Tuesday 23 June 2009
Fibre to the Home (FTTH) is an extremely fast form of broadband with typical speeds of up to 100Mb/s, but also capable of some of the fastest broadband speeds on the planet up to and including 1Gb/s or higher, even as high as 20Gb/s. Whereas in ADSL, soon to be the "new dial-up", the last kilometre between the telephone exchange and premises is copper wire, with Fibre to the Home the broadband connection is fibre optic all the way to the home or building. The FTTH penetration in the UK is negligible at the moment, and the UK is in danger of paying the price for not having FTTH installed years ago.
Even if just the big cities had FTTH earlier - for example in the mid-to-late 1990s when the internet was starting to take off - it would have meant less work to do today and less costs too. With the usage of iPlayer rising rapidly, gamers playing online on World of Warcraft, people watching youtube videos, working from home, this means the bandwidth requirements are rising rapidly and is sure to continue to grow.
Indeed industry experts have already warned about speeds nosediving if we were not to upgrade to FTTH. Imagine what would happen today if just 20 million were to use iPlayer, with an online gaming tournament happening at the same time, and imagine this happening when lots of people want to chat on emails, and use high definition video chats? Now add to this people trying to work from home, or do video conference calls.
How can the UK expect to remain economically competitive if its broadband infrastructure is not able to cope with today's or tomorrow's demands? In the FTTH league table, The UK is already lagging way behind even other European nations (including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and Latvia) when it comes to FTTH penetration, and nowhere to be seen compared to South Korea and Japan, the international leaders in FTTH penetration and who have had FTTH for many years.
Meanwhile in the UK, FTTC (Fibre to the street cabinet) deployments are being planned by BT. FTTC involves connecting all fibre optic up to the street cabinet or kerb, which which could be 300m or less from your premises, and from the street cabinet onwards it is coaxial copper cable to the home. FTTC is still dependent on copper wiring which limits the maximum speed to up to 60Mb/s and is not futureproof by any means. BT's current policy appears to be only to install FTTH in "new build developments" such as was done for new developments in Ebbsfleet, and FTTC otherwise by default. I believe that FTTC is only an interim solution at best, and should be regarded as a stepping stone to eventual FTTH.
On the other hand, the media company Virgin Media have already deployed 50Mb/s (1Mb/s upstream) broadband using DOCSIS 3.0 which can support up to 300Mb/s, which is a higher bandwidth than FTTC can support. Virgin Media are planning 100Mb/s in the near future, however Virgin Media is not available in all areas of the UK. DOCSIS 3.0 is competitive with FTTH, but will the DOCSIS 3.0 specification be incrementally updated to support 1Gb/s broadband (as opposed to a DOCSIS 4.0 specification)? Only time will tell, but if it is possible then it should.
In June 2009, the Digital Britain final report was released. It is good that the report recognises that there is a problem with broadband speeds and the need to invest in fibre optic. However, unfortunately there is no firm commitment for subsidising or public sector investment for fibre optic networks in general and FTTH in particular. In the report FTTC is mainly mentioned, although FTTH itself does get a mention as well, including as part of community deployments which is a cost-effective way forward. A universal service obligation for broadband which is mentioned in Digital Britain is a very good idea but 2Mb/s is far too slow, 100Mb/s really should be the bare minimum and would be possible with both FTTH and DOCSIS 3.
Admittedly cost is an issue for FTTH - The Broadband Stakeholder Group estimate of installing FTTH throughout the UK is £28bn (€33 bn), although even that investment is well worth the long term benefits. This shows that the longer any important project is left, the more it costs later. If the wires were to be replaced at the same location, there will also be a lot of digging up of roads causing hassle to those who need to do the work, disruption and annoyance to road users, depending on where the copper wires have been laid.
But do we really have to dig up roads? i3 Networks (formerly H20 Networks), and geo have both shown a way, by putting fibre optic cables through sewers, and are in the process of deploying FTTH this way, the deployment of FTTH for Bournemouth by i3 Networks is underway and scheduled for completion in 2010. In fact, FTTH deployments through the sewers are also used in France, Japan, and South Korea.
