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FTTP - Fibre To The Premises

Fibre to the premises, known as FTTP or FTTH (fibre to the home), is a genuine pure-fibre ultrafast broadband Internet system rather than the hybrid-fibre superfast FTTC system that has been employed by Openreach in the last 5 years or so. BT/Openreach have been wedded to their old copper line based hybrid-fibre FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) technology. Although this has proven cheap and relatively easy to install in urban areas, its use in rural situations is prone to issues. FTTC has severe limitations, the main one being the available speed drops off rapidly with distance,  and certainly will not keep up with growing Internet speed/reliability requirements for the next 10 years. The Internet infrastructure of the UK's rural areas is now finally being upgraded. A genuine fibre (pure-fibre) to the premises (FTTP) solution provides a significantly better and future proof solution and thankfully everyone is waking up to this and we are now beginning to see it employed more fully.

Technologies

DIAL-UP/ISDN: These are the traditional copper telephone wire based internet access system. Uses the standard telephone copper wires to the exchange.

ADSL: ADSL1 and ADSL2+ uses broad bandwidth technology to offer faster speeds over the traditional copper telephone wires to the exchange.

FTTC: Fibre to the cabinet superfast broadband. Called fibre broadband but it is really hybrid fibre/copper broadband infrastructure. The most common in use today. Copper wires to a nearby street cabinet then fibre. G.Fast is a technology that is similar to FTTC but provides faster speeds if a customer is very close to the cabinet of G-fast electronics. This copper wire technology has reached the end of its tether and will be replaced with FTTP over the next 10 years.

FTTP: Fibre to the premises. Genuine pure fibre technology. Fibre all the way to the exchange (can go to intermediate locations). Low usage in the UK but most internet connections will use this in the future.

Feature ADSL FTTC FTTP
Connection type Copper hybrid fibre/copper fibre
Reliability Low Low High
Downstream bit rate Up to 20 Mbps depending on distance Up to 70 Mbps depending on distance Up to 1 Gbps no distance issue
Upstream bit rate Up to 1 Mbps depending on distance Up to 17 Mbps depending on distance Up to 1 Gbps no distance issue
Interference Medium High Low
Lightning damage High High Low
Packet loss Medium High Low
Latency 13-60 ms variable 20 - 30 ms variable no interleaving 8 - 15 ms variable
Line Contention Cross-talk limited Highly Cross-talk limited, cabinet about 2.6:1 40 Mbps Depends on split ratio in use and speeds. 2.5 Gbps upstream and 2.5 Gbps downstream shared by up to 32 premises
Future proof No No Yes (If split ratio used by Openreach is not too high)

Why FTTP ?

Pure-fibre FTTP is a genuine NGA architecture. It is reasonably future proof unlike FTTC which is already becoming quickly outdated in terms of the growing Internet speed and reliability requirements.

  • Reliable system. Water ingress in the rural areas is particularly an issue with copper cables. Internet availability/speed is very variable. The number of times rural business/people have to try and get things fixed and the time and cost of this is high.

  • Solid and fast down-link speeds. Bit rate is independent of distance for the speeds/distances concerned. Speeds can go up to 1Gbps now and  tomulti-terrabyte speeds if needed in the future, so quite future proof as Internet services evolve. Rural properties tend to be widely spaced. FTTC is only really suitable for < 600 meters @ 50 Mbps on good quality cables (a lot or rural cabling is old and decaying).

  • Solid and fast up-link speeds. Cross talk due capacitive/inductive coupling on copper wires restrict down-link/up-link speed ratios. That is, everyone sharing a multi pair copper cable has to have the same up-link speed. A business, for example, could not have a faster up-link speed. Fast up-link speeds are needed for creative businesses/people, home working and video conferencing. Can be > 1Gbps but limited by Openreach at the moment.

  • Customers get the speed they have ordered/paid for be that 40 Mbps, 80 Mbps, 330 Mbps, 1 Gbps etc. Rural businesses or individual home owners can pay for and receive a higher speed Internet services if desired.

