Confusion reigns

Out of the loop for quite a while, I return to find a comment in the press that rather shakes my confidence.  The article itself, in ‘Think Broadband’, is one of several to record how advances in vectoring techniques have allowed BT to increase the potential speed of its ADSL offering beyond 80 Mbps – possibly up to 100 Mbps.  The subsequent comment from a reader, ‘New_Londoner’, included this: 

“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?