There could be other ways of putting fibre optic cables, e.g. on telephone wires, although the fibre optic cables would need to be kept in very strong duct, and be resistant to wind and the elements. Another alternative is to dig up the pavement or somewhere else (e.g. unused or "brownfield" land), and re-route the network there, and ignore the old copper wires. There could be other ways as well. Roads should not need to be dug up unless absolutely necessary.
As well as reducing the costs of deploying FTTH, it is worth considering all available funding options. FTTH could be wholly or partially subsidised by the government, but this is a matter for consideration. I would suggest more subsidies can be used to ensure a faster deployment, and not to be dependent on short-term "profitability". Either way the funding which provides the best possible solution at the minimum possible cost with the minimum possible disruption, or as close to that as possible should be decided, and without any cutting of corners. The endgame is, and should be, maximum nationwide coverage of FTTH. We should also ensure that rural areas are not left out either.
Support to community based FTTH deployments should also be encouraged, as this is a cost effective way of encouraging FTTH deployments, and there is no reason why the UK's FTTH network needs to be a single network, as distinct networks can be interconnected, after all that is how the internet is connected.
We should also supplement the ultra-fast high speed landline broadband (FTTH and DOCSIS3) with ultra-fast mobile internet possibly by evolving existing 3G and 3.5G networks towards 4G, which would give us both a high speed mobile and landline network infrastructure. With phones such as Apple's iPhone able to support internet anywhere, the next logical step is high speed internet anywhere. This will not only give the option of both high speed fixed line and mobile broadband, but we will also be able to view high definition videos and take high definition video calls on the move, among other bandwidth intensive applications.
The bottom line is that the UK needs to speed up its FTTH deployments otherwise we will miss out. Countries around the world are pressing ahead with FTTH deployment. FTTH is by far the most futureproof broadband technology and will not need any further investment for decades once its deployment is finished. And the UK will benefit tremendously with FTTH, with a huge amount of bandwidth and spare capacity to cope with iPlayer, youtube, online gaming, digital TV, video conferencing and other bandwidth hungry applications, and people working from home or teleworking will benefit tremendously with high speed connectivity and potentially low contention. We should also have a reasonable upload speed as well, a minimum of 1.5Mb/s or higher.
What would be ideal is for us to have fibre optic in every home, also known as Fibre to Every Home (FTEH), which is a very long time away, certainly in the UK.
Even if just the big cities had FTTH earlier - for example in the mid-to-late 1990s when the internet was starting to take off - it would have meant less work to do today and less costs too. With the usage of iPlayer rising rapidly, gamers playing online on World of Warcraft, people watching youtube videos, working from home, this means the bandwidth requirements are rising rapidly and is sure to continue to grow.
Indeed industry experts have already warned about speeds nosediving if we were not to upgrade to FTTH. Imagine what would happen today if just 20 million were to use iPlayer, with an online gaming tournament happening at the same time, and imagine this happening when lots of people want to chat on emails, and use high definition video chats? Now add to this people trying to work from home, or do video conference calls.
How can the UK expect to remain economically competitive if its broadband infrastructure is not able to cope with today's or tomorrow's demands? In the FTTH league table, The UK is already lagging way behind even other European nations (including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and Latvia) when it comes to FTTH penetration, and nowhere to be seen compared to South Korea and Japan, the international leaders in FTTH penetration and who have had FTTH for many years.
Meanwhile in the UK, FTTC (Fibre to the street cabinet) deployments are being planned by BT. FTTC involves connecting all fibre optic up to the street cabinet or kerb, which which could be 300m or less from your premises, and from the street cabinet onwards it is coaxial copper cable to the home. FTTC is still dependent on copper wiring which limits the maximum speed to up to 60Mb/s and is not futureproof by any means. BT's current policy appears to be only to install FTTH in "new build developments" such as was done for new developments in Ebbsfleet, and FTTC otherwise by default. I believe that FTTC is only an interim solution at best, and should be regarded as a stepping stone to eventual FTTH.
On the other hand, the media company Virgin Media have already deployed 50Mb/s (1Mb/s upstream) broadband using DOCSIS 3.0 which can support up to 300Mb/s, which is a higher bandwidth than FTTC can support. Virgin Media are planning 100Mb/s in the near future, however Virgin Media is not available in all areas of the UK. DOCSIS 3.0 is competitive with FTTH, but will the DOCSIS 3.0 specification be incrementally updated to support 1Gb/s broadband (as opposed to a DOCSIS 4.0 specification)? Only time will tell, but if it is possible then it should.
