BT Selects Lucky Oxfordshire Village For All-Fibre-Network

Residents in the Oxfordshire village of Deddington could be forgiven for thinking that Christmas has come early, after BT selected it for a fibre-only network deployment.

What this means is that homes and businesses in Deddington will become the first community in the UK to benefit from a 100 percent fibre network, with no copper lines at all slowing down line speeds.

Rural FTTP Deployment

All the copper-based cables will be replaced with fibre, starting from the telephone exchange, through to the cabinet, and then onto the premise. This is known as FTTP (fibre to the premise), but this is an incredibly rare occurrence in the UK.

At the moment the vast majority of BT’s fibre deployment is FTTC (fibre to the cabinet), which will eventually (in theory) offer speeds of up to 80Mbps. Itt is estimated that just 250,000 homes and blocks of flats in the UK are being wired up to FTTP, out of a population of 62 million. FTTP promises much faster broadband speeds, up to a possible 300Mbps in some cases.

“This programme will explore the opportunities arising from a future fibre-only world in which services over copper are replaced entirely with next generation voice and broadband services running over fibre optic cables,” said BT. “It is a long term programme given that copper based services are expected to be available for many years yet.”

Supercapacity Upgrade

BT Openreach is set to begin the trial sometime this Spring, with new ultra-fast broadband speeds available to residents and businesses in Deddington from 2013 onwards. BT estimates that 300Mbps will be available to all homes and businesses in the village whilst upstream speeds will reach an impressive 40Mbps.

For the villagers in Deddington, this will be an unbelievable speed increase, as they are currently using a copper-based network capable of delivering speeds of up to 8Mbps. Deddington is described as a small rural exchange serving approximately 1,400 lines, making it ideal for the pilot.

BT also said that the scheme in Deddington will allow rival communication providers to build and test a suite of new products that will run over fibre alone.

“Fresh advances in technology are pushing the boundaries for new services on an almost daily basis,” said Sean Williams, Group Strategy Director of BT. “This is an important pilot which will help the industry better understand the opportunities arising from a fibre-only world in which traditional copper will be replaced by the super-fast capabilities of fibre-optic cable.”

Dancing A Jig?

“We are excited to be the first community in the UK to be piloting this latest innovation in telecommunications,” said Councillor Jim Flux, Chairman of Deddington Parish Council, who could be forgiven for dancing a jig on the village green. “Not only will our residents and businesses be able to take advantage of ultra-fast broadband speeds but Deddington is also helping pave the way for the services of the future.”

“When suitable voice and access fibre-based alternatives are available to all communications providers using the Openreach network, BT will phase out traditional copper-based services in Deddington over a period of approximately two years,” BT said.

Whilst the news is noteworthy, it is worth pointing out that that BT still believes that copper (and other wireless options) will be the only connection for the last third of the UK that will not be blessed by being included in BT’s nationwide fibre deployment.

Digital Digital

BT is spending £2.5 billion to roll out fibre-based broadband to two thirds of UK premises by the end of 2015, but this leaves risk leaving a sizeable portion of the country stuck in the broadband slow lane. The company hopes that its deployment of ASDL2+, which will promise a modest speed increase for those people unfortunate enough to be stuck on old copper lines, will suffice for the meantime.

With the government only committing a lowly £530m of public money to bridge the remaining third of the UK with superfast broadband, it seems likely that the digital divide will be with us for some time to come.

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