back to article Achtung NIMBYs! BT splurges extra £50m on fibre broadband rollout

BT is throwing a further £50m at its commercial deployment of fibre cabling for faster broadband connections and has said that 30 cities in Britain will benefit from the cash splurge. The telecoms giant will use its existing copper wiring infrastructure to hook up most of the 400,000 urban dwellings that it plans to upgrade to …

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  1. James 51
    Pirate

    Why not just nationalise the bloody thing again and get on with it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Why not just nationalise the bloody thing again and get on with it."

      You're obviously too young to remember what a success nationalisation was. It's a major part of the reasons why we don't a British owned volume car maker, why we don't have a credible aerospace sector, why the railways have barely gone beyond the network built by private Victorian companies, and indeed why Britain was for so many years the dirty man of Europe due to poor management of the publicly owned water authorities through the 70s and 80s. And when the energy sector was publicly owned, it became a huge make work scheme to keep miners employed digging out coal at much higher cost than could be bought on the world market. The miners and public sector management wouldn't modernise, and eventually we were left with no coal industry, thanks to berks like Scargill (not to mention the power station workers forcing the economy onto a three day week in the 1970s. I remember eating tea by candlelight in the socialist utopia of 1970's Britain.

      If you want to see how your proposal might work out, look at the energy sector today. Although the capital is nominally privately owned, you've actually got a stealthily nationalised decision making process: Incompetent public sector processes and bureaucrats decide what assets you can build where and when, whether you have a licence to operate in the "market", the rules of the "market" for power, where and what the subsidies and taxes are (all in the name of the FoE energy "policy" of the present and last bunch of twats in Parliament). Even as people struggle with the concept of a "capacity gap" that might lead to blackouts at periods of peak demand, consumers are bleating at high energy prices, yet the generating companies are taking thermal capacity out of service because it is losing money now that DECC have buggered up the system to channel all the money into wind farms and the like.

      BT is grim, anti-competitive, and towards the very back of the list of organisations I'd give my custom to, but a nationalised telecoms industry would be even further back in that queue.

      1. Chris Miller

        While agreeing with the general thrust of your argument, Ledswinger (I'm old enough to have dealt with some of these nationalised behemoths), it's not true that we don't have a credible aerospace sector - Rolls-Royce and a very significant share of Airbus manufacturing, plus the largest manufacturer of satellites outside the US. And that's just the civil stuff.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Chris Miller

          "it's not true that we don't have a credible aerospace sector - Rolls-Royce and a very significant share of Airbus manufacturing, plus the largest manufacturer of satellites outside the US. And that's just the civil stuff."

          You're right. Well, insofar as we make the wings for AIrbus. As Airbus is effectively French state controlled (with a nod to the Germans) the continued wing construction at Broughton has to be considered as not a safe long term bet - I work for a European owned company, and (unlike British managed companies) they are remarkably parochial. They'll never adopt a best in class solution if there's a third rate one on offer in their home country, and if something good is being done in a foreign part of the business they'll replicate it (often badly) at home, and then centralise, closing the efficient and innovative part of the business down, because they couldn't bear to do it the other way round.

          Rolls Royce I'd take my hat off to. Satellite building - good stuff, but actual job numbers and income will be small relative to the rest of the economy.

          But that does lead us onto defence and BAES. They seem unable to put an aircraft of their own in the sky other than as vast Euro-boondoggle programmes with huge cost over-runs and delays. The best they can do is the three country money pit that as the Eurofighter Typhoon, meanwhile Sweden (with a population barely larger than Greater London) put the Gripen into the air without having to involve every other major European economy, and with far smaller cost overrun issues.

          I'd like it to be different, and for our fantastic industrial and aviation heritage to be evidenced today, but I see no sign of it. If BAES weren't such a lard arse state-suckling mess, they might have thought about the need for a competent strike fighter in time for when the Tornadoes, Jags and Harriers were retired, and built the prototype at their own cost and without the incompetent bungling of the MoD to muck it up.

      2. James 51

        At the moment BT is content to leave large swathes of the country with little more than a string and two tin cans hooked up to an acoustic coupler. They are having to be proded or bribed into every extra ounce of effort unless it's to squash a local competitor. If we're going to bribe them into doing nationally important work, why allow them to skim the cash off as dividends?

