“I presume
those that keep pushing the "FTTC is a cul-de-sac" line will be
feeling more than a little foolish”.
Now let’s be clear about this: my technical knowledge of
broadband systems is virtually zero. I
rely on others to tell me what the alternative technologies – specifically,
fibre to the home and BT’s FTTC alternative – can and can’t do. For example, I’ve relied heavily on the House
of Lords Communications Committee pronouncements
last year on the preferable technology for the future:
“We
anticipate and recommend that policy should ultimately be directed towards
universal, point-to-point FTTP as this is a technology not only able to
accommodate current demand, but at current rates of growth, will be able to
accommodate the UK’s bandwidth demands for many decades to come”.
The same committee argued against BT’s FTTC technology on the basis that
it both precludes full physical unbundling, thus limiting the scope for service
competition, and that it may frustrate the upgrade path to fibre, i.e.
“Critics of FTTC argue that while FTTC is
cheaper to install in the short term, it may prove more expensive in the long
run to upgrade FTTC to FTTP”.
All of that sounds like a resounding ‘No’
for FTTC but I’m bound to wonder whether that conclusion still holds. Can anybody help?
