Fibre To The Homes In FRANCE

[James Henry]

http://slashdot.org/articles/06/07/26/127205.shtml

If it weren't for the formerly ntl old boy's network at Ofcom regulating BT to death to the point where there's no point in them doing fibre to cabinets or to homes we could be seeing rollouts of technologies like this.

Oh well, so long as the next insanely cheap and crappy LLU DSL offer comes along. Of course have to protect ntl:Telewest from big bad BT as well.

France now joins Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Italy and others with live fibre to the home networks.

We again won't see this for years as Ofcom have made it pointless for BT to do it and no-one else wants to make the investment (BT do actually want to invest in these things but unless they make money there's no point, and Ofcom ensure they won't).

[Stuart]

Yet if the cable companies were to die off because of their precarious financial state and lack of protection, BT would have no competition, and, therefore no incentive to install technologies such as fibre to the home.

Why spend millions upgrading copper to fibre, when they can just try and carry on squeezing more bps from copper?

I would love to see FTTH. I just don't think that BT would bother unless they had competition. In fact, I am sure they wouldn't.

[James Henry]

They wanted to do the investment over 20 years ago and still want to now. It's all about TV and FTTH is the best way for them to deliver it.

There is FTTH and ethernet to the home in Sweden, coexisting happily with UPC cable and ADSL2+...

The top tier of UPC cable in Sweden is 24Mbit down and 8Mbit up, this thanks to ethernet to the home.

That's what FTTH does, it raises the bar, just ask Optimum Online customers in the USA who've seen their 10/1 packages upgraded to 15/2 free of charge and a new service of 30Mbit introduced due to FTTH rollout.

[Stuart]

Oh, I don't doubt the benefits of the technology. I was just making the point that BT don't invest that kind of money unless there is competition. Put BT in a position where they can remove that competition (which, if Ofcom removed the protection from the cable companies, they would be doing) and BT would have little or no incentive to invest.

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Oh, I don't doubt the benefits of the technology. I was just making the point that BT don't invest that kind of money unless there is competition. Put BT in a position where they can remove that competition (which, if Ofcom removed the protection from the cable companies, they would be doing) and BT would have little or no incentive to invest.

Point being cablecos have been protected long enough and the point of regulation was to prevent BT abusing the monopoly they were given when privatised. A rebuild of infrastructure of this magnitude would remove the last excuse, the inherited copper loop, for keeping BT under shackles.

You ignored the above as well, UPC are doing ok in Sweden despite not having the Swedish government order BBB / B2 not to lay fibre, quite the opposite it was encouraged and aided.

Japan despite extensive fibre to the home also has cable companies that are ticking along.

The whole theory of big bad BT doesn't wash, cable has had two decades to get its' act together and if it still can't compete in an open market place there's really no place for it anyway.

If the cable company is being inept that's their problem and shouldn't need government holding back other companies to keep them in business.

If BT are prepared to invest 9 or 10 figures which has nothing to do with public money in infrastructure it should not be subject to the same restrictions as the networks that were left by privatisation.

[TheNorm]

In the meantime, why can't we have this sort of thing (http://www.powerline-plc.com/index.asp):

Providing high speed internet access through an ordinary wall socket. That's correct, through your existing power lines you can be instantly connected to the World Wide Web.

Or will a collaboration between the electricity and communication companies upset yet another regulator?

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by TheNorm

In the meantime, why can't we have this sort of thing (http://www.powerline-plc.com/index.asp):



Or will a collaboration between the electricity and communication companies upset yet another regulator?

Heh.

Scottish and Southern Electricity tried it, and have all but abandoned it, due to the high coverage of ADSL in the UK.

It's a dirty technology anyway, bad RF polluter, the current generations of the technology are slow and unreliable, and it's tough to make a good business case for it as the equipment has to be installed so close to consumers that each install of kit covers relatively few homes so you need a very high uptake of the service to make it worthwhile, which is unlikely when over 99% of the country can get ADSL from 200+ different ISPs.

From your link:

Provides standard data rate of 2.5 Mb/s at user level, using a highly efficient modem, specially designed to operate in noisy power line environments.

Pretty underwhelming.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by James Henry

Point being cablecos have been protected long enough and the point of regulation was to prevent BT abusing the monopoly they were given when privatised. A rebuild of infrastructure of this magnitude would remove the last excuse, the inherited copper loop, for keeping BT under shackles.

You ignored the above as well, UPC are doing ok in Sweden despite not having the Swedish government order BBB / B2 not to lay fibre, quite the opposite it was encouraged and aided.

Japan despite extensive fibre to the home also has cable companies that are ticking along.

