Optical Network Market Research Reports

On the face of it, BT's recently announced £1.5 billion fibre programme is welcome, but meagre. It would provide hybrid FttC/VDSL to only 40% of homes, leaving the remainder with ADSL2+. And there is no guaranteed funding as yet: work is unlikely to start on the project unless a number of criteria are set, mainly related to Ofcom providing a sympathetic regulatory regime involving a minimum return on investment, and to the co-operation of local councils which would be expected to part-fund deployments in their areas. Without these conditions in situ, BT may yet scrap its fibre plans or delay them indefinitely.

That BT's (cautious) fibre plans have no national ambitions is striking, since there is a real risk that the UK could prolong its unequal broadband delivery into the era of NGNs. On the one hand, the UK has a much trumpeted broadband infrastructure with excellent competition and low prices for consumers. On the other, bandwidth is far more measly than in many comparable Nordic, north European and Asian markets.

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