    2. AndrueC Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Why not just nationalise the bloody thing again and get on with it.

      Because the government has such a good track record of financing and organising large projects? Or because you feel that putting our entire telecommunications infrastructure in their hands will ensure security and freedom for all?

      You're obviously too young to:

      a)Remember life under the Post Office(*).

      b)Have much experience of government run projects.

      c)Have learnt not to trust governments.

      (*)To be fair the PO had some clever and capable people working in the R&D department. Unfortunately what it didn't have was much support from the government - especially financial.

    3. Jim 59

      Because the internet would be in black and white and cost you £100 per month.

      1. Tom 7

        Why renationalise BT?

        Well when I worked for them when they were being privatised they were the world leader in high speed fibre optic work. The stuff they were researching into then is now becoming mainstream and seemingly at prices several orders of magnitude higher than 25 years ago - in fact even then it would have been cheaper to replace the copper with the fibres they were pulling in the research labs and the technology was there to send 2.4Gbps over 10km for about $5 at each end of the fibre.

        I bet the taxpayer pays more for the paperwork to give openretch the money to stick the cable in now.

        Most privatisations could be described as pissing in your chips - the BT one is the equivalent of inventing blight for a laugh.

        1. SW10
          Holmes

          Re: Why renationalise BT?

          the technology was there to send 2.4Gbps over 10km for about $5

          So £5 in 1984 is about £13 today?

          I won't be snarky and ask for your references, but I will be snarky and observe that pricing by nationalised utilities often bears little relation to costs...

          1. Tom 7

            Re: Why renationalise BT?

            SW10 - I dont know if you noticed but in 1990 a few thousand transistors would cost you a £100 or so.

            Nowadays you can get a few thousand billion for that.

            I live in the sticks with a couple of holiday cottages and my exchange is going FTTC and I'm trying to work out if and when I might get upgraded to 8Mb so I can offer my guests IP TV. This is merely 25 years since, for the hardware cost of less than a months sky subscription I could have had fibre to the house with over 2Gbps of broadcast and the 8MB ADSL left for spam emails and porn browsing.

            I've worked in companies with 2MB fibre optic feeds from BT where the termination equipment cost £60k - which is about £10k more than they could have made a test run of chips which would have provided several hundred chips to do the same job with the addition of a power supply and box.

            But ignoring the fact that BT threw our future out with the bathwater can you tell me one of the big utility privatisations that has actually reduced bills for the customer?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Why renationalise BT? @Tom 7

              "But ignoring the fact that BT threw our future out with the bathwater can you tell me one of the big utility privatisations that has actually reduced bills for the customer?"

              Having worked for the water industry during the 1990s and managed a multi-hundred million investment programme, and now working in the power sector I can help you out on both topics:

              The dynamics are different by industry. Water privatisation occurred because (a) the operations and investment arms of the regional water authorities were incompetent and hugely inefficient, (b) the same public sector organisations had allowed the network infrastructure to rot, such that renewal was happening slower than the network fell to bits, and (c) government didn't want to foot the huge bill for (largely justified) EU water quality improvements. Your bill certainly went up, but operating costs (like for like) came down massively, we got to a point where network decay and renewal moved into rough balance, and the government didn't have to borrow the billions I was busy spending on water and sewage assets.

              In the case of power, the inefficiency existed, and was addressed over a decade of redundancies (we're back in that part of the cycle now in response to all the ill informed whining about the cost of energy). There was a need for some asset renewal (replacement of the older less efficient coal plant by CCGT, the original "dash for gas". And your costs did come down, year on year from 1991 through to 2003, when government got bitten by the "green" bug, which led to prolonged, continuing and accelerating pressures on your energy bill to pay for windmills, carbon taxes, rebates for the poor and elderly, insulation on the homes, sometimes on real bill payers homes, but largely targeted at the Labour voting poor.,

              See chart 2.1.2 in the link below for the evidence on cost.

