Nice!
So when are BT / VM rolling this out in the UK?
10 Gbps fibre-to-the-home signed off, ITU eyes 100 Gbps future
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has kicked off standardisation for symmetrical 10 Gbps optical broadband services over 20 km. The standard for XGS-PON, ITU G.9807.1, sets down an upgrade path for existing PON (passive optical network) deployments such as fibre-to-the-home. As the ITU's statement notes, it's …
-
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 10:32 GMT Steve Davies 3
Deep Joy. This is pie in the sky as far as this country is concerned.
As the Chairman of the Federatino of Small Busisnesses said on BBC R5 earlier, Infrastrucure in this country is a sad joke.
IMHO, no one involved with it has the skill/commitment to even org a pissup in a brewery.
VM won't offer this except in one or two places (enough to satisfy the ASA) because much of their last mile is coax that was laid 20+ years ago. Like BT their network is only partially fibre (at least around where I live) YMMV though
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 14:50 GMT orb8
"because much of their last mile is coax that was laid 20+ years ago"
Were I live near Southport our coax is as old as the homes here, which makes
it at least 40 years old. No wonder whenever there's a bit of rain folks house phones
become noisy and frustration of days of dropping broadband kicks in until the connections
dry out again.
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 18:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
"IMHO, no one involved with it has the skill/commitment to even org a pissup in a brewery."
The issue isn't one of skills or will, it's financial. The price the market is willing to pay for FTTH and the number of people willing to pay for it don't support the investment needed to actually do it.
Try going to see you bank manager and telling him that you need some money to rollout a new service. Tell them that the cost is roughly £2K per home and that only one in six will actually want it. That one home in six will pay at best £25 a month for that last mile. I doubt it will be a long meeting.
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 20:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
That one home in six will pay at best £25 a month for that last mile.
In towns VM have competition from all the competitors using Openreach (and that's often for FTTC). My guess is that in rural areas you'd have about three out of five premises preferring proper broadband over Openreach's damp string offer.
I doubt it will be a long meeting.
Probably still the case without some form of cross subsidy or USO.
But if the costs are as prohibitive as is claimed, why is it feasible to offer as near as makes no difference USO for electricity and water? Most households now spend more on (assorted) communications than they do on gas plus electricity, and water bills are about a third of energy.
-
Friday 4th March 2016 11:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
"But if the costs are as prohibitive as is claimed, why is it feasible to offer as near as makes no difference USO for electricity and water? "
Those network rollouts were government funded, completed a long time ago and remain technically fit for purpose. A utility can afford to take a multi-decade view on RoI if they know that what they install today will still be a usable asset in 30 years time and that regulation around that investment and asset is likely to be favourable. Use of the asset is likely to be ubiquitous amongst premises passed.
In the case of broadband, or specifically FTTH, operators have to deal with declining pricing, limited demand, an evolving technical situation and uncertain regulation. I'm not certain that there's been a widespread rollout (>50% pop) anywhere in the world that hasn't involved significant public investment, regulatory guarantees or de facto nationalisation.
"My guess is that in rural areas you'd have about three out of five premises preferring proper broadband over Openreach's damp string offer."
That's not been the experience so far. It's gradually improved from 1 in 6 to I think 1 in 5 (common to BT and Virgin). The vast majority of people on damp string choose to remain on damp string when better options become available. In BT's case that means customers remain on xDSL, for Virgin it means the customers take the cheaper broadband packages. If the market has decided it prefers cheap broadband over better broadband, who's going to invest in businesses promising the latter?
-
Friday 4th March 2016 12:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
The vast majority of people on damp string choose to remain on damp string when better options become available.
If that's correct, there's the problem. It isn't that rural rednecks want broadband that the market won't deliver, it is that the majority of them don't want it even when offered, in which case the rest of the population should accept that the unavailability of broadband in rural locations is the preferred choice of the majority who live there, and we needn't concern ourselves to please the handful of moaners.
Regarding your point about the long term value of other infrastructure, whilst technology moving fast may be true, who would be rushing to roll out rural gigabit broadband using brand new lines anytime in the next decade or more? Even if there were, if Openreach lay all cable in ducts or via poles, then the bulk of the investment cost would still have enduring value carrying the new unicorn hair data links, because the infrastructure cost (and long term value) would be in the ducts, not the shorter lived assets strung through them.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 10:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm very happy to have FTTH where I live and people can buy Gigabit Ethernet. So, the real difference between Gigabit, 10Gigabit or 100 Gigabit is the transceiver in the devices at the CO, the pole/node, and the home, and of course the devices that hold those transceivers. With Fibre to the Home the problem is no longer getting those speeds to the home but the cost of the equipment.
Oh, and how many servers would one have to be receiving data from and transmitting data to to make that worthwhile. I have 100M down and 50 M up and rarely run into a server that transmits to me at those speeds. Even with a bunch of people at the house using wifi we all have great service :)
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 17:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Yeah, I have 100/100 fibre to my place (I actually have two fibres coming in because my tenants wanted one too) and all it really does is show me how slow web servers are."
You can't know that. The limitation on throughput could exist anywhere between the point in the ISP's network where you traffic is aggregated with others and the web server. It's wrong to assume it's the web server.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Thursday 3rd March 2016 14:24 GMT Jon Massey
Re: Router throughput...
You're paying a premium for HP-compatibility. Generic GBICS are much cheaper http://www.fs.com/10gbase-er-sfp-1550nm-40km-dom-transceiver-p-11592.html . Hell you can get ZR lamps for under £300 http://www.fs.com/10gbase-zr-sfp-1550nm-80km-dom-transceiver-p-11595.html
-
Friday 4th March 2016 07:23 GMT Christian Berger
Re: Router throughput...
"Most domestic routers can barely handle 100Mb/s throughput."
Yes, but that's because they are limited by the $10 mark, if you allow your hardware to cost more, you can do more.
Also the concept of a domestic router might disappear soon anyhow. Currently it's needed for NAT, but that's not much of an issue once you've completely moved to IPv6. So even today you could just have a little box that would switch IPv6 traffic, and do NAT on the little bit of IPv4 that's left. Your box would then just have some bog standard switch chip-set and re-program it so it'll be aware of protocols. I wouldn't be surprised if even the ones in dirt cheap routers could do that.
-
Biting the hand that feeds IT
