Landline conversion to digital

[SH]

And you do see what looks like domed black plastic tubes on either wood poles or on overhead wires/fibres where all the fibres enter into at the flat end:

[SH]

We had BT copper underground here.

When I ordered FTTP from vodafone, I was concerned at the prospect of hving the block paving driveway being lifted between the street pavement and the front door.

When Kelly Communications turned up, they simply lifted just one brick outside the front door to follow the BT cable down to the underground duct.

They then pushed in fish tape probably a good 20 metres to the first inspection/access chamber and then all the way back to the new fibre cabinet. They then pulled though the nylon tube (very similar to pneumatic tube) from the roadside cabinet to my front door.

Compressed air was then used to blow the fibre through this nylon plastic tube.

The one single driveway brick was then replaced.

So it appears that there are underground ducts serving houses directly back to the main duct in the pavement and that there are duct sharing agreements in place to allow Vodafone to use the existing ducts laid by BT well over 35 years ago (my house was built in 1985)

As a side point, I should think once all the copper wiring is removed, its scrap value now is probably more than the purchase cost back in 1985 our our estate!

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

Surely for the majority of phone/broadband customers who are on FTTC, the final existing copper connection from the cabinet will be retained for some time to come.

BT/OR are unlikely to transfer everyone to FTTP for Free?

[Andy Burns]

Yes of course, just for the broadband, not for the voice.

Virtually nobody is likely to pay the horror price to upgrade from FTTC to FTTPoD, so eventually they will.

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

But surely the voice connection will come via the broadband?

[Mike Clarke]

Or BT/OR might keep increasing the price their 'loyal' customers pay for FTTC to the point that they find it attractive to upgrade.

[Owain Lastname]

I read somewhere that the value of copper wiring in the BT network is worth more than BT as a company.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well the way fibre works, as currently implemented (so not the way it might, could, or should) is that a single fibre is *passively* split into many for individual premises. So all the signals from all the premises end up at all the premises and all the uplinks are MUXEd together on their way upstream with encryption and TDM sorting out the private logical channels.

A passive splitter does not need power, for a start, so one aspect of the street cabinet is redundant. It also does not need VDSL DSLAMS either.

Neither does fibre react badly to flooding.

Put that lot together and you can shove a splitter down in a typical BT street manhole accessed underground junction box.

I cant recall what is happening round here. Maybe I should take a camera and snap it, but its not standard green boxes.

I suspect that they will disappear in time.

BUT that time is a very moveable feast. Currently VDSL is good for what

- 80Mbps?. If you are less than 200m from the cabinet...

I cant see users that close getting FTTP any time soon

Not sure that is correct. Not for VDSL/FTTC.

I wouldn't be putting mains power and electronics in a floodable enclosure.

I suspect that when the time comes to replace FTTC with FTTP, they will build a totally new network. You dont need the green cabs at all.

Fibre passes my home. I think the splitter that breaks out my channel is underground at the pole that brings the overhead in. IIRC the engineer made one connection underground, one at the top of the pole to a physically strengthened drop wire, and then the house connections.

It's hard as usual to find out info about all this. Some comments that may or may not be accurate suggest that every main fibre splits to 32 'premises' fibres and that BUNDLE runs past any house, so connecting a house consist in cutting one of those fibres and extending the optical circuit to that house.

the 32 way splitter can definitely be underground

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes, but not forever.

the amount they are charging is a lot more than a 'tenner a month' and the maintenance costs of fibre versus copper is akin to jet aircraft versus piston engines.

In short they have a massive financial incentive to do exactly that.

I dont think people realise just how reliable fibre is vis a vis VDSL/ADSL.

Openreach have all the ducting in place to run a fibre network. Fibre itself is cheap and so are the splitters - how many engineer hours are used to lay it versus engineer hours re-splicing copper, is a calculation only Openreach can do.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No underground copper phone line is 'not in a duct'

[The Natural Philosopher]

What horror price? IIRC I pad about £50 for installation.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is a separate issue to FTTC/FTTP

In essence FTTC is copper to the cabinet. But not further on to the local exchange.

Going VOIP over FTTC means losing copper trunks and local telephone exchanges. Huge sale of potential assets looms!

[John Walliker]

They have already sold them and lease them back until they become redundant!

John

[Theo]

FTTPoD isn't regular FTTP, it's FTTP on Demand. Unlike a local rollout of FTTP where they do the whole street, essentially they do all the local fibre pulling and road digging-up from your aggregation node just for you. That can be km of fibre, and you get to foot most of the bill.

Here's what people on ThinkBroadband forum[1] were quoted for FTTPoD:

Cerberus, one of the providers, says you should expect costs upwards of £4500 in installation costs. You also get to pay a high monthly bill for your first contract, then it turns into regular FTTP that you can buy from any ISP.

Theo

[1]

[Theo]

The incomer in a 1970s house that we put a shovel through wasn't. They had just buried the copper pair unprotected through the front garden, whose flowerbeds of course got dug up...

Theo

[Mark Carver]

It wasn't at our last 1984 built house, it was a  directly buried grey armoured cable, about 10-12mm in diameter. No duct. I should know it was exposed when I did the front garden

CW1198 Spec ?

[Mark Carver]

I know one radio station who had BT lines from their remote OB receive points, which contained UHF receivers. They deliberately switched off the 'no signal' squelch, so that they would sit there blasting white noise down the line 24/7, rather than silence, because the local BT bods had a habit of nicking the pairs thinking they were unused.

Another station built little 10 second solid state audio indent boxes for their remote interview studios with a continuous, 'This is the audio circuit from xxxx town hall to radio xxxx'

[Andy Burns]

BT sold the exchange buildings 20 years ago, openreach are just a tenant in them now ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Good point! Not the copper though

[Andy Burns]

well into the thousands when I looked.

yes, that horror price ...