Use your loaf, Europe! Eat more fibre - high-speed web lobbyists

If it was that simple...

There are so many gaps in the FTTH Council's argument, you could run a nice bit of fibre through them.

Most notable is that it doesn't have a single ISP member - this is just a kit manufacturers' lobbying company who don't have to worry about the economics of raising the capital for building networks, so long as it's spent on their kit.

For those who point at Asia - in Korea and Japan it's often fibre-to-the-basement where the incoming megabandwidth is then shared between residents at much lower end speeds and contention issues. On top of that, there's often no choice of providers and the services they provide, so no competition. Korea Telecom last year started blocking traffic to Smart TVs because it was in competition to their own subscription IPTV. These countries are also densely populated, which makes it very easy to build FTTP, and have little copper to replace, and the suburbs live under a hideous cats-cradle of telegraph wires.

BT's strategy may be too slow for those who think money grows on trees, but in addition to FTTC they will soon be offering FTTP On Demand - businesses who want it can pay for the FTTP to come to them from the nearest cab, and in many cases this will also create a node from which the neighbours can connect, or they could all club together.