BT fibre trials imminent

BT has outlined some further details of its trials of fibre-based broadband services that will begin next week.

The trials, in Muswell Hill in London and Whitchurch in Wales, will run to 30,000 homes in total, with more than 100 street cabinets fitted with FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet) technology.

Headline speeds on offer will be up to 40Mbps and guaranteed to be at least 15Mbps.

BT has already trialled FTTC services in Foxhall, Ipswich, but on a much smaller scale.

The trials are another step towards BT's goal of offering 10 million homes in the UK fibre-broadband services by 2012.

However, BT only expects a 20 to 25 per cent take up of fibre broadband.

Content is King
According to BT's Liv Garfield, uptake of fibre-based broadband services will revolve around the kind of content on offer as well as the price.

Garfield said that a "competitively priced product that people believe they can get something different from" would be in a good position to succeed.

She welcomed recent recommendations made by Ofcom concerning the pay-TV market, where Sky may be forced to offer its channels through other broadcasters' services.

Though BT hasn't released any information about the pricing of its pilot schemes and any future fibre-based products, it did promise to be competitive.

"We think people will be surprised by how competitively we're pricing this," said Garfield.

Digging
BT also said that the roll-out of the fibre network would not cause too many traffic snarl-ups as very few roads would have to be dug up.

BT's David Campbell said that fibre could fit through existing channels housing copper cables and that it could also run overhead or through ducts.

"Very little digging will be involved," said Campbell.

However, anyone hoping for widescale deployment of FTTH (fibre-to-the-home, also referred to by BT as FTTP, or fibre-to-the-premises) will be disappointed.

Though both FTTC and FTTH/FTTP will be offered by BT through fibre-enabled exchanges, and limited FTTH/FFTP trials have taken place in Ebbsfleet, Kent, the vast majority of the new network will be FTTC.

FTTH/FTTP, which offers a fibre-optic connection all the way to your home or business, will only make up a "small percentage" of fibre connections, Campbell said.

But there will be a large pilot of FTTP beginning in March 2010 in two as yet unspecified areas, incorporating up to 40,000 households, BT said.

There is also concerning news for people living in remote areas, with Campbell admitting that "there will be small areas where we can't justify the economic case" for fibre deployment.

However, BT's choice of Whitchurch as one of the areas to trial fibre services signals that some non-urban areas are in with a chance of seeing the high-speed services at some stage.

A further 29 areas will have their telephone exchanges upgraded to incorporate fibre-optic technology, as the company announced in March, though only two of these areas - Calder Valley and Taffs Well - could been seen as truly rural.