Ofcom proposes new rules to ensure competition exists in fibre market

The central pillar of UK telecom regulation for some thirty years has been to increase competition and regulate the pricing that BT charges, either at the wholesale or retail level. A large degree of freedom was afforded to the BT Group and Openreach when the fibre based broadband roll-outs started in 2009 and the price of the FTTC services or equivalent products in the areas where FTTP is the native option has pretty much remained static, while the retail pricing has slowly crept down, offset in part by the increases in voice line rental.

Now that fibre based services are popular to the extent of some 2.7 million connections on the Openreach network Ofcom is making moves to ensure that the BT Group does not manipulate pricing so that competitors cannot compete. Effectively what we will see is the price of BT Retail fibre based services kept high so that TalkTalk and Sky can undercut them.

Today’s proposals preserve that pricing flexibility, while seeking to ensure that BT does not set prices in such a way that prevents other operators from competing profitably for superfast broadband customers. In May, Ofcom announced its intention to set out proposals on this issue.
Ofcom is proposing to put in place a regulatory condition requiring BT to ensure that the margin between its wholesale VULA charges and its retail superfast broadband prices is sufficient for rival operators to compete and make a profit.
Extract from Ofcom announcement
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6499-ofcom-proposes-new-rules-to-ensure-competition-exists-in-fibre-market.html

1 month till i'm on fibre! Yay!

Although for an ADSL line it holds up well! I can't wait to move at the end of the month and put my NAS on a half decent upstream 20Mbps with 80Mbps down!





Heres a ping monitor of how the lines held up against heavy downloading all day and I reinstall Windows updates / Office and Steam games all day:

BT Openreach List Next 82 UK Exchanges for FTTP on Demand

Harrow is one but with those install costs I won't be considering it for a long while...

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/12/bt-openreach-name-2014-q1-uk-fttp-demand-exchange-upgrades.html

A picture of what a typical FTTPoD setup will look like:
http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-fastfibreaccess/fibretothepremises/fttp/downloads/NewSitesnewhomeflyerFINAL.pdf

Vectoring Trials Begin as BT Look to Boost UK FTTC Broadband ISP Speeds

BTOpenreach, which helps to maintain and upgrade BT’s national telecoms network, has confirmed that the first customer trials of VDSL2 Vectoring technology (ITU-T G.993.5) are live. The new technology could deliver a significant speed boost to users of the operators existing up to 80Mbps hybrid-fibre (FTTC) superfast broadband network.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/09/vectoring-trials-begin-as-bt-looks-to-improve-uk-fttc-broadband-isp-speeds.html

BT List 19 Final UK Exchanges for their GBP2.5bn Fibre Broadband Rollout

The Absolutely Final 19 Commercial Fibre Exchange Upgrades

ANFIELD – Merseyside
ASHFIELD – West Midlands
BEACON – West Midlands
BRADFORD – West Yorkshire
CANARY WHARF – Greater London
FARNWORTH – Greater Manchester
GOSCOTE – Leicestershire
HALESOWEN – West Midlands
HOLMEWOOD – Derbyshire
LEEDS – West Yorkshire
NETHERLEY – Merseyside
NEWCASTLE EAST – Tyne and Wear
NORTH SHIELDS – Tyne and Wear
OLD WHITTINGTON – Derbyshire
ORRELL – Greater Manchester
RIPPONDEN – West Yorkshire
RUBERY – West Midlands
STONE CROSS – West Midlands
WAKEFIELD – West Yorkshire

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/09/bt-list-19-final-uk-exchanges-commercial-fibre-broadband-rollout.html

ISPreview Sky news.

Two articles:

Sky will be trailing what most ISP's will want: Self install FTTC services. There are various pitfalls and advantages to this. The main advantage being cost and the main disadvantage being the customers home environment. One of the main advantages of having a OR engineer comes to site is that they should in theory fix any in home issues.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/09/sky-broadband-first-uk-isp-begin-trialling-self-install-fttc.html

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/09/uk-isp-sky-broadband-breaks-1000gbps-network-data-traffic-milestone.html

TalkTalk announce their results. Still not great in my opinion.

Currently making a meal of my parents Business FTTC install (If it was residential it would have gone on Sky).

The PSTN had FeatureLine on it (gets you an incompatible product when you place a fibre order) so they took the line to WLR3 first and then are moving it to MFP LLU before FTTC. Their correspondence is awful and confusing for customers not in the know. All it needs is one letter explaining this, instead they send multiple as if you've signed up to each service separately confusing the hell out of the purchaser as to what they've actually bough. One person asked me to start going through the order again when it was already over on WLR3 (cutting off the internet which had been SMPF with them and not making them aware of the longer downtime than initially planned)!  

