Broadband USO

[Starwire]

As well as construction costs for the Remote DSLAM, which is what FTTC is there is also the added cost of Powering that DSLAM, which can exceed over £5000 a year.

If installing a RDSLAM is only going to provide ‘Superfast’ Broadband to say 50 premises then BT/Openreach would lose Money.

Also BT/Openreaches long term goal is 100% FTTP Coverage. They’re no longer wasting Money/Time/Resources in deploying FTTC and or G.Fast.

[apmcroome · Accepted solution]

Thanks Starwire.  What is a waste of money depends, I guess, on your perspective. From the position of someone struggling with one tenth of one mbps upload, I would not think  it a waste of money for BT/Openreach to deploy technology that gives people like me a chance of the " affordable" access to the 21st century that the USO was and is designed to achieve. If BT were entirely free to maximise profit it would be different. But they are of course a regulated business arising out of a former state monopoly and bound by the USO.   That said, reading your views on BT's commercially preferred technolgy preferences has been useful.

Another approach might be for BT to lobby to get the USO changed to get a clearer and fairer balance between the competing interests of the rural customer and itself taking account of whether and how quickly it expects to make any USO redundant by getting FTTP to everyone .