UK Digital Minister Will “strain every sinew” to Cover Britain in FTTP Broadband

The Government’s Digital Minister, Matt Hancock, has told the Broadband Stakeholder Group 2017 Conference that existing hybrid fibre FTTC services are “not fit for the future” and that they will “strain every sinew” (wrong fibre Matt) to get “full fibre” (FTTP/H) ultrafast broadband rolled out in Britain.

At present the Broadband Delivery UK programme hopes to extend the current generation of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services to around 98% of homes and businesses by 2020, while the remaining 2% should be catered for by a new 10Mbps minimum speed via the Universal Service Obligation (USO).

However since last year the Government has begun directing new investment (around £600m) and policy support towards the encouragement of “full fibre” technologies, such as Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H), which is capable of delivering multi-Gigabit speeds to homes and businesses. “The purpose of this work will be to … make sure that the conditions are as good as they can be to maximise investment in full fibre,” said Matt.

Most of this was covered in the Spring 2017 Budget (here) and reflects a mix of support for alternative FTTP network providers, as well as a 5 year tax holiday from business rates for new fibre infrastructure, regulatory changes via Ofcom (e.g. legally separating Openreach from BT and making it easier for rivals to access their cables), plans for vouchers to help connect UK businesses to “full fibre” connectivity and so forth.

Matt added that “in the coming months” the Government will also be examining the market for investment in future connectivity, to ensure “we have markets and regulations that encourage investment now and in the future“. A big focus of this will be on making it even cheaper and easier to deploy new fibre.

Matt Hancock MP said:

“In May 2017 the Broadband Stakeholder Group published its report ‘Tackling Barriers to Telecoms Deployment’. This looked at the factors slowing down the rollout of UK Broadband, including local authority planning and the business rates regime for fibre.

As a direct response to this excellent report, our Barrier Busting Taskforce aims to reduce the costs of street-works, liberalising planning, to simplify wayleave agreements and tackle every and any barrier to rollout. We will systematically examine every issues flagged in the report, and then working with local bodies to identify solutions or to implement best practice.

We are working with local authorities to standardise their approach and reduce bureaucracy, and we’re prepared to change regulations if needed, on planning, transport, and wayleave rules if we need to. We want to hear from you about the practical barriers to deployment. Like you, we want to get the cost per premise passed down.

As well as government funding, and busting barriers, we are determined to ensure that we get the market structure and incentives right. I believe that the market for full fibre will look very different to the market for copper connections, and we want to see a fully competitive market for full fibre with a panoply of potential players.

…

We all want people to stop badgering us about their broadband. And I want to ensure they don’t have to badger us ever again, whether they are up in space or down here on earth.”

Elsewhere Matt said he found it “astonishing” that a “large proportion” of 4G base stations today are still connected via copper and radio links (fibre cables don’t reach everywhere). On top of that Matt said he was “concerned at the speed BT Group are moving in formally implementing the agreed split” and warned that “significant progress” must be made “very soon” or further action may be required (he doesn’t clarify where BT is falling behind).

As usual there are plenty of sound-bites to be had and we welcome the broad approach being taken, although there are still a few problem areas to overcome. For example, Matt welcomes Ofcom’s “efforts in these areas and hope the outcome of the Wholesale Local Access market review will further encourage fibre investment,” although the regulator’s drive to cut the wholesale price of 40Mbps FTTC services may conflict with this (here).

The work at present is also largely focused upon encouraging private investment for commercial deployments, which is a wise place to start given that early FTTP/H coverage is still only around 3% of UK premises and initial work will always focus upon the low hanging fruit of dense urban areas.

However, FTTP is painfully slow to rollout and as a result the Government really needs to develop a plan, ideally including clear targets and funding, to help support a truly national deployment, which could run for a couple of decades or more. A strategy that only works over a single parliamentary term isn’t going to be good enough and makes it hard for operator’s to plan their future strategies.

So far the Conservatives 2017 Manifesto has only put their “full fibre” target as 10 million premises by around 2022, which still leaves roughly 20 million of the more expensive premises left to serv. The costs of catering for that could easily reach well into double figures (billions). Private investment alone isn’t going to do all that. Hybrid fibre solutions (e.g. G.fast) will probably be sticking around for awhile.

Meanwhile all this talk of “full fibre” is probably very galling if you happen to live in an area where first generation copper line ADSL broadband services are still the only fixed line option. Many of those would argue that we should be trying to get universal coverage of superfast broadband figured out before we head towards an ultrafast future, although the real-world often takes a different path.