The cost of taking super-fast fibre optic broadband to every home could total up to £28.8billion, according to a report by industry body the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG). The new figures well exceed BT’s original estimate of £15billion for installing a super-fast broadband network across the UK.
The report is designed to inform a government review of Britain’s broadband infrastructure being led by Lehman Brothers’ vice-chairman, Francesco Caio, of the cost of various ways of wiring a next-generation broadband network in Britain. Compiled from research conducted by Analysis Mason, it details a range of options for fibre-optic broadband. The cheapest option, at £5.1billion, involves taking fibre as far as street-level cabinets, which would then be connected to the home with copper wire. Even this option is three times as expensive as our current copper wire network. Speeds would vary between an estimated 30-100 Mbps.
The fastest, and most expensive option at an estimated £28.8 would use ‘point to point’ technology, delivering a dedicated fibre connection to each home, and ensuring constant speeds across the board of up to 1Gbps. A middle ground option costing £25,5 billion would deliver fibre to the premises, but with a shared line and varying speeds.
The total bill also conceals the disparity in costs between providing a super-fast connection to rural and to urban locations. Essentially, the more isolated a home is, the more expensive it is to wire to the network.
However, the prospect of faster broadband connections could lead to a higher take-up in rural areas, thus making deployment of fibre-optic cable in the countryside more acceptable to ISPs.
“If operators could achieve a higher level of take-up in rural areas than we have predicted in our study, then the business case for deployment in those areas could improve significantly”, said Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group.
Similar Posts: