fibre announcment from Fujitsu

[#1]

Hi
as Plusnet if i am right is owned by BT can't you give someone upstairs or whereever a bit of a dig in the ribs to wake up, BT infinity or the plusnet fibre trials are great for people in the larger towns and cities, while Fujitsu and a couple of undesirables have announced plans to bring fibre to 5 million homes and businesses in rural Britain,
what about the rest of us that don't rightly fit in either camp.
I live in a medium size Village ( domatory Village ) about 5 miles from the nearest major town but we are constantly ignored by all these proposals.
Steve


http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/news/pr/fs_20110413.html

[#2]

I'd suggest a better idea would be to contact your MP and ask him to talk to mine (Ed Vaizey)...
BT and the like are commercial companies, and as such do everything for profit.  Small villages with middling to no population simply won't be worth BT's troubles.  No amount of protestations will help.  In the same way you're unlikely to persuade Ferrari to drop the price of their 599's so everyone can have one (Though I dearly wish they would).  It's probably why there's no Virgin option either.
I would suggest that Fujitsu are either posturing, or more likely angling for some government assistance. After all, if it's not profitable for BT, it probably won't be for them.
As such, I see you best course of action would be to get the Government to assist in your village, rather than try and persuade companies to do something unprofitable. I suspect you'll have more chance of success. 
Just my 2p mind.

[#3]

Fujitsu have not announced that they will be building a fibre network, they have announced that if the UK government give them £.5bn (and probably a chunk more) they will build a fibre network.

[#4]

This is indeed related to the economics of providing fibre broadband out in the sticks. BT can't afford to do it - but then neither can Fujitsu or Virgin.
The core thing here is that this is about trying to grab a slice of the £530M that the government has already announced - the Guardian reported:

Quote

North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire and the Highlands and islands will all benefit from a £530m investment in superfast broadband, pledged by the government in its comprehensive spending review. The money will be injected over the next four years, and include £300m redirected from the BBC licence fee. In North Yorkshire, the 'rural market testing project' will see superfast broadband running up to 50 times faster than conventional broadband by using fibre-optic cable, introduced in up to 27 market towns where broadband provision was previously considered economically unviable. Around 11,400 businesses and 220,000 people are expected to benefit. The project is being run by Broadband Delivery UK, a government organisation with the task of ensuring broadband access to the whole of the UK by 2012, and high-speed broadband to the majority of the country by 2017. Around 2m households should benefit from the scheme.

2M households? I make that an investment of about £250 per line, from the government. There would probably end up being more investment from Fujitsu (or whoever would end up owning the network). Virgin's threshold is about £300 per line - if it costs more to connect you to their network, they won't bother.
According to something else I've seen, BT have around 28M lines - so this funding targets around 7% of BT's installed base. That's equivalent to about 60% of all the market 1 lines.
But Fujitsu is reporting 5M lines - or around 20% of BT's installed base (the entirety of the market 2 & market 1 lines). Optimistic, I think.
They also add the proviso:

Quote

The plans rely on the remedy imposed by the regulator Ofcom, on BT Openreach, to provide access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

So phil4's correct. The announcement is a bit of posturing, at trying to get Ofcom to reduce BT's access charges. It is also aimed at the people who will organise broadband for these remote villages, so they at least get an idea of interest. In Surrey there is a partnership that is trying to organise this, with their own pot of money, but it is related to the county council.
As you can be sure there isn't enough cash for the job, then you can expect these groups to take a balanced look at all solutions - including FTTH, wireless and satellite options. I'd like to see how Fujitsu's plan stack up economically against those options.

[#5]

A couple of corrections to the Guardian quote.
The £530m does NOT include the additional £300m, and the £300m is as yet unavailable, and wont be for some years.
ALL the money, all £830m that is or will become available is from the BBC/Licence fee, although £530m was originally allocated for supporting the digital switch over.
Personally I very set against the licence fee being used for anything other than BBC funding, and worry that what we are seeing is the thin end of the wedge of governments using licence fee money to fund various "digital" projects.  For me, either give the money to the BBC or lower the licence fee.

[#6]

Quote from: fourfourdevon

Personally I very set against the licence fee being used for anything other than BBC funding, and worry that what we are seeing is the thin end of the wedge of governments using licence fee money to fund various "digital" projects.  For me, either give the money to the BBC or lower the licence fee.

I too am against funds levied for legitimate projects being spent on other things, however these are places that won't be seeing decent speeds for a very long time without additional funding. With the current economic climate, investment in infrastructure seems worthwhile for the future benefit that it will bring.

[#7]

Indeed, but there are many many worthy projects and needs out there, many many many and they probably all seem worthwhile, but special taxes (like the licence fee) should only ever be used for their intended purpose (i.e. the very reason the special tax exists) after all there must have been a reason why a special tax was thought to be needed, and not to be funded from the general taxation pool.
It comes down to deception for me, for instance some people object to the licence fee because they don't see it as value for money, they argue for instance why should they pay when they don't watch the BBC.  The supporters of the licence fee argue that the unique way the BBC is funded gives us a unique TV market with an overall quality not matched in any other market, and so on.  But now we find the licence fee isn't just about the BBC, but about helping pensioners buy Freeview tuners and other support services around digital switchover and also about supplying broadband to large chunks of the UK... it's start to sound like the licence fee is just another general taxation, which transforms the arguments about its legitimacy all together.  But also, special taxes like the licence fee, when redirected to other projects are under the radar, if for instance the government had said they were raising basic rate Income tax by 0.25% for 1 year to raise the £830m then you and me would have been involved in the debate.