Broadband Cumbria

I think one problem is to differentiate between what it would cost another telco to kit out an FTTC cabinet and what it costs BT. They have a lot of overheads to cover (not least a massive pensions hole) so the amount they charge is a lot more than the amount it costs them. In [...]

Benoit, I’m aware of a number of cases where BT has made indicative offers to do an FTTC rollout. I’ve been told what the offer prices are and I’ve worked that backwards to arrive at the figures I’ve used. I’m not at liberty to disclose where the projects are. But one reference that is in [...]

Dave,
Thanks for all that information. Clearly some legal advice is needed to get the right structure. Sounds like you have a lot of knowledge in the area and perhaps could advise us?

Yes thats the purpose of the wayleave, first to give permission to cross the land and then to service the facility placed under it. The wall would need a “V” slot taken down, say 2m wide at the top to a foot wide at the bottom. The digger then cuts his trench through the slot [...]

Well I can only say that I spoke with my local stone waller who does most of the work around here and he said he could do two walls per working day and charges £25/hr, my numbers came from that. I dont understand the “appears to have repealed various laws” bit. If we dont cross [...]

Hi Graham - I have gone with a CIC simply because it was the first model that came up that seemed to work. I’m sure that there are others and we would need input to see which would be best. A CIC which is a Social Enterprise hits the spot with me for two reasons, [...]

I’ve had a number of queries re the digging costs so its obviously contentious. I’ve arrived at it by disregarding traditonal telco contractors and instead looking at agricultural labour rates. A man with mini digger plus a mate to help costs between £250 and £350 per day. These people are very experienced in things like [...]

Craig, This does not affect the FTTP CIC project unless we did use BT poles. It is trivial to not use a pole to reach a business but actually its all red herring and not something to bother about. We would indeed offer service to both businesses and mobile operators and anyone else who wanted [...]

The question of community involvement is the crucial one for us. What does it mean? Well firstly landowners have to grant a free of charge wayleave. Why should they? Well it supports the community, it gets them a better service and there is plenty of evidence that properties with fibre/very high speed broadband sell for [...]

Hi Aled, Actually there are technical issues that prevent VDSL2 being run from exchanges. Without getting too techie its down to the power spectrum distribution of the signals. ADSL has a spectral mask as does VDSL2. If you run VDSL2 from the exchange there is cross interference from the VDSL signals which would blat the [...]

The design would allow for 100% connectivity in that the trunks would be sized with enough fibres to drop 4 off at each property. Spur points (splice bullets) are located in suitable locations ready for the spurs to be dug off. You would only dig that spur once the property owner signed up for service. [...]

John,
The CIC would be the ISP and provide all the usual ISP services. The £30/m fee covers all that.

Hi John, actually the Settle to Carlisle line does not have any Global Crossing fibre laid along it. The only fibre there is a 24 fibre bundle surface mounted and stapled to the sleepers which was installed by Network Rail as part of the FTN project (£1.2B of public money). Network Rail are happy to [...]

Just to clear up something else. The total project costs include taking four people from the local community and putting them through a C&G Fustion Splicing course so that they can do the clever linking of fibre pieces together. It also includes buying the fusion splicing kit and assorted tools for them to use on [...]

1. Yes, these are approx but in the right ball park. 2. Yes the £1250 was derived by digging out to 100% of properties and doing all the company work+backhaul to Manchester, etc then dividing total cost by number of props. 3. The £500K is a mix of lease for a dark fibre pair say [...]

BT size their network to allow 35Kbs per subscriber at peak times. TalkTalk allows 20Kbs and the other ISPs a range of capacity between 20 and 50Kbs. They are assuming traditional use such as web browsing or email. With users pulling video for extended periods their networks will collapse unless resized. With BT GEA (Infinity) [...]

Actually John you have hit on one of the main drivers behind FTTP, its video. The latest project is YouView which is a joint BBC/ITV/CH4/CH5 etc. etc service which will deliver TV via the Internet. All FreeView and FreeSat channels will be on it along with an extended IPlayer service giving -7days viewing. Also video [...]

Well there are two bits of FTTP, the trunk bits and then the spurs off to individual houses. The spurs could easily be delivered by poles and if BT does make pole access available at an affordable price then that could be the preferred method. For the trunk where bigger capacity cable is needed its [...]