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50p = 80% ?
03 Jul 2009 | 10.40 Europe/London
BT have been suggesting that the 50p telephone line tax may only be sufficient to bring fibre-based services to 80% of the population.
Liv Garfield, BT's director of strategy, is quoted on silicon.com saying
Lord Carter envisaged the 50p funding a "final third" project to bring the fibre based connections to ~90% of the population rather than the 60-70% he envisaged would be achieved through commercial provision.
There will be a body of opinion that maintains a FTTC based architecture as proposed by BT is a short termist waste of time and the effort would be better spent getting fibre all the way to the home (FTTH). FTTC will run fibre to street cabinets and use the copper loop for the final part of the connection.
[ silicon.com ]
Liv Garfield, BT's director of strategy, is quoted on silicon.com saying
"I could see a way to get to 80, 85 per cent with [the fund generated by the fibre tax] but I struggle a little more if it is up to 100. It's impossible to get up to 100."
Lord Carter envisaged the 50p funding a "final third" project to bring the fibre based connections to ~90% of the population rather than the 60-70% he envisaged would be achieved through commercial provision.
There will be a body of opinion that maintains a FTTC based architecture as proposed by BT is a short termist waste of time and the effort would be better spent getting fibre all the way to the home (FTTH). FTTC will run fibre to street cabinets and use the copper loop for the final part of the connection.
[ silicon.com ]
80% of the population, might be 90% of the land mass? That would be a massive improvement over the current situation. Changing the USO from 28.8kbps to 2000kbps (2.0mbps) is a massive change.
The UK is a large and *varied* land mass, including the islands. As the mobile phone networks found, population coverage is not land coverage.
04 Jul 2009 | 00.38 Europe/London
80% of the population will be a lot less than 90% of the land mass, might be as little as 20%.
The 50p isn't for the 2M USO, it's for Next Generation Access.
04 Jul 2009 | 10.40 Europe/London
40% of the population live in 90% of the land mass. The 50p is supposed to be for the 30% of the 40% that adsl can't serve. It won't happen anyway, cos it won't hit the statute books before the next election. It is just a red herring to take the heat out of the fact that even the government don't understand broadband, and they are advised by ofcom. say no more. They want a next gen network, but they don't really know how it works. The only way to provide a futureproof solution is to replace the copper with fibre, make sure the backbones are up to scratch, do fibre to the cabinet for very difficult places and remove all obstacles to communities who want to do FTTH from those cabinets for themselves. Fibre is cheap. It is the tax and paperwork that costs the money. I can understand BT not wanting to invest in really remote locations, but if the govt wants access for all then it has to make BT either do it, or make the job easier for others to do. Govt also has to drop the tax on lighting fibre until everyone has it. Or pass the tax back to BT to enable remote access?
05 Jul 2009 | 07.35 Europe/London
One thing that annoys me a little is that, those fortunate to have thier telephone via cable or fibre and hight peed internet are the ones not having to pay the 50p. Its those that dont have the high speed and have only POTS that are having to pay without option.
Phil
05 Jul 2009 | 12.06 Europe/London
I'm happy to pay the 50p tax....but if my rubbish little telephone exchange does not get fibre, then I shall be claiming a refund from BT & the Govt.
05 Jul 2009 | 19.41 Europe/London
"40% of the population live in 90% of the land mass" - fraid not, as 83% of the UK (the population of England) live on 53% of the land mass (the area of England) you simply can't have 40% occupying anywhere near 90%.
DEFRA stats show 80.4% of England & Wales population in urban areas and 8.6% in small towns and fringes. That's 89% in sizable built-up areas which will be a small proportion of the land mass.
06 Jul 2009 | 18.14 Europe/London
Phil, do you expect anyone to take seriously data supplied by defra? The 90% is illustrative rather than absolute, but the maps and models are based on government data and vetted by data analysts at CRC, and I would trust CRC before Defra any day. It all boils down to statistics and more damned statistics. The truth of the matter is that nobody further than a couple of Km from an exchange will ever have access to Next Gen. end of. So that is at least 90% of the land mass out of the picture.
08 Jul 2009 | 09.16 Europe/London
For example, the current benchmark used by DEFRA counts any community with more than 10,000 people as urban, the same as London - that's a village of say 3,000 homes is not rural?
08 Jul 2009 | 09.18 Europe/London
A village of 3,000 homes may be as dense as a part of London and therefore the economics of provision would be similar, so it is a valid comparison. 12.5% of the land area gets you well over 90% of the population, end of.
09 Jul 2009 | 15.20 Europe/London
"nobody further than a couple of Km from an exchange will ever have access to Next Gen" - why ? FTTC operates from cabinets not exchanges for example, and ever is a long time. If Openreach use FTTP on new builds, as they say they intend to, this statement becomes even more redundant.
09 Jul 2009 | 15.22 Europe/London
from Point Topic: High density areas with at least 500 lines per sq.km cover just over 9,000 km² or 3.8% of the UK land area and contain 12.75m or 76.6% of lines. The next band, with 30 - 500 lines per sq.km, includes suburban fringes, villages and more populated areas of the countryside covering 8.9% of the land area and housing 17.4% of lines. Together these two bands represent 94% of lines but only 12.7% of the land area. In the second band a subsidy is required to address the shortfall between the costs and the extra revenue generated.
09 Jul 2009 | 16.44 Europe/London