BT announces Fibre to the Kerb trials

BT has announced localised trials aimed at improving broadband availability
for small pockets of customers currently unable to benefit from high speed
internet services over the telephone network.

Small scale trials will begin in four sites in Yorkshire and five in
Northern Ireland. With up to 200 invited trialists taking part, the trials
involve installing broadband equipment in locations closer to the customers
than the local BT exchange. This should enable some lines which would not
previously support broadband to do so.

In a separate trial beginning in December, a similar approach will enable
trialists in the Charlton Down area of Dorchester, Dorset, and the
Kingswells area of Aberdeen to get broadband service. In these areas a cable
technology, known as TPON, is currently used to deliver voice telephony to
these areas. This technology does not allow the delivery of ADSL broadband
direct from the exchange. The deployment of equipment in street locations
during the trial is being investigated as a way of overcoming this issue and
enabling customers in such locations to receive broadband.

The aim of these trials is to test the technical, logistical and commercial
aspects of providing broadband service in this way.

More at
http://www.btplc.com/news/Articles/S...9-a274f1f22b0c

Regards
Sunil

Sunil Sood wrote:

> The aim of these trials is to test the technical, logistical and commercial
> aspects of providing broadband service in this way.

Good news and pleased to see BT attempting this. I wonder whether other
Countries (e.g France) with long line lengths have or will have such trials?

"Sunil Sood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> BT has announced localised trials aimed at improving broadband
> availability for small pockets of customers currently unable to benefit
> from high speed internet services over the telephone network.

If this all works which I expect it will, I wonder if BT will roll out
similar services to folks on the outer reaches of normal ADSL. I can't have
anything faster than 0.5Mb due to line length.

>
> Small scale trials will begin in four sites in Yorkshire and five in
> Northern Ireland. With up to 200 invited trialists taking part, the trials
> involve installing broadband equipment in locations closer to the
> customers than the local BT exchange. This should enable some lines which
> would not previously support broadband to do so.
>
> In a separate trial beginning in December, a similar approach will enable
> trialists in the Charlton Down area of Dorchester, Dorset, and the
> Kingswells area of Aberdeen to get broadband service. In these areas a
> cable technology, known as TPON, is currently used to deliver voice
> telephony to these areas. This technology does not allow the delivery of
> ADSL broadband direct from the exchange. The deployment of equipment in
> street locations during the trial is being investigated as a way of
> overcoming this issue and enabling customers in such locations to receive
> broadband.
>
> The aim of these trials is to test the technical, logistical and
> commercial aspects of providing broadband service in this way.
>
> More at
> http://www.btplc.com/news/Articles/S...9-a274f1f22b0c
>
> Regards
> Sunil
>
>

In point of fact it's Fibre To The Cabinet which is being trialled and
about time too, i.e. fibre to DSLAMs in street cabinets and ADSL over
the local loop. Fibre To The Kerb is about VDSL, which is something
that only the CATV operators could offer (unless we want all our
streets to be dug up again in order for BT to put in a fibre access
network).

Nick

On 15 Sep 2005 05:40:37 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>In point of fact it's Fibre To The Cabinet which is being trialled and
>about time too, i.e. fibre to DSLAMs in street cabinets and ADSL over
>the local loop. Fibre To The Kerb is about VDSL

a semantic differntiation that may or not be in common use.

If the street cab is sat on the kerb whose to say whether its FTTC or
FTTK.

What would your version of FTTK do - run a fibre to the pavement
outside of a house and bury a fibre to coax convertor under the
pavement ?

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 14:26:57 +0100, Phil Thompson
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On 15 Sep 2005 05:40:37 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>
>>In point of fact it's Fibre To The Cabinet which is being trialled and
>>about time too, i.e. fibre to DSLAMs in street cabinets and ADSL over
>>the local loop. Fibre To The Kerb is about VDSL
>
>a semantic differntiation that may or not be in common use.
>
>If the street cab is sat on the kerb whose to say whether its FTTC or
>FTTK.

IIRC in the USA they usefully distinguish FTTN (node=cabinet) and
FTTC/FTTK (curb/kerb) by distance. Basically 500 feet or less to the
premises is FTTC/FTTK.

Again, IIRC, loop unbundling applies to the former case but not the
latter, nor FTTP/FTTH. This was a FCC decision to promote deep fibre
deployment..

I imagine there's a whole load of regulatory stuff to sort out as and
when BT deploys fibre in the loop, big-time.
--
Mark

Phil Thompson wrote:
> What would your version of FTTK do - run a fibre to the pavement
> outside of a house and bury a fibre to coax convertor under the
> pavement ?

No, the usage that I'm accustomed to for FTTK is fibre to a VDSL mux in
a street cabinet, running 10 Meg downstream over the last drop (been
around for 10 years). BT putting baby DSLAMs into street cabinets is
just a cost-reduced version of what they do already with bigger DSLAMs
next to Concs. Call it whatever you like, but that's not what FTTK was
meant to be about. By the way, the original BT press release calls
this trial Fibre To The Cabinet too.

The press release I'm really looking forward to is the one that comes
from a company trialling multimedia over IP through a fibre access
network. Then we can chuck out crappy ADSL and have proper broadband,
which is what Broadband Britain was really meant to be about.

Nick

On 15 Sep 2005 13:32:51 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>Call it whatever you like, but that's not what FTTK was
>meant to be about. By the way, the original BT press release calls
>this trial Fibre To The Cabinet too.

it does indeed, but from what you say FTTC and FTTK are the same thing
even if you prefer them to do VDSL from the K or C instead of 512k for
blackspots.

Hopefully what they learn from the trial will help them move towards
FTTC with higher speeds - ADSL2+ or VDSL.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.

Solving the conundrum of a national core network belonging to BT and a
broadband access network belonging to the CATV companies would be
perhaps as big a challenge as the original de-monopolisation of the UK
telecoms market. Can the CATV companies build a core network to
match/exceed that of BT? Does anyone (outside BTRL) seriously believe
that BT would be permitted to put in the equivalent of 40M copper
pairs' worth of local access in order to build its own broadband access
network. And by the way, given Sky's domination of digital TV, why the
would anyone bother anyway? What would this new network be used for?

Nick

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:01:35 +0100, Mark <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>IIRC in the USA they usefully distinguish FTTN (node=cabinet) and
>FTTC/FTTK (curb/kerb) by distance. Basically 500 feet or less to the
>premises is FTTC/FTTK.
>
>Again, IIRC, loop unbundling applies to the former case but not the
>latter, nor FTTP/FTTH. This was a FCC decision to promote deep fibre
>deployment..

yes, that seems to be the case - the only basis of the 500 ft and >20
MBits/s in the US is to avoid unbundling. 2000 ft may be more logical
for cost minimisation.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.