  • Lower latency (faster ping times) for interactive use.

  • Contention (sharing the overall bit rate) can be lower with an FTTP solution. However it can be higher depending on the systems design (number of shared fibres with splitters used).

  • Almost no interference issues which cause lost packets and unreliable connections. Especially an issue with long rural overhead cables and at night. At our separate business unit 10 companies internet was knocked out (Intermittent 0.5 Mbps ADSL rather than 5 Mbps) for 6 months due to a faulty laptop power supply in one of the offices.

  • Lightning strikes cannot cause business/home internal systems damage. Already had 3 computers, two switches and a router destroyed by a BT/Openreach telephone line strike. With the IoT becoming prevalent more devices are locally connected to the Internet and are at risk of damage.

  • Future proof. A pure fibre network can reach bi-directional multi Gigabit speeds easily irrespective of the distance a property is from the exchange and is much more reliable. FTTC has already reached its limits and any such systems will need upgrading to FTTP within the next 5-10 years.

  • Long term lower maintenance and running costs for the network, being proved by world wide telecommunications companies.

  • More "Green", much less power is needed to run the Network. There is no green cabinet with its powered electronics required.

  • Although home Internet connections are termed Broadband due to the copper wire technologies employed in ADSL and FTTC, FTTP is currently a narrow-band technology. As performance requirements extend in the future FTTP will use a wider bandwidth and become more broadband to deliver much faster speeds than today.

FTTP disadvantages to FTTC

  • Initial infrastructure install cost and install time. This is primarily where underground cable works are required. In rural locations, where overhead cables are used, it is likely that FTTP install costs would be similar and cheaper especially if costs over 10 -20 years are taken into account.

  • As every property in an area will need a new fibre cable installed and some individual properties may be distant from the main fibre, costs may preclude some properties being upated in the short term.

  • The customer will need a new fibre line installed into their premises.

FTTP Install Costs

The costs of installing fibre to peoples homes is often touted as being very high. This is mainly due to the fact that most properties are in urban areas and most of those are connected by underground cables. The cost of digging up roads and pavements to install the fibre optic cables is very high.

In rural areas the situation is quite different. Most properties tend to be connected using overhead cables. The costs of installing overhead fibre cables is much lower than an underground installation. The costs of the fibre itself is cheaper than the copper. No FTTC cabinet with its electronics and power supply is needed.

Another aspect is that most of the overhead cables are old and are probably at least half way through their lifetime (some are beyond their lifetime!). They will likely need replacing anyway within the next 10 years or so. Thus a fair degree of the installation costs of the fibre can effectively be recouped over a 10 year period. If you take this into account, over a 10 - 20 year period, FTTP is likely to be significantly cheaper than a FTTC installation as no network updates will be needed and there is no cabinet with its associated powered electronics needed.

Also FTTP is reasonably future proof as it is able to deliver bi-directional multi Gigabit speeds easily and reliably. This means the Infrastructure has a long life time (20 – 30 years ?). FTTC systems however are already outdated already and certainly will need to be upgraded within the next 5-10 years significantly increasing the cost of a FTTC solution over the much superior FTTP solution.

Notes

  • There are technologies such as G.Fast becoming available. This allows the fibre to be taken closer to the property but keeps the existing copper cable for the last portion of the network. This is a dead end technology but may be used in urban areas by BT/Openreach for a short period. Maintenance issues and reliability will be bad.

  • FTTrN technology can be used for some individual properties where the costs of FTTP installation is very high. This allows use of the existing copper cabling to the property to the nearest, easily accessible fibre of an FTTP system. Could be useful where an individual  property is connected by an existing relatively long underground cable for a short period.

  • OFCOM are pushing for FTTP to be installed across the country. There are now quite a few companies coming on stream to provide a FTTP solution to rural areas. These companies are, however, restricted by the BT/Openreach monopolies ownership of the ducting and overhead cable space, way leave issues and “fibre tax” issues etc.