Sky Signs Three Month Ducting Trial With BT

Sky has become the first major British ISP to sign a deal with BT to use its ducting, for a possible rollout of fibre.

The three month deal will allow Sky to access BT Openreach’s Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which essentially allows Sky to install its own fibre cables in BT ducts and telegraph poles.

Another company, Call Flow, has also signed a three month deal with BT to assess the costs involved in setting up a next generation access (NGA) network using BT’s infrastructure.

Testing And Learning

This deal with BT allows BSkyB to investigate the real life costs involved in a fibre deployment in the UK, and whether it would be cheaper to carry on using BT’s infrastructure to deliver its services.

Sky has previously conducted its own fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) tests back in 2008.

And Sky is currently working with rival ISP TalkTalk for a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) research pilot.

“This is a small scale trial which forms part of our fibre test and learn activity, alongside our existing R&D trials with BT and TalkTalk,” a Sky spokesman told eWEEK Europe.

“It will help us understand future options and ensure we are well positioned should customers tell us they want fibre broadband,” the spokesman added.

Field Testing

“This trial will allow us to field-test the processes involved in allowing others to use our duct and pole infrastructure and build upon the accuracy of our assumptions before we launch the product commercially,” said Fergus Crockett, Openreach product director.

“It will also provide our CP customers with far greater clarity around the detail of deployment, and the likely costs involved, as well as giving them the chance to engage with us constructively around pricing and process development,” he added.

“We are delighted that Sky and Call Flow have signed up to the trial; they each bring critical experience, Sky with their scale end-user customer base and Call Flow as the UK’s largest Sub-Loop Unbundling provider,” said Crockett.

Ducting Charges

BT had agreed with Ofcom way back in February 2010 to open its ducting so that rival ISPs could lay their own cables. In January 2010 it published its charges to allow them to access BT’s telephone poles and ducting.

But these charges did not sit well with some ISPs.

In early April a number of ISPs wrote to communications minister Ed Vaizey, warning of a possible boycott of the government’s £830 million investment in rural broadband pilots, because they felt BT’s charges were unreasonable.

Signatories to that letter included TalkTalk, Fujitsu, Geo, Virgin Media and Vtesse, but crucially not Sky.

Then in mid April Fujitsu announced plans to build its own £2 billion superfast fibre network, which will bypass BT’s street cabinets and offer high speed connections to five million homes in rural Britain that currently have poor broadband  coverage.