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Friday, May 11, 2007

Openreach FTTH Consultation

Without much fanfare Openreach is currently undergoing various consultations with the industry about providing FTTH services.

They are naming this "Fibre to the Premises at Greenfield Sites", but no doubt will provide the template for any future UK wide FTTH deployments. The consultation looks at a very early stage and very little looks as if it is decided with two big and vitally important exceptions.

First it looks as if GPON Architecture has been decided – this is a similar architecture to one chosen by Verizon in its FIOS project, but a different one to the chosen one by Iliad.

Second, it looks as if Openreach as going to build a dedicated RF broadcast signal for FTA TV, DAB Radio & "Satellite" TV (ie Sky) on the Fibre. Again this is a similar architecture to Verizon FIOS, but a big kick in the teeth for IP-TV.

The consultation looks as if it is being rushed through on the quiet to deal with the Ebbsfleet development, but as I said before will have dramatic long term consequences, if BT ever builds a FTTH network, to all UK ISPs and Service Providers.

Even without a legacy FTTH deployment, BT estimate that 246k new homes and business premises are built every year which will all over time move to a FTTH architecture.