‘Telecommunications Magazine’ is reporting that ceo of BT Wholesale Paul Reynolds has said that the UK incumbent presently has no plans to invest in a nationwide fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network. Speaking at the DigiWorld 2006 event in France, Reynolds apparently questioned the business case for all-out FTTH, suggesting that the ADSL2+ service that BT would launch next year would have more than enough heft to deliver the services its customers might require.

This runs somewhat counter to the view of the authors of the recent Analysys report ‘Fibre in the Last Mile: the business case for FTTP and VDSL’ (click). “Real-life speeds of all DSL technologies can be as much as 40% lower at source than their theoretical maximum, and, despite continuing improvements in digital processing, ADSL2+ does not leave a lot of reliable bandwidth to play with over and above one HDTV stream,” judged Martin Scott, co-author of the report.

“Standard digital TV may provide a stop-gap for the near future, but HDTV will be the future standard, and ADSL2+ won’t cope. If ADSL2+ isn’t enough then operators must look to VDSL2 and fibre,” added Scott.

BT’s fibre strategy also looks to be the opposite of that of Japanese operators who, according to a recent report from Yano Research Institute Ltd, grew the number of FTTH subscribers by 88% in fiscal 2005, to reach a total of 5.4mn by the end of March 2006. The ‘Fiber-Optic Telecommunication Market In Japan 2006’ analysis calculates that the size of the total Japanese fibre-optic access systems market has reached approximately US$645mn, of which approximately US$555mn is for passive optical network (PON) systems and US$90.7mn for media converters (MCs).

Interestingly, Yano says that most major Japanese telecommunication carriers reported that approximately 60% to 70% of new subscribers had concurrently subscribed to optical IP phone services, and emphasised that the cost for ‘FTTH and IP phone’ was now lower than the cost for ‘ADSL and conventional analogue phone’ in terms of basic monthly fees.

Yano estimates that the total number of Japanese FTTH subscribers would exceed 27mn by the year of 2011 with over 3mn annual net increases of FTTH subscribers each year up to 2011.
John Williamson