TalkTalk to splash £1.5bn laying full fibre on 3 million doorsteps TalkTalk plans to bring full fibre speeds of 1Gbps to three million premises in the UK, by creating an independent company with a total investment of around £1.5bn. Under the plans, the entity would be 20 per cent owned by TalkTalk and 80 per cent by infrastructure investor Infracapital. The ISP is also raising £200m in new …
Oh no. Please Mods just cut'n'paste the comments from the last TalkTalk fiasco report and close this so we can froth at the mouth down the pub instead. Saves time, bitter tastes better.
While you are about can you cut out the stock image on the frontpage with some vague connection to a tedious story and replace it with a loop of Thunderbirds 1 & 2 landing simultaneously on Cape Canaveral obviously filched from the discarded film stock bin at Shepperton and pretending its really real - a bit like TalkTalk's broadbind.
Just kiddin'. Elon you are magic. With knobs on.
Agree with you about not using Talk Talk, even without the hack I would not use Talk Talk.
Full fibre is fine for people who needs the speed, i am fine with 38Mbs to be honest, so even if full fibre came here unless the price was the same as what I am paying now i would stay as I am.
TBH, if ADSl could offer me 8Mbs at least I would go back to that.
Reliability is more important than speed. for me, but I do need a certain amount of speed to watch HD video.
Not entirely sure why you were downvoted; even a 1080p60 youtube stream rarely exceeds 6Mb/s bitrate overall, and I don't think iplayer shows anything more than 720p50, usually maxing out at around 2.5Mb/s. They'll fit down a 10Mb/s pipe without even touching the sides. I don't use them myself but I can't imagine other streaming video services being vastly different...
Openreach is used for all networks. I received this from they around my several year delay to get fibre...
Thanks for contacting us about fibre.
I've had a look into this for you and can see the cabinet x of the x exchange has an ongoing project to upgrade it to be fibre ready.
I'm afraid we can't give any completion dates just yet as the FTTC(Fibre to the cabinet) project is currently on hold. We place projects on hold for lots of reasons, but due to the number of variables involved it's impossible to give a completion date that would be accurate.
Also, I've checked if there are any plans for FTTP(Fibre to the Premises), unfortunately there are no plans to provide FTTP services as of now.
When the fibre service is available for you and orders can be accepted, this information will be given via this link:
https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/fibre-broadband/when-can-i-get-fibre
We can also get in touch with you directly as soon as we know more or have fibre available. Ask them to simply click on the link below and fill in the details:
https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/expression-of-interest
Once you've signed up we'll get in contact with you as soon as we have further information about the upgrade.
Best wishes,
* sigh *
@AC: "I doubt TalkTalk will Wholesale as it makes the case to invest way, way harder. No-one would unless forced to by regulation."
Not sure I agree with you. If they were forced by regulation to wholesale at the levels applied to Openretch then, yes, it probably wouldn't be worth the investment. If they choose their own wholesale price (which they probably could do as they don't have market dominance, unlike Openretch) they could make a profitable product - they supply the line and someone else does the customer stuff (signing customers, support, billing &c).
The TT board discussion would more likely be - if we keep this to ourselves and don't wholesale, will we make more money having it as a selling point than if we wholesale to others and have multiple ISPs getting Bums on seats?
We all know BT hover over their dead carcass of legacy copper/alu broadband like vultures, while proclaiming the vapourware wonders of Pointless G.fast.
BT talk the talk, but delay and delay, obstruct progress, sit on their hands like the local drunk blocking the pub doorway, drinking with their fcuk buddy Ofcom.
Everyone has had enough listening to the combined bullshit, forced into the situation of stepping over/ bypassing a couple of very pally luddites. Better to do it yourself independently, obviously.
FTA: "TalkTalk plans to bring full fibre speeds of 1Gbps to three million premises in the UK..."
Openreach: Openreach ups investment plans: Will shoot out full fibre to 3 million premises
I wonder if they'll target [largely] the same 3 million properties or completely separate sets of 3 million properties?
Talk Talk will get to keep all the revenue from every customer they sign up. Openreach get to keep whatever the line rental on fibre is - say £10 a month - and the rest goes to the ISP.
One of those models is easier to get investment for than the other.
> One of those models is easier to get investment for than the other.
Yep: the one where the monopoly incumbent gets to keep the majority of the revenue (e.g. £18.34+VAT for FTTP 80/20 wholesale), and the resellers are the ones who get their margin squeezed as they compete.
No TalkTalk are talking of do more than Openreach, but what is significant is the timing of the announcement, it comes after Openreach's submission to Ofcom. It will be interesting to see Sky's announcements on its position with represent to TalkTalk (are they going to join in?)
Hence it would seem that Ofcom can have no reasonable objection to the Openreach proposals, as they haven't prevented competition from entering the market.
Now the question is, if Ofcom give Openreach the go ahead, whether TalkTalk actually go ahead or quietly shelf their proposals and continue to use Openreach...
> And given TalkTalk still can't even do IPv6, should we trust them to deliver 1Gb without CGNAT!...)