The whole theory of big bad BT doesn't wash, cable has had two decades to get its' act together and if it still can't compete in an open market place there's really no place for it anyway.

If the cable company is being inept that's their problem and shouldn't need government holding back other companies to keep them in business.

If BT are prepared to invest 9 or 10 figures which has nothing to do with public money in infrastructure it should not be subject to the same restrictions as the networks that were left by privatisation.

The ironic thing is that if NTL didn't keep trying to merge with other companies, they would probably have most of the money needed to carry fibre to the home themselves.

I do agree: If NTL (let's be specific here, they are by far the largest CableCo in the UK) is having problems, it is their own responsibility. However, that doesn't stop the fact that if NTL goes, none of the other telcos (in this country) are big enough that they would provide serious competition to BT. Where would BT's incentive to invest be then?

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

The ironic thing is that if NTL didn't keep trying to merge with other companies, they would probably have most of the money needed to carry fibre to the home themselves.

I do agree: If NTL (let's be specific here, they are by far the largest CableCo in the UK) is having problems, it is their own responsibility. However, that doesn't stop the fact that if NTL goes, none of the other telcos (in this country) are big enough that they would provide serious competition to BT. Where would BT's incentive to invest be then?

Competition would come from whoever acquired ntl.

ntl is too big to disappear entirely and has too much infrastructure in the ground.

There are a lot of places without massive telcos to compete with the incumbent, they instead attract investment from outside the country.

Besides as BT would have to invest in new access network in order to put pressure on ntl I wouldn't be too concerned.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by James Henry

Scottish and Southern Electricity tried it, and have all but abandoned it, due to the high coverage of ADSL in the UK.

IIRC, it's been tried a few times. Failed every time. Still, that won't stop them trying again.

It's a dirty technology anyway, bad RF polluter, the current generations of the technology are slow and unreliable, and it's tough to make a good business case for it as the equipment has to be installed so close to consumers that each install of kit covers relatively few homes so you need a very high uptake of the service to make it worthwhile, which is unlikely when over 99% of the country can get ADSL from 200+ different ISPs.

Apart from anything else, doesn't the broadband speed drop dramatically if someone plugs a device with a heavy current usage (such as a drill) into the circuit?

Much easier to get an ADSL or Cable connection (after all, most people have either a BT phone or a cable connection) and a wireless router.
[quoite]

Provides standard data rate of 2.5 Mb/s at user level, using a highly efficient modem, specially designed to operate in noisy power line environments.

Pretty underwhelming.[/quote]

And, again, IIRC, that's assuming you are near the local substation and have hardly any people on that circuit.

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Apart from anything else, doesn't the broadband speed drop dramatically if someone plugs a device with a heavy current usage (such as a drill) into the circuit?

LOL no not at all, the broadband signal is separated from the standard current before it hits your meter. The only way it might affect speeds is from the RFI the appliance might cause.

[BBKing]

The ironic thing is that if NTL didn't keep trying to merge with other companies, they would probably have most of the money needed to carry fibre to the home themselves.

Um - if they hadn't merged, they wouldn't have particularly large areas to do FTTH in...

The real problem goes back to the daft idea of small franchises in the 1980s, which lead to small cable companies with incompatible systems. Throw in idiotic beancountery (hello, Barclay) in the telecoms rush of 2000 and resultant large debts (run up buying overpriced companies rather than unifying what you've got) and cable has never really been in a position to move to second-wave broadband technologies - paying for the first lot in a highly competitive market is hard enough.

Regulation is unfortunately necessary in privatised industries with dominant players, as otherwise they'd revert to the previous monopoly, which is worse.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Um - if they hadn't merged, they wouldn't have particularly large areas to do FTTH in...

I actually meant the recent Telewest and Virgin mergers..

Regulation is unfortunately necessary in privatised industries with dominant players, as otherwise they'd revert to the previous monopoly, which is worse.

My point exactly.

[Chrysalis]

Im inclined to agree with James Henry here, the cable companies have had well over a decade now to sort themselves out, who is to say they will go on another decade like this during regulation. If ntl was really struggling they wouldnt be buying out other companies and making bids for premium tv content, it wouldnt surprise me at all if profits are manipulated so they low which means ofcom carry on strangling BT, also if BT remain strangled their is no benefit to most people since NTL wont be expanding their network so anyone outside of NTL continiously shrinking footprint loses out because of the regulation. Not expanding their network could be deliberate now as well since their would then be possibly counted as having a monoply similiar to BT.

[AbyssUnderground]

If NTL bothered to upgrade the UBR's, Modems and other equipment, isnt it possible to get 100Mbps+ through the normal coaxial? After all its similar to ethernet...