SO FIBRE IS FIBRE… RIGHT?
Over ten years ago, Openreach started to upgrade its infrastructure by the addition of fibre from the exchange to the green cabinets in the street (fibre-to-the-cabinet / FTTC) which gave us an increase from 24Mbps (21CN) to between 40 and 80 Mbps, depending on the quality and distance of the onward copper cable from the cabinet to the premises.
Openreach, the part of BT PLC that owns and operates the networks has had the arduous job of upgrading UK PLC infrastructure from the legacy copper networks to rolling out FULL Fibre, from the exchange to the door i.e., Fibre-to-the-Premises / FTTP.
Also, over the past ten years, Virgin Media, Openreach’s main rival in delivering Broadband services as an infrastructure provider, have had their market share challenged (along with Openreach) with the emergence of an array of Alternative Networks or AltNets as they are known in the industry.
One of the biggest rivals, who have now ‘passed’ over two million premises with their own fibre optic (FTTP) cable network is City Fibre.
FIBRE TECHNOLOGY GAINS PACE
With the UK having the oldest network with its maze of copper cables, both overhead and underground, it has taken over twenty years to push the networks into swapping out the legacy infrastructure for a technology that has been around since the 1970s.
Fibre technology was developed as a way of transmitting vast amounts of (then) voice calls as data transmissions were still in their infancy and in 1982, the world’s longest fibre cable was deployed and brought into service between London and Birmingham.
FIBRE TECHNOLOGY TODAY – GIGABIT CONNECTIVITY
Fast forward to today’s modern thirst for online content and the ever-increasing business requirements both Google and Microsoft have their own vast private fibre optic networks to link up data centres and using old terminology, back out to the outside world of the ‘information super highway’, aka The Internet.
Due to this vast demand, we are now seeing the final step of end-to-end gigabit connectivity.
As with all terms and conditions of supply and cost, there are standard residential packages and also business grade pricing, with the appropriate Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for when things go wrong.
You cannot demand an eight-hour fix when you want to pay as little as possible and then say you run your business from home. If you pay for a business service, you will get a business SLA.
Basically, it’s about how many premises are connected to (in simple terms) a ‘junction box’ in the ground, which is then connected to the main network fibre.
MAKING GIGABIT CONNECTIVITY WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Larger businesses have their own direct fibre connection, so inherently pay a higher rental with 24/7/365 monitoring and network fix times to ensure that maximum up-time is always achieved and they have the guaranteed bandwidth and top speeds at all times.
On the newer FTTP gigabit services for homes and businesses, at a much lower price point, you will see that the network may only ‘guarantee’ half of the advertised speeds and will be dependent on network conditions.
So the technology that runs along the fibre in the ground (or overhead) solely depends on what is connected to the glass at either end and have different properties with different outcomes…so not all fibre SERVICES are the same.
MAXIMUM NETWORKS
Get in touch with the Maximum Networks team team today on 0330 102 7444 or using our contact form