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Waiting for fibre

By Mark Lum, independent telecoms consultant

Excuse me for being parochial, but being British and chairing at this week’s FTTx Summit leaves me feeling somewhat depressed, as I wait for my flight home from Munich. Doubly depressed, if I tell you that I first saw FTTH with BT’s early deployment in Milton Keynes back in 1984, I think it was (as a young graduate engineer, I should hasten to add!)

I can report that in the intervening 25 years, the UK has hardly advanced, whilst the rest of Europe — and large parts of the world, too — has marched on, now reaching mainstream fibre deployment in many countries. A brilliant constellation of technologies, investments and businesses — open and closed access, municipal and incumbent players, FTTH and FTTB, P2P and PON architectures, private and state investment, individuals and corporations — is testament to the vision and human ingenuity to pioneer, find the successful and make this thing happen commercially over the past decade.

And as for the UK? Sadly, we are a “no-show” as far as the FTTH league tables are concerned. Many would say that we are the donkey cart of the information superhighway… Given up before we even try to deploy fibre to the home… Several fibres short of a muesli breakfast… Flatlined in the FTTH casualty department: it’s just embarrassing!

I fully appreciate BT’s market position, but it’s latest announced plan is largely a “mend and make do” FTTC strategy. Luckily, there are a few green shoots showing from other initiatives.

For a country where Kao and Hockham first conceived using optical fibre as a communication medium (at ITT’s STL Harlow labs in 1966) this is a disappointing situation, quite frankly. One might hope that we would be in a more enlightened position. Perhaps the UK government’s imminent Digital Britain report will realise where the rest of the world is headed, help jump-start the country and shake us out of fibre torpor. Let’s see.

Now I have that off my chest, I’ll gather my wider thoughts and look to report on a few highlights from what was an extremely cheerful, forward-looking and optimistic FTTx Summit. Ironically, next year’s event is planned for London! For many countries and people, fibre is coming home — those involved couldn’t be happier.

Posted by Pauline Rigby on June 12, 2009 12:05 PM | Permalink