In June 2009, the Digital Britain final report was released. It is good that the report recognises that there is a problem with broadband speeds and the need to invest in fibre optic. However, unfortunately there is no firm commitment for subsidising or public sector investment for fibre optic networks in general and FTTH in particular. In the report FTTC is mainly mentioned, although FTTH itself does get a mention as well, including as part of community deployments which is a cost-effective way forward. A universal service obligation for broadband which is mentioned in Digital Britain is a very good idea but 2Mb/s is far too slow, 100Mb/s really should be the bare minimum and would be possible with both FTTH and DOCSIS 3.
Admittedly cost is an issue for FTTH - The Broadband Stakeholder Group estimate of installing FTTH throughout the UK is £28bn (€33 bn), although even that investment is well worth the long term benefits. This shows that the longer any important project is left, the more it costs later. If the wires were to be replaced at the same location, there will also be a lot of digging up of roads causing hassle to those who need to do the work, disruption and annoyance to road users, depending on where the copper wires have been laid.
But do we really have to dig up roads? i3 Networks (formerly H20 Networks), and geo have both shown a way, by putting fibre optic cables through sewers, and are in the process of deploying FTTH this way, the deployment of FTTH for Bournemouth by i3 Networks is underway and scheduled for completion in 2010. In fact, FTTH deployments through the sewers are also used in France, Japan, and South Korea.
There could be other ways of putting fibre optic cables, e.g. on telephone wires, although the fibre optic cables would need to be kept in very strong duct, and be resistant to wind and the elements. Another alternative is to dig up the pavement or somewhere else (e.g. unused or "brownfield" land), and re-route the network there, and ignore the old copper wires. There could be other ways as well. Roads should not need to be dug up unless absolutely necessary.
As well as reducing the costs of deploying FTTH, it is worth considering all available funding options. FTTH could be wholly or partially subsidised by the government, but this is a matter for consideration. I would suggest more subsidies can be used to ensure a faster deployment, and not to be dependent on short-term "profitability". Either way the funding which provides the best possible solution at the minimum possible cost with the minimum possible disruption, or as close to that as possible should be decided, and without any cutting of corners. The endgame is, and should be, maximum nationwide coverage of FTTH. We should also ensure that rural areas are not left out either.
Support to community based FTTH deployments should also be encouraged, as this is a cost effective way of encouraging FTTH deployments, and there is no reason why the UK's FTTH network needs to be a single network, as distinct networks can be interconnected, after all that is how the internet is connected.
We should also supplement the ultra-fast high speed landline broadband (FTTH and DOCSIS3) with ultra-fast mobile internet possibly by evolving existing 3G and 3.5G networks towards 4G, which would give us both a high speed mobile and landline network infrastructure. With phones such as Apple's iPhone able to support internet anywhere, the next logical step is high speed internet anywhere. This will not only give the option of both high speed fixed line and mobile broadband, but we will also be able to view high definition videos and take high definition video calls on the move, among other bandwidth intensive applications.
The bottom line is that the UK needs to speed up its FTTH deployments otherwise we will miss out. Countries around the world are pressing ahead with FTTH deployment. FTTH is by far the most futureproof broadband technology and will not need any further investment for decades once its deployment is finished. And the UK will benefit tremendously with FTTH, with a huge amount of bandwidth and spare capacity to cope with iPlayer, youtube, online gaming, digital TV, video conferencing and other bandwidth hungry applications, and people working from home or teleworking will benefit tremendously with high speed connectivity and potentially low contention. We should also have a reasonable upload speed as well, a minimum of 1.5Mb/s or higher.
What would be ideal is for us to have fibre optic in every home, also known as Fibre to Every Home (FTEH), which is a very long time away, certainly in the UK.
It is a shame that once again we are behind the world in an important advance in technology. I live in a suburb and our broadband speed is vastly behind that of the rest of the country. The government, in conjunction with industry, should look forward, not just doing things as an afterthought.... Although with the recession still going strong who knows when this may happen!
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