BT Admits Ducting Problems Cause FTTP Delay

BT has admitted that the scheduled date for its fibre to the premise (FTTP) trial may be delayed by a few extra months because of the problems it is experiencing with blowing the fibre through existing ducting.

So said BT’s broadband programme director Johnny McQuoid, quoted in various media reports. He told the Register, for example, that some of the trials were taking twice as long as anticipated due to duct blockages that needed to be cleared.

This in turn has a knock-on affect for communication suppliers, which had been hoping to resell services using BT’s FTTP capacity.

FTTP Trial

BT plans to roll out fibre to approximately two thirds of homes and business premises in the UK by 2015. This rollout includes a combination of FTTP and fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) – which is a much easier process but delivers slower speeds because, from the cabinet, the broadband service has to be routed via the copper-based telephone line leading into the house or building.

Fibre to the premise (FTTP) allows for much great line speeds, as the fibre connection is rolled out from the telephone exchange, right through to the home or business, without the bottleneck of the “last mile” copper line. But FTTP entails a lot more work in routing the fibre to the house, either via existing underground ducting or via telegraph poles.

BT is currently working on a 75/25 percent split between FTTC and FTTP. Some are concerned, however, that the government is placing to much emphasis on fibre installatations when there are wireless and satelitte alternatives.

Speaking to eWEEK Europe, a BT spokesman said the delays are hardly surprising, given that the FTTP is a trial and BT is having to overcome ducting blockages – or in some cases there is nobody at home when BT tries to install fibre into homes or buildings.

Flexible Deadlines

“This is a trial and, by its very nature, the projected launch dates have to have a fair amount of elasticity, because we are finding out how long it takes to deploy this solution as we go along,” said a BT spokesman. “The majority of FTTC deployments are not as labour-intensive as rolling out fibre to the premise.”

“At the end of the day a trial is a trial and this just highlights some of the difficulties we have encountered,” BT said. “It is a frontier technology, and we are learning all the time. We initially thought the delivery date would be around September, but it is now around December. It is nice that people acknowledge the inherent difficulties with doing this type of technology rollout. That said we could find – once we have completed the trial – that there are quicker ways to deploy fibre to people’s homes.”

Blockages And Space

“The problems we have encountered include making sure that someone is at home, and also the fact that some ducting is either very crowded (with other cabling) or the ducting itself is damaged. We are also trialing running fibre over telegraph poles as well. But once FTTP is installed, it is a very future-proof technology,” said BT.

“The whole purpose of a trial is to learn about the various processes and how to improve them, so we fully expected to encounter things like duct blockages,” BT added. “We sometimes have to make changes to what we planned to do to make sure processes are sufficiently robust. As an example, we are trialling a two-stage process to perform the external work when residents are not at home and the internal work when they are.”

“FTTP is a complex technology which we are currently trialling at scale,” said BT in an official statement. “We are pleased with how the trials are going, but have always been very clear that we will only launch it on a commercial basis once it has been fully tested and is ready for the market.”

BT also disputed the Register article, which said that “roughly a quarter of its trials found engineers taking two days to blow cables into customers’ homes”. BT said that was incorrect.

Labour Intensive

To be fair to BT, the installation of fibre is an incredibly labour intensive process, as witnessed first hand when eWEEK Europe visited BT’s Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) trial in Bradwell Abbey (a suburb in Milton Keynes) in October last year.

BT has already said that it intends to double the speed of its fibre-based Infinity broadband package. BT currently offers a theoretical maximum speed of 40Mbps for Infinity, so those lucky customers connected to a fibre-equipped street cabinet should see their broadband speed double to a possible 80Mbps in 2012.

And of course BT has already announced that that it is upgrading the maximum possible speed of its copper broadband product, from 8Mbps up to 20Mbps.

Ducting Dispute

The ducting problems comes as BT finds itself in dispute with some ISPs over access to its ducting. Last month a number of BT’s competitors wrote to communications minister Ed Vaizey, warning of a possible boycott of the government’s £830m investment in rural broadband pilots.

Their complaints centre around the prices that BT charges in order to allow them to access its telegraph poles and ducting.

With no signs of compromise between the two sides, Ofcom has warned that it may have to step in and regulate the prices BT charges.