No more money for Copper. Pointless G.fast shouldn't ever be publicly funded.
No more money for Copper. Pointless G.fast shouldn't ever be publicly funded.
Clive Selley is a BT Company man through and through (he's been parachuted into the Openreach role for the sole purpose of managing BT's interest in Openreach, in the interests of BT). You can have any separate corporate structure you want but it comes down to indivduals, I believe he was put there for that purpose, above other individuals.
This sounds very much like "Put up, or shut up", so shut up and accept bamboozled, obfuscated "up to" copper carcass Pointless G.fast technology.
G.fast has been used as a distraction/delaying tactic by/for BT with the regulator Ofcom. Improved complex Cooper technology to solve all our Nation's "up to" Broadband issues was always just over the horizon, and Ofcom fell for the patter every time.
We need a proper future plan that gives the UK blanket, even coverage for all, not "up to" and fundamentally we don't have one. The Internet has proved its worth, now it's time to make the network robust for everyone, and that means full pure fibre.
The public need to understand that pointless G.fast will never offer "up to" ultrafast broadband in the real world on anything but a perfect copper pair, over distances of less than (I'm being generous here) 500m (250m as the crow flies from the cabinet). 500m is the ballpark cut-off, beyond which G.fast helps no-one.
Large add-on G.fast pods/cabinet extensions currently take a maximum of 48 ports. In the market town I live we have 5 FTTC cabinets, but the exchange has 1500 lines. The practical limitations are there to see, 190 Connections max, for 1500 lines (assuming no change to the existing network infrastructure). There will be have's and have not's, and that's without taking into account the 500m cut-off.
The G.fast trials to date have used completely separate wiring/circuits to keep the cross-talk interference to a minimum. When done in real world conditions (especially in industrial zones), the same speeds just won't be practically possible over much of the network.
Whatever layout/topology you go for, i.e. Pole deployment v Cab deployment for G.fast, it just doesn't stack up as a "cheap","reliable" - long term technology.
You either need far too many nodes, per Sqm, or you need much improved cabling, expensive smoothed power supplies and the existing ADSL/ADSL-LLU migrated off the local loop. It can't be used for EO lines. Mismatches in firmware/incompatible equipment and rogue devices on the network, just compound issues, over time.
National G.fast deployment is a can of worms waiting to happen. Fault finding will become a nightmare.
As customers we're been sold snake oil, by BT. BT needs to completely re-think its strategy.
It needs to get rural communities on-board for a start otherwise I can see someone pushing for a funding model that extends B4RN's approach Nationally, as regards rural communities. Because that approach is working.
Community Cabinets alongside BT Cabinets, that can be isolated from the network if need be, like the BT Socket, is probably the logically approach. Customer then pay private contractors to connect fibres within the mini local loop, allowing households to club together to get streets connected at time.
There are ways to do full fibre for everyone, but BT need to drop their bamboozled obfuscated pointless "up to" G.fast plans. NOW.