Open reach is a relatively young business having been formed in 2006 with the mandate to underpin the UK communication provider for broadband services based upon the LLU model. We are now creating what will be the next generation access network for the U.K. as a whole using the right kind of Ethernet presented technology. We have created a mixed economy model based upon a common Ethernet presentation of our service to communication providers and that allows us to provide fiber to the cabinet based upon VDSL and that allows us to deploy fiber to premise based upon GPON technology and to deliver those services with a standardized presentation at a head-end to our communication provider customers.
I think vectoring is a very interesting and important technology. What we are seeing right now is that vectoring does offer the potential to support us in operating lines close to the no noise limit for VDSL, that will improve speeds in many cases, it will improve the predictability of speed, and reliability of service that we’ve delivered. We see vectoring as something which, in time, will enable us to sustain our speeds as the take up on cabinets and cables grows. And we see vectoring in time as offering us the opportunity to offer some enhanced speeds.
I think G.fast is quite an interesting technology and opportunity, yes it’s a copper technology, it is a copper technology which runs on much shorter loops, and because it runs on much shorter loops it can offer very impressive speed uplift – half a gig to one gig or perhaps beyond. I see it as something which has the potential at sometime in the future to support much higher speeds and speeds which are quite complimentary to our fiber to the premise type options right now.
10G PON is quite interesting. We built in the WDM devices at our head end locations, such that we can make sure that the passive optical network infrastructure we were deploying was properly future proof ie. beyond the GPON system to the 10 gigabit 10G PON system, we think that will provide our customers, the communication providers with a solid foundation for significant innovation for many years to come.
