Peter Cochrane

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Fibre To The Home Costs In
Peter Cochrane
www.ca-global.org
COCHRANE a s s o c i a t e s
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Some pre history 1970 - 80s
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BT deployed fibre in the long lines network in
just 6 yearseverything improved
staffing went down from 242,000 to 110,000
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The fibre for coax transformation gave so
much net improvement that the move into the
local loop was an obvious target.and a
reduction to only 35,000 staff !
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Wavelength routing changes everything later
residential sector
residential sector
The 1986 - 1990 trial system advanced to the
point where gt 6000 local switch sites could
be removed from the network
Factories were built in Ipswich to manufacture
all the devices and plant..
ring feeder
optical amplifiers
to network node
business sector
Changing signal format with timeallocated a
carrier per session
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So, how in 1986 did FTTH cost in?
Not by simple minded upfront costing! But by
whole life costing by taking advantage of every
aspect of fiber!
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Costing in for FTTH

• Water ingress in copper 50 of faults
• Employees in network 25 of faults
• Remote routing of fiber saves 95 work
• Fibre reach removes electronics
• Switch nodes/building stock reduced gt90
• Reduced OSS BSS systems costs
• Energy costs reduced by gt50
• Staffing reduced by gt 80
• Lead, copper plastic recovered income
• Year-on-year OPEX fall with new tech

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And the projected cost of fibre to every home
office in the UK?
Only 15Bn 3 years profits!! Time to complete
10 years So a spend 1.5Bn/year
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So, what went wrong????
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How come 21CN has taken 25 years to arrive???

• Politics
• Regulation
• Libralisation
• Stock Market
• Vested interests
• People
• Demand

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The GOOD News
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But we are now engaged in a dive to the
bottom
where everything is a commodity and the
commercial environment is predatory!
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Interesting, persistent, and really
dumb questions!
How much bandwidth do we need? What will people
do with it? What are the killer
applications? Cant we do it all with wireless
anyway? Havent we invested in too much fiber/re?
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Interesting, persistent, and really
dumb assumptions!
Customer use/need is asymmetric! Customers will
pay for connectivity! Netcos/Governments can
control network use! Content can be
controlled! Maximum penetration is
100! Government/Regulators understand !!!!
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The biggest problems we face?
Not technology! Not operational? The business
model/thinking is wrong People find it hard to
change
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A world of opportunity risk.
www.cochrane.org.uk
www.ca-global.org
www.conceptlabs.net
COCHRANE a s s o c i a t e s