Europe hits one million FTTH broadband connections

@ Tim Spence

You mean the type of infrastructure that starts buckling because a TV station has started making a small proportion of their media available online?

You have to admit it's really barely adequate for today's needs. Unless significant improvements are made soon, I dare not think what bandwidth will be like in 10 years time.

Paris Hilton because I dare not think what SHE'll be like in 10 years either.

@Meanwhile...

Surely a nationwide rollout of FTTH would help enable an Orwellian police state? And with a webcam and microphone in every room, ISPs would have to reverse their current policies:

- Faster upload than download speed

- "Expected use" instead of "Fair use" policy and if you don't exceed the minimum threshold, you must be hiding something...

Not going to happen

FTTH is something for your grandchildren’s grandchildren. No one in the UK is making enough profit to do the build or if they are making the money they are not willing to spend it on this technology (not least because we punters wouldn’t be willing to pay for the services at a realistic cost)

No, it's fair usage policies and traffic "management" for the UK at least until the copper / fibre hybrid network breaks down and melts!

@ the were never going to get fibre crowd

arent you forgetting h2o networks? The sewer broadband people.

We didn't get FTTH because

When BT wanted to invest in laying it, they weren't allowed to offer cable TV services. If they'd been allowed to sell VOD their accountants had worked out that there were enough sad gits in the country who arrive home too late and miss the start of corry/east enders/what ever other soap, who would gladdly fund the installation of fibre to the whole country. There even enough of these a sados that they didn't need to rely on the pron crowd who funded most of the internet. But no, so as to promote competition BT were barred from offering TV services.

(OK, actually they could sell VOD coz the government hadn't thought about it, so they hadn't banned it) but they needed the cable service to go with it to make it work.)

I wish we had sewers

Where I live, there is no mains sewer

We have to have a great big tank burried in the garden to

enable us to flush out toilet.

I can't see a techie cable guy turning up any time soon

to get in there with a few thousand gallons of Sh1t.

Then install a microwave tower to get fibre to our house!!

Although the pipe to it is only 40M

And another thing, when the fibre comes out of the toilet

are they really gonna put a box nearby with "DO NOT PISS ON THIS"

Another flash in the pan idea!!

It's already possible

"Surely a nationwide rollout of FTTH would help enable an Orwellian police state? And with a webcam and microphone in every room, ISPs would have to reverse their current policies:"

There was a virus doing the rounds once that enabled peoples webcams. Anyhow that is what the flip down privacy guard is for. What? Yours does not have one? Meh. Buy something that is not a £5 peice of crap next time.

Bugger FTTH....

... I'm still waiting for uninterrupted copper.

@ Dick

They invariably have a light on them for exactly that reason - so you notice you left your webcam open on YIM *before* you go looking for porn...

Why Dont Virgin Media Go Wholesale?!

If they went wholesale, and sold space on their network to other companies then wouldnt the money generated be able to then be invested in laying down more cables and expanding the network (from 55% coverage to around 95%), paying off their debts, and investing in faster speeds, better technologies etc

I know Virgin Media has an advantage when it comes to FIBER vs ADSL but surely if they set up a wholesale system whereby they could offer 3 broadband wholesale tiers to competitors and get some cash of the government to offer wholesale then it would out them in a fantastic position!

The problem is, even with BT bringing out the 21CN it is not going to do much for ADSL broadband speeds and it would be impossible for BT to replace all copper wiring with FIBRE anytime in the near future, whereas cable has a network built which could be improved, and 'rent' out space for broadband.

Just a thought, Virgin Media can not afford to expand the network anytime in the next 20 years so why not? It would make sense the network is there, and for expansion work with H20 to get to the remaining non cabled areas through FIBRE through the SEWERS!!!!!

The government will need to make it worth their while to do this though...

Apples and oranges

The comparison is at best misleading: the infrastructure of the US, Europe and Japan are not directly comparable, although I suppose it might be fair to compare New York and London. As American is still expanding in population it is easier to install more modern technology in new areas which pushes up penetration rates. At the same time the US is not very good at updating existing infrastructure in the backwaters or even existing cities.

But who needs these massive data rates anyway? ADSL2 seems to be fast enough for most services and is available to an ever increasing proportion of the population with UMTS finally becoming a reasonable fallback. UK investment is lagging as usual but unbundling has been reasonably successful and cable is starting to show the potential it was denied when the licences were initially awarded (under the bitch if memory serves) so that they *could* not compete with BT.