The FTTH Council Europe has published an interesting new report that looks at the progress being made across 27 EU member states (and the United Kingdom) in switching off older copper based broadband networks as part of adopting gigabit full-fibre infrastructure. The report finds a mixed picture, with Portugal, Spain and Sweden leading the way, while others lag far behind.
The report largely seems to act has a high-level summary of policies and progress across each country, which unfortunately doesn’t tell us anything terribly new about where the UK stands because there’s a lack of key data in the report (as evident from the illustration below, although we’re probably somewhere around Italy’s position). But it does help to show just how much work is going into this across the EU and that the UK is far from being alone in its challenges.
Regular readers of ISPreview will already be aware that the move away from copper to full fibre lines is a very gradual process and one that involves several separate, albeit complementary, phases. For example, Openreach and BT’s ongoing effort to shift consumers off traditional analogue voice (PSTN / WLR) services to digital all-IP technologies by 31st Jan 2027 could be said to form the first phase (here and here).
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On top of the above phase, we also have Openreach’s “FTTP Priority Exchange Stop Sell” programme, which reflects areas where over 75% of premises are able to get full fibre lines and will thus stop selling copper-based services (latest progress). After that will come Openreach’s move to close around 4,600 old telephone exchanges under the “Exchange Exit” programme (currently in pilot), but that won’t really kick off at scale until 2030 onwards.
The council’s new report provides similar information for all the other countries it covers, which praises operators in Portugal, Spain and Sweden who have “mostly discontinued their copper networks“, while also revealing that Germany, Greece and the Czech Republic “still rely heavily on old copper infrastructure“. The UK is in a similar place to the latter group, as our own FTTP deployments are still playing catch-up with most of Europe (we started the FTTP build, at scale, quite late).
The report highlights that in only 12 countries do the incumbent operators have a plan for complete copper switch-off and in 8 of these 12 countries the plans are publicly available (the UK is one of these, so that’s a plus), while in others (e.g. Portugal) the plan is confidential.
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“We believe that fibre networks are fundamental to the digital transformation of Europe,” said FTTH Council Europe President, Roshene McCool. “Phasing out copper networks for fibre infrastructure will lower energy consumption and reduce overall operating costs, therefore making a great contribution to the achievement of the EU’s Digital Decade objectives”, Ms McCool continued.
The new tracker and report are useful for those seeking some additional context across countries, but as we say, it doesn’t really add much for the UK that we haven’t reported on many times before in various different articles. Ofcom’s next major market review is likely to take a closer look at Openreach’s current plan, which is more of an industry-led process, and it’s possible we may see some additional changes as part of that effort.
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Britain’s lunch is being eaten by Bulgaria and Lithuania. And places further afield, like my in-laws’ town in northern Malaysia, where everyone’s had fibre for years. But in a city of 130,000 in southern England? Nope, still waiting, and waiting…
What, fibre is not available anywhere in the town? Really!
“likely to take a closer look at Openreach’s currently plan, which is currently more of an industry-led process”
First ‘currently’ should lose ‘ly’.
Feel free to delete this comment after your edit.