Monday, August 7th, 2017 (11:03 am) - Score 5,312

Last month Openreach (BT) launched a new consultation that hinted at a large-scale deployment of “full fibre” FTTP ultrafast broadband, which could cover up to 10 million premises by around 2025 (here). Today a leaked copy of that document has pegged the cost at between £3bn to £6bn.

At present Openreach’s roll-out of 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology is only expected to reach 2 million premises (mostly new build homes and businesses) by 2020, while their ‘up to’ 330Mbps hybrid-fibre G.fast solution will do 10 million premises by the same date. Meanwhile the Government have long been pressing them to invest in much more “full fibre” and the growth of rival FTTP/H providers, as well as Virgin Media’s network expansion, has also provided some food for thought.

However Openreach has said that such a deployment would only work if they had support from major ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk, Sky Broadband) via greater collaboration or cost sharing models, as well as the backing of Ofcom and the Government. For example, they’re seeking protection for their investment against aggressive regulation / charge controls and a reduction in logistical barriers (e.g. simpler planning and traffic management processes between local authorities).

On the flip side ISPs will want to ensure that they have some flexibility to differentiate their products and can offer it at an affordable price. At present it’s difficult to perceive of any ISPs committing direct investment to help Openreach deploy new infrastructure if they can’t get better and cheaper access to what is built, such as perhaps via wavelength unbundling.

Today a leaked copy of the consultation has apparently reached The Register, which claims to reveal that such a roll-out could cost up to £6 billion. The leak also suggests that Openreach are considering the possibility of migrating the “entire Openreach customer base” in related areas to new fibre optic lines, which we’d assume would also support the withdrawal of legacy copper line / ADSL services (cost saving).

However that sort of migration would be tricky unless the prices between the old and new services are fairly level and all ISPs, not just the biggest players, are willing to play ball. The above article claims might not be the case and customers could end up paying +£7 per month extra for FTTP lines, which would obviously cause a lot of consumer frustration (not everybody wants a faster service, some prefer to save money via slow ADSL). But this is only one of various approaches being considered.

An Openreach Spokesperson said: “Deploying full fibre at scale will cost billions of pounds – we are currently in the process of exploring what we can do collectively across industry, government and regulators to minimise those costs. The exact costs involved would depend on a variety of factors – which is what the consultation is exploring. We also need to consider with [ISPs] what the level of demand for full fibre is, and what the best way is for us to recover the costs of building any network. This process is ongoing and we will share more detail in due course.”

At present it’s still early days and no decisions have been made. The consultation itself is expected to run until 29th September 2017 and sadly we won’t be able to see any of the responses because this remains an industry, not public, consultation. Unless somebody leaks those too..

UPDATE 2:35pm

We’ve spoken to a couple of ISPs and now have a bit more context for the figures. The document basically says that a large-scale deployment of FTTP might cost £300-600 per premises passed. As such, a rollout to 10 million premises might cost between c.£3bn and £6bn, and a rollout to 20 million premises would cost more than double since costs increase disproportionately as coverage is extended to areas that are more difficult to cover (e.g. rural areas).

The document also uses some benchmarks’ to support its point, such as Virgin Media’s £3bn Project Lightning network roll-out to an extra 4 million UK premises that has an expected build cost of c. £600 per premises passed plus £150 per connected customer. Plus TalkTalk’s joint project in York with a build cost of under £500 per premises, as well as projects in Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium etc.

UPDATE 30th September 2017

Some recent investor slides from BT (here) reveal that the first 10 million premises to be connected via FTTP would cost an “estimated” £300 – £600 per premises passed, plus £175 – £200 to connect.