There is a lot of talk at the moment about FTTH (Fibre to the Home) and FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) replacing DSL in the UK. However I think we are looking at many years before these technologies make any significant impact on the market as a whole. For one BT is protecting its business customers as much as possible, so the product is very much consumer oriented with high downloads, but crucially low upload speeds. Granted 2 Mb/s is a good upload for a customer but that speed is already served nationwide through the plethora of ADSL2+ exchanges with the likes of Carphone Warehouse and O2.
My feeling is that BT will continue to lower the cost of fibre to businesses, who still put a lot of value in this technology, to help drive access so that it can serve consumers in the long term. I have previously talked about their trials with FTTC with the issues surrounding the technology and scale needed for wide adoption of this technology.
So the short and medium term DSL still has a very important part to play in internet delivery and more so as businesses look to increase their reliance with the adoption of cloud and voice applications. We have been bonding DSL products for many years and with services capable of up to 80 Mb/s down and 10 Mb/s up there is a compelling case that FTTC and FTTH have a way to go.
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