04.28.09
Digital Britain Summit Sees Heated Debate on FTTC vs FTTH
While the main attraction at the Digital Britain summit was the keynote speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a heated panel discussion attended by the executives of three major British ISPs also claimed a fair amount of attention.
The ISP community was represented by the CEOs of Virgin Media, BT and O2. BT chief Ian Livingstone talked about the company’s plans to install fibre right up to the street side cabinets but no further (Fibre-to-the-cabinet installation). The estimated budget for this project, slated to begin soon, is one and half a billion pounds.
However, Livingstone’s remarks did not appear to satisfy the panel. He had to defend against accusations of not releasing an extensive enough plan for high-speed broadband. In his company’s defence, the BT chief said that the proposal of FTTH (Fibre-to-the-home) was not economically viable because the costs involved were huge and the customers were not willing to pay for it. According to him, there just isn’t enough demand to justify the installation of fibre beyond the cabinets. To understand more about the different types of broadband service, such as cable broadband, click here for good info.
These talks were sparked off after the panel started talking about whether the government should join the effort to spread high-speed broadband by regulating the market or by providing support through subsidies.
The Digital Britain summit was held at the British library where major player in the communications industry participated in a discussion on
