A new study from consultancy firm Analysys Mason has suggested, theoretically, that a mix of band plan, vectoring and line bonding solutions could allow up to around 98-99% of UK homes and businesses to received superfast broadband ISP services via FTTC (e.g. BT-Infinity ) technology. In reality there are problems and many unknowns with this prediction but it might have some merit.

At present Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) works by delivering a fast fibre optic cable to street cabinets, while the remaining connection (between cabinets and homes) is done using VDSL2 (similar to existing ADSL broadband but faster over short distances) via existing copper cable.

BT already uses this solution to deliver download speeds of up to 40Mbps to 30% of UK homes and it plans to reach 66% of homes by 2014. BT has repeatedly said that the service could potentially reach 90% of the UK (i.e. roughly equal to its eventual 21CN coverage) if it gets the lion's share of public money, but we'll leave that often heated debate aside for today.

A "band plan" (increased spectrum allocation) related upgrade during this spring will boost FTTC's top download speed to 80Mbps (20Mbps uploads) and a similar upgrade in the future could push that to 100Mbps+.


According to Analysys Mason, adding pair-bonding (using one or more spare copper pairs [phone lines] to increase speeds) and vectoring (works to cancel out interference [crosstalk]) could make FTTC faster and available to about 8% of lines over and above those covered by the current band-plan changes.


In the real world, mathematical assumptions like this and actual deployments don't always meet up quite so precisely and usually sidestep other problems. For example, some premises would not have the necessary amount of copper pairs to benefit from bonding.

The assumptions about speed also forget that as FTTC performance rises, usually for those closest to their street cabinet, it falls for people who reside further away. Real-world performance is usually very poorly reflected by predictions of theoretical capability (i.e. expect to get a lot less).

Then you have the financial issue. Both vectoring and bonding in particular would cost more money and this in turn is likely to make them more expensive for consumers; in some cases prohibitively. On the other hand there are those who would be more than happy to pay double if it meant getting a superfast connection.

It's worth pointing out that we don't yet know the full details of how BT would, if it got the funds, reach that 90% figure. This could easily impact Analysys Mason's prediction so we're taking it all with a pinch of salt. Thanks to Ian Grant for pointing us towards the report.