Given that TalkTalk inherited the carcasses of many different ISPs (Tiscali, World Online, Carphone Warehouse, Opal, Pipex, Nildram, LineOne, Homechoice, Telinco etc) they probably have more than enough IPv4 space to keep them going indefinitely in the UK marketplace, at one address per customer.
https://bgp.he.net/AS13285#_prefixes
https://bgp.he.net/AS9105#_prefixes
https://bgp.he.net/AS8586#_prefixes
https://bgp.he.net/AS43234#_prefixes
https://bgp.he.net/AS12708#_prefixes
https://bgp.he.net/AS134712#_prefixes
The first link alone includes a /11 netblock (2 million IP addresses), eight /14's (another 2 million addresses), two /13's (another 1 million)
Even worse when you decide to cancel their service (as I id this morning) you talk to "Michael" who has a very very heavy Indian accent who needs to verify your address, which you give him and he says that's not the address they have on the account. Eventually after several attempts I discovered their version of my address is prefixed by the word "Apartment" and he could not accept a prefix of "Flat" or accept just the number without the prefix, nor give any clues about the issue. "Michael" then tried to get me to take my service to my new home. No. Give it to someone else. No (I'm not that cruel). Pay the £20.09 early cancellation fee. Yes please.
After that it was just the expected reading me the terms and conditions putting me on hold while he did "something". No more than a 30 minute call in total, but by the end of it I was begin to suspect that "Michael" wasn't his real name and I was half expecting him to tell me that there was a virus on my computer.
How much overlap will this have?
How many customers will have access to BT Fibre, Talktalk Fibre and Virgin Cable?
Would it not be better to force providers to upgrade or install in areas where the others are not operating first? I understand that would limit choice to begin with but at least you have one choice rather than none.
This is one of the arguments for having a non-profit do the fibre build-out & then rent capacity to ISPs. But for heaven's sake don't let the government anywhere near the planning & build activity! The big problem of course is how to incentivise the non-profit to maximise capacity and reach whilst minimising cost, and to keep the network upgraded as technology & service requirements allow.
This is one of the arguments for having a non-profit do the fibre build-out & then rent capacity to ISPs. But for heaven's sake don't let the government anywhere near the planning & build activity!
Whilst I agree with you, the real opportunity to do this some years back when the government initiated the BDUK programme; which just goes to show don't let the government define the terms of reference either...
We have VM cable with 12 up 160 down.
The OpenReach line checker shows FTTC with a maximum of around 50 down.
Telephone poles are sprouting fibre terminations with reels of fibre waiting to be pulled through the ducts.
I have no idea if Talk Talk are planning a roll out of fibre to add to the mix. Noting that unless they get access to the poles there is likely to be a lot more cost compared to the OR deployment. This in turn makes me wonder if OR will quickly roll out FTTP in any area where TT apply for planning permission (or whatever) to dig up the roads and pavements.
Yeah, but investors bought shares for the dividends, not because they're interested in the company's activity.
and only what happens in the next 90 days. Plans about investments outside the next quarter are seen as negative in their view of the world. This short termism are be the downfall of many a company. I've even seen one with a full order book for the next TWO years go under because they could not get a line of credit extension for more than 90 days. When their products take at least 120 days to make they had no choice but to shut up shop. Madness.
@ Pascal Monett - I think that just about sums up what is wrong with the Stock Market. It's not just dividends though.
The barrow boys at the Stock Exchange treat shares as simple commodities to be bought and then sold at a profit. Now we have computer trading where an advantage for trading is based on milliseconds.
Unfortunately now that most peoples' pension funds rely on the Stock Market we are stuck with it.
"You'd think that investing in the fundamental infrastructure requires to survive as a business would put shares up, not down."
It's much riskier than just leasing parts of BT's network or buying white-labelled wholesale products.
The general expectation amongst investors regarding Telecoms is "Build it and go bust". Infrastructure is hard and there's a very real chance of price declines meaning that it becomes impossible to pay back the original loans - as happened with the cable companies in the 90's. At that point a rival comes along and picks up your assets in a fire sale for peanuts. Better to be an investor in that rival than in the company that did the building.
>Why?
This smacks of both canal and railway mania where so many companies will be digging up roads and pavements to lay competing different fibre networks. There must be some better way that maximises resources and limits disruption by companies sharing infrastructure such as a national fibre network then add capacity as needed. After all a vast majority will only need one FTTP connection at any one time.
I just find it disheartening to waste resources when we live on a planet with limited amounts.
....."such as a national fibre network"...
You mean OpenReach, the company that inherited FOC copper and preferred to squeeze every last penny out of it rather than manage and remove copper from ducts and lay fibre in their place?
You can either have a "national something" or a "quality something" but expecting a "national quality something" is a bit of a Unicorn.
> the company that inherited FOC copper and preferred to squeeze every last penny out of it rather than manage and remove copper from ducts and lay fibre in their place?
You are overlooking the key role Ofcom (previously Oftel) has played: in trying to create a 'competitive market' they prevented BT from investing in fibre, in some respects if BT hadn't already started the upgrade of their core network to fibre, Oftel would have blocked it, instead they prevented BT from deploying fibre in the local loop...
So you can have a "national quality something" at reasonable cost, if you drop the dream of having a "competitive market".
> Talk Talk business model/structure is based on using other companies infrastructure
That's a bit unfair - they have a large LLU rollout, which means they have their own equipment in BT exchanges (DSLAMs for DSL only, MSANs for data and voice), and their own backhaul links.
However in the Brave New World of FTTC/G.Fast and FTTP, all this reverts to the old model where OpenReach owns and runs all the active network equipment, shared by all ISPs.
There doesn't seem to be any discussion of unbundling fibre, and that would admittedly be quite tricky for GPON as it would require customers to be patched to the right optical splitter.
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