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@ Easy tigers #
Posted Tuesday 14th October 2008 17:13 GMT
I'd take BT as the incumbent over VM any day.
BT moves a lot more quickly than you give it credit for. It just tends to do it quietly, keeping its cards very close to its chest. Every advance they make has to be substantially in-place and substantially provisionable to the vast majority of subscribers before they can start banging the feed-time drum. With a network as big as theirs it is a massive undertaking every time. No wonder they're canny with their cash when each major advance means committing such huge amounts of it, not to mention the massive jumps in required backbone bandwidth that go hand in hand with every such advance. BT started beefing up their backbone for ADSL almost a decade before all but the most tech-savvy consumers had even heard of it ("Project Colossus" iirc - don't bother Googling). I would expect BT to be well on their way to being in a position where they can provide the kind of bandwidth required for FTTC/H and are only now moving on to serious trials of the line infrastructure. They have in fact already trialled FTTC kit on more than one occasion since the mid-90's, usually in isolated new-build housing estates.
