Fibre broadband: The cost of delivering in rural areas

[Java Jive]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54718673

Fibre broadband: The cost of delivering in rural areas

"Not to be defeated, Mr Brett clubbed together with some of his
neighbours to persuade BT to run 1Gbps (gigabit per second) fibre
broadband to their street.

But when the quote came back from Openreach, the spin-off from BT that
is responsible for the vast majority of the UK's broadband
infrastructure, he was shocked.

"I was quoted £101,855.00 - which seemed high."

There was no breakdown of the cost but Openreach had helpfully done some
of the maths - for 17 premises the cost per home or business would be
£5,991.47, with the possibility of vouchers taking an estimated £20,000
off the overall estimate."

Similar experience here in Shinness: While those premises nearest to
Lairg have benefited from FTTC, the cost of FTTP to each of the 50
remaining premises is approximately £5,800, of which £1,500 for
residential premises and £3,500 for business premises can be claimed
back from the government, the total cost to the community being about
£290,000 less the above mentioned government grants.

So we're using more realistically priced alternatives such as mobile and
local radio connections.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
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[Graham J]

Java Jive wrote:

[snip]

>
> Similar experience here in Shinness:  While those premises nearest to
> Lairg have benefited from FTTC, the cost of FTTP to each of the 50
> remaining premises is approximately £5,800, of which £1,500 for
> residential premises and £3,500 for business premises can be claimed
> back from the government, the total cost to the community being about
> £290,000 less the above mentioned government grants.
>
> So we're using more realistically priced alternatives such as mobile and
> local radio connections.

We've covered this here before: the cost of connecting absolutely
everybody would be trivial if amortised across the whole Openreach
customer base; an additional few tens of pence per year per existing
customer.

A decent broadband service is now actually more important than the
postal service particularly for dealing with the administrative
machinery of government, so if the post is subject to a Universal
Service Obligation then so should Openreach as effectively the only
nationwide internet communications provider.

This is not a business decision for Openreach, it is a political matter
and should be part of its operating license. So get onto your MP !!!


--
Graham J

[Java Jive]

On 15/11/2020 11:24, Graham J wrote:
>
> This is not a business decision for Openreach, it is a political matter
> and should be part of its operating license.  So get onto your MP !!!

I've copied my national and local political representatives in on most
of my dealings with Openreach.

[Vir Campestris]

On 15/11/2020 16:34, Java Jive wrote:
> On 15/11/2020 11:24, Graham J wrote:
>>
>> This is not a business decision for Openreach, it is a political
>> matter and should be part of its operating license.  So get onto your
>> MP !!!
>
> I've copied my national and local political representatives in on most
> of my dealings with Openreach.
>

Hmmm... 100k for a mile or so.

"We have to take a physical fibre cable along roads and fields and it
needs to be put in underground ducts or across poles. The
civil-engineering costs could involve road closures and the erection of
several poles. These are all very large costs."

Our village was ADSL only until we started looking into dumping BT,
whereupon they installed fibre.

Running the fibre along existing ducts where they exist, and using
existing overhead poles where there were no ducts.

The total distance is between 2.5 and 3.5 miles depending which end of
the village you mean.

Andy.