FTTP on demand

[Andy Burns]

I've heard that, or rather heard that the fibre doesn't *necessarily* go to the same exchange that the copper goes back to, possibly to a larger, more distant exchange.

[Abandoned_Trolley]

Possibly part of a long term plan to close down a load of local exchanges ?

Most of them must be way too large for 21st century purposes anyway.

As soon as the copper is gone theres no need for anybody to live within

100 miles of an exchange - in fact, the word "exchange" might disappear from use altogether.

[Theo]

FTTP on Demand. That's what Cerberus, who I got the quote from, call it. They should know. And so do Openreach:

It is Fibre To The Premises, installed on the demand of one customer rather than as part of a local rollout.

Openreach describe it as:

"Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) on Demand will enable you to offer broadband speeds up to 1000/220 Mbps to customers served by a GEA-FTTC enabled cabinet. "

So it's definitely coming from the cabinet, they're not digging kilometres of new duct from the nearest regional point just to serve me.

That does raise a question of what happens when everyone else gets FTTP - will my FTTPoD order cause the local network architecture to feed back to the old FTTC cabinet, whereas if nobody locally has FTTP they might run it from a new aggregation point?

In this case it's probably moot, given the existing single cabinet for the village and a duct route for the copper must go back from there to the exchange (which is a single-garage sized building in the countryside, down a minor road with a few 1950s council houses). While I wouldn't be surprised if the fibre backhaul goes somewhere other than the exchange, the cabinet is probably the best location for a fibre aggregation point anyway.

Theo

[Tim+]

I?ve had my eye on the site of my local exchange which sits on a desirable plot of land?

Tim

[Andy Burns]

Keep any eye on this then ... BT don't own them.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In my case it DEFINITELY doesn't go to that exchange: I specifically asked

The FTTP rollout seems to be a completely new network. Using almost none of the old.

Hence the ditching of copper and POTS.

It's clear that long term they intend to decommission anything that uses copper!

[The Natural Philosopher]

No. Currently the cost benefit curve of unamplified passively split fibre limits the distance to a powered node to about 15 miles, and less than ten is better.

But that compares with less than 2 miles for ADSL, so its definitely a reduction in needed exchanges. Just not as much as you hope!

How big the facility needs to be is a different matter. The incoming fibres already carry many subscribers on a single fibre...dont need massive racks and patch panels

>

[Tim Streater]

As I recall, more like 40 miles or so for single mode fibre.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I know what it is, but when I looked fir it it was called fibre on demand.

yes. I misunderstood what you were talking about.

I would imagine that fibre on demand will disappear altgether in its current form. If you want a big symmterical fibre service it will go into the FTTP network, becase FTTC and cabinets and copper are going to be decommissioned

fiber on demand seems to be an interim product, leveraging the FTTC network

It may be the best location, but what I have seen here is a manhole cover in the ground *next* to a green cabinet, where the earth is all disturbed showing it was part of the FTTP rollout. And I think thats how they will go. The green cabinets will mostly disappear altogether along with all the copper

[Andy Burns]

the two statements aren't incompatible

Why would that be? The FTTC is hardly ancient.

Sure they want to ditch the copper, but their training videos imply all their flavours of fibre service are equivalent, perhaps some of the really ancient stuff like 2Mb/8Mb megastream tributaries is different, but the modern stuff?

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes, but not unamplified & passively spilt into 100 circuits monomode.

If the power is split among one hundred premises on a single fibre, you cant do the same length...

and on the uplink side, where each premises has its own transmitter, although its much better, you still have a few dB in each combiner..

Also what length you can do is not just a matter of dispersion, its a matter of power and how you encode the data. Pushing monomode to the bleeding edge in e.g. a submarine cable is not what OR wants to do. They want the overall least cost solution. So they wont be running at max power with amplified splitters. Or using very sophisticated modulation schemata.

I've seem <8km quoted online, my OR man said it went to a town 12 miles away.

[Andrew]

The one in Chichester is massive.

[Bob Eager]

The product is Fibre To The Premises On Demand.

As opposed to Fibre To The Premises.

[Robin]

I think the signs are that Openreach intend GPON to bypass cabinets in most if not all cases. They don't need them; and there's obvious attraction in getting rid of the risk of e.g. a single vehicle taking out a very large number of users.

[Theo]

I think the hole next to the cabinet will still exist, and house the ducts with a fibre node under the pavement, but the green box above ground will go. Therefore the cabinet location may still be relevant, but not the above ground construction with power, cooling, etc.

Which is not to say they won't make extra holes in the pavement elsewhere for other fibre nodes.

Theo

[charles]

But, probably fairly empty. It was built to accomodate Strowger kit.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well actually it is.

2009.

Remember BT Openreach are being driven by Ofcom which wants britain to be somewhere near the forefront of broadband speeds. A large percentage of the population is supposed to be *able* to get

1Gbps or something. Not possible with FTTC And the government are tossing money to enable it

Well they would say that wouldn't they?

The reality is that O/R VDSL is limited to I think 85Mbps

And its flaky vis-a-vis copper corrosion

FTTP is up to 1Gbps. And has no copper to corrode.

If the gummint is prepared to toss money to OR to build it, they are more than happy to deploy it - its a more potentially valuable broadband with far far lower maintenance costs.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think so too.

On the evidence so far, that is the sensible thing to do

[Tweed]

Actually I?d say OR are being driven by two things: Existing copper infrastructure (including the plant equipment) is heading towards being life expired. Competition is starting to put fibre in the ground at scale. Once someone else has installed fibre in a district few are going to need/want the OR product.

[The Natural Philosopher]

those are definitely factors.

As with most things, its the balance of all the issues that drives the agenda. They are getting a load of money tossed at them as part of Boris 'great reset' - broadband is seen as strategic nationally.

I agree with that.

Sadly he thinks windmills are too.

Or his shagbunny does. She seems to be driving the green policies