Re: Wheres baldrick
"Oh FFS, if your going to run it to the bloody curb, run it the house, this is getting insane. Why would you want to mainintain 5-10m of copper to the majority of houses in the country....."
There is actually a good reason for this. Running fibre in public streets is not especially expensive and the cost is reasonably predictable for the quality of service gained. There are variations for sure but overall it is a manageable exercise requiring mostly just public land access with predictable outcomes.
Running fibre from the curb into the premises, however, is a very different prospect. Cost and scale of the work are both highly variable and it is difficult and expensive to manage because of the variability and the need to arrange access individually to every premises.
FTTC allows for the best compromise on many fronts:
- the expensive part of the fibre rollout (curb to premises) is avoided.
- speeds are still high. Even VDSL over such short distances can generally deliver 100Mbps.
- GFast should be able to deliver even higher (perhaps Gbps+) speeds without curb to premises fibre.
- For those who absolutely have to have fibre, the conversion cost should be comparatively low.
All politics aside, FTTP would have been a great result but nobody is promising a return to a full FTTP rollout. FTTC offers a solid alternative with many upsides and few downsides.
As for the politics, FTTC is probably the best outcome we can ask for. LNP can do it without losing face and Labour (if they regain power) can still roll it out with performance that matches fibre for all but the most extreme users.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