              But that unfortunately coincided with the start of the mid noughties boom, and the emergence of China as a force to affect world commodity prices, so that on top of green meddling there was real sustained increase in the price of gas and coal (see chart 3.2.2)

              https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDsQFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F65940%2F7341-quarterly-energy-prices-december-2012.pdf&ei=y6fiUoWCGtKjhgfoioGIBg&usg=AFQjCNGXBuWIH9KxRsR7xWfIWZBzqedNyw&bvm=bv.59930103,d.ZG4&cad=rja

              1. Tom 7

                Re: Why renationalise BT? @Tom 7

                So that's a no then.

            2. Elmer Phud

              Re: Why renationalise BT?

              "But ignoring the fact that BT threw our future out with the bathwater can you tell me one of the big utility privatisations that has actually reduced bills for the customer?"

              There is so much back-story to all this.

              They had already proved HD(at the time) TV down copper wire.

              Had brought Westminster Cable into being

              And then were stomped on to ensure that Sky got the satellite TV deal using BT's sats.

              So many people forget why it was privatised -- it had absolutley noting to do with telecomms or data tx.

      2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Because the internet would be in black and white and cost you £100 per month.

        And you'd only be allowed to connect your government-supplied Sinclair Spectrum to it.

    4. rhydian

      If this week's El Reg stories about Kingston Communications up in Hull haven't put you off a nationalised/monopoly telecoms supplier then nothing will.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nationalisation means the government running the telecommunications in the UK and no alternative possible.

      You'd get censorship in no time.

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. AndrueC Silver badge

    The telecoms giant will use its existing copper wiring infrastructure to hook up most of the 400,000 urban dwellings that it plans to upgrade to fibre.

    And this is why I hate the term 'fibre broadband'. It should mean 100% fibre last mile in which case only a few thousand residential customers qualify.

    1. wyatt

      Definitely, my mum and dad keep saying they're getting fibre. When I point out they're not they get confused. BT should say it as it is, not as they're trying to sell it.

      The government could push things along as well, each new build needs ducting run to it from the street for facilitates that can be upgraded as required. A slight increase in cost initially but massive savings in the future.

    2. A K Stiles
      Pirate

      Ah, but you see, it would cost BT too much if they laid FTTP everywhere. Not that FTTP infrastructure is significantly more expensive than FTTC, just that they couldn't also then continue to rake in the £15+ per month per install in line rental for the land-line phone that many people no longer want / need, on top of the £5 a month* advertised broadband charge.

      (* rising to £20 per month after 3 months**

      ** rising to £30 per month after a further 6 months***

      *** what do you mean "dubious advertising practices" and "locked in contracts"?)

      1. davemcwish

        Rake in the £15+ per month per install in line rental

        it's not just BT that do this.

      2. rhydian

        Even if you only had broadband on a line (copper or fibre) you'd still have to pay an amount as "line rental" for maintenance etc. of the physical plant just as with electricity/gas/water supplies. Some providers might roll this in to a higher monthly fee (like with "no standing charge" electricity bills) while others levy a separate charge.

      3. Steven Jones

        Reply to another fantacist...

        The wholesale cost of a copper local loop is fractionally over £7 per month. Quite who you take the retail package from, is up to the consumer, and there are deals around which are a lot less than £15. Also, that retail price includes VAT, so that's about £2.50 off the price you quote.

        In any event, the wholesale line cost includes all the costs of rates, maintenance of ducts, poles, the building where all this terminates and much else. That's not to mention recovering the costs of capital expenditure and, dare I mention it, some return to the shareholders who bought this stuff off the government. In practice, phone revenue used to cover much of these costs, but no longer.

        So the long and short of it is that, whether it's fibre or copper, the fixed plant costs will remain and aren't going to be substantially cheaper than utilising the copper. Indeed, given the high costs of running fibre to premises, the costs would go up. If it was cheap to do, then you'd see other operators queuing up to run in local fibre loops. It isn't.

      4. sysconfig

        "Not that FTTP infrastructure is significantly more expensive than FTTC, just that they couldn't also then continue to rake in the £15+ per month per install in line rental for the land-line phone that many people no longer want / need"

        They do that regardless. I'm one of the very few lucky people who have FTTP. They wouldn't sell it to me without phone line (via fibre; the old copper line is no longer connected).

        I'm not complaining, though. If anything, they should be forced to significantly reduce prices for traditional copper broadband, because FTTP is in a different league altogether, throughput and latency-wise.

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      It should mean 100% fibre last mile

      Why? Unless you're going to fit fibre ports onto all your home appliances, at least some of the last 100m are going to be copper pair. Why should it matter if its 10m or 500m, if you get the speed you need?

    4. Bunbury

      100% fibre last mile?

      So you can connect all your photonic devices to it?

  4. Jim 59

    Nimby here

    Pottering round my fairly pleasant home town last week, I spotted a huge, monumental green cabinet, stuck right in the middle of the market place. I wasn't sure whether to look for a door or start worshiping it. This thing is as subtle as an Easter Island Head. Sure enough, Google says our exchange has just got fibre.

    So it has to be huge. But why not put it down a side alley, or next to a building like all previous utility cabinets ? Answer: because that would have cost BT an extra £800 or whatever, and the govt says BT can ignore the people now. Our ancestors went to a lot of trouble with the built environment - burying power cables, concealing wires in walls, pipes under roads, disguising masts as trees etc. We should continue that for those who come after.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Nimby here

      Well, there are two sides to every story.

      Our ancestors did indeed bury lots of infrastructure. They've lost some of it too. I've been involved in projects in London where we know there are sewers and water pipes, we just don't know where. Which makes connecting to them quite difficult. Plus you have to close some pretty big roads in order to get at them.

      5 years ago I reported noise on my line to BT. Lots of it. They investigated, and found damp in the cables. I was rather embarrassed when I walked out of my house to find one of the 4 main roads into my town had been closed - and there was a nice 2 mile traffic jam. Which I was walking alongside thinking I hope these guys don't realise it's my fault. Got my phone fixed though, so it wasn't all bad...

    2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Jim 59 Re: Nimby here

      ".... why not put it down a side alley....." If it upsets you that much why don't you and the rest of the Rotary Club hold a whist drive and plant some hedges round the cabinet.

  5. David Webb

    Flats?

    With the hideous complication of getting FTTP into flats (wayleaves from the people responsible for signing the things to allow BT to install their bits of kit on each floor) I can't expect the takeup on that to be very high. Yes I'm bitter after waiting 5 months for a wayleave to be signed and still no sign of it.

  6. rhydian

    While it is a pain that it's BT doing the work...

    ...The fact that they're forced to open up the finished network to competition does mean that prices aren't too mental for joe public at the end of it.

    Also, while FTTP would be fantastic, FTTC is fine for now as the main backbone network will be in place for when FTTP becomes cheaper to roll out (Remembering that a lot of rural lines still run overhead for miles).

  7. rh587

    "The cabinets in question had missed out on BT's original £2.5bn commercial investment because of "technical challenges or local planning restrictions," the company said."

    Local planning restrictions? LOCAL PLANNING RESTRICTIONS?

    If the little darlings don't want nasty green fibre cabinets outside their houses then don't force it on them. Let them enjoy their coppery pit whilst you come and do ours. Really, we want it. If you offer it and they didn't want it then don't hang about and argue the toss - there are plenty of us waiting for the offer who will (figuratively) bite your hand off.

  8. Jim Lewis

    new cabinets double as advertising hoardings

    To further rub salt into the wounds of those people whose communities are blighted by the arrival of these unsightly cabinets, BT has begun plastering them with advertising to trumpet the arrival of the fibre service.

    This must surely be against local planning rules. No-one else is allowed to just plaster the built environment with adverts in this way.

    check out this horrific example:

    http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-blog/2223612/bt-s-cornish-superfast-broadband-rollout-in-pictures

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: new cabinets double as advertising hoardings

      Have you seen some of the O2 Cabinets thay are deploying? By volume they seem to be 4x the size of the BT ones. My BT FTTC cabinet is the same size as the wall it is up against.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cabinet solution

    Make the cabinets in the shape of Daleks.

    Imagine the look of horror as people wake up to Daleks dotted all around.

    They could even be made to "talk". CONNECT TO BT SAVE 50p PER MONTH.... EXTERMINATE THE OPPOSITION...

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