UK Business is ‘missing a trick’ by not taking advantage of faster Fibre Optic Broadband already available today
Fibre Optic Broadband
There’s no doubt that access to faster internet services is crucial for the UK business community and an essential ingredient for the development of the UK economy. Clearly the UK government recognise this, with another £50 million of funding announced in the Chancellor’s autumn statement, but their rhetoric about ambitious goals for the future are overshadowing what’s available today in terms of “Superfast Broadband” and the benefits that this can bring UK businesses right now.
Over half of premises in the UK can already access Fibre Optic Broadband based on FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet – explained later in this article) technology that offers download speeds of up to 76Mbps and upload speeds of up to 19Mbps. Typically customers experience 50-60Mbps download speeds with this form of Fibre Optic Broadband, which is 8 – 10 times faster than a typical traditional broadband service. However, recent industry figures suggest that where superfast broadband has already been made available in the UK (typically FTTC), only 7% of customers have actually taken it up. Within Zen’s own customers’ take-up rate stands at 18%, but we have been communicating the benefits of Fibre Optic Broadband to our customers for over two years since we first introduced this service in the autumn of 2010.
This leads me to the conclusion that UK Internet users, especially small businesses, are missing out on the benefits of faster Fibre Optic Broadband services that are already available TODAY! It is important that business who don’t have IT and technology expertise, are provided with better information and education about faster Internet services they can access right now. Government logically has a big part to play in this but appears far more interested, may be even obsessed, in grabbing headlines about building Europe’s best Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) network by 2015. Clearly it’s important to have ambitious plans for the future, but please let’s make sure that UK plc is taking full advantage of faster internet services that are already available today.
The bottom line is that Fibre Optic Broadband is fast, reliable, affordable and already widely available with more being deployed every month, let’s take advantage of it today!
FTTC is …
Fibre to the Cabinet or FTTC describes a deployment where a fibre cable runs from a BT exchange to a street cabinet that contains the Broadband equipment. From here it is linked to business premises and homes via just the last few hundred metres of existing copper cable. Because all but the last few hundred metres of the connection is based fibre optic, FTTC services are much faster and more reliable than traditional broadband services. Zen provides FTTC services with a choice of download speeds of up to 38Mbps and up to 76Mbps with prices from £23 per month excluding VAT. FTTC is available to approximately 50% of UK premises.
FTTP is..
Fibre to the Premises or FTTP describes a deployment where a fibre cable runs from a BT exchange all the way to the end-user premise. This means that the entire connection is fibre optic based so services are extremely reliable, with speeds faster than FTTC and speeds are also not affected by distance from the local exchange. Currently FTTP is not widely available but Zen provides a range of FTTP services with a choice of download speeds of up to 38Mbps, 76Mbps, 100Mbps and a massive 330Mbps with prices from £23 per month excluding VAT.
It isn’t fibre optic broadband unless its fibre to the home. My dial up is fed by fibre at the exchange. another few metres to a cabinet makes very little difference to me. Just because you are in marketing doesn’t mean you should perpetuate the myth Andrew. Zen is one of the best or nearly the best ISP there is. Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Blogs by their very nature are an expression of opinion, but the following facts lead me to my very positive view of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) based deployments of fibre broadband.
FTTC based broadband technology that offers download speeds of up to 76Mbps and upload speeds of up to 19Mbps is now available to about 50% of UK premises. Typically users experience download speeds around 60Mbps with this form of Fibre Broadband, which is 8 – 10 times faster than a typical traditional broadband services. FTTC based services offering download speeds of up to 38Mbps are also available with customers typically experiencing download of speeds of 30Mbps.
From a personal perspective my experience of FTTC has been great. I live on the edge of a rural town, my home is at the end of a fairly long telephone line and with ADSL2+ broadband I was getting 3Mbps download speeds. With FTTC I now enjoy a tenfold increase in download speed at just over 30Mbps with upload at 6Mbps.
Clearly I am an advocate of FTTC, but here are some facts from recent surveys of new Zen Fibre Broadband customers. Actual speeds met or exceeded estimated speeds for 92% of customers, plus in terms of ease of set-up and reliability the service was consistently rated between 88% and 90% across a number of surveys. However, most importantly 94% of customers would recommend Zen’s Fibre Broadband to a friend or colleague.
In simple terms broadband is a technology to deliver high speed data signals for Internet access over traditional telephone lines. It has been a great success, but a fundamental characteristic of broadband is that the longer the telephone line the slower the broadband service becomes. Not much of a problem if you live close to the telephone exchange but more of an issue if you live further out and your broadband speed is slowed by a long telephone line of several kilometres or more.
Telephone lines are made of copper or aluminium wire and the way forward is to replace as much of this telephone line connection between the local exchange and your premises with fibre optic cable. Again in simple terms, Fibre optic has the advantage over wires of being able to carry signals over much greater distances without slowing them down.
There are two types of fibre optic broadband available. Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) which replaces the entire telephone line with a fibre optic connection from the local exchange to the premises, today there is limited but growing availability of FTTP. The more widely available Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) replaces the telephone line between the local exchange and an equipment cabinet in the street with fibre optic leaving just a couple of hundred metres of telephone line in the broadband connection to the premises which means that much higher connection speeds are available.
More information about FTTC and FTTP is available at the following link:
http://www.zen.co.uk/business/broadband/fibre-optic-broadband/fibre-broadband-faqs.aspx
Well Andrew I live in Suffolk and use Zen for work and home and frankly I get zilch speed as the likes of fibre optic have passed us by. I get much better responses from satellite and cannot wait to see if 4G will at last bring Suffolk into the 20th (let alone 21st) century!
Can I also add that I have asked Zen to notify me (in Ipswich not out of town) when BT finally get around to connecting us and there doesn’t seem to be a proactive means from Zen of doing this.