FTTH, what would it cost?

[Technical Ben]

FTTH would cost too much you may think. But what are the figures? What other schemes cost similar money and are these worth it?

What other expensive investments are currently being proposed? Well the BBC recently ran a program on the High Speed Rail Network providing a better link between the North and South of the UK. This would be done by laying a new High Speed (HS) line from London to Birmingham at a cost of £32 billion. That seems a large amount to spend on one line. We all know what happens to trains when they get the wrong type of leafs on the line, why would we want more of that? The argument for it is that it would reduce the time and increase the capacity to travel between destinations. With the hope that the time saved would be equivalent to £7.3 billion by 2043. This only includes that one section, and probably does not include the benefit of the increase in capacity. So what else could you do with that money? One of the arguments against the line was that "We use the internet for conference calls anyway". Well, let's see what you can get for £32 billion if pumped into BTs infrastructure!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14231420

My first thought was to go for FTTH. Why aim low with just FTTC? We don't want to leaf any copper on the line. Oh and why worry about just two cities and one line, when we can aim for the entire country and millions of lines? So I propose the UK Wide Take-up of Fibre (UKWTF). Currently we have 61,838,154 people in the UK and 26,195,758* households. How much would it cost to plumb in some fairy light optics to each one? One source states "For FTTH to be installed across the UK an estimate of around £10-£15 billion is expected."
http://www.broadbandwatchdog.co.uk/ftth.php

To be safe we can take the higher estimate of £15 billion. That is only £572.62p per household or just 242.57p per person. Now we don't have one line and one train, everyone gets their own line and training period. There is now no reason to leaf the North to work in the South. You can work from home anywhere you live. It costs £32 billion for the rail companies to install one line but 0.00000002% the cost for BT to install one of their lines. The UKWTF covers all the country for less than half the cost of the HS2 line and still has more than double the savings!

However The Register reports "BT has committed £2.5bn to upgrade two thirds of its network by 2015, but the scheduled work is concentrated in densely populated regions where the return on investment will be greatest." So at this time, we are no where near close to getting the coverage needed to reach the targets prosed in the UKWTF scheme. To get anyone to commit to the UKWTF, we will have to get money on track and into the BTs pockets. BT would also need extra funding for a new DLM called Line Management Asymmetric Organisation (LMAO) to stand any chance of coping with all the extra demand.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/08/bt_iwade/

Am I making an understatement on the difference UKWTF would make to the country? Well, in 2010, apparently 60% of the UK adult population had access to the internet. The UKWTF would increase that to 100%. It could also more than sextuple** the current average speed of 5.2Mbps. We would jump to the top of the lists on all the internet speed tests. Even beating South Korea! Money well spent. This is too important to leaf it to chance, we must do something right away!
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/01/25/akamai-reveals-q3-2010-uk-average-broadband-internet-speed-topped-4mbps.html

PS, just realised for £32 billion we could each get two lines on FTTH. That's a possible 100mb up and down!

*Estimated on a 0.66% increase over 2010 figures.
** That's six times more!

[kinmel]

Or we could  give 10 times as much money as that to prop up the banks again when the Euro collapses.  Which option will they choose ?

[Rik]

To increase their expense allowances?

[Lance]

[Technical Ben]

I'll get scouted for a Broardband news site some day Lance!!! 

[pctech]

Could always try ISPreview or TBB.