Fibre technology
High-speed data transmission across long distances
High-speed data transmission across long distances
For long distance (greater than the 100m reach of Ethernet) high speed data transmission it has been known since the 1970s that fibre optic is the way to go: even cheap £35 single-mode transmitter-receivers will run 32Km at Gigabit speeds.
So I'll tell you the story of The Great BT Openreach Fibre betrayal of 2008:
BT weren’t stupid: their Norfolk research team told them long before 2008 that analogue voice in the local loop was doomed.
The 1970s digitalisation of Inter-exchange and international circuits had reduced per minute costs (to them) of intralata, interstate (US), long distance (UK) and international calls so much and so quickly that the retention of the pre-digitalisation higher prices (to the consumer) by maintaining the “premium product” appearance gave them a good 20 years of truly record profits.
Rumour has it that these profits (from the pre-BT Post Office) built the entire M25.
But eventually they had to bring the prices down (a bit), especially now the newly-privatised BT’s accounts were a matter of public scrutiny.
BT had been gifted the ageing and increasingly-maintenance-hungry copper phone infrastructure for nothing and was basically set up to run it in to the ground.
By 2008 the premium bits had been made subject to competition by the likes of the upstart cable companies that eventually became Virgin Media but that didn’t do voice.
The BT copper loop with its modems, ADSL data-bodge and aluminium loops from 1970’s cost-saving schemes were beginning to reach the end of their lives so BT financed a number of fibre local-loop replacement experiments, the most notable being the Deddington exchange.
This was built out using BT’s current state of the art fibre methods and the bill was apparently huge. I've seen the client ends of this system and from and engineering perspective it's really nicely done, but definitely could have been done more cheaply. It's all underground for a start, in conduit and beautifully done.
BTs board buckled at the projected price tag for re-cabling the entire country and doomed rural areas where there was no competition to low speeds and unreliable service for the foreseeable future.
However, by 2010 the price of modular fibre connectors had dropped to the point where companies such as Gigaclear could make a commercial decision to roll out rural Gigabit fibre and actually make a profit. Their rollout actually began in late 2011 in Appleton of all places. BT's silence on the subject was deafening: at that point they should have announced a 5 year project to fibre the entire country, they could have borrowed the money and paid it back out of the hugely reduced maintenance costs versus the existing copper network.
It is my belief that in 2011 they decided to stand back and let the alternate providers such as Gigaclear fail; they would then step in and take over the infrastructure at a low cost, saving them the costs of installing it themselves.
This didn't happen, fortunately, so finally in 2018 they announced in a huge fanfare that they would fibre everywhere, but gave no dates. Even in 2024 huge areas across the UK are still waiting for their roll out and that roll out comes with some pretty silly low access speeds and seemingly random destinations.
If I was OfCom I would have demanded in 2011 that they publish a 5 year roll-out schedule for all rural areas and made them stick to it.