Mb fibre broadband connections direct to the home (FTTH) came from Hartwig Tauber, the director general of the FTTH Council.
To push the point home of the UK’s lack of ambition he pointed to the fact that last summer Japan were pushing for everyone there to have a minimum 1Gb fibre broadband connection, while over in the UK our government said they wanted there to be a minimum 2Mb broadband connection for everyone in the country, this is 500 times small than the target Japan has set!
The FFTH Council did acknowledge the EU’s target of making sure everyone within the EU would have broadband access by 2013 and that by 2020 there should be a minimum 30Mb broadband connection, although upload speeds and also minimum speeds was still unclear as many “up to” speeds don’t actually guarantee users will actually receive this broadband speed.
In the UK there are currently only 5,000 homes that have full Fibre To The Home connections and across Europe this totals around 2.5 million. However, in comparison to the Far East where fibre broadband is much more widespread there are around 38 million people who are connected with fibre directly to their premises.
There was also a slight dig made at the FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) installations that BT are installing, this is where the fibre is taken to the street side cabinet then VDSL2 technology is used via the existing copper network to take the broadband to the home, this results in slower broadband speeds than full fibre, with BT offering up to 40Mb broadband connections via this type of installation.
Tauber said this on the issue:
“The applications that people will want in the future, such as being able to download HD movies, will need faster speeds. An HD video of 20GB would take five hours to download on VDSL speeds of 10Mbit/s, but just 30 minutes on fibre of 100Mbit/s.“
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March 10, 2010
Fibre-Optic broadband access is growing across Europe as next generation broadband starts to take off.
A study done by IDATE on behalf of the Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council Europe showed that the rate of growth of Fibre-To-The-Home broadband went from 19% in June 2009 up to 29% by the end of December 2009.
Across Europe it is estimated that there is FTTH access available to 25 million homes and businesses with currently around 3.5 million taking subscriptions.
In Europe it was found that there was 249 FTTH projects taking place, with 136 of these being new initiatives that were launched since 2005.
The UK however does not show up on the tables for leading the way with FTTH, Norway top the charts with a coverage of 64.9% and Sweden in second spot with a FTTH coverage of 41.4% coverage.
It is countries in Western and Northern Europe that also lead the way in terms of subscriptions to FTTH services, with 67% of subscribers in these countries, Sweden, Italy, France, Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
The UK we hope will start to feature in the next year or two as fibre broadband deployment is starting to take off a bit more here now, even though we have Virgin Media who are a cable provider the study did not include them. BT are starting the roll out of their own fibre network (BT Infinity), with around 2.5 million premises having FTTH installed by 2012 although the majority however are having FTTC (Fibre-To-The-Cabinet) installed which does not offer as fast speeds as it uses copper wires to deliver the broadband from the cabinet to the premises. Virgin Media are also looking to offer 100Mb fibre broadband via their DOCSIS 3 network.
What is considered one of the main issues with next generation high speed broadband connections is getting people to sign up to them, so a similar process that was needed to get people to change from dial up internet to standard ADSL broadband.
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February 24, 2010
Bournemouth residents are set to have the fastest broadband in the UK, dwarfing the broadband speeds to be offered by BT Infinity and Virgin Media fibre broadband by getting a superfast 100Mb fibre broadband.
 The three fibre broadband providers have been announced who will be providing fibre broadband over the Fibrecity network and be able to offer fibre broadband speeds up to a whopping 100Mb, this is double the current maximum that Virgin Media offer (50Mb) and over double what BT Infinity will offer (40Mb).
The Fibrecity network will use Fibre To The Home (FTTH) and has been installed using existing waste pipes and sewers meaning that it could be installed at a hugely reduced cost than would have been possible if they had had to dig up roads.
The Fibrecity network will also not just be offering super fast fibre optic broadband but also telephone and TV. With a fibre connection of 100Mb it means that the fibre optic network connection can easily cope with handling a number of different applications, such as streaming videos, webcam use, telephone calls and online gaming without there being an effect on the other applications that are also using the connection at the same time.
Another plus point with the Fibrecity networks is that no telephone line rental charges are charged, also, as the telephone can run through the fibre network aswell it also means that you could get rid of your BT telephone line if you wish.
The 3 providers who will be providing the fibre broadband services have been announced as, VISPA, Velocity1 and Fibreband.
The homes in Bournemouth that have already been connected to the Fibrecity network will be contacted to have a set-top-box installed that will then let them connect to the fibre broadband from one of the 3 broadband providers.
This new network is currently only available in Bournemouth although Fibrecity are currently doing a network in Dundee. Going on the success of these it is likely that further cities and locations will have Fibrecity networks installed.
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October 9, 2009
BT is to more than double the number of homes and businesses that will be able to receive it’s fastest FTTH (Fibre To The Home) broadband.
BT’s Fibre To The Home (or Fibre To The Premise as BT call it) will be the fastest broadband BT will offer with speeds up to 100Mb and is to be made available now to 2.5 million premises and not the 1 million as originally planned. The move comes as BT have findings that it is going to cost far less to deploy than they had originally anticipated meaning that even more people will be able to benefit from it.
BT will be deploying Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) elsewhere and the hope is that around 10 million homes and businesses will have a fibre broadband connections by 2012. FTTC is expected to deliver broadband speeds of 40Mb.
BT has cut the costs of FTTH by moving away more from having to dig up roads to using existing underground ducts where copper wires are already running, they are also planning on using telegraph poles to run the fibre optic cables between these, again which takes away the expensive cost of digging up roads.
BT has also updated the speeds and prices that communications providers will pay to use BT’s Generic Ethernet Access over Fibre to the Cabinet (GEA-FTTC) that will deliver broadband at 40Mb download and 10Mb upload, this is an increase from 5Mb upload speeds and won’t cost the providers any more. The wholesale price to the providers is £88.80 per year.
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September 10, 2009
There are now more than 2 million fibre broadband connections in Europe that go direct to the home (Fibre-To-The-Home) according to research by the FTTH Council Europe.
The number of those with FTTH has increased by 18% since 2008 across Europe which shows that the broadband market has continued to grow and develop, however some of the bigger European countries such as the UK, France & Germany didn’t make it onto the top 10 list of countries in Europe with FTTH (based on percentage of customers who have fibre broadband).
The list was dominated mainly with smaller European countries with Sweden topping the list with 10.9% of the country being connected with fibre broadband. Norway and Slovenia were the next 2 countries on the list.
- Sweden – 10.9%
- Norway – 10.2%
- Slovenia – 8.9%
- Andorra – 6.6%
- Denmark – 5.7%
- Iceland – 5.6%
- Lithuania – 3.3%
- Netherlands – 2.5%
- Slovakia – 2.5%
- Finland – 2.4%
The FTTH Council expects that by 2012 there will be around 13 million people who will have fibre broadband across 35 European countries.
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