Karin Ahl, chair of the Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Council said that the government has missed an opportunity to futureproof internet access by not supporting the build of a new fibre to the home network.
“[The UK] used taxpayers money but it will take some time, up to 25 to 30 years before its paid off and then reinvested.”
“You’re long gone with the need for capacity and stability by that time so not going fully FTTH at the moment is definitely a mistake,” she told Cable.co.uk.
Ms Ahl (pictured) argued that faster broadband speeds than BT’s current fibre to the cabinet service can deliver would be needed to support the rise in e-health and e-government services.
“When we see healthcare services rolled out to a larger extent we also want to say we’ll give a gigabit to your house so you can have a consultation with your doctor and all that stuff.”
“We’ll need some extra capacity for the core network in that aspect.”
Asked if the UK government can do anything now to satisfy a demand for more bandwidth-hungry services, Ms Ahl replied, “Well not unless you pay and it’s too expensive, it’s not feasible".
“I think what they should do now is at least get some pilots up and running to show [FTTH] is a stable business case, it’s viable and it’s definitely doable.
“And consumers are up for it at the moment.”
The government has invested £10m in eight pilot projects to determine the technologies that will help provide broadband access to the final 5% of the UK not covered by its superfast broadband programme.
One of the projects will test the capabilities of a hybrid FTTH and wireless network.
BT previously told us that rolling out FTTH to every UK home would have cost “up to £30 billion” and “would have taken an awfully long time”.
They added that: “Industry experts believe the average home will require 19Mbps by 2023, so our FTTC service – which delivers speeds of up to 80Mbps – has plenty of life left in it yet".
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Hannah Langston
Quelle/Source: Cable.co.uk, 20.11.2014
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