BT Warns Home Hardware Could Hold Back Fibre
100Mbps fibre speeds might be held up by users’ routers and Wi-Fi, as well as cloud applications, says BT
BT has warned that some of the hardware used in today’s homes may act as a brake to the ultimate line speed of a superfast broadband connection.
The warning was given during a visit to BT’s Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) trial in Bradwell Abbey, a suburb in Milton Keynes, at which BT showed eWEEK Europe UK and other press the difficulties of rolling out highly delicate connections to thousands of homes.
Complex Installation
These difficulties included the installation of thousands of pieces of hardware (manifolds, splitter nodes and aggregation points) in outside ducting, as well as the lengthy hours it takes to wire up a home.
The fibre trials in Bradwell Abbey (using underground ducting) and Highams Park (using telephone poles) were first announced last year and were slated to begin in January, but only got going in July this year.
Unlike FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) which will typically offer speeds of up to 40Mbps, the Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) trial in Milton Keynes should be able to offer businesses and homes superfast broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps.
But BT engineers and officials warned that end users may not see these type of speeds, after it followed up some customer concerns in the pilot scheme.
These customers were apparently found that their new superfast fibre connections appeared to be delivering speeds slower than they were expecting. For example, back in July it was reported that one customer at BT-owned Plusnet did a speed test soon after he was signed up and he achieved 77Mbit/s down, 15Mbit/s up (although Plusnet use its own branding, it has been owned by BT for some years).
Customer Bottleneck
BT believes that most of these bottleneck issues are caused by the customer’s own equipment. Some users apparently have ancient PCs such as 486-based machines, that are simply unable to keeping up with the superfast broadband.
And BT representatives also warned that some routers could also be an issue, especially if customers are connecting to the Internet via their Wi-Fi network.
“The technology in a wireless chip could restrict you to 20Mbit/s,” said Johnny McQuoid, BT’s superfast broadband director. “This is what we’re finding now – it’s your PC, it’s your router.”
And it seems that the cloud could be a problem too. Many existing cloud-based apps such as photo sites are limited in how quickly they can process data, so end users won’t see a significant improvement in upload times.
BT also warned that while end users may well expect 100Mbit/s, this will rely on a combination of the other communication providers playing ball, coupled with the right hardware and applications, to ensure customers achieve their full line speed potential.
Fibre Focus
There is little doubt that BT is turning its full attention to fibre.
It has recently added another 200 apprentice jobs to help rollout fibre in the UK. It has also set up partnerships in Northern Ireland and Cornwall to deliver fibre to rural areas. And the government has said it would make £530 million available to help companies reach other rural areas.
BT spokesmen at the fibre demonstration also reiterated the fact that the rollout of its fibre network, which will be open to all other communication providers, is one of the fastest in the world. It stated that its networks passes the equivalent of the population of Singapore every quarter.
Already more than two million premises now have access to fibre broadband. That number will increase to four million by the end of 2010, with BT planning to pass 10 million premises in 2012, and two-thirds of UK premises (approx 16.5 million premises) in 2015.