The only plus side is they are cheaper that BT infinity for unlimited usage wtih a static IP. 

Link to announcement via ISPreview.co.uk:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/07/talktalk-grows-to-4-071m-uk-broadband-users-with-95k-on-superfast-fttc.html

Sky Broadband do well at the ISPA awards

ISPreview:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/07/ispa-announce-the-winners-of-its-2013-uk-internet-industry-awards.html

Alcatel-Lucent on G.Fast and Vectoring 2 for Future 1Gbps FTTC Broadband

ISPreview:: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/07/alcatel-lucent-talk-g-fast-and-vectoring-2-for-future-1gbps-fttc-broadband.html

BT Reveal UK FTTC Self Install and Vectoring Broadband Trial

ISPreview:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/04/bt-reveals-uk-fttc-broadband-isp-self-installation-and-vectoring-trials.html

EE might be bought by a consortium.

ISPreview http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/02/private-equity-firms-target-4g-mobile-operator-ee-uk-with-gbp10bn-bid.html

Sky's broadband share growing!

Good to see. There is also an increase in customers taking stand alone phone and broadband which shows strength in the product on its own.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/01/bskyb-sky-broadband-tops-4-23-million-uk-isp-subscribers.html

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5694-sky-starting-to-challenge-virgin-media-as-second-largest-provider.html

BT Openreach Confirm UK ISP Pricing for FTTP on Demand Pilot Phase 2

Although those prices are very off putting (£500 install and £1000 for a 500m run of fibre) we could see some ISP willing to subsidise this heavily with lengthy contracts. With FTTC giving 80Mbps down / 20Mbps up, people will start thinking hard about if the upgrade is worth it. 

It's a clever move by OpenReach to save money upgrading the network. I don't ever remember NTL / Telewest or their predecessors doing any thing similar on a residential; service. Hopefully it will leads to a focus on keeping the network running smoothly with better service to ISP's.

The Pilot will take place in the following exchange areas:

High Wycombe
Bristol South
St Agnes Cornwall
Edinburgh Waverley
Basingstoke
Watford
Cardiff Central
Manchester Central

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/01/bt-openreach-confirm-uk-isp-pricing-for-fttp-on-demand-pilot-phase-2.html

How to Identify Slow Speed as a Fault on FTTC Superfast Broadband Lines

ISP review:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/12/when-slow-speeds-become-a-fault-on-bts-fttc-superfast-broadband.html

A great bit in there is that they know of one example where the customer was about 2000m from the green box (PCP) and getting 16 Mbps. If that's the distance to the PCP it makes you wonder what they would have got on ADSL2+ with the copper going all the way back to the exchange.  Probably barely anything if the downstream attenuation was above 70dB.

Special offer on FTTC Simultaneous Provides in New Year

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5478-special-offer-on-fttc-simultaneous-provides-in-new-year.html

Openreach announces next phase of superfast broadband roll-out

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5461-openreach-announces-next-phase-of-superfast-broadband-roll-out.html

New blog: www.bbhelp.co.uk

I've moved some of the DSL related stuff from this site to a new dedicated blog: http://ukbroadbandblog.blogspot.co.uk/ which will eventually end up on a nice short domain:  http://www.bbhelp.co.uk (give the domain 24hrs as some DNS servers are being slow to update).

BT Preps New UK Superfast Broadband Cabinets for Exchange Only Lines

ISPreview: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/bt-preps-new-uk-superfast-broadband-cabinets-for-exchange-only-lines.html

Communications news round up

Vodafone are pretty unhappy with Everything Everywhere's effort to get 4G out this year

Apparently BT Open Reach is enhancing the experience of moving away from Sub Loop Unbundling SLU (as opposed to the more familiar LLU)  providers, which reads to me more like "We actually have a proper process in place now" to me.

Note this is different to Open Reach's GEA-FTTC, of which they are soon to be rolling out the faster 80/20 service come April.

Fibre to the cabinet (UK)

I learnt a couple of new things today about FTTC. Firstly I got to see the master socket that gets installed with these new VDSL installs (This is what that £70 install buys you). 

It looks like the filter is now built into the socket. Whether that turns out to be a good or bad thing is yet to be seen. I suspect that it wouldn't be easy to replace from the looks of it. Not sure I like that.

Secondly, BT are using Huawei hardware (HG612) with PPoE. Pretty indifferent about that, IPoE would've been nice but I guess we're not there just yet... 

[Update] Check out my broadband page over on the right >
I have lots of broadband related links and info kept here!

Also the socket is made in three sections. There is a middle section that